Not the End of the World (32 page)

Another two patrolios came through the doors, Carver and Chase, bemoaning the chaos they’d found on their doorstep. Larry watched them turn and walk towards the locker rooms.

‘The Armada, yeah?’ Larry asked. Witherson looked up, nodding. ‘Okay, follow me.’

‘Where we going?’

‘Bilbo Baggins’s place. Gonna ask for a loan of his ring.’

Lisa Chase’s uniform was maybe just a little big for Witherson, which prompted Carver to chide his partner about cutting down on the Twinkies, but what the hell, she wasn’t looking to pass parade inspection.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ Witherson told Chase gratefully, slipping on shades and pulling the peak of the hat down. ‘If I actually had tits it’d be a perfect fit.’

Kennedy was more of a problem. They did eventually find a uniform close to his elongated dimensions, but no amount of pins could restrain his conspicuously non‐
regulation mane of hair under the hat. He didn’t walk right either. It was hard to pinpoint just what exactly he was doing wrong, but as soon as he took two steps it was obvious from any distance that he was not a cop but a guy badly disguised in a cop’s uniform.

There was only one way around it. Larry made him put his own clothes back on and slapped some cuffs on his wrists. Then Witherson and Carver led their ‘prisoner’ out back to a patrol car and drove up the station‐
house ramp through the gauntlet of cameras and microphones, all of which turned away when they saw who was – or more importantly who wasn’t – in the back seat.

Larry watched the car head off towards Santa Monica Boulevard, glancing at a TV screen for reassurance that the girl’s escape had gone undetected, then sat down at his desk and swallowed back two headache tablets with a lukewarm styrofoam cup of coffee.

He looked at his watch and realised that its objective sense of time was thoroughly out of synch with his own. It seemcd like days had passed since he woke up this morning, yet it was barely two in the afternoon.

Christ knew how Madeleine Witherson felt.

The sun wasn’t due to set for several hours, but her longest, darkest night had already begun.

Paul Silver liked to think he was not normally neurotic. He was normally Jewish, however, which was probably why he so much hated getting all hyper and paranoid. The business he worked in traded prosperously in stereotypes, which had always made him agitatedly self‐
conscious about behaving like one. Even when he was feeling neurotic, he tried his best to keep it below the surface, concentrate on his breathing, think carefully about whatever he was going to say, and not burble on like a speed‐
freak reading James Joyce. This was because everyone else was allowed the occasional bout of public fluster: people just thought, Golly, he’s got enough on his plate today. But if you were Jewish and you lost it one time, they all thought, Typical neurotic Jew.

In a way, Woody Allen had pissed in the water tank they all had to drink from. Paul often wished the little jerk had sent off to the Charles Atlas ad in his Superman comics as a kid. If he had a time machine he’d go back and bribe every girl in Woody’s neighbourhood to blow him carnivorously throughout his teen years. All right, the world probably wouldn’t get Sleeper later on, but you had to balance these things out.

Unfortunately, it was the Woody the world did get that formed Paul’s self‐
image any time he felt under pressure. And not just any incarnation either: it was the damned animated version from Annie Hall that he saw, exaggeratedly diminutive and helpless‐
looking. Why couldn’t Lenny Bruce have lived longer and become an acclaimed auteur? That’s what Paul wanted to know. Cool, streetwise, in control, turning the accusatory neurosis outwards at the world instead of inwards at himself.

Most of the time, Paul was a real calm guy. That was what had got him where he was. He could put people at ease, he could deal with logistics, he could negotiate, he could juggle responsibilities. You couldn’t survive in the independent sector otherwise. Working for small production and sales outfits like Line Arts, ImageTech and KinoKraft, you had to do a dozen jobs at once to bring in a movie under its already minuscule budget. He knew that if you were paying close attention to Killer Instincts III you could spot the film’s producer (one P Silver) in four different cannon‐
fodder villain roles, getting repeatedly killed by the hero, Nuke Powers, in a variety of bad wigs. But then if you were paying close attention to Killer Instincts III, you probably weren’t the type to notice these things.

When he got the post with AFFMA, it was on the strength of his reputation for, quite simply, handling it. He was younger than the previous incumbents, and had a lot less experience within AFFMA’s organisation, in terms of how they liked to run things, but everybody was confident because Paul Silver ‘could handle it’. And handle it he had, right throughout all the preparation, organisation, administration and build‐
up. Compared to some of the logistical miracles he’d had to pull off in the past, his first eight months at AFFMA was a breeze. The event itself was a far huger affair than any production he had ever co‐
ordinated, but it was still a much smoother ride, and he didn’t once have to fall screaming into a vat of slime wearing a blood‐
spattered space‐
lizard costume.

However, the nearer it had drawn to the commencement of the market, the more he began to fear that Woody would be running the office. It was as though he had been concentrating so hard on scaling the cliff that he’d failed to notice how high it was until he reached the summit, and instead of experiencing a feeling of achievement, he was suffering a woozy vertigo.

And there was something else too. It was irrational to the point of embarrassment, but he had what he could only describe, in the hackneyed words of the shitty scripts he was used to working with, as ‘a bad feeling about this’. Maybe it was just what they were calling 1999 Syndrome, seeping silently and undetected into the subconscious, but whatever it was, it sure wasn’t comfortable.

He was pretty good at hiding it when he moved in familiar circles. Talking to AFFMA’s CEO, Brad Getzen, or to execs from the attending companies, he slipped so easily into leisurely confidence that he could almost convince himself he had nothing to fret about. But people on the outside could see Woody three blocks away. That cop twigged how anxious he was straight off; so did Nunez, although she seemed to find it funny, which worked as reassurance through mild humiliation.

Sergeant Freeman seemed to relish the threat of chaos presented by the Jesus‐
freaks across the street, with their protests and hoax bomb warnings. It was like the big cop was telling him to enjoy the ride, trying to make him fast‐
forward to the bar‐
room where he’d look back and laugh about what a crazy time the ’99 market was. And though something inside was resisting it manfully, it was starting to work: Paul was beginning to tell himself that if Freeman and Nunez weren’t worried, it wasn’t because he was the only one smart enough to anticipate trouble, nor that he was the only one who’d be firing off resumes in a month’s time.

Nonetheless, something was resisting it. Woody would not pack up and go home to New York, and the twisted feeling in his gut warned him that he feared the little jerk would yet get to say ‘I told you so’.

So on his mid‐
market day off, his time to relax and have a few drinks aboard Moonstar’s hospitality charter, when the captain and a hollow‐
faced Linus Veltman asked everyone to sit down and remain calm then announced there was a bomb on the boat, Paul’s curious first reaction was a feeling of eye‐
rolling vindication. It was like finally being told the answer to a stupid but exasperating riddle – Ah! So that’s what it was. There was almost an element of relief about it. After so long desperately trying to hold it together, he could now comfortably go nuts along with everybody else.

Stephen was right about her being safe at the Armada. Okay, cop outfit or not she’d felt conspicuously female on the way up to the room, but in the bigger picture absolutely nobody was going to think of looking for her in the place anyway. It was perfect – the only drawback was that she couldn’t hide there past dawn. One way or the other.

Stephen held open the door for her but without any hint of ostentatious chivalry. He wasn’t trying to be her saviour or her guardian or even her advocate, all of which she was grateful for because she had enough on her plate without attempting to salve someone else’s conscience by making them feel useful. Nonetheless, there was still a part of her that could have used just a little bit more of an idea where she stood with this guy. He’d saved her life, so it was safe to assume he held her in higher regard than some in this town, but beyond that it was difficult to discern. Ironically, saving someone’s life isn’t necessarily personal.

He had a detached manner and a weird kind of humour that combined to suggest he found everything around him faintly ridiculous – but not ridiculous enough to be amusing. Between that and his physical imposition, she’d have been scared even to talk to him, had circumstances not introduced them. He was here with her now, but that was because they had been thrown together; and because she had asked him; and because he was a decent and considerate guy. He looked like he’d have some tall blonde waiting for him back in England, someone elegant and artistic who understood what the hell he was talking about. There’d be framed shots he’d taken of her all round their apartment.

That’s why she’d been so nervous at the beginning of the shoot. He’d seemed all interested and complimentary yesterday, and she’d felt like killing Tony for lining up that meeting that had forced her to run out on him. But by the time morning came she’d been far less certain of what their previous conversation had meant – wasn’t making you feel comfortable, confident and attractive part of a good photographer’s technique? Wasn’t he just being professional? And why would a guy like that be interested in her, more than for just the shoot and the story?

She’d spent ages waiting on that stairwell, composing herself, getting into character, ready to walk out on to that roof all Hollywood confidence and goddammit just tell him she was taking him out for lunch. It was when he said nothing in response that the facade crumbled and she turned back into a quivering amateur.

But this was all back when shit like that mattered. Guys, dates, photo‐
shoots, careers. Back in the ancient history of five hours ago.

She walked into the hotel room and sat on the edge of the bed, her elbows on her knees, chin in hands. The sound of the door closing brought out a lung‐
crumpling sigh, like she hadn’t breathed out since the bomb went off. It should have been the moment of blessed relief, when she looked back at what had happened from the disbelieving perspective that comfort and security afford. It should have been the moment that her mind had been focusing on when she was in that swimming pool, and later as she took Stephen’s wrist in her hand, trying not to look at what lay beyond his dangling legs. Instead it sounded like the closing of the condemned prisoner’s deathwatch cell. There was a release, yeah, but only because the time of uncertainty was over. Now came the calmer time, the slower time, to contemplate her fate.

‘Hell of a date,’ she sighed, speaking because she wanted to hear his voice and she knew he wouldn’t say anything first.

‘Well I’m sure it could have gone a wee bit smoother,’ he said, his tones soothingly reverberant. ‘But on the plus side, from my point of view, I did manage to get you back to my bedroom.’ His voice was drily languorous; he wasn’t trying to cheer her up, just laughing with her in the dark.

‘Yeah, well, that’s only a qualified success,’ she replied, her throat swollen from gulping back tears and chlorinated water, not to mention shitty coffee. ‘A porn star, Whore of Babylon, fornicating slut like me gotta be a sure thing, even on a first date.’

He smiled. He was leaning against the dressing table, his straggled blond hair hanging down across the left half of his face like a half‐
drawn curtain. It was the look Evan Dando had been aiming at for years for his album covers: variously evocative of humour, pity, pain, fear, affection, fatigue, knowingness, innocence, infatuation and unknowable depth. She was sure Stephen could organise the photo‐
shoot, but was less sure that Ev could handle the being‐
blown‐
up part.

‘I should really offer you a cup of tea,’ he said.

‘Oh, no more caffeine, please.’

‘No, not for refreshment purposes. It’s just traditional where I come from to offer a brew to the hopelessly afflicted. You know, “The doctor says it’s the big C, I’ve got three months to live” – “Never mind, have a cuppa tea”. This would be my chance to set a new international record. There can’t be anyone on the planet a cup of tea would make less difference to right now.’

‘You got that right.’

‘You’re hangin’ on by your fingernails, aren’t you?’ he said softly, his tone bereft of its previous wry levity. It wasn’t an offer of help; it felt like an entreaty to her to grant herself some sympathy, telling her it was all right to feel that way. She had been fighting it so hard, and part of her hated him for so deftly puncturing her efforts, but maybe she needed to let go. She nodded, feeling her eyes fill up again but determined not to break down. It felt like an easeful temptation, an abandon to luxuriate in, the comforting release of giving herself to crying, from the eyes, the mouth, the shudder of her body like a distant shadow of orgasm. But she feared that if she let go now she’d never recover.

‘I know it’s not gaunny solve anything,’ he said, ‘but would a bath do you any good?’

She rubbed at her puffy cheeks with the over‐
long sleeve of the police uniform and ran a hand through her tangled hair. ‘More than you could possibly imagine.’

Jo Mooney didn’t have the energy to join in the widespread histrionics, the practisedly supercool movie people metamorphosising into headless chickens around her as they finally encountered a problem they couldn’t get their lawyers to sort out for them. She wasn’t frozen with fear or exhaustedly resigned to her fate either: it was more like she’d been punched in the gut and was taking time to reconstitute herself before considering her next move.