one that surrounded her bedroom door.
Needing to move and stretch the muscles that coiled with tension, Reilly hauled himself to his feet and began to prowl the den.
It was a comfortable, rustic place with rough planking covering the north and east walls. The room had been divided from the guest quarters by elevating it, giving it a loft effect. A large, soft, white U-shaped sectional sofa invited a person to sprawl out to listen to music or perhaps to watch a movie on the big-screen television. Most of the east wall was taken up with shelving and a cluttered desk area. As with the first level, the south wall was one enormous window.
The view tonight was nothing but a weird combination of moonlight and fog. It made Jayne’s big barn house seem cozy and warm, the only solid, safe place to be in a world that had mysteriously evaporated into mist. Once again Reilly had thesensation of being at home. His family’s station wasn’t often enveloped in a bank of fog, but there was ever the feeling of being in a pocket of security surrounded by wilderness. It was a good feeling, a safe feeling, one he eagerly embraced now, during the long night when there was no one he needed to impress with his sensible self-reliance.
Not wanting to think another thought about this horrible weakness that was afflicting him, he climbed the four steps leading up to Jayne’s office area and began to poke around, searching for things of interest. He inspected the desk that was littered with notes, mail, old copies of
Variety
. It never occurred to him to feel guilty about snooping. He wanted to know more about Jayne, so he looked.
There was a half-finished review in the typewriter, waiting for the final touches before she would submit it for her column. He read it over, wincing at the concise manner in which she had cut the film to shreds. It seemed a paradox to him that Jayne, who was one of the most compassionate people he’d ever known, could be so brutal in her critique of someone else’s work. Knowing her personality, one might have expected her to be kind and sympathetic toward a bad performance or an unfortunate choice of scripts. Instead, she was painfully honest in heropinions, padding nothing with kind words that could have been misconstrued as praise when she felt none was due.
What Jayne did for a living bothered Reilly much more than her penchant for palmists and paranormal phenomena. The people in the film industry worked long, hard hours to put a movie together. They put heart and soul into their work. It just didn’t seem right to him that a critic should be able to sit in supreme judgment like some kind of Grand Inquisitor, able to make or break a picture according to her whim. It just didn’t seem democratic. He wondered how big a fight he’d have on his hands if he tried to talk her into quitting.
Mac had been able to live with Jayne’s profession, Reilly reminded himself as his gaze fell on a photograph of his old friend. The picture in its ornate, silver filigree frame stood on the shelf above the typewriter. Mac stared out at him with wise dark eyes and a crooked smile, looking enough like Sean Connery to make feminine hearts flutter despite his age.
They had been best friends, he and Mac, but they had been very different from each other. Mac had been calm and pragmatic. Those words were noticeably absent in descriptions of Reilly. It stood to reason his relationship with Jayne wouldbe very different from her relationship with Mac. He wondered now if that idea frightened her. Jayne liked security. She tended to back away from anything that threatened to overwhelm her.
Mulling that thought over, Reilly examined the photo that sat next to Mac’s. It was of Jayne, two other young women, and Bryan Hennessy, all in graduation caps and gowns with a rainbow staining the sky behind them. Moving on to take a look at the stuff crammed onto her shelves, he let the subject slide from his mind. He let his gaze drift over a
Needing to move and stretch the muscles that coiled with tension, Reilly hauled himself to his feet and began to prowl the den.
It was a comfortable, rustic place with rough planking covering the north and east walls. The room had been divided from the guest quarters by elevating it, giving it a loft effect. A large, soft, white U-shaped sectional sofa invited a person to sprawl out to listen to music or perhaps to watch a movie on the big-screen television. Most of the east wall was taken up with shelving and a cluttered desk area. As with the first level, the south wall was one enormous window.
The view tonight was nothing but a weird combination of moonlight and fog. It made Jayne’s big barn house seem cozy and warm, the only solid, safe place to be in a world that had mysteriously evaporated into mist. Once again Reilly had thesensation of being at home. His family’s station wasn’t often enveloped in a bank of fog, but there was ever the feeling of being in a pocket of security surrounded by wilderness. It was a good feeling, a safe feeling, one he eagerly embraced now, during the long night when there was no one he needed to impress with his sensible self-reliance.
Not wanting to think another thought about this horrible weakness that was afflicting him, he climbed the four steps leading up to Jayne’s office area and began to poke around, searching for things of interest. He inspected the desk that was littered with notes, mail, old copies of
Variety
. It never occurred to him to feel guilty about snooping. He wanted to know more about Jayne, so he looked.
There was a half-finished review in the typewriter, waiting for the final touches before she would submit it for her column. He read it over, wincing at the concise manner in which she had cut the film to shreds. It seemed a paradox to him that Jayne, who was one of the most compassionate people he’d ever known, could be so brutal in her critique of someone else’s work. Knowing her personality, one might have expected her to be kind and sympathetic toward a bad performance or an unfortunate choice of scripts. Instead, she was painfully honest in heropinions, padding nothing with kind words that could have been misconstrued as praise when she felt none was due.
What Jayne did for a living bothered Reilly much more than her penchant for palmists and paranormal phenomena. The people in the film industry worked long, hard hours to put a movie together. They put heart and soul into their work. It just didn’t seem right to him that a critic should be able to sit in supreme judgment like some kind of Grand Inquisitor, able to make or break a picture according to her whim. It just didn’t seem democratic. He wondered how big a fight he’d have on his hands if he tried to talk her into quitting.
Mac had been able to live with Jayne’s profession, Reilly reminded himself as his gaze fell on a photograph of his old friend. The picture in its ornate, silver filigree frame stood on the shelf above the typewriter. Mac stared out at him with wise dark eyes and a crooked smile, looking enough like Sean Connery to make feminine hearts flutter despite his age.
They had been best friends, he and Mac, but they had been very different from each other. Mac had been calm and pragmatic. Those words were noticeably absent in descriptions of Reilly. It stood to reason his relationship with Jayne wouldbe very different from her relationship with Mac. He wondered now if that idea frightened her. Jayne liked security. She tended to back away from anything that threatened to overwhelm her.
Mulling that thought over, Reilly examined the photo that sat next to Mac’s. It was of Jayne, two other young women, and Bryan Hennessy, all in graduation caps and gowns with a rainbow staining the sky behind them. Moving on to take a look at the stuff crammed onto her shelves, he let the subject slide from his mind. He let his gaze drift over a
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