Freedom [104]
“What’s up,” Katz said.
“What’s up with you?” Walter countered with giddy niceness. “It seems like you’ve been everywhere.”
“Yeah, really singing the body electric. Heady times here.”
“Tripping the light fantastic.”
“Exactly. In a Dade County jail cell.”
“Yeah, I read about that. What on earth were you doing in Florida anyway?”
“South American chick I mistook for a human being.”
“I figured it was all part of the fame thing,” Walter said. “ ‘Fame requires every sort of excess.’ I remembered we used to talk about that.”
“Well, fortunately, I’m past having to deal with it. I’ve stepped off the bus.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m building decks again.”
“Decks? Are you kidding? That’s crazy! You should be out trashing hotel rooms and recording your most repellent fuck-you songs ever.”
“Tired moves, man. I’m doing the only honorable thing I can think of.”
“But that’s such a waste!”
“Be careful what you say. You might offend me.”
“Seriously, Richard, you’re a great talent. You can’t just stop because people happened to like one of your records.”
“ ‘Great talent.’ That’s like calling somebody a genius at tic-tac-toe. We’re talking about pop music here.”
“Wow, wow, wow,” Walter said. “This is not what I expected to be hearing. I thought you’d be finishing a record and getting ready for more touring. I would have called you sooner if I’d known you were building decks. I was trying not to bother you.”
“You never have to feel that.”
“Well, I never heard from you, I figured you were busy.”
“Mea culpa,” Katz said. “How are you guys doing? Everything OK with you?”
“More or less. You know we moved to Washington, right?”
Katz closed his eyes and flogged his neurons to produce a confirming memory of this. “Yes,” he said. “I think I knew that.”
“Well, things have gotten somewhat complex here, it turns out. In fact, that’s what prompted me to call. I have a proposal for you. Do you have some time tomorrow afternoon? On the late side?”
“Late afternoon’s no good. How about morning?”
Walter explained that he was meeting Robert Kennedy Jr. at noon and had to return to Washington in the evening for a flight to Texas on Saturday morning. “We could talk on the phone now,” he said, “but my assistant really wants to meet you. She’s the one you’d be working with. I’d rather not steal her thunder by saying anything now.”
“Your assistant,” Katz said.
“Lalitha. She’s incredibly young and brilliant. She actually lives right upstairs from us. I think you’ll like her a lot.”
The brightness and excitement in Walter’s voice, the hint of guilt or thrill in the word “actually,” did not escape Katz’s notice.
“Lalitha,” he said. “What kind of name is that?”
“Indian. Bengali. She grew up in Missouri. She’s actually very pretty.”
“I see. And what’s her proposal about?”
“Saving the planet.”
“I see.”
Katz suspected that Walter was calculatedly dangling this Lalitha as bait, and it irritated him to be thought so easily manipulated. And yet—knowing Walter to be a man who didn’t call a female pretty without good reason—he was manipulated, he was intrigued.
“Let me see if I can rearrange some things tomorrow afternoon,” he said.
“Fantastic,” Walter said.
What would be would be and what would not would not. In Katz’s experience, it seldom hurt to make chicks wait. He called White Street and informed Zachary that the meeting with Caitlyn would have to be postponed.
The following afternoon, at 3:15, only fifteen minutes late, he strode into Walker’s and saw Walter and the Indian chick waiting at a corner table. Before he even reached the table, he knew he had no chance with her. There were eighteen words of body language with which women signified availability and submission, and Lalitha was using a good twelve of them at once on Walter. She looked like a living illustration of the phrase hanging on his words. As Walter rose from the table to embrace Katz, the girl’s eyes remained fixed on Walter; and this was indeed a weird twist