The Continuity Girl (29 page)

“Nothing,” said Meredith. “At least nothing that would make me famous. Or do you mean famous in a smaller sense of the word?”

“I didn’t. But now that we’re on to the subject, what are you famous for in the smaller sense of the word?” He shifted his
shoulders and looked right at her as though he was truly curious.

Although she was certain she would never trust Tony, Meredith realized it was quite possible she would end up liking him.
With this in mind she carefully considered her answer.

“I suppose I’m famous for being anal about things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Oh, you know, tiny things. The sort of stuff that other people don’t usually notice.”

“My God, you make yourself sound boring. I hope I don’t have to sit beside you at dinner.” He narrowed his eyes. “But you’re
not really boring at all, are you. You’re having us all on. Perhaps you’ve got a secret plan—
that’s
it. You’re a double agent—”

“Are you drinking?” Meredith said, hoping to change the subject.

Tony raised an eyebrow. He was aiming for a gesture of practiced raffishness, but instead his eyebrow hovered above his spectacles,
an inchworm stopped midinch.

“Perhaps.”

“I’m only asking because I was wondering where to get one.”

Tony smiled and reached over to a long narrow tapestry hanging on the wall beside the door. At the bottom was a brass ring,
which he pulled. Somewhere far away a buzzer sounded.

“Someone will be along shortly.”

Meredith thanked him.

“Oh, you are a sassy little thing, aren’t you? I should be careful of you.” Tony took her by the elbow and guided her across
the room toward the men by the fire. “Now, come meet our lucky fellow guests,” he whispered in her ear.

She could feel the fine hair at her temple wilt with the moisture of his breath. It smelled like spearmint and propane fumes.

“Dennis and Phillipe. Phillipe is from Spain. A dancer. Dennis is some sort of art collector. Terrifically rich. No one knows
how.
They just got married. Isn’t that charming? Not that I’m gay. Thank God. Are you?”

“No.” Meredith frowned. She wasn’t used to personal questions from complete strangers. Tony, she sensed, was the sort of person
who blurted things out in order to set his conversation partner off balance. It worked.

He kept whispering in her ear until they were only a few feet from the other two. The older man spoke with an American accent
and wore his hair in a swooping pompadour. He was impressively tall and sumptuously upholstered in velvet and silk. His husband
stood shyly beside him, looking out under a dark fringe of eyelashes, lips perfectly bowed and rosy-plump. If not for the
pepper grindings of stubble across his jaw and a protruding Adam’s apple, Meredith would have mistaken him for a particularly
muscular girl.

Tony threw his arms around both men and squeezed them until they stumbled together like children in a potato-sack race. “Look
at the blushing brides, would you? I’d like you both to meet my lovely fiancée, Meredith, uh...” He looked at her questioningly.

“Moore,” Meredith said.

“Of course. Meredith Moore. Isn’t she just a pudding?”

Dennis and Phillipe seemed to understand this as a joke, for they shook her hand laughing and offered no congratulations.
Then a gaunt man appeared holding a silver tray clamped in a pair of white cotton gloves. He was dressed in what appeared
to be a militaristic uniform, complete with decorative gold ropes and epaulets. Meredith took a flute off the tray and sipped
the orange liquid inside.

“Bellinis. Osmond harvests the peaches from his orchard and squeezes the juice himself,” said Dennis, watching her reaction.

Meredith felt exposed, as though she had just been caught inspecting herself in the mirror. She heard herself giggle.

The music switched to an impossible fusion jazz composition and the gaunt military butler strode out of the library, his tray
heavily loaded with used glassware. At Tony’s prompting, Dennis began to tell the story of his and Phillipe’s recent seaside
wedding in Spain. Meredith’s eyes began to wander over the objects in the room. Most of the furniture was Florentine gilt.
Delicate wooden pieces full of curving angles and filigreed edges painted in a vulgar matte gold. Heavy silk curtains hung
beside the windows. In the corner stood a harpsichord, the lid lifted to expose its web of strings and hammers. Apart from
the leaking candle wax, the room was immaculate.

“A local fisherman caught the shellfish and then his wife made an enormous paella,” Dennis was saying, “which we served with
the local wine in these fantastic swinging wicker baskets. It was all very homey. I wanted to create a casual sort of peasants-on-the-seashore
vibe. Phillipe didn’t want flowers but I insisted he carry a single calla lily. Just the one. Didn’t I, darling?”

Phillipe gave a sleepy smile. “Dennith wath wonderful. He do everything. I jeth show up,” he said with an irresistible Spanish
lisp.

With a couple more sips of her Bellini, Meredith felt her spirits rising. Small talk, which had seemed an impossible chore
only a moment before, was suddenly effortless. A pleasure. She chatted easily with Phillipe and Dennis as Tony went off to
greet some other guests who’d just arrived—a short youngish bald man with a tall, striking older blonde woman wearing an enormous
diamond necklace. More Bellinis came, and the room began to fill with people of every age, size and description. Between kisses
and introductions, Tony would scoot over and insert bits of delectable information in her ear. “See the social X-ray in the
purple dress? Just got out of rehab for mainlining coke. Lost custody of her children in the process. That man feeding her
the oyster? Her barrister. And the angelic young couple holding hands near the window? They’re only the hottest actors in
Sweden. About to costar in a big action thriller financed by our host. Fraternal twins, but rumour has it they fuck. Or they’re
fucking and rumour has it they’re twins. I forget which.”

Several languages she recognized plus a couple she didn’t floated through the air and up to the ceiling, where they merged
into a canopy soundtrack of party chatter. Meredith kept looking around for Osmond, but having no idea what he looked like,
she wasn’t sure what to watch for, or even what she would say if she did see him. The party surged forward like a rowboat
on high seas.

The following afternoon Meredith lay in the garden beside the pool. A wet cloth was draped across her face, and she moved
it aside only to take pinched sips from a can of lemon soda. The tin, which had been ice-cold when the butler offered it to
her from his tray, was now blistered from condensation in the blazing summer heat. A dozen or so of her fellow guests lounged
around the patio. Meredith recognized a few of them from last night’s dinner, but the rest seemed to have materialized out
of nowhere. She took her place under the partial shade of a particularly leafy potted lemon tree and smeared her body from
tip to toe with expensive French SPF 60 block she’d found on one of the garden tables. Then, as a finishing touch, she draped
a beach towel over herself for extra protection. Meredith did not tan. Which is not to say she was one of those people who
couldn’t
tan—just that she
didn’t,
never had, and because of that, didn’t know whether she actually could or not. Still, she
could hardly sit indoors on such a perfect day.

Every thirty minutes or so, she raised herself from where she lay and slipped soundlessly into the pool. The heat was breathtaking.
For a moment her hangover symptoms would abate, but by the time she hoisted herself over the cement edge and resumed her place
on the chaise, her hair would have dried into hippie mats and the droplets on her skin would have evaporated, leaving her
hot and throbbing once again.

The party the night before swirled through her brain. Snippets of conversation slid into one another. She felt as though she
had been plucked up by a tornado and set down somewhere else entirely.

Osmond Crouch had materialized just in time for dinner—a short rounded man in a black suit and T-shirt, with a face that looked
like the full moon when he smiled. He sat flanked by the Swedish actors, appearing contented but somehow removed from the
scene before him.

Meredith never did get to meet him.

After dinner she was so woozy with drink and travel that Tony offered to help her back up the stairs to her turret room. She
had a vague memory of slapping his hand out from under the back of her skirt as they climbed the stairs, but decided to put
it from her mind, along with the cartload of other cringe-worthy moments from the past several weeks. Now, she told herself,
all she had to do was get through the next few hours, go to bed and get up and leave in the morning. Most of the guests were
staying on for a long weekend. Meredith hadn’t even intended to stay an extra night, but Tony had persuaded her not to leave
when she ran into him at breakfast in the dining room. Over berries and pressed yogurt, he and Dennis cheerily invited her
to come with them for a bike ride into Florence. Many of the party guests were going, though she couldn’t properly imagine
how, given that most of them had stayed up drinking for hours after she had gone to bed.

Underneath her washcloth veil and beach-towel tent, the full weight of the afternoon heat pressed itself upon her. The sun
had shifted again, and she would have to move her chaise out of its reach. She huffed, irritably considering the prospect
of going back indoors to nap on her clammy bed in the turret. Maybe if she just moved the chaise one more time the sun would
stay in place. Meredith threw off her covers and looked in surprise at the figure standing above her.

Osmond. He wore a short terry-cloth robe that hung open over a black Speedo bathing suit. A silver shag carpet covered his
chest and belly. He was holding the leaves of the lemon tree aside and grinning.

“You must be a vampiress,” he said, cocking his head teasingly. “Most women get annoyed when a man steps into their sun but
with you it is the opposite.” He spoke with the word-perfect formality of someone speaking a second language that has become,
for all practical intents, his first.

“I’m not a big tanner.”

“Smart girl. The sun is damaging.”

“It’s not that really. I just don’t like the feeling of exposure.”

Osmond let the branches go and they swished back into place between them. “Ridiculous,” he said, picking a dead leaf from
the tree and crumbling it between his fingers. “A lovely young woman like you should be shown to the world. If anything, you
should spend more time in the sun. Figuratively speaking.”

Meredith had nothing intelligent to add but she felt she should do something. She sat up to introduce herself, causing the
beach towel to fall away and reveal her bare chest. Somehow her bikini top had come unstrung. She covered herself, cupping
a palm over each tit like a starlet on the cover of a fashion glossy. Osmond smiled. He did not look away.

“God.” She tried to laugh in a casual way. “How very, uh,
European
of me.” She grabbed the bikini top with one hand and wrapped
the other arm around her rib cage so it covered both nipples. She struggled one-handedly to yank the two tiny cotton triangles
into place without revealing herself. Without a word, Osmond moved to the other side of the chaise, took the strings from
her and tied them in a bow around her neck.

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” He was standing behind her, but she did not want to turn around and face him just yet.

“I am so pleased you accepted my invitation, Meredith. I wasn’t entirely certain that you would.”

She stood up and wrapped the beach towel around her waist. He was still smiling. Indulgent eyes dancing in the crags of his
cheeks.

“I trust you have enjoyed yourself?”

“Yes, I have. Thank you, Mr. Crouch.”

“Call me Ozzie.”

The wind was cooler now. They were high up, half a mile or so above sea level at least. Meredith could see Florence from where
she stood. Village roads lined by ancient fieldstone and cypress trees looped down the foothills and joined in the city. Thousands
of orange-tiled rooftops and Medici-era battlements surrounded the great orb of the Duomo, its roof gleaming pinkish in the
afternoon light. It looked close enough to touch, even though Meredith knew it was actually a half-hour’s drive away.

“Recognize it?”

“Florence?”

“The view.”

It was not a question that demanded an answer. Meredith shook her head.

“It’s the same one they used in
A Room with a View.
The director was an old friend of mine. I let him shoot a few exteriors
from here. After the film came out they issued a new edition of the book and came up and photographed it again for the dust
jacket. I’ll show it to you one day.”

The breeze came up. Meredith shivered. Ozzie slipped off his robe, revealing more of himself than she was entirely comfortable
seeing, and threw it over a chair. She could sense the other guests around the pool stirring from their prostrate positions
and taking notice of what was going on behind the potted lemon tree.

“I was just about to take my afternoon swim,” said Ozzie. “Why don’t you go back to your room and get changed for dinner and
then meet me in the library around five? I have something I want to show you.” He checked his wristwatch, a stainless steel
mariner’s model with more switches and dials and gauges than a submarine control panel.

“How did you know who I was?”

“I recognized you from the photographs.”

“What photographs?”

“The ones your mother sent. When you were a little thing. Irma and I were once great friends, you know.”

“She mentioned something.”

“I’ve always taken an interest in your progress. And now I finally get the chance to meet you as an adult. I understand you
were working on my latest film in London.”

Meredith dragged her bare toes across the edge of a large pink flagstone. “That didn’t exactly work out.”