of the sun on the mirrory hood of the other. There was a swerve and a crash. Both drivers survived uninjured, and Colonel Gorge intended to use the cars as part of an advertising exhibit. Later, however, he decided against it.’
‘Why?’
‘Three small girls and a terrier were killed in the accident.’ Woodkin continued the tour. ‘This is a signed photograph of the actress Marlene Dietrich. This is the coyote whose glands were transplanted into the Colonel by Dr Voronoff. This is the authentic skeleton of a Troodonian cantor. This is a flagitious puppet from the Colonel’s great-great-great-great-grandfather’s puppet show, discovered last year in an attic in New Orleans. This is a drawing made by the Colonel’s daughter when she was five. And this is the book that the Colonel wishes you to have.’
It was French, and it was rare, but it wasn’t
‘But the Teleportation Accident was in 1679,’ said Loeser.
‘Yes,’ said Woodkin. ‘Lavicini survived it, however. And when Auguste de Gorge, my employer’s great-great- great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, discovered this fact some years later, he became determined to have his revenge on the Venetian for destroying his theatre. But at that point his resources were meagre, and by the time he found out where Lavicini had been hiding, Lavicini was already dead, so de Gorge’s sole consolation was a copy of this book. Bernard Sauvage had printed only a dozen, intended for his closest associates. It is one of the very few inherited possessions that has survived all the changing fortunes of the Gorge patrilineage. No other copies are now known to exist. All Lavicini’s secrets are here.’ Woodkin paused. ‘Is something the matter, Mr Loeser?’
‘Oh, no. Not at all.’ Loeser knew that this was probably the most extraordinary gift he could ever hope to receive in his whole life. He did his best to conceal his disappointment. ‘Did Lavicini really plan the Teleportation Accident? I think that’s what Bailey thought.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of a woman,’ said Woodkin. ‘He went to Paris because of a woman. He perpetrated the Teleportation Accident because of a woman. He went back to Venice because of a woman. So the testament states.’
‘He really killed all those people because of a woman?’
‘That is not precisely the case, no. I hope you’ll forgive me for suggesting that it would be best if you read the truth for yourself, Mr Loeser. Now, I imagine this has been a demanding evening, and it occurred to me that you might not have had time to attend to your own needs. I understand that Watatsumi is preparing a light supper for the Colonel’s daughter. Perhaps you would like to join her. And perhaps before that you would like a bath and a change of clothes.’
Loeser had never met Mildred Gorge, but when he was shown into the dining room later that evening, he recognised her at once: here was the redhead who had been sitting in the audience at the Gorge Auditorium — forced to attend, he surmised, by her father, who could not go to his own theatre for obvious reasons. Woodkin introduced him. He sat down. She barely acknowledged his presence. And within half an hour, Loeser had decided he was in love.
As prolegomena to an explanation of this surprising turn of events, there now follows a partial list of subjects covered in Loeser’s conversation with Mildred Gorge that night that failed to arouse even the smallest perceptible quantum of approval or interest from the heiress. The delicious seared tuna steak and artichoke salad prepared by Watatsumi; any of Watatsumi’s cooking; any meal she’d ever had; food in general, and also drink; the weather in Los Angeles; the weather anywhere; sunshine in general, and also shade; the generous postgraduate scholarship she had been offered by Cambridge University to study moral sciences; learning in general; rationality in general, and also madness; Britain; Europe; the civilised world; travel in general, and also staying at home; the Gorge mansion; her family fortune; money in general, and also anything bought with it; hypothetical boyfriends; romance in general; human company in general, and also solitude; theatre; art in general; her lucky escape from an explosion that could have claimed her life and the lives of hundreds of others; her continuing survival in general, and also her death; sailing boats; tiger cubs; daffodils; cinnamon; laughter.
She really just didn’t like anything. And although this might almost have sounded almost like an illness, the truth was that Mildred Gorge didn’t seem to be depressed or morbid or arrested in adolescence: her opinions on the world didn’t derive from a mood or a temperament or a pose, but rather from a rational evaluative position. There was nothing to rule out the possibility that at some point in the future, perhaps in only a few moments’ time, she might be girlishly surprised and delighted by some notion, event, object, or human being, but it happened that, just now, everything still bored her. In other words, although one might have supposed that a conversation with Mildred Gorge would have been like auditory ketamine, to Loeser she was the opposite of tiresome. There was nothing more attractive than a girl who was difficult to impress. And he’d never met a girl more difficult to impress than Mildred Gorge. She was a perfect negation of the city in which she’d been born, a pearlescent kidney stone that California had grown in its own gut, one shake of her head enough to shame a million nodding, nodding, nodding oil derricks. He thought of that drawing he’d seen in the treasury: rain falling on a crippled old man alone in some sort of quarry. Five years old, living in Pasadena, and that’s what she’d drawn.
Loeser had never wanted to marry anything so much in his life.
‘It’s strange we’ve never met before,’ he said as a maid cleared the plates. Woodkin still stood in the room, presumably as a chaperone, but Loeser had known skirting boards that were more obtrusive.
‘Not really,’ said Mildred. ‘Since I left Radcliffe I’ve been going to stay with my friend Goneril quite often.’
‘I’m sorry, did you say Goneril?’
‘Yes. Why? Do you know her?’
‘No, but my parents are psychiatrists, and they once had an American patient who called one of his daughters Goneril, and she would have been about your age by now, and it’s such an unusual name…’
‘She has a sister named Regan.’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
‘And he named his yacht
‘To prove he was the master of his own fate. What happened to him?’
‘The yacht sank, the company went bust, and his daughters had him certified insane.’
‘Oh.’
‘Luckily Goneril got some money from an uncle.’
In parallel with his realisation that he wanted Mildred Gorge to be his, another new knowledge was now surging within Loeser: that this city, to him, was his bungalow, the Gorge Theatre, his longing for Adele, his monthly cheque from the Cultural Solidarity Committee, parties at the Muttons’ house, the definite absence of Bertolt Brecht … But now he couldn’t rely on any of those things. California was a patient who had never left Dr Voronoff’s operating table, who had accepted transplant after transplant after transplant until its limbs bubbled with moist grapevines of every imaginable foreign gland — but after five years of dribbling sour juices into his new host, a xenograft called Egon Loeser had finally been rejected. And he didn’t know what to do next. Except that when Gorge shouted for Woodkin, and Woodkin left the room for the first time since Loeser had sat down, he knew he had to say something.
‘Your father’s going to make you marry Norman Clowne,’ he blurted.
‘Who’s that?’
‘The Secretary of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission.’
‘Why is he going to make me marry the Secretary of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission?’
‘Because I told him teleportation isn’t real.’
‘Oh,’ said Adele, apparently satisfied by that explanation. ‘I don’t want to marry the Secretary of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission.’
‘I don’t want you to either,’ said Loeser boldly.
‘I guess I don’t have a choice.’
