Read Online Overhead in a Balloon by Mavis Gallant - Free Book Online

place at the end of the bus queue. “I mean it,” she said, clutching his arm. “He can wait.”
    Speck’s second rule of disappointment came into play: the deceitful one will always come back to you ten seconds too late. “What does it mean?” he said, wiping rain from the end of his nose. “Having it before him means what? Paying for the primary expenses and the catalogue and sweetening the Paris critics and letting him rake in the chips?”
    “Wasn’t that what you wanted?”
    “Your chap from Milan thought he was first,” said Speck. “He may not want to step aside for me – a humble Parisian expert on the entire Cruche context and period. You wouldn’t want Cruche to miss a chance at Milan, either.”
    “Milan is ten times better for money than Paris,” she said. “If that’s what we’re talking about. But of course we aren’t.”
    Speck looked down at her from the step of the bus. “Very well,” he said. “As we were.”
    “I’ll come to the gallery,” she called. “I’ll be there tomorrow. We can work out new terms.”
    Speck paid his fare without trouble and moved to the far end of the bus. The dark shopping centre with its windows shining for no one was a Magritte vision of fear. Lydia had already forgotten him. Having tampered with his pride, made a professional ass of him, gone off with his idea and returned it dented and chipped, she now stood gazing at the Pompidou Centre tea set, perhaps wondering if the ban on graven images could possibly extend to this. Speck had often meant to ask her about the Mickey Mouse napkins. He thought of the hoops she had put him through – God, and politics, and finally the most dangerous one, which was jealousy. There seemed to be no way of rolling down the window, but a sliding panel at the top admitted half his face. Rising from his seat, he drew in a gulp of wet suburban air and threw it out as a shout: “Fascist! Fascist! Fascist!”
    Not a soul in the bus turned to see. From the look of them, they had spent the best Sundays of their lives shuffling in demonstrations from Place de la République to Place de la Nation, tossing “Fascist”s around like confetti. Lydia turned slowly and looked at Speck. She raised her umbrella at arm’s length, like a trophy. For the first time, Speck saw her smile. What was it the Senator had said? “She had a smile like a fox’s.” He could see, gleaming white, her straight little animal teeth.
    The bus lurched away from the curb and lumbered towards Paris. Speck leaned back and shut his eyes. Now he understood about that parting shot. It was amazing how it cleared the mind, tearing out weeds and tree stumps, flattening the live stuff along with the dead. “Fascist” advanced like a regiment of tanks. Only the future remained – clean, raked, ready for new growth. New growth of what? Of Cruche, of course – Cruche, whose hour was at hand, whose time was here. Speck began to explore his altered prospects. “New terms,” she had said. So far, there had been none at all. The sorcerer from Milan must have promised something dazzling, swinging it before her eyes as he had swung his Alfa Romeo key. It would be foolish to match the offer. By the time they had all done with bungling, there might not be enough left over to buy a new Turkey carpet for Walter.
    I was no match for her, he thought. No match at all. But then, look at the help she had – that visitation from Cruche. “Only once,” she said, but women always said that: “He asked if he could see me just once more. I couldn’t very well refuse.” Dead or alive, when it came to confusion and double-dealing, there was no such thing as “only once.” And there had been not only the departed Cruche but the very living Senator Bellefeuille – “Antoine”; who had bought every picture of Lydia for sixteen years, the span of her early beauty. Nothing would ever be the same again between Speck and Lydia, of course. No man could give the same trust and