Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [36]
Boy, and I had thought Max could sometimes prattle on too long without encouragement. He was an amateur compared to this woman.
Still, since I wanted a job from her, I feigned interest. “You can tell all that from the colors?”
So she talked about the colors some more (red was associated with bloodshed and sacrifice, purple with women, blah blah blah), and then she talked about the symbolic meaning of the pattern (more of the same), and then she talked about the legend of how kente cloth had originated (two guys got the idea from a spider’s web).
Frankly, I was starting to wonder if her husband had died of boredom.
Still, it wasn’t that difficult to guess what had first attracted Martin Livingston to her. She was a good-looking woman with a well-maintained figure that was shown off to advantage today by a sleeveless sheath dress. Her smooth blond hair was pulled back in a stylish chignon, and her makeup was skillfully applied with a light hand. A lot of men would look twice at her. And if Martin had also shared her loquacious fascination with “ritual weaving and the symbolic visual language of traditional African cultures,” then the marriage was probably a match made in heaven.
I, however, was finding Catherine’s company a bit of an endurance test. I was just starting to think I didn’t really want this job after all, since it might mean bumping into her on a regular basis, when she gave a rueful little laugh and said, “Oh, dear, I’ve done it again.” She smiled at me. “You must forgive me, Hester.”
“Esther.”
“I tend to get carried away when the conversation turns to a subject that I find so interesting.”
I refrained from pointing out that it wasn’t a conversation, it was a monologue. A long one.
Jeff said to me, “You’ll learn a lot, working here.”
“Indeed,” I said, hoping that my gaze would turn him into stone.
“Ah, yes,” Catherine said. “That brings us to the subject at hand. I gather from Jeff that your filming schedule allows you enough time to take over the responsibility for some of his workshops that he has abdicated this summer?”
Ouch. I resisted the urge to look at Jeff to see if he was wincing.
“Yes. I’m waiting for the production office to reschedule me for another scene or two, but that will probably be a nighttime shoot. And my other job is mostly at night, too.”
“Other job?” they said in unison.
“I’m a singing server at Bella Stella.”
Jeff said in surprise, “You’re waiting tables?” Apparently he’d assumed my D30 gig was a steady thing.
“And singing.” I said pleasantly to Catherine, “Maybe you’ve heard of Bella Stella? There was a mob hit there about two months ago. Chubby Charlie Chiccante got it right in the chest and died while I was waiting on him during the dinner shift. The story was in all the tabloids.”
Sometimes I just can’t help myself.
Catherine’s carefully blank expression didn’t change as she looked from me to Jeff. As if she were silently accusing him of that murder, he held up his hands and said, “Hey, I was in LA two months ago.”
She looked at me again. “My, what interesting stories of the actor’s life you will be able to share with our students here at the Livingston Foundation.”
Jeff jumped in. “Does that mean you’re approving her as my sub?”
“I don’t have time to look for someone myself, Jeffrey. Nor do I know anything about acting. So I’ll have to trust your judgment.” She added, “Besides, thanks to how unreliable your first choice was, we need someone immediately, don’t we?”
“Esther’s reliable,” he said.
“I’m reliable,” I said.
“Actually, she was my first choice,” Jeff lied, “but her shooting schedule at the time meant she couldn’t do it. But now Frank is out of the picture, and Esther’s available.