Читать книгу Riviera Blues - Jack Batten - Страница 5

I asked Annie what colour my eyes were.

She gave me an intent look from five feet away. “Swamp green,” she said.

I was filling out a passport application. Date of birth. Height. Weight. Colour of eyes stumped me.

“Too long,” I said. “The form doesn’t have room for descriptives.”

“Write smaller, big guy.”

“Please,” I said. “One simple colour.”

“Swamp.”

“Listen, kiddo, will green do the trick?”

“Actually,” Annie said, “your eyes are green with a soupçon of grey.”

“I’ll put green and hope I don’t get picked up for travelling on somebody else’s passport.”

“I thought all you swift criminal lawyers kept passports at the ready. You know, in case a client needs instant services in Bogota or some sleazy place like that.”

Annie was curled on the sofa in the living room of my apartment, leafing through Premiere magazine. I live on Beverley Street, across from the park behind the Art Gallery of Ontario. I own the house the apartment is in, and rent the first floor to a gay couple and their dog. Annie had on a black wool dress with big black buttons all the way up the front. Annie is small and dark and beautiful in a gloriously old-fashioned way. Myrna Loy beautiful.

“I let my passport lapse,” I said. I was sitting in an armchair kitty-corner to the sofa. I had the passport application propped on a record jacket. The record was playing low on the stereo, Billie Holiday from the 1950s. I said, “The last trip I took out of the country was a week in Baja.”

“You must have left me at home.”

“Before your time.”

“Oh.” Annie put down the Premiere. Behind the “oh” there was a curiosity that might set the room ablaze. “Okay, fella, so who did you go to Mexico with?”

“Myself. I was mending a broken heart. Or that’s what I was supposed to be doing.”

“Oh.” Flat and anticlimactic this time. “When you split from old what’s-her-name,” Anne said. She picked up the Premiere. “Your ex-wife.”

Under “in case of accident or death, notify:” I wrote Annie’s name and address. She lives in a third-floor flat over in Cabbagetown. Her movie reviewing is freelance and not conducive to a paycheque every Friday. She discusses movies twice a week on Metro Morning, the local CBC radio wake-up program, and writes features for whatever newspapers and magazines she can wangle commissions from.

“Speaking of whom,” I said, trying for a casual delivery, “her father bought me lunch today.”

“Old what’s-her-name’s father?”

“Pamela’s.”

Annie swung her legs out from under her and set her feet on the floor.

“What did her dad want all of a sudden?” Annie asked. “Anything about patching up the family dynasty?”

I shook my head. “He wanted a favour.” I told Annie about Swotty Whetherhill and Jamie Haddon and Monaco. I used sentences that I hoped came across as off-hand.

“Gee, rich guys don’t mind presuming,” Annie said. “You’re gone years from his life, and he thinks he can crook his finger in your direction and you’ll snap to attention.”

“Maybe I felt a little sorry for him. Maybe I felt a little intimidated by him. Maybe a little of both.”

Annie smoothed the skirt of her dress over her thighs. “It wouldn’t do any harm,” she said.

“What?”

“Looking up this Jamie Haddon.”

“You noticed the circumspection of my approach to the subject?” I said. “I thought you might be pissed off.”

Annie shrugged. “Monaco could fit nicely into our program.” Annie’s shrug looked Gallic. Insouciant, yet assured.

“You’re in charge of the itinerary, sweetie,” I said.

“Monaco’s vulgarity quotient is awfully high. But there’s the Oceanographic Museum. Very Jacques Cousteau. And you’d get a kick out of the decor in the Casino. I’d estimate a half day’s worth of sights.”

“Built around a lunch at Le Restaurant du Port?”

“Well, you have to ask after the rude cousin somewhere.”

I balanced the passport and the record jacket on the arm of my chair. “I’m not questioning your innate good nature, my love,” I said, “but why are you being so accommodating all of a sudden?”

Annie curled back on the sofa. She gave me a smile. It may have had a trace of the sheepish in it.

“Well, you’ve got this case to take care of,” she said. “And as a matter of fact, a potential job … more than potential … a sure thing … came my way this morning.”

“In France?”

“In Cannes.”

“He doesn’t call it a case, by the way. Swotty doesn’t. Very adamant on that point.”

“I love that part, the man’s name.”

“You should have met his father,” I said. “The late Bubs Whetherhill.”

“I always wondered about upper-class nicknames,” Annie said. “Do the parents dish them out at birth?”

“Swotty got his at prep school. He’s really a John.”

“What did you call him when you were his son-in-law?”

“Sir.”

“Oh, so that’s the way it was.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “Tell me the other half of your news.”

“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.”