He stretched over to ruffle Boofuls’ hair, although Boofuls stepped back so that he was out of reach.
‘What you have here, Martin, this is different, this is
product
. This is something that a studio can understand in terms of box office. What did you say your name was, kid?’
‘My name is Lejeune,’ said Boofuls.
‘Well, we’re going to have to think about
that
.’ Morris grinned. ‘Don’t want you sounding too Frenchified, do we? Perhaps we can call you Boofuls II. Martin – you fix yourself a drink. How about you, Lejeune? What about a Seven-Up? Let me call Alison; she can take care of Lejeune for a while so that you and I can talk a little business.’
‘I’d rather stay here and listen,’ said Boofuls.
‘Well, you don’t want to do that,’ Morris told him. ‘This is grown-up talk; very boring. Alison will show you the peacocks. We have five now, did you know that, Martin? They make incredible watchdogs. Anyone come within five hundred feet of the house, they scream out like somebody strangling your grandmother.’
Boofuls suddenly looked white. ‘I want to go,’ he said.
‘We won’t be long,’ said Morris, parking half of his enormous bottom on the side of his desk and punching out the sun-room telephone number. ‘We just have to talk about how we’re going to lick this whole thing into some kind of shape.’
‘
I want to go
,’ Boofuls insisted.
‘Sure,’ said Morris, ‘sure. Just as soon as we’ve sorted things out. Oh – Alison? How are you doing, sweetie-pie? Would you mind coming into the den for a moment? Well, I’ve got a cute young friend here I’d like you to meet. All right, then, okay. Bysie-bye.’
The phone rang again. Morris picked it up. ‘Hello? Oh Henry, how are you? Where are you calling from? You’re kidding! Well – if it’s unavoidable. What time can you get here? Okay, all right, that’s fine. I can see you at two-thirty. Fine.’
‘That was Henry Winkler,’ he told Martin as he put down the phone. ‘He’s been held up at ABC. Now, how about that drink? I could use one myself. Lejeune, my friend, the lovely Mrs Nathan is going to show you around the yard while Martin and I have a little powwow, all right?’
‘
I’m going
,’ said Boofuls, his lips blue with rage; and he turned around and stalked out of Morris’ study and slammed the door behind him.
‘Morris,’ Martin appealed, ‘just give me a moment, will you?’
He went after Boofuls and saw him marching past the swimming pool, his chin lowered, his arms swinging angrily.
‘Boofuls!’ he called out. ‘Just hold up a minute, will you?’
At that moment, however, Alison came out of the sun-room and began to walk toward the swimming pool in the opposite direction. When she saw Boofuls she waved and smiled and quickened her pace. Her white silk caftan floated in the gray daylight like a Pacific roller photographed in slow motion. She had almost reached Boofuls, however, when she covered her face with both hands, so that only her eyes were visible; and for no apparent reason at all she let him pass straight by, and disappear down the steps toward the front gate.
Martin hurried across the flagstones and took hold of Alison’s hand. ‘Alison? Are you okay?’
Alison nodded. She was shuddering. ‘I think I’m going to have to sit down,’ she said. Martin brought over a cast-iron garden chair, and she sat on it unsteadily and hung her head between her knees, breathing deeply.
‘Who was
that
?’ she managed to ask Martin at last.
‘You mean that boy? He’s a child actor I discovered. You know, singer and dancer. I brought him along to meet Morris because he’s really got something special.’
Alison was still quaking. ‘Is he sick?’ she wanted to know.
Martin couldn’t help letting out a grunt of amusement.
‘Not so far as I know.’
Alison sat up straight, and clung on to Martin’s sleeve. ‘If he’s not sick – why does he look so white? He looks so sick, like he’s dead already.’
Martin said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ He glanced up. Morris was walking toward them now, his white sandals flapping loudly on the flagstones. ‘What do you mean, he looks like he’s dead already?’
‘His face … oh, God, Martin – it was just like a
skull
.’
Martin found Boofuls sitting in the passenger seat of his Mustang, throwing stones at lizards, and usually missing. Martin climbed in behind the steering wheel and sat there saying nothing for two or three minutes, drumming his fingers on top of the dash.
At last, Boofuls said, ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I didn’t mean to spoil things. I haven’t lost my temper like that in a long time.’
‘You could have screwed things up permanently,’ said Martin. He took off his glasses and breathed on the lenses, buffing them up with his handkerchief. ‘If Morris Nathan can’t or won’t fix anything for you, then you might just as well pack your suitcase and go back to wherever you came from.’
‘Back through the mirror, you mean?’ asked Boofuls. He hesitated for a while, and then he said, ‘No, never. I’m never going back through there.’
‘I’m talking in terms of making this movie,’ Martin told him.
‘The movie has to be made,’ Boofuls insisted, not for the first time that day.
‘The movie
will
be made,’ Martin assured him. ‘And when you’ve done that, you can do whatever the hell you like, just so long as we get Emilio back. But right now, be nice to Morris, because if Morris starts to think that you’re unreliable or flaky, then this picture will take us
years
to get together – even if we can manage to get it together at all.’
Just then, Alison appeared at the gate. Boofuls moved his head to one side so that he could look at her. Alison said, ‘Morris says he’s sorry and do you want to come back in and talk turkey?’
Martin couldn’t take his eyes off Boofuls’ expression. It was both adult and lecherous. It was more like the gilded face of Pan than ever – hairy, wily, foxy-eyed. Alison was standing in the gateway with one hand raised against the gate. The faintest wash of late morning sunlight shone through the sheer white fabric of her caftan, and she was obviously nude underneath. She peered at Boofuls a little shortsightedly, and brushed the breeze-blown hair away from her face.
Boofuls climbed out of the car and walked ahead of them back to the house. Alison stayed close to Martin; and when Boofuls turned around from time to time to make sure that they were following, she hesitated, as if she were frightened of him.
‘Was it
that
scary, what you saw?’ asked Martin.
Alison nodded. ‘He looked like a Halloween mask, you know? Just for a second. Then he looked normal.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Martin, trying to be reassuring. ‘He’s a pretty funny sort of kid.’
‘Is he your nephew or something? You don’t have children, do you?’
Martin shook his head. ‘He’s what you might call my protégé.’
Alison stopped and took hold of Martin’s forearm. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m stupid or anything, I’m not exactly Miss IQ of America but I’m not stupid. All my life I’ve been able to see things that other people can’t see. Even when I was little. I mean nothing important but kind of
auras
. Like when somebody’s happy they shine; or when somebody’s sad or sick or something bad’s going to happen to them, there’s this kind of dark smudge over their face, so that I can hardly see what they look like.’
Boofuls had reached the doorway. He turned around and waited for them. Martin lifted a hand and waved to him, to show him that they were coming.
Martin asked Alison, ‘Seeing Lejeune’s face like a skull … do you think that was the same kind of thing?’
Alison nodded. ‘My aunt always said that I was – what do you call it? –
psychic
. She used to say that
every
body’s psychic, just a little bit. You know when you get feelings that something’s going to go wrong, you shouldn’t get on that particular airplane, or you shouldn’t cross the street. She said that was all part of being psychic. But some people can see much more than others. Some people can see things that haven’t even happened yet: like when other people are going to die.’
She paused and glanced toward Boofuls. ‘I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but Lejeune gives me the
weirdest
sensations. I look at him, and I feel like I’m going down in an express elevator.’
Martin took hold of her arm and led her toward the house. ‘Can you do me a favor?’ he asked her. ‘Can you keep these feelings to yourself, just for now?’
‘Is there something
wrong
?’ Alison asked him.
‘I don’t know. Right now, it’s too difficult to explain; and even if I
did
explain it, I don’t really think that it would help. But trust me.’
Alison hesitated for a moment, looking at Martin carefully as if she wanted to make quite sure that he wasn’t lying. ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘But he’s not sick, is he, Lejeune? He’s not going to die? It wasn’t just his face that upset me. There was a kind of
smell
about him, like something gone bad, and a
noise
, like hundreds of flies buzzing.’
‘Are you coming, Martin?’ called Boofuls impatiently.
‘Sure, I’m coming. Let’s go see what we can do to get this motion picture on the road.’
Martin led the way into the house. Alison stayed where she was, on the patio, her caftan ruffled in the breeze. Just as he stepped into the house, Boofuls turned around and stuck out his tongue at her in a lascivious licking gesture.
Alison stayed where she was, shocked and frightened. Boofuls had licked at her so quickly that it was impossible for her to tell for sure, but she could have sworn that his tongue was long and narrow and gray, the color of a snail’s foot, and cloven at the end, like a snake’s.
In spite of his disturbing precociousness, Boofuls ate and drank and slept like a normal boy. Martin gave him supper at eight o’clock, ravioli out of a can, and tucked him up on the sofa in the sitting room. He insisted on sleeping in the sitting room so that he could lie awake and watch the surface of the mirror. Martin didn’t even like to look at the mirror now: all he could think about was Emilio, trapped in some unimaginable world where everything was back to front.
‘You see,’ said Boofuls as Martin went to turn off the light. ‘I told you that it wouldn’t be difficult, finding somebody to remake
Sweet Chariot
.’
‘We’re seeing June Lassiter tomorrow,’ Martin told him. ‘I think you’re going to find her a whole lot tougher to win over than Morris Nathan.’
Boofuls smiled to himself. Martin switched off the light and stood in the doorway for a moment. He found it particularly disturbing the way Boofuls’ eyes glittered blue in the darkness. It was the blue of decaying mackerel; the blue of cutting torches. He said, ‘Good night, Boofuls,’ and closed the door. He thought that he had probably never been so consistently frightened in the whole of his life, not just for himself, but for Emilio, too.
He went through to the kitchen, opened up the refrigerator, and helped himself to a red apple and a can of Coors Lite. Then he sat down at the kitchen table, where he had set up his typewriter, and began to peck out a few lines of corrected dialogue for
Sweet Chariot
. Boofuls had wanted him to update some of the story line, ‘so that it isn’t old-fashioned, and so that people really believe it’.
He had asked Boofuls yet again why he wanted so badly to make this film; but Boofuls had ignored his question and given him a brassy laugh.
He typed for almost an hour, gradually changing a bunch of 1930s kids from the Lower East Side into a gang of 1980s Hollywood Boulevard scuzzballs. The changes came surprisingly easily, and Martin began to feel quite proud of himself. ‘Once a pro, always a pro,’ he remarked, zipping out another piece of paper.
It was then that the phone rang. He scraped back his chair and picked up the receiver. A familiar voice said softly, ‘Mr Williams? Is that you? I haven’t caught you at an inconvenient moment?’
‘Father Lucas? Is that you?’
‘The very same, Mr Williams. Can I safely speak?’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Is the boy there, that’s what I mean.’
‘No, no. He’s asleep in the other room.’
‘Very well, then, good enough. I have some news for you. I went to see my old friend Father Quinlan at St Patrick’s this afternoon, and I took the relics with me. I also told him about the mirror.’
‘And?’
‘He wants to see you. He says it’s desperately urgent. He says that something terrible is about to happen and that he must speak to you at once.’
Martin checked his watch. It was twenty after nine. ‘Do you mean
now
?’ He wants to see me
now
?’
‘He says there’s no time to waste. Please, Mr Williams. It’s very urgent indeed.’
Martin wearily rubbed his eyes. ‘All right, tell me how to get there. Hang on – let me get my pencil. Okay, left off Alden Drive, just past Mt Sinai. All right … give me fifteen minutes at least. I have to make sure that Mrs Capelli can keep an eye on the boy.’
He folded the sheet of paper with Father Quinlan’s address, tucked it into the pocket of his jeans, and then went through the hallway to the sitting room. The door was slightly ajar. Martin listened, and all he could hear was steady childish breathing. The little
mazik
was asleep.