Free Therapy by David Lodge Page B

to side, making her hair fan out. I seemed to be able to produce this effect very easily. My wry little British digs at Hollywood manners and Californiaspeak tickled Louise. Naturally, for a scriptwriter there is nothing more gratifying than having an attractive and intelligent young woman helpless with laughter at your jokes.
    One warm evening towards the end of my stay, we drove down to Venice to eat at one of the shoreside fish places they have there. We ate outside on the restaurant’s deck to watch the sun set on the Pacific in a vulgar blaze of Technicolor glory, and sat on in the gloaming over coffee and a second bottle of Napa Valley Chardonnay, with just a small oil-lamp flickering between us on the table. For once I wasn’t trying to make her laugh, but talking seriously about my writing career, and the thrill of making the breakthrough with The People Next Door. I paused to ask if I should order some more coffee and she smiled and said, “No, what I’d like to do now is take you back to my place and fuck your brains out.”
    “Would you really?” I stalled, grateful for the semi-darkness as I struggled to arrange my thoughts.
    “Yep, how does that grab you, Mr Passmore?” The “Mr Passmore” was a joke, of course — we had been on first-name terms since Day One. But that was how she always referred to me when speaking to other people in the company. I had heard her doing it on the phone. “Mr Passmore thinks it’s a mistake to make the Davises a Latino family, but he will defer to our judgement. Mr Passmore thinks the scene beginning page thirty-two of the twelfth draft is overly sentimental. ” Louise said it was a mark of respect in the industry.
    “It’s very sweet of you, Louise,” I said, “and don’t think that I wouldn’t like to go to bed with you, because I would. But, to coin a phrase, I love my wife.”
    “She would never know,” said Louise. “How could it hurt her?” “I’d feel so guilty it would probably show,” I said. “Or I’d blurt it out one day.” I sighed miserably. “I’m sorry.”
    “Hey, it’s no big deal, Tubby, I’m not in love with you or anything. Why don’t you get the check?”
    Driving me back to my hotel she said suddenly, “Am I the only girl you’ve had these scruples about?” and I said I’d always had them, and she said, “Well, that makes me feel better.”
    I didn’t sleep much that night, tossing and turning in my vast bed at the Beverly Wilshire, wondering whether to call Louise and ask if I could have second thoughts, but I didn’t; and although we saw each other again on several occasions it was never quite the same, she was gradually backing away instead of coming closer. She drove me to the airport at the end of my stay and kissed me on the cheek and said, “ ’Bye, Tubby, it’s been great.” I agreed enthusiastically, but I spent most of the flight home wondering what I’d missed.
    Time to go to bed. I wonder what they’ll be showing on the Dream Channel tonight. Blue movies, I shouldn’t wonder.
     
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    Thursday morning, 18th Feb. The video entryphone in the flat is connected to a camera in the porch which gives you a choice of two shots: a close-up of the face of the person ringing your bell, and a wide shot of the porch, with the street in the background. Sometimes in idle moments I press the button for the wide shot to have a look at the people passing or pausing on the pavement. It gives me ideas for characters — you see all types — and I suppose there’s a certain childish, voyeuristic pleasure in using the gadget. It’s like an inverted periscope. From my cosy cabin high above the ground I scan life on the scruffy surface: tourists frowning over their street-maps, young girls too vain to cover their skimpy going-out gear with topcoats clutching themselves against the cold, young bucks in leather jackets scuffling and nudging each other, infatuated couples stopping in