Look, fellow, I know you know damn well that I know how uncool this sounds, he said. But man, I’m also counting on you to realize that all of this is still very much in vamping phase. Which is why it’s absolutely impossible for me to even hint that I question anything of any sort whatever about her. Man, I’m just trying to vamp this infatuation thing until she comes back out to the coast. What all this has been about all along is me vamping this thing until she comes back when the producers start pulling all the logistics together and now I’ve got to find out if it’s worth it or if it’s all going to go up in smoke.
XIX
When he finally called me from Hollywood to bring me up-to-date on the situation a week and a half later, as soon as I heard his voice I knew that whatever had happened during the rest of his trip to New York or after his return to the coast had changed his mood from shock and anxiety to an enthusiastic anticipation that I remembered always being there whenever we were doing whatever we had been doing in California.
So what can I tell you, my man? he said, before I could even say Hello. You already know that Hollywood is seventy-five percent if not ninety percent pop song romance, Sunset Boulevard and blue horizons indeed. So what can I tell you, fellow? Old Mice got it bad and gotta try to make it good. So I got over that attack of cornballitis.
Man, he went on, I realize what had hit me right after we came outside and you headed across the street to the arcade to Forty-third Street. Suddenly there was this irrepressible need to hear her voice again as soon as possible. So that I could be sure that I hadn’t made the whole goddamn thing up. So I decided to call her up and ask if I could pop by the boutique.
Which he had done from the phone in the lobby of the bank at the corner of Fifth Avenue, and she had said yes and as he hung up he suddenly realized that the relationship he was trying to develop with her was only incidentally and at most only temporarily connected with the film production that neither of them had ever mentioned to each other. After all, her profession was high fashion as such, not costumes for show business, and she had come out to Hollywood only to look around, mainly because the producer had sent for her, hoping that the visit would change the “maybe” she had given them to a “yes.”
Look, man, he said, I think I made it pretty clear that I got to meet her in the first place because she was more excited about the music she might be able to check out while out there than she was about the technical details in the production of what to her was only a sweet drawing room comedy that she was out there to decide whether she wanted to work on.
I grunted to let him know that I thought he was making his point, and that was when he went on to say, Now hey, fellow, you know as well as I do that a job as composer/consultant on a high-budget production like that was a pretty big break for Old Mice’s status as a sound stage studio pop pro in this town, as far as that sort of thing goes around here. But although it was my new status that got me to that Beverly Hills production party where I met her, it was because of the music that I’m most serious about that I got to take her out that very first night.
You’ve got to believe me, fellow, he said, neither one of us mentioned anything at all about that goddamn sleek-ass production. Not even a word about when or if she might have to come back out for final fittings and the shooting. My guess was that she would take the script and do all the designs and sketches in New York and send them out for approval and suggestions and make whatever adjustments and revisions they requested and sew everything up in New York and come back out west to check things out when the actual shooting began.
Anyway, as he had come on along Forty-fourth Street and turned up Madison Avenue, the only thing that mattered was that she was waiting for him and he would be there in less than ten minutes and would see how her head tilted and her hair fell as her eyes sparkled when her Parisian lips moved as she said whatever she would say.
He had not taken a taxi because he needed that much walking distance to get himself back together after what he had put himself through. But every time he had to stop at a traffic light he realized he was struggling to keep himself from springing forward before the yellow light changed to green again.
Hey, man, when I stepped into that endroit of ultimate chic while the fragrance matched the background like music and a design on display seemed almost as much a part of nature as the flower arrangement and here’s this stone fox of a Parisian high-fashion designer looking like she’s one of her own models. Man, not just waiting for me to pop by for a brief arrival chat but also ready to turn me right around and head for a cozy, nearby bistro because it’s lunchtime.
He then went on to say that by that time it was as if he had never ever heard of a private investigator or ever even seen the ones he grew up going to see in the movies. Then he also went on to
