Riviera Blues. Jack Batten

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      “The job is for the Sun,” Annie said. Eagerness was building in her voice. “And it is definitely big time. They’re accrediting me to the film festival.”

      Behind us Billie Holiday was singing “Easy to Love,” medium tempo and heartbreaking. Annie and I were trivializing Lady Day’s music, half-listening to it the way we were, treating it as a backdrop to conversation. I got up, and turned off the stereo.

      I said, “Doesn’t the Sun have a regular guy they send to Cannes?”

      “Bruce Kirkland, yes,” Annie said. “Bruce phoned me himself. This year they’ve decided they want somebody over there doing capsule reviews. Not for every day’s paper. I’m just to pick out movies I think are relevant to your average Sun reader and write short takes on them.”

      “Your average Sun reader?”

      “I shouldn’t have said that,” Annie said.

      “Would he or she, this average Sun reader, be the person you see on the subway, lips moving, little bit of drool maybe?”

      “Such an obvious straight line.” Annie shook her head. “Why did I hand it to you?”

      I slid onto the sofa beside her.

      “So it isn’t the New York Times,” she said, “the Sun’s still a better paper than you think it is. Some sections are.”

      “Where does that leave Kirkland?” I was unwilling to debate the Sun’s journalistic merits.

      “Free to do the newsy stuff.”

      I put my arm around Annie’s shoulders. “How long were you intending to hold out on me about the job?” I said. Annie wasn’t ready to melt into my arms.

      “I was monkeying around for the right approach,” she said.

      “While I was tiptoeing into the Swotty Whetherhill errand.”

      I squeezed Annie’s shoulder. She turned her head toward me. Our faces were six inches apart.

      “You’re not upset?” she said.

      “It’s a great career chance.”

      “Or disappointed? This will mean me seeing a couple of films a day. Hanging out some with the movie people.”

      I shrugged. “Exposure in a daily,” I said. “Who knows where it’ll lead.” My shrug was pure Canadian. The French would spot me for a tourist every time.

      “I know this is putting a crimp in our original plans,” Annie said, “but we’ve got the first week clear for ourselves. And the hotel room in Cannes is for the two of us, the same with the movie passes. I told Bruce you had to be part of the package or forget it.”

      “I’ll supply the common man’s touch. Very useful at the Sun.”

      Annie closed the gap between our faces. We kissed lightly on the lips. The kiss lingered until I had to detach my hand from around Annie’s shoulder. The hand had gone to sleep. I stood up and shook it.

      “You think the sun’s over the yardarm?” I asked her.

      “Probably over Hawaii by now.”

      Outside the window, the street lights had come on. I looked at my watch. Not quite seven. For late April, it had been a murky day and close to the freezing mark.

      “White wine, please,” Annie said. She had Premiere open again. “It says here Marcello Mastroianni’s in a film that’s set for competition at Cannes. Lucky you, your very favourite actor.”

      I went into the kitchen. I poured Annie a glass from an open bottle of Orvieto. The Wyborowa was in the freezer. I put three ice cubes in a glass that I’d got for buying two tanks of gas at a Texaco station. I filled the rest of it with vodka. The glass was imitation crystal and spectacularly ugly. I bet a Pole wouldn’t sully his Wyborowa with ice cubes. Probably wouldn’t drink it out of a Texaco glass either. There was a tin of unsalted nuts on the counter. I managed to open the tin without cutting myself and dumped the nuts into a cereal bowl. I got the wine, the vodka, and the nuts in delicate balance in two hands. The telephone rang.

      “You mind getting that?” I called to Annie.

      I have two phones, one in the kitchen, the other in the bedroom. Annie came into the kitchen. I passed her at the door and put down the glasses and the bowl on the pine table behind the sofa. I could hear Annie talking on the phone, not words, just tones. She wasn’t long.

      “Is old what’s-her-name’s mother still living?” Annie asked me.

      “Pamela’s?” I said. “As far as I know.”

      “In that case, she’ll probably be the next member of the family wanting to bend your ear.”

      “Pamela’s on the phone? Right now?”

      Annie pointed a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen phone. “It’s a woman, and she wants to speak to you, and when I asked ‘Who may I say is calling?’, she said ‘old what’s-her-name’.”

      “She did not.”

      “You’re right,” Annie said. “She said ‘Pamela Cartwright’.” I lifted my glass from the table, and swallowed an inch of vodka.

      “Well, now,” I said. “I wonder what she wants.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      Pamela wanted me to come to tea at four o’clock the next afternoon, Thursday.

      “Well, sure, that’d be just fine, you bet,” I said on the phone. I sounded like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

      “Until tomorrow then,” Pamela said, crisp and categorical.

      “I clocked that at a forty-second call,” Annie said in the living room. “You and Pamela aren’t much for trips down memory lane.”

      I swallowed another inch of vodka. My hand shook slightly.

      “She invited me to tea tomorrow.”

      “That’s wild.”

      “The tea?”

      “No, that’s quaint,” Annie said. “Her asking to see you, that’s wild.”

      “Tea might be a euphemism for scotch whisky.”

      “What’s she after, any hints?” Annie was sitting up on her knees on the sofa. “More about this Haddon bounder? Or deeper matters? I put my money on deeper.”

      “The only reason Pamela would call me is if she wants something very special,” I said. “Special to her.”

      “Not your body, I trust.”

      “The implication when we got divorced was she’d had her СКАЧАТЬ