Читать книгу The Tiger Catcher - Paullina Simons, Полина Саймонс - Страница 12

A FEW WEEKS LATER JULIAN RAN INTO HER AT BOOK SOUP ON Sunset. Ran into her was probably a misnomer. He was in the poetry stacks, killing time before meeting up with Ashton, and she waltzed in.

Skipping up the short stairs, she headed for the black shelves by the windows, to the film and theatre section. From his hidden vantage point, his head cocked, Julian watched her scanning the spines of the books. It was definitely the same girl, right? What a coincidence to find her here.

She had on a blonde wig in New York and cocoa hair now, swept up in a messy, falling-out bun. She was wearing denim shorts, black army boots, and a sheer plaid shirt that swung over a bright red tank top. Her legs were slender, long, untanned. No doubt. It was her.

Julian didn’t usually approach women he didn’t know in bookstores. Plus he was out of time. He glanced at his watch, as if he were actually contemplating accosting her, or perhaps looking for a reason not to. Ashton in thirty.

His insane buddy wanted to go canyoneering in Utah! Julian’s job as a friend was to talk him out of it. So Julian had gone to Book Soup to buy the memoir of the unfortunate hiker who had also gone canyoneering in Utah. The poor bastard got trapped under a boulder for five days in Blue John Canyon and had to cut off his own arm with a dull pocket knife to survive. Over lunch of spicy soft-shell crab tacos, cilantro slaw and cold beer, Julian intended to read the salient passages to Ashton about how to save a life.

But before he could get to the life-saving travel section, Julian got sidetracked by the L.A. poems of Leonard Cohen and then by the hypnotic synth-beat chorus of Cuco’s “Drown” playing on the overhead speakers.

And there she was, bouncing in.

It was almost noon. Julian had just enough time to hightail it to Melrose to meet Ashton at Gracias Madre. At lunchtime, the streets of West Hollywood pulsed with hangry drivers. The girl hadn’t even seen him. He didn’t need to be sneaky. He didn’t need to be anything. Put Leonard Cohen down, walk out the open door onto Sunset. Stroll right on out. Throw a dollar into Jenny’s jar. Jenny the blind waif loitered outside the store at lunchtime by the rack of newspapers. The homeless needed to eat, too. Walk to your car, get in, drive away.

Without traffic, it would take him seven minutes. Julian prided himself on being a punctual guy, his Tag Heuer watch set to atomic time, Hollywood’s legendary lateness insulting to him.

Julian did not walk out.

Instead, casual as all that, he ambled across the store to the sunny corner by the window until he stood behind her, Leonard Cohen’s love songs to Los Angeles clutched in his paws.

He took a breath. “Josephine?”

He figured if it wasn’t her, she wouldn’t turn around.

She turned around. Though not exactly immediately. There was a delay in her turning around. She was makeup free, clear-skinned, brown eyed, neutrally polite. Everything on her smooth healthy face was open. Eyes far apart, unhindered by overhanging brow lines or furrows in the lids, forehead large, cheekbones wide, mouth pink.

At first there was nothing. Then she blinked at him and smiled politely. Not an invitation to a wedding, just a tiny acknowledgment that she was looking at a man whom she didn’t find at first glance to be overly repellent, and to whom she would deign, grace, give one minute of her life. You got sixty seconds, cowboy, her small smile said. Go.

But Julian couldn’t go. He had forgotten his words. Going up, it was called in the theatre. When everything you were supposed to say flew out of your head.

She spoke first. “Where do I know you from?” she asked, squinting. There was no trace of a British accent in her voice. “You look so familiar. Wait. Didn’t you come to my play in New York? The Invention of Love?”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “You remember?”

She shrugged. “Yours was the only playbill I signed.” Her voice—not just her stage voice but also her normal sing-song speaking voice—was gentle and breathy, a girl’s voice but with a naked woman’s lilt to it. Quite an art to pull that off. Quite a spectacle. “What are you doing in L.A.?”

“I live around the corner,” he said, ready to give her his street address and apartment number. “You?”

“I’m just visiting. Auditioning.”

“From London?”

She chuckled. “Nah, that was fake. I’m Brooklyn born and raised—like Neil Diamond.”

“Don’t you have a show to do?”

She shook her head. “Nicole came back.”

“Why was she out that night?” Gwen was still carrying on about it.

“You’re upset about that, too? The theatre got so many complaints.”

Julian stammered. “No, not me.”

“Would you believe it—Nicole’s driver took a wrong turn into the Lincoln Tunnel.” Josephine chortled. “He had a brain freeze. He drove to Jersey! I mean, Jersey is always the wrong turn, but then they got stuck behind an accident coming back, and—well, you know the rest.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. My contract ended a few days later,” she said. “They didn’t renew.”

“I’m not surprised,” Julian said. “Nicole must’ve been afraid for her job. You were fantastic.”

“Really?” She beamed.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “You stole the show. They don’t forgive that in the theatre.”

The girl thawed. She said some things, a thank you, and a you really think so? Julian barely heard her. His sight grew dim.

That night was the only night she took the stage.

In front of him.

Blinking, he came out of it. “Plus,” he said, “you couldn’t make up a better stage name than Josephine Collins.”

“How do you know I didn’t make it up?” She twinkled. “And what’s your name?”

“Julian.”

She shielded her eyes—as if from the sun, even though they were inside—and assessed him. “Hmm. You don’t look like a Julian.”

“No? What does a Julian look like?” He resisted the impulse to check his attire, as if he forgot what he’d put on that morning. “I’m no Ralph Dibny,” he muttered, not meaning to say it. It just slipped out. In the comic book universe, Ralph Dibny was an ordinary man in ordinary clothes who drank a super-potion that changed him into an extraordinary contortionist.

Josephine nodded. “Agreed, you’re no Dibny—unless you’re made of rubber. Julian what?”

“Julian Cruz. Did you say rubber? You know who Ralph Dibny is?”

“The Elongated Man? Doesn’t everybody?” she replied in her dulcet soprano.

Julian didn’t know what to say.

“Are you sure you’re not a Dibny?” Josephine stood clutching a book to her chest as if they were in high school. “Why else would you look like a geeky middle-school teacher?”

“I don’t look like a middle-school teacher,” Julian said, and the girl laughed at his on the fly editing, as he hoped she would.

“No?” she said, studying him.

Why did Julian suddenly feel so self-conscious? She reviewed his well-groomed square-jawed face, she assessed his hair—kept carefully trimmed—the crisp khaki slacks, the sensible shoes, the button-down, blue-checked shirt, the tailored blazer, the impeccably clean nails digging into the cover of Leonard Cohen. He hoped she didn’t notice his large, tense hands with their gnarly knuckles or his broken nose, or his light hazelnut eyes that were forcing themselves into slits to hide his interest in her.

“Okay, okay,” the girl said, her face lighting up in a smile. “I’m just saying, like Dibny, you look like you might have some hidden talents.” Teasing him suggestively, inviting him to tease back.

What happened then wasn’t much.

Except the skies opened up and the stars rained down.

“You don’t need to be Dibny,” Josephine added. “You can live up to your own rock star name, Julian Cruz.”

Julian Cruz the rock star forgot how to talk to a girl. Awkwardly he stood, saying nothing. Why did his earth-tone fastidiousness irk him so much today? He was normally so proud of it. He hid his face from her in a dazzle of tumbling stars.

“Listen,” Josephine said, “I’d love to stand and gab with you all day about our favorite superheroes, but I’ve got an audition at one.”

“Is that what the book is for?” He pointed to her hands. Monologues for Actors from Divine Comedy.

“No, the book’s for my 4:30.” She zeroed in on him, blinking, thinking.

Not knowing what to say, Julian took a step back and lifted his Leonard Cohen in a so long, Josephine.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, taking a step toward him. “I was gonna catch a cab, but they’re so hard to find around lunchtime, so I was wondering … is there any way you could help a girl out and drive me to the audition? It’s at Paramount, not too far.”

On the radio, Big Star were in love with a girl, the most beautiful of all the girls in the world. “Not a problem,” Julian said, flinging away Leonard Cohen.

“I don’t mean to impose,” she said. “New York’s so much easier, I just hop on the subway, but here without a car …”

“It’s no big deal.” Ashton who? Friend for how long? “So you live in New York?” he asked at the counter as they waited to pay.

“I do. Is that good or bad?” Cheerfully her dark eyes blinked at him. She was fresh faced, eager, sincere. She had a few freckles, a dimple in her small chin. There was something wonderfully animated and inviting about her open face, about her pink vivid mouth.

His car was parked by the Viper Room, a block up Sunset. “The audition is for Mountain Dew,” Josephine said as they hurried past the blind homeless Jenny, smiling as if she could see them. “But the 4:30 is for something called Paradise in the Park at the Greek Theatre. Have you heard of it? Apparently, they need a narrator for Dante and also a Beatrice.”

“Have I heard of what? Mountain Dew? Beatrice? The Greek?” Julian opened the car door for her. He’d been leasing a Volvo sedan the last couple of years. It was spotless inside.

She didn’t notice the car or the cleanliness, or if she had, didn’t care. She was starved, she said, she hadn’t eaten since the night before. He offered her a bite-sized Milky Way from the glove box, behind his seatbelt cutter, flashlight, and multi-tool—items she also ignored on the way to the chocolate. “I really need to start making some money,” she said, theatrically chewing the hard caramel. “This Milky Way tastes like it’s been there since Christmas. I’m not complaining, mind you. Mine is a beggar’s kingdom.” Flipping down the visor mirror, she took out a small bag from her hobo purse and started doing her makeup. “I didn’t know Ralph Dibny drove a Volvo.” So she did notice. She threw blue shadow over her eyes and some more shade at him. “What are you, fifty?”

“What? No—”

“Only married fifty-year-old men with kids drive Volvos.”

“That’s not true,” Julian said, “because I’m none of those things, and yet I drive one.”

“Hmm,” she said with a purr, casting him a sideways gaze. “You’re not a man?”

Julian turned off his phone. Switched it off cold. Last thing he needed was Ashton’s scolding voice coming through the car speakers, intruding on his Technicolor daydream. He just hoped Ash wouldn’t think Julian had been in an accident. Ashton wasn’t going to take it lightly, Julian blowing off lunch and a set walkthrough at Warner.

Well, hadn’t Julian been in a kind of accident? On an unremarkable day, a nothing day, a Tuesday, he was suddenly doing remarkable, out-of-character things. Standing up his friend. Approaching strange women. Giving them rides. The open-ended nature of life was such that on any day, at any moment, this was possible. But just because the world for others was free to these possibilities didn’t mean it was thus free to Julian. He lived his comfortable life mostly without impulse and therefore without miracles. He barely even believed in miracles, as Ashton never failed to remind him.

With the traffic on Santa Monica at a standstill, Josephine got antsy, while Julian became a praying man, don’t change, red light, don’t change, please. “So what do you do, shuttle back and forth between L.A. and New York?” he asked her. “Why not move out here?” Oh, just listen to him! He gripped the wheel.

“I tried that,” Josephine said. “I couldn’t make it. I don’t mean, I couldn’t get work. I mean I couldn’t live here. Hey, can you give me a heads-up before the light changes and you start driving? I’m putting liner on the inside of my eye.” She told him that to her, L.A. always carried a vague ominous quality. At first Julian thought she was joking. L.A. ominous? Maybe some parts. Parts he didn’t visit. “I don’t feel real when I’m here,” she said. “It feels like I’m in a dream that’s about to end. Hey, Julian, remember you were supposed to give me a heads-up? I could’ve poked my eye out.”

“Sorry.” He slowed down, like now that helped. “In a dream like a dream come true?” Smooth, Jules. Real smooth.

“No,” she said. “Like a walk-on part in someone else’s acid trip.”

He wanted to make a joke but couldn’t, he was too busy praying.

A few minutes to one, he pulled up to a Paramount side gate off Gower. The guard there knew him. “Hey, C.J.,” he called out to the smiling security man.

Josephine was impressed. “You’re on a first name basis with the guard at Paramount?”

“How you doin’, Jules,” C.J. said, peering inside the Volvo. “And where’s our boy Ashton today?”

“Who’s Ashton?” Julian said with a wink.

A smirking C.J. was about to lift the gate, but Josephine leaned over Julian to flick her audition pass into the open window. Julian smelled her meadowsweet musky perfume, verbena mint soap, and the chocolate Milky Way on her breath. Pressed against the back of the driver’s seat, he inhaled her and tried not to get lightheaded—or worse.

“You’re fine, young lady,” the guard said, waving her on. “You’re with him, go on through. Do you know where you’re going?”

“Do any of us really know where we’re going, C.J.?” Josephine said cheerfully. They drove past. “Who’s Ashton?”

“My get-into-Paramount card,” Julian replied, looking for her soundstage. “Also, Warner’s, ABC, CBS, Universal, Fox. Really my get-into-life card. Run, it’s right here. Or you’ll be late.”

At the gray door to Soundstage 8 marked “Auditions,” Josephine said sheepishly, “Um, do you think you could wait? I won’t be but a minute. Five tops. I’ll buy you lunch after. As a thank you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I want to. But also”—she coughed with a beseeching smile—“maybe after I buy you lunch you could drop me off at Griffith Park? The stupid Greek Theatre is so far. And then that’s it, I promise.”

After she disappeared inside, Julian texted a rushed half-sentence apology to Ashton, switching the phone off again before he could get an outraged reply.