'You're right.'
'While you're waiting, would you mind signing this?' She passed Teresa a plasticcovered clipboard with a sheaf of papers attached. On the top was a disclaimer form, and a printed invoice with a creditcard authorization on a tearoff slip below. Teresa signed woozily, and passed back the clipboard.
The woman checked the signatures, then tore off the top copies of everything and gave them to Teresa.
'How's the neck feeling now?' she said.
'Not too good.'
'The nurse won't be long.'
'Look, I'm grateful for everything you've done,' Teresa said.
'That's my job. I'm paid to help the customers.'
'No, 1 mean, telling me about the shareware, and all that.'
lit's OK.'
Teresa was feeling as if she was about to faint. She stared at the computer screen, which was still showing the list of Aronwitz's scenarios. She knew that somewhere in there, perhaps everywhere in there, would be living images of Andy. If she went into any of those scenarios she could see him again, talk with him again ...
The poignant longing overwhelmed her, and she closed her eyes, trying to control herself, She knew she could have seen him while she was still in the US. Her section chief had offered her free access to the Bureau files, when the ExEx scenarios started becoming available a few weeks after the actual shooting. She had turned down the offer then, and knew she would have to again. lt would be unbearable to be there, knowing he was about to die. All over again.
Waiting for the nurse, trying to distract herself, Teresa said, 'Do you have scenarios about Gerry Grove?'
'Not at present. We had shareware that's about to be replaced. It's not too good. They're working on a couple of new ones at the moment, and they should be here in a few days. One before, one after. You know.'
'No 1 don't,' Teresa said. 'What do you mean?'
Patricia picked up her phone again. 'Are you feeling OK, Mrs Simons?'
'Yeah, I'm fine. Before or after what?'
But her hold on the conversation was no longer so certain. In the last couple of minutes the nausea had increased unpleasantly, a huge distraction. She wanted to find out more from this efficient young woman, but at the same time she could no longer focus her eyes. She sat helplessly at the side of the desk, from where she had been watching the monitor, unable even to turn her head. Patricia was speaking on her phone again, but Teresa could not hear the words.
Presently, a tall, youngish man in a long blue nursing jacket appeared, introduced himself as the duty nurse, and apologized for the delay. He helped her stand up, then supported her as he took her along to the treatment room, at the far end of the building, well away from the ExEx equipment. Teresa managed to hold back until she was there, but threw up as he closed the door.
An hour later he drove her back to the hotel. She went straight to bed.
CHAPTER 19
There had been American voices around her at breakfast in the hotel, or at least they spoke so loudly that they had seemed to be all around her. They were the worst kind of Americans, Teresa thought unfairly: young, ambitious, crude, loudmouthed, superficial. She despised their expensive but tasteless clothes, their bland Midwest accents, the gaucheness of their responses to things British. They made her feel like a snob.
Why does any of that make them worse as Americans? Or as people? She didn't know, but she couldn't suppress the thoughts, and disliked the feelings they aroused in her.
Normally she liked most of the people she met, a trusting kind of liking, just in case. But being nice was the last thing she felt like at present. After two quiet days, spent mostly in private misery in her hotel room, the dressing on her neck was ready to be removed and the sickness had passed. She was still on antibiotics. She found a weighing machine in the public toilet next to the bar, and if the thing was registering accurately it looked as if she had lost five pounds since arriving in England. She liked that news: in the miserable months after Andy's death, she had given up caring about her figure and her clothes had started feeling tight. On the plane to England she had unbuttoned the top of her skirt, making the excuse that you always swelled up a little on a long flight, but knowing the truth was more prosaic. Now, though, things were definitely improving.
But she couldn't ignore the Americans who had moved
into the hotel. As soon as she was feeling better, and able to move around the hotel again, they seemed to be everywhere she went. They exerted a deadly fascination over her. They radiated insincerity and ambition, seemed to dislike or misunderstand everyone they met, even themselves, but suppressed their sourness unenthusiastically, keeping it deliberately unspoken, and thus underlining it.
She admired the calm way Amy had served them at their table, smiling and chatting with them, not letting her face or body-language reveal anything other than a cheery pleasure at seeing them there for breakfast. Yet she knew Amy must be feeling much as she did.
Teresa had spent the days dreaming of America, an older America, one where a hot wind blew and there was a sense of everunfolding space. She was stimulated by the ide exploration, of pushing at the edges of reality, of moving beyond the limits of the scenario.
She felt drawn by a
m'f 'rig kinship with the large, elderly form of Elsa
ysti yl 1
Durdle, the woman with the big car and the gun in the glove compartment, and her drive along the wide highways of southern California.
