Read Online Fay Weldon - Novel 23 by Rhode Island Blues (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page A

           Being
a woman of quick decision she had already decided to accept Felicity for the
Atlantic Suite, but it was wise to let her fret a little. She would be quite an
asset: she moved and spoke gracefully, and was of good appearance, and though no kind of intellectual, unlike the Pulitzer Prize winner,
would not annoy the other guests by smoking . Moreover, she quoted from
the I Ching - ‘it furthers one to have somewhere to go ’ could only come from this
source - which meant Dr Grepalli would put up no objection. Jungians clung to
one another in their absurdities.
     

7
                 You
can run, but you can’t hide. When we got back to Passmore there was a black
limo waiting, with New York plates. I was needed back in the Soho editing suite, urgently. I was to take the nine p.m. Concorde flight out of Kennedy. Tomorrow Forever was, as I say, a
big-budget film. The percentage cost of Concorde tickets for a deviant editor
was minuscule, compared even to leaving the Versace sequences on the cutting
room floor. 1 told the driver to wait while I thought about it, but Felicity
asked him in and gave him coffee and cookies. Joy made a hasty exit: the driver
was some kind of bearded mountain tribesman and made her nervous. He rose to
his feet when she left the room, and bowed with exquisite courtesy, but that
only made her the more nervous.
                 I
could not work out at first how anyone knew where to find me. Air travel slows
my mind. True, I’d told my friend Annie where I was going. But she wouldn’t
have told anyone: and the designer upstairs had my key to let out the cat but I’d
just told him vaguely I was off to visit a sick relative: I then remembered
that some of my conversation with Felicity had been through the answering
machine. The bastard Krassner must have listened to what we said, and then put
his people on to it. Film folk can do anything if they put their mind to it.
They bribe phone operators and computer hackers and dig dirt on anyone they
want. They are ruthless in defence of the people’s entertainment and their own
profit, which comes to the same thing. Perhaps Krassner had stayed in my
apartment for some time after he woke - how many days ago was it now, four? I
had not envisaged that until now: I had simply assumed that being at the best
of times in such a hurry, he would have woken, perhaps found some coffee, to
which he was welcome, and left at once, back to work. If he had time to spare
he would surely have more glamorous and rewarding women than me to pursue and
persecute. I felt the less inclined to return and fish the team out of whatever
trouble they were now in. I called the editing suite but no-one replied. No
doubt they were too busy to so much as pick up the
phone for a call they had not initiated.
                 I
had woken up a little. I liked the clear air and the woods and the deer ticks
kept at a safe distance from the house, and Felicity was cheerful and Joy was
funny and we’d spent a good morning at the Golden Bowl, and the world of
downtown Soho seemed a long way away and not a place anyone would gladly return
to, not even by way of Concorde and free gifts in best-quality leather which
nobody ever wanted. Felicity had been enchanted by the Golden Bowl: we had been
shown over its gracious Library, its sparkling clean kitchens, where only the
best and freshest food was prepared, and not a sign of a Lite packet anywhere;
its Refectory, where guests could sit and eat by themselves at little round
one-person tables - though Nurse Dawn did not approve of this: the digestive
processes apparently function better if eating is a social affair - its elegant
community rooms, its nursing wing, empty of patients: we met Nurse Dawn’s team
of nurse-attendants, all bright, cheerful and friendly: we met the Professor of
Philosophy, though his eyes were dull and all he wanted to talk about was the
state of the golf course. We were told that