and a self-deprecating smile: fifteen years in fertilisers, best make sure you're sitting downwind.
He had been back in the city by six and by seven had written up his sales reports, called his secretary on her home number and checked his appointments for tomorrow, thought about phoning his wife got halfway through dialling the number before deciding against it.
One of the things he couldn't stand, men who behaved as if they were on some kind of leash.
Peter Farleigh sucked in his stomach beneath the hotel towel, made a fist to circle steam from the mirror and leaned forward to examine his face; he could leave shaving till morning. A splash of aftershave would do.
Dry, he put on clean socks, underpants and shirt, the same suit and tie. In the lounge bar, he ordered a G amp; T, evinced enough of an interest in the forthcoming test series to have the waist coated barman smiling, tipped in the rest of his tonic and carried his glass over to a table near the smoked-glass window. Blurs of light passed along the street outside, trailing orange smoke.
When Farleigh turned his head, she was sitting across from him, relaxed into one of the easy chairs near the piano, leaning back.
Black dress, dark hair curling away from the nape of her neck.
Thirty? Thirty-three? He watched as she bent forward to pick up her bag, the way the button-through dress eased itself a little higher above her knees when she sat back. Oblivious to anyone around her, the woman tapped a cigarette from the pack, clicked her lighter, no response, gave it a shake and tried again, 102 finally dropped the lighter back inside her bag and began rummaging for a match.
'Here,' Farleigh said, walking towards her.
'Allow me.'
'Thanks.' Perfume, red nails matching the dark of her lipstick; smoke that moved soft across her face.
'Staying here at the hotel?'
Shaking her head, she smiled.
'No. I'm meeting a friend.'
Back at his seat, Farleigh thumbed through the menu, vacillating between the steak and the salmon. A light- toned Afro-Caribbean sat down at the piano and almost immediately began with
'Over the Rainbow', sleeves of his lightweight cream jacket pushed high above his wrists. For some moments, Farleigh was nagged by the thought that he had missed his daughter's birthday; once they were off at university, it was so difficult to keep tabs. At the edge of his vision, the woman shifted her position casually, leaning forward to the ashtray and back, crossing and recrossing her legs.
If she looks at me when I get up, Farleigh thought, I'll speak to her again. Instead, her head was turned towards the pianist, who had eased the microphone over the keyboard and was lightly crooning, The and Mrs Jones'. For God's sake, Farleigh told himself, stop being so bloody pathetic!
In the dining room, he decided fish twice in one day wasn't a good idea and ordered the steak. One bite and he knew that hadn't been a good idea either.
'Everything satisfactory, sir?'
'Fine, thank you.'
As compensation, he sent back his glass of house red and ordered a bottle of good Bordeaux. Before now he'd paid the earth for stuff that tasted more like the copper sulphate fungicide known to the trade his trade as Bordeaux Mixture, but this was the real thing.
By the time he had risen to his feet, one bottle later, his head was slightly muzzy and it had taken him a while to realise that the dark-haired woman from the bar was now sitting at a corner table of the restaurant, evidently still alone.
That's all right, Farieigh lectured himself, keep on walking; couple of phone calls, early night Just as long as she doesn't look up. But it hadn't even taken that The woman was surprised when Farieigh stopped beside her table.
'At least you made the right choice,' he said, nodding towards her plate.
I'm sorry? '
'The salmon. I had the steak. Like the proverbial, I'm afraid.'
'The proverbial what?' There was just a hint of lipstick, dark against the white of her teeth.
Old boots. '
Farieigh smiled and she smiled back with her eyes; she was older, he decided, than he had first thought, but not by too much. Still the right side of forty.
It was never an issue,' she was saying.
'The steak. I'm vegetarian.'
Ah. '
All that stuff they pump into the poor animals, mad cow disease and everything. ' She smiled, more fully this time.
'Perhaps you think that's foolish?'
Not at all. ' Things I could tell you, he was thinking, put you off your food for a lifetime.
'What happened?' he asked, indicating the empty chair.
Vaguely, she waved a hand.
'Oh, you know…'
'It's difficult to imagine.'
'What's that?'
'Anyone standing you up.'
He had hoped for some response, a laugh, an explanation. Instead, she looked down at her plate and pushed at a piece of pink flesh with the edge of her fork. Farieigh knew he had blown it.
'Well, enjoy the rest of your meal.'
She waited until he had almost turned away.
'Why don't you sit down? Join me for a drink. '
Twenty
Curtis Woolfe's film had been well received. Of course, there were always those who wanted nothing more than the latest glossy mishmash of unarmed combat and special effects, and who found anything pre-seventies slow and dull and boring.
'Nothing happens,' they would say, mooching down to the bar for their designer lager. Nothing happens. Well, nobody's head came off, nobody's blood spurted a perfect technicolour parabola across the screen, nobody humped naked in the shower or the kitchen sink; there was no Chuck, or Steven, or Cynthia, no Jean Claude, Arnie, or Sly; not even (the heavens forfend) Bruce Willis. But the moment when Albert Dekker steps into the darkness of his hotel room, twists the key in the lock behind him, slides the bolt and turns back into the room to see Martha Mac Vicar feral face illuminated through the slanting blinds by the light across the street, still had most of the audience catching its breath. The smile that died in her eyes as her teeth bit down into her lower lip.
In the auditorium, Curtis Wooife had been pleased with the audience's reaction and had answered questions with self-deprecating charm. What had it been like working with Mitchum?
'Delightful, especially when he was stoned.' Who was the most beautiful femme fatale'1.
'Gail Russell ask John Wayne.' What was his favourite film noirl
'Aside from my own. Out of the Past.' Why hadn't he made a film in over twenty years?
'Nobody asked me.'
Here in Sonny's restaurant, he was even more relaxed. Gesticulating over the food in his assumed Gallic manner, almost anxious to talk about the other films in the season, Wooife was lavish in his praise for Tyrell and the festival.
Resnick had arrived early, drunk a Beck's alone at the large reserved table and been about to leave when, through the curved corner window, he had seen Mollie Hansen leading the group along Carlton Street, past the George Hotel. There were a dozen of them in all, Dorothy Birdwell the last to arrive, leaning on Marius Gooding's arm. Cathy Jordan, her hair trimmed back and partly covered by a black velvet beret, had taken a seat alongside
