Free The Stand-In by Evelyn Piper Page B

you know it!”
    â€œStop that, Bran! I only know they have my baby. How can you think about who wants who to direct what now?”
    â€œMy fault, darling,” Nube said. “I shouldn’t have brought that up. Excuse, please. Listen—I want both of you to listen to me now. Listen, Coral!”
    She had jumped up and was going toward the door.
    â€œDarling, I know you want me out of here in case they’ve got someone watching, but if you listen this will only take a few minutes.
    â€œYours isn’t the first kid kidnapped. Pay attention! Kidnappers always tell the parents not to contact the cops because cops are the only ones they’re scared of. Cops know exactly how to handle these matters, and I am advising you to call them in and cooperate with them.”
    â€œWe can’t call. For all we know, the operator is in on it!”
    â€œCould be. Anything could be. So let me call, how’s that? I’m going to the Turkish bath and I’ll call from a public booth on the way. You know I walk there. Everybody knows that Nube walks to the Turkish bath almost every night.” (He sometimes believed this.) “That I should stop on the way to call—in case they tail me—well, I’ve done it a hundred times. Walking gives me ideas and everyone knows that when Nube gets an idea, day or night, he gets on the phone and starts the action. How’s that?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBran?”
    â€œYou mean not pay them off?”
    â€œI mean do what the cops tell you to.”
    â€œNo, Nube, absolutely not!” She came toward him with her fists up. “Nube—if you do anything—one thing! If you tell one person!”
    Nube took her fists and kissed them. “Who can be sensible about his kid’s life? I’d do the same if it was one of mine. Okay, doll, you go along with them and I’ll have the money ready for you.”
    â€œDon’t forget, Bran! When he calls again you take it.” Coral had said this many times since Nube had left.
    â€œOkay. Did you hear that shit?” He had said this many times. “‘If I wanted to go that high you wouldn’t have had it in the first place.’ I wish I’d told him to contact Rorty’s agent, then he’d believe that when the agent told Rorty my ideas he got instructions that the rights were mine if I’d go up to fifty. Rorty wants me to direct. It’s not a question of where he could get the best price. I don’t mean he’d throw the rights away, but if I could meet the price.”
    â€œTell him we’ll do anything. Anything.”
    â€œOf course we’ll do anything.” He knelt on the floor and pulled her down trying to make her rest against him, remembering the night in the hospital when they had said, “Here’s your daughter, Mr. Collier .” Ugly as hell. All new ones ugly. His mother said he was beautiful from birth, but his mother wasn’t exactly unprejudiced. The pains began while they were having dinner at his mother’s place. (That first year Coral used to go with him.) He had driven Coral to the hospital alone, but his mother came after him and waited with him. Then when she saw Cornie, when they brought Cornie into Coral’s room, his mother didn’t exactly say she was ugly, but Coral got sore because she kept saying how beautiful Bran had been from birth. Then Coral had seen the basket lunch his mother had packed him with roast beef sandwiches with mayonnaise, thick the way he liked them, and she’d had hysterics. Coral said it took his mother to know it was the expectant father who needed care! For Christ’s sake, his mother needed time to break the habit of taking care of him. It was only natural. He became a father before his mother even had time to get used to his being a husband. God knows she hadn’t had a chance to adjust to that! (Coral said she never would, in one month, one year, or