I’ll be doing the same,” Chris said, backing out of the room.
I wonder what two realities just crossed, Paul thought. Chris obviously works for Beck, and for some reason seeing Cornelius here scared him. The plot thickens. But I would’ve shot that out on the balcony, framed against the big black drop.
Paul stepped through an arch and into the strobe room, where three couples were twined around each other in the flashing light, kissing and writhing like flickering figures in an ancient stag film. Paul laughed—an image of Sandra Bayne zipped through his mind like a quick single-frame flash-forward—and he went through the next archway, finding himself in the greenly lit room where he had left Velva.
But Velva wasn’t there, and neither was John Horst. A few of the crowd of minor actors, actresses, and writer types were still there, talking to each other and to the black man in the cream-colored suit from the hashish den. Did Velva actually manage to get it on with John Horst? More power to her! If she’s taken care of, maybe I can find Sandra Bayne. That makes two people to look for, increases the odds of my finding at least one of them. If Velva’s disappeared on me, that gives me the right to disappear on her. On the other hand, I did leave her sitting here a long time. Maybe she just got pissed off. Well, if I don’t find her before I find Sandra Bayne....
It was too complicated to try to figure out a logical progression. The only thing to do was to keep in motion and deal with whichever of them he found first. The problem was figuring out which one he hoped he’d find first, and that, by its nature, was a bullshit problem.
So, keeping in motion, Paul pepped back into the black-light room. Artie, the fat rock critic, was talking with the three musicians on the couch, while the five groupies, their bodies melted, their heads nodding, stared at the huge day-glo poster, the great bush of hair, the spiral eyes, the slightly sardonic mouth, all done up in solarized globs of green, blue, and red. It has to be Beck, he thought. Who else’s face would he plaster across a whole wall? But the solarized poster of Jango Beck told him nothing; the face was fragmented into abstract smears of color, rendered inhuman and entirely enigmatic.
Artie waved a heavy hand at him as he walked across the room and favored him with an entirely false smile of recognition. Paul reciprocated as he passed by on his way out of the room.
Now he was in the room where the idea of The Man Upstairshad first come to him, lit by the synthetic firelight globe on its tall pedestal. But the blond Indian and his listeners were gone; instead, John Horst was sitting on a couch with the handsome matron in the blue cocktail dress, listening to the short dynamic man who earlier had been reading the yellow manuscript. He still clutched the manuscript, waving it around, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.
“—so when he said that, I just went blaargh! and dived across the entire table at the spastic son of a bitch! Knocked the cretinous model submarine right into Irwin’s lap—”
“Pardon me, Mr. Horst...”
Horst looked up at Paul with an expression of suppressed patrician annoyance. “Yes?” he said curtly, while the short man glowered.
Paul suddenly felt peasantlike and stupid and angry at the two of them for making him feel that way. He could read their faces like director’s instructions in an overwritten script. Horst was assuming that he was faced with some upward-crawling parvenu who was attempting to make his lordly acquaintance, and the short man was pissed off because some bumbling nerd had interrupted his schtick.
“Ah, I’m looking for the lady I was with,” Paul said. “A very good-looking blonde in a very tight blue dress. Last time I saw her, she was in a room with you.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t notice,” Horst said icily.
“If you find her, ask her if she has a nymphomaniac sister,” the short man
I wonder what two realities just crossed, Paul thought. Chris obviously works for Beck, and for some reason seeing Cornelius here scared him. The plot thickens. But I would’ve shot that out on the balcony, framed against the big black drop.
Paul stepped through an arch and into the strobe room, where three couples were twined around each other in the flashing light, kissing and writhing like flickering figures in an ancient stag film. Paul laughed—an image of Sandra Bayne zipped through his mind like a quick single-frame flash-forward—and he went through the next archway, finding himself in the greenly lit room where he had left Velva.
But Velva wasn’t there, and neither was John Horst. A few of the crowd of minor actors, actresses, and writer types were still there, talking to each other and to the black man in the cream-colored suit from the hashish den. Did Velva actually manage to get it on with John Horst? More power to her! If she’s taken care of, maybe I can find Sandra Bayne. That makes two people to look for, increases the odds of my finding at least one of them. If Velva’s disappeared on me, that gives me the right to disappear on her. On the other hand, I did leave her sitting here a long time. Maybe she just got pissed off. Well, if I don’t find her before I find Sandra Bayne....
It was too complicated to try to figure out a logical progression. The only thing to do was to keep in motion and deal with whichever of them he found first. The problem was figuring out which one he hoped he’d find first, and that, by its nature, was a bullshit problem.
So, keeping in motion, Paul pepped back into the black-light room. Artie, the fat rock critic, was talking with the three musicians on the couch, while the five groupies, their bodies melted, their heads nodding, stared at the huge day-glo poster, the great bush of hair, the spiral eyes, the slightly sardonic mouth, all done up in solarized globs of green, blue, and red. It has to be Beck, he thought. Who else’s face would he plaster across a whole wall? But the solarized poster of Jango Beck told him nothing; the face was fragmented into abstract smears of color, rendered inhuman and entirely enigmatic.
Artie waved a heavy hand at him as he walked across the room and favored him with an entirely false smile of recognition. Paul reciprocated as he passed by on his way out of the room.
Now he was in the room where the idea of The Man Upstairshad first come to him, lit by the synthetic firelight globe on its tall pedestal. But the blond Indian and his listeners were gone; instead, John Horst was sitting on a couch with the handsome matron in the blue cocktail dress, listening to the short dynamic man who earlier had been reading the yellow manuscript. He still clutched the manuscript, waving it around, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.
“—so when he said that, I just went blaargh! and dived across the entire table at the spastic son of a bitch! Knocked the cretinous model submarine right into Irwin’s lap—”
“Pardon me, Mr. Horst...”
Horst looked up at Paul with an expression of suppressed patrician annoyance. “Yes?” he said curtly, while the short man glowered.
Paul suddenly felt peasantlike and stupid and angry at the two of them for making him feel that way. He could read their faces like director’s instructions in an overwritten script. Horst was assuming that he was faced with some upward-crawling parvenu who was attempting to make his lordly acquaintance, and the short man was pissed off because some bumbling nerd had interrupted his schtick.
“Ah, I’m looking for the lady I was with,” Paul said. “A very good-looking blonde in a very tight blue dress. Last time I saw her, she was in a room with you.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t notice,” Horst said icily.
“If you find her, ask her if she has a nymphomaniac sister,” the short man
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