"The Blue Afternoon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Boyd William)

EIGHT

Philip wrote out the cheque with evident but ridiculously disproportionate pride and handed it over with a courtly flourish.

'Pay to the order of Mrs Kay Fischer, two hundred dollars,' he said, through his grin.

'So you got a job,' I said.

'And a bank account. I've got six weeks' work with MGM. I'm the third writer on Four Guns for Texas.'

'Sounds fulfilling.'

'Sounds like money.'

We were sitting in my office on Hollywood Boulevard. From my office window I could see the top three storeys of the Guaranty Building and the dusty fronds of a palm tree. I rented three rooms above a clothing wholesaler – Tex-Style Imports Co.-who specialised in blue jeans, dungarees and work boots that were sold to the petrochemical industry. The room that faced the boulevard was my office, beyond that was a small corridor that led to a windowless cube which was the drawing room where my solitary assistant, Ivan Feinberg, worked. Off the corridor was the reception area with a view of the parking lot. Mary Duveen, my secretary, had her desk here, squeezed between two banks of filing cabinets. It was all a bit shabby, a little make-do, especially compared to what I had become accustomed to at Meyersen and Fischer, but since the great schism and the lawsuit I had been obliged to economise. I had heard from one of my former colleagues that Meyersen had moved into my old office. Perhaps that was what he had been after all the time?…

I took Philip's cheque and folded it away in my pocket book. He had had his hair cut and was wearing a new sportscoat, cotton, a greenish plaid, and wide mushroom-coloured trousers. His short hair, I thought, made him look even younger, a superannuated college kid, and for a moment I felt a brief squirm of self-pity as I reflected on our short marriage and what I had lost when I kicked him out. I kept the appellation 'Mrs', not because it impressed my clients but because it made them relax, but joined it up with my maiden name. The conjunction seemed to me to reflect ideally my social and personal status. But Philip was offended and hurt: I was having my cake and eating it, he said truculently. But isn't that what life's all about, I replied, the goal we're all chasing? A brief squirm of self-pity, but one that disappeared soon enough.

'Movies,' I said, breezily. 'Going to get your name on this one?'

'There's a chance.'

I laughed. 'And pigs may fly one day, they tell me.' I stood up. 'I'll walk down with you, I've got to get some lunch.'

As we descended the two floors to the street I asked Philip if he knew any way of tracking down a man called Paton Bobby, who was in his sixties and might have been a policeman.

'Tried the phone book? Who's Paton Bobby?'

'A friend of mine needs to find him. I thought you might know how.'

He shrugged. 'You could hire a P. I., I guess… Or maybe I could ask the head of security at the studio – ' He grinned. 'Did you hear that? "At the studio" – I'm a natural, success simply cannot continue to elude me. This guy used to be a cop, he might have some idea.'

We sauntered down the sidewalk towards a street vendor. The sun was hot on the crown of my head and I undid the top button on my blouse. It was a fine day with a baby-blue sky up above and a few perfect dawdling clouds. A fresh breeze moved through the fronds of the new palm trees, still only half the height of the streetlamps. They made a sound of nail scissors snipping or of matches tipped on to a glass table. I put on my sunglasses as the sun bounced off the white walls of the buildings across the street. Too much Streamline Moderne for my taste these days. Curved walls, curved glass, mirrored panels set here and there, stringcourses picked out in red and black to emphasise the horizontals, canopies swooping round corners or ducking into forecourts whenever possible… What was going on here? It was all vitiated anyway by the garish lettering, shouting signs in primary colours hanging off buildings or else set on cantilevered wooden hoardings on the flat roofs, good chow! ham 'n eggs, cameras, gifts, parking. We passed through a tangy waft of fried onion as we walked by harrold's charcoal broiled steaks and made for the street vendor with his refulgent silver chariot. I ordered a super chile dog with mustard and extra onions.

Philip touched my arm. 'Listen, you're not in any kind of trouble, are you, hon?' He was sincere, and it was a kind thought. I realised I was still very fond of him.

'Of course I'm not,' I reassured him. 'It's some old fellow I know, needs to track this party down.'

Philip looked at me shrewdly, not wholly convinced, as I paid for and received my food. I could see him wondering how many 'old fellows' I might know and why I might want to help them locate a missing person.

'Stop looking at me like that. You don't have to do anything if you don't want to.'

'No, no, I'll see what I can do.'

I could wait no longer. I bit avidly into my chile dog, my nostrils suddenly filled with pungent heat. With a finger I helped a stray ribbon of onion into my mouth. I chewed.

Philip looked at me fastidiously. 'I was going to ask you to dinner tonight, but now I've seen your lunch I guess you won't be hungry.'

'Ha-ha. Call me later, you may get lucky.'

When I returned to my office George Fugal was there waiting for me, a wide smile on his narrow face. George was a tall thin forty-year-old with a restless, jumpy demeanour that sat oddly with a professional manner that could only be described as the last word in pedantry. He had thinning brown hair, big watery eyes and a weak chin that always had a bluey, unshaven look to it. If I had not known he was a lawyer I would have placed him as a minor criminal on parole, or a debtor on the run from the IRS. George never stopped looking round whatever room he was in, or over his shoulder; in restaurants he insisted on sitting with his back to the door, the better to squinny round in his seat.

'So what's the good news?' I asked him.

'We got a buyer for the house. I'm sure. A-' He checked his notebook. 'A Mrs Luard Turner. Pleasant lady. I just showed her around.'

'I'm going to finish it first. I hope she realises that,' I said with some ungrateful belligerence. All at once I felt oddly sad. Someone was going to buy my house. Someone else was going to live in my carefully constructed volumes of air.

'She knows that, she knows that. But she loves the place. Classy, she said. Grade-A class, she said. Her very words, Kay, her very words.'

He chattered on, excited and pleased for me, his gaze leaping from me to Mary to the office door to the trash can. We needed the sale to make the profit to permit K. L. Fischer to survive and move on to bigger and greater things. But I was still feeling my loss keenly.

'We've done it, Kay,' George Fugal said. 'You're there.' I smiled at him. Somehow I did not believe it was ever that easy.