Free Miner's Daughter by Alice Duncan Page B

going to massage my
neck,” he said stiffly.
    “I’ll do it after this is over.” She sounded
grim.
    He had to be satisfied with that.
    The screening was to be done against a wall
of the parlor. Ben and Martin had removed two paintings—very bad
ones—from the wall and propped them up next to the sofa. The wall
was more or less white, and would make a passable viewing screen.
The accommodations around this place were pretty pathetic, Tony
thought with an internal sneer.
    Then he told himself not to be a snob. Then
he told himself he wasn’t a snob, and that Mari Pottersby was dead
wrong about him. Nevertheless, he felt slightly ignoble about
having had disparaging thoughts about the Mojave Inn. After all,
nobody came here. Why would they? Unless a person had business with
the miners hereabouts, why visit Mojave Wells? It was a terrible
place. A ghastly one. One that no right-thinking individual would
ever visit on purpose, unless he were forced to. As Martin and Tony
had been.
    Sighing happily, Martin sat in the middle
chair. Eyeing him, Tony decided Martin, at least, was glad Mari had
chosen to sit apart from Tony. The poor man probably feared a fight
would break out if they sat next to each other.
    That was silly. Tony would never strike a
woman, not even one as irritating and hazardous as Mari
Pottersby.
    “Can you get the lights, Ben?”
    “Sure thing, Martin.”
    Tony watched as the cameraman went to the
light switch, pressed the off button, and returned to his
camera. The room wasn’t awfully dark, but it was dark enough that
Tony wished Mari were sitting next to him. He still didn’t know
why. But he’d have liked to watch her face as she saw herself on
film. He was curious to see her reaction.
    “Okay,” said Ben from behind the projector.
“Here goes. It’s rough and unedited.”
    “That’s fine,” Martin told him. “All we need
to see is how Miss Pottersby projects herself on film.”
    Tony thought he heard a noise from Mari, sort
of a cross between a moan and a sigh. He looked her way but only
saw Martin. Damn it.
    A mechanical sound started, a tunnel of light
flickered from the projector, and images began appearing on the
wall. There were several frames of test patterns, and then nothing.
Into the nothing, a woman walked.
    Mari gasped. “Mercy sakes, is that me?” The
question had been asked in a whisper, and held a world of
wonder.
    “That’s you.” Martin, on the other hand,
sounded about as happy as a man could sound.
    Watching the wall, Tony guessed he understood
why Martin sounded so damned happy. Mari Pottersby looked good on
film. Very good. Appealing. Delicious. Almost ethereal—which was a
laugh, since she was about as ethereal as a dynamite blast.
    Unable to stand not knowing how she was
taking this, Tony leaned over and peeked at Mari. She was sitting
as straight as an iron rod in her chair. It looked as if her hands
were strangling each other in a tight knot in her lap. She stared
at the Mari projected on the wall as if in horror. Her mouth opened
slightly, and it looked as if she wanted to say something, but she
didn’t. She licked her lips.
    He couldn’t wait any longer. “What do you
think, Miss Pottersby? How do you like yourself on celluloid?”
    She didn’t turn to look at him, being too
occupied in staring at the wall. “I-I don’t know. It doesn’t look
like me. I mean, it doesn’t look like what I think I look like. I
mean—oh, bother.”
    Tony understood.
    So, apparently, did Martin. He chuckled
easily. Everything about Martin was easy. Tony usually enjoyed
Martin’s company, but sometimes he acknowledged a faint twinge of
envy. Tony wished he could be as personable as Martin. Martin got
along with everybody. Tony struggled with people who weren’t as
quick as he, or as knowledgeable. It wasn’t a pleasant personality
characteristic, and he tried to hide it. He figured he’d inherited
it from his father, who was as impatient as a man could be.
    “It’s