Tangier

Free Tangier by William Bayer Page B

Book: Tangier by William Bayer Read Free Book Online
Authors: William Bayer
Tags: Fiction, General, Horror, Tangier (Morocco)
glistening body throb beneath him and hearing her gasps against his ear, he was inspired to a tenderness he had never felt with any other woman, a sense that she was exquisite and that it was his pleasure to make her body sing. In bed with other women he had cared only for himself, but Kalinka's moans and embraces made him as interested in giving as in taking, and so he let her guide him in his moves rather than thrusting to his own release. He treasured this new-found gentleness and loved her for provoking it. It was far better, he had learned, to make love to a woman than merely to use her to allay desire.
    Yes, she had taught him about love, and now he could not imagine experiencing it any other way. She'd come into his life strangely, romantically, providing him with a refuge from the harshness of his work and from all the struggles that consumed Tangier.

A Night at the Theater
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    L aurence Luscombe stood on the empty stage facing the place where the curtains met. He liked to do this on an opening night, stand silent, listen to the house fill up. He looked at his watch. Twenty to eight. In a few minutes The Winslow Boy would go on, and then all the agony of rehearsal, the tantrums and the temperament, would fade before the magic of the play. He would marvel then, as he had so many times, at the power of performance—the way it could seize an audience, hold it in thrall.
    But suppose , he thought, they all walk out?
    He'd had that anxiety for over fifty years, ever since he'd first gone on the stage. He couldn't overcome it—at the age of seventy-five he still couldn't rid himself of the nightmare of an empty house. He didn't act anymore himself, but the fear had followed him to Tangier. Here he'd founded the Tangier Players, his gift to the city that had embraced him in old age.
    Peter Barclay had put it another way. "Thank God for Larry Luscombe and TP. They're something to talk about at our barren dinner parties, fill out our wasted afternoons." Peter was being amusing, of course. He didn't think his dinner parties were barren, or that he wasted his afternoons. Still Laurence believed his remark had been well meant, and now Peter, "pasha" of the Mountain, was a patron of TP and the club's most loyal fan.
    It hadn't always been like that. The struggle had been lonely and hard. Laurence thought back as he stood on the empty set. At sixty-five he'd retired to Tangier with the dream of founding a theater club. He'd begun slowly, organizing readings in people's houses while he gathered the corps of loyal amateurs who shared his love for the stage. People had scoffed at first, Peter Barclay among them, but slowly the group had prospered and grown. Someone went to London and brought back lights. Someone else donated canvas and lumber. Gradually the productions grew more lavish and the ragged ends were smoothed. TP became a success, a permanent part of European life in the town.
    But now, after all the struggles, the arduous climb to success, the club was facing its greatest crisis, a threat to its integrity and to Laurence's capacity to carry on. Kelly—that American swine, Joe Kelly—was trying to organize a putsch. He didn't yet have the backing, but if tonight's production failed there were people in the group who would take his side. The Drears, the Packwoods, the Calloways, Jack Whyte—that hard core of amateurs Luscombe had made into minor celebrities in the town—they'd turn on him sure as death, and TP would melt to mud.
    Laurence knew what was going on, and what he hadn't overheard people made certain he found out. They were saying he was too old, losing his grip, that he couldn't control rehearsals, and that his tantrums were throwing everybody off. There was trouble in TP—no secret about that. People who'd accepted parts were doing the unpardonable and walking out. Others complained that Laurence got too much credit, while they were slighted in reviews. He wasn't disturbed—there

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