Read Online Wake Up and Dream by Ian R. MacLeod - Free Book Online
Authors: Ian R. MacLeod
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roar.
Chateau Bansar was up a drive which wasn’t even signposted, and which wound on for so long, and through gardens so spectacular, that Clark found himself wondering when their designer’s invention would run out.
There were lakes and Chinese pagodas. There were Grecian temples and a huge and genuine-looking waterfall cascading over genuine-looking rocks. A stag deer regarded them from an outcrop. He’d just decided that it was a thing of painted plaster when it raised its head and bolted off.
The chateau itself was all fairyland turrets and balconies, floating in a haze of spotlights against the setting sun. A car valet liveried like a medieval page took the Delahaye and drove it off down an underground ramp so as not to spoil the scene. They wandered beneath arbors and around fountains. Peacocks were preening and cawing. There were swans on a moat.
“Is this what you and Dan do regularly?”
“No.” They were arm in arm.
“So there’s no chance of anyone recognizing us?”
“Absolutely nil. Why do you think I chose it? But don’t forget, you are still Dan tonight.” He felt her shrug. “I just felt we both deserved a treat.”
Wrought-iron candelabra, real fires and sweeping wooden floors. Minstrels playing something minstrel-like from a minstrel gallery. A green-lit carp-filled pool. The woman who checked their reservation and led them around the mosaic pillars to their table was wearing a wimple.
The other diners were dim figures—each alcove was shrouded in ivy and lit by genuine flames—but if you peered hard enough you could make them out. This was a gossip columnist’s paradise, and Clark didn’t doubt that all these handsome faces murmuring to each other over expensive wine belonged to people he should have heard of. Trudy Rester and Saffron Knowles and James H. Pack, maybe, and all those other billboard names he’d given up noticing these last few years. But that would have to be Monumenta Loolie. No one else in the world had breasts like hers, and even he knew about those.
He wondered about the old names—those briefly immortal faces he’d glimpsed along the corridors of York and Bunce. Mary Pickford. William Desmond Taylor. Colleen Moore. A few still lived in this city, or so he’d heard. They’d enough money to keep hold of some fragment of the dream even if no one now remembered or cared about who they’d been. Then there were those other names. People who were just starting to get used to the limousines and the easy fucks and the swish hotels before it all disappeared. People like himself.
The menus were huge and handwritten and had no prices. He was vaguely worried that April Lamotte might decide to deduct his half of the bill off the thousand bucks she was paying him, but for one night he was happy to play along. After all, they had pulled off something pretty impressive together, hadn’t they?
The Champagne was poured. They clinked glasses. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” He took a slug of the Champagne, then slid the bottle out of the ice bucket and poured them both some more. “When do you think Dan… uh… I’ll be back in good enough order to get back to work?”
Her gaze hardened fractionally. “I don’t know.”
He considered the bubbles in his Champagne. Someone as sharp as she was, he was surprised she wasn’t ahead of him. “What I mean is, April, the contract’s just step number one. The studio will want all the usual stuff once the project goes into development. You know—meetings, revisions. More meetings, more revisions. Table top readings and re-writes for some star who thinks they know about how to make a script work. All the crap that writers have to go through.”
“I guess so.” She was twisting her wedding ring, although she stopped as soon as she noticed him watching.
“And if Dan’s not… If I’m not—Hell, April, no one here’s listening… What I’m trying to say is that I could help you and Dan some more. I could go to the
Chateau Bansar was up a drive which wasn’t even signposted, and which wound on for so long, and through gardens so spectacular, that Clark found himself wondering when their designer’s invention would run out.
There were lakes and Chinese pagodas. There were Grecian temples and a huge and genuine-looking waterfall cascading over genuine-looking rocks. A stag deer regarded them from an outcrop. He’d just decided that it was a thing of painted plaster when it raised its head and bolted off.
The chateau itself was all fairyland turrets and balconies, floating in a haze of spotlights against the setting sun. A car valet liveried like a medieval page took the Delahaye and drove it off down an underground ramp so as not to spoil the scene. They wandered beneath arbors and around fountains. Peacocks were preening and cawing. There were swans on a moat.
“Is this what you and Dan do regularly?”
“No.” They were arm in arm.
“So there’s no chance of anyone recognizing us?”
“Absolutely nil. Why do you think I chose it? But don’t forget, you are still Dan tonight.” He felt her shrug. “I just felt we both deserved a treat.”
Wrought-iron candelabra, real fires and sweeping wooden floors. Minstrels playing something minstrel-like from a minstrel gallery. A green-lit carp-filled pool. The woman who checked their reservation and led them around the mosaic pillars to their table was wearing a wimple.
The other diners were dim figures—each alcove was shrouded in ivy and lit by genuine flames—but if you peered hard enough you could make them out. This was a gossip columnist’s paradise, and Clark didn’t doubt that all these handsome faces murmuring to each other over expensive wine belonged to people he should have heard of. Trudy Rester and Saffron Knowles and James H. Pack, maybe, and all those other billboard names he’d given up noticing these last few years. But that would have to be Monumenta Loolie. No one else in the world had breasts like hers, and even he knew about those.
He wondered about the old names—those briefly immortal faces he’d glimpsed along the corridors of York and Bunce. Mary Pickford. William Desmond Taylor. Colleen Moore. A few still lived in this city, or so he’d heard. They’d enough money to keep hold of some fragment of the dream even if no one now remembered or cared about who they’d been. Then there were those other names. People who were just starting to get used to the limousines and the easy fucks and the swish hotels before it all disappeared. People like himself.
The menus were huge and handwritten and had no prices. He was vaguely worried that April Lamotte might decide to deduct his half of the bill off the thousand bucks she was paying him, but for one night he was happy to play along. After all, they had pulled off something pretty impressive together, hadn’t they?
The Champagne was poured. They clinked glasses. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” He took a slug of the Champagne, then slid the bottle out of the ice bucket and poured them both some more. “When do you think Dan… uh… I’ll be back in good enough order to get back to work?”
Her gaze hardened fractionally. “I don’t know.”
He considered the bubbles in his Champagne. Someone as sharp as she was, he was surprised she wasn’t ahead of him. “What I mean is, April, the contract’s just step number one. The studio will want all the usual stuff once the project goes into development. You know—meetings, revisions. More meetings, more revisions. Table top readings and re-writes for some star who thinks they know about how to make a script work. All the crap that writers have to go through.”
“I guess so.” She was twisting her wedding ring, although she stopped as soon as she noticed him watching.
“And if Dan’s not… If I’m not—Hell, April, no one here’s listening… What I’m trying to say is that I could help you and Dan some more. I could go to the
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