“I suppose so,” Oxnard admitted.
Gabriel grasped him by the shoulder. “Go on, get some sleep. We can talk about it later.”
Oxnard nodded and got up wearily from the table. Padding down the hall toward the guest room, he wondered what Gabriel and Brenda were going to do while he slept. Hell, you know what they’re going to do. The thought irked him. Greatly.
The guest room was midnight dark. Oxnard was completely blind the instant he let the door snap shut behind him. He took two cautious steps forward, hoping to make a less-than-shincracking contact with the bed, and stumbled against something soft.
It squirmed and he fell on top of it.
“Hey, whatcha... oh, Ron, it’s you,” a sleepy voice murmured.
They were sprawled on a sea of pillows that the girl had evidently strewn across the guest room floor.
“No, it’s not Ron.” Oxnard whispered, feeling rather flustered. He wished he had pockets to put his hands into.
“Oh? Who’re you?”
“Uh... Bill,” he said into the darkness. He still couldn’t see anything, but he felt her soft body and breathed in a tawny scent.
“What’s goin’ on?” another lissome voice whispered.
“It’s Bill,” said the first girl.
“Oh, gee, that’s nice.”
Oxnard felt another soft, warm body snuggle close to him. Four hands began fumbling with his robe. He thought furiously about the lab and his responsibilities. And about Brenda. He tried to remind himself that he was, after all, an adult who could take care of himself. He didn’t need... didn’t want... maybe they... but....
Finally, he said to himself: So this is show business.
3: THE AGENT
Jerry Morgan had two hysterical unemployed actresses in his waiting room, one tightlipped producer who was trying to break into comedy writing, and a receptionist who had just given two days’ notice. The actresses and producer were all formerly employed by Titanic Productions: a significant phenomenon, as Sherlock Holmes would have said if he’d been a theatrical and literary agent with an office off the Strip.
At the moment Morgan had a worse problem on his hands: a morose Ron Gabriel. It wasn’t like Gabriel to be downcast: ebullient, brassy, argumentative, noisy, egregious, foolhardy, irreverent—all those yes. Morgan was accustomed to seeing Gabriel in those moods. But morose? And—fearful?
Morgan studied his client’s face on the big view screen set into the wall of his private office. He had considered getting the phone company to put in a three-dee viewer, but so far hadn’t gotten around to it.
“So it’s been more than a week since Brenda brought the idea to Titanic,” Gabriel was saying, his voice low, “and I haven’t heard a word from her or anybody else.”
“Neither have I, Ron,” said Morgan as pleasantly as he could manage. “But, hell, you know Finger. He never moves all that quickly.”
“Yeah, but Brenda would’ve gotten back to me if there’d been some good news....”
Morgan glanced at the outline and fact sheet for “The Starcrossed” that rested on a corner of his desk.
“Did you give her the same poopsheet you gave me?” he asked.
Gabriel nodded. “We did it that morning, right on the voicewriter. Haven’t seen her since. She just took off...”
“She’s probably waiting for Finger to finish reading it. You know he can’t get through more than one page a day. His lips get tired.”
Not even the joke stirred Gabriel. “They’ve torn it up,” he said miserably. “I know they have. Finger took one look at my name on the cover and tore it into little pieces. Then he must’ve fired Brenda and she’s too sore at me to even let me know about it.”
“Nonsense, Ron. You know....”
“Call him!” Gabriel said, his face suddenly intense, his voice urgent. “Call Finger and find out what he did with it! Make a personal pitch for the show. I’m broke, Jerry. Flat busted. I need something! That show....”
With a sigh, Morgan said, “I’ll call Les Montpelier. He’ll know what’s happened.”
Morosely, Gabriel nodded and shut off the connection.
Three hours later, Morgan took off his sunglasses and peered into the dimly lit bar. Vague shapes of men and women were sitting on bars tools; beyond them, the narrow room widened and brightened into a decent restaurant.
The hostess was dressed in the very latest Colonial highnecked, long-sleeved, floor-skirted outfit with the bosom cut out to show her bobbing breasts.
“Lookin’ for somebody?” she said in her most cultured tones.
“Mr. Montpelier was supposed to meet me here,” Morgan said, still trying to make out the faces of the men at the bar.
“Oh yeah, he was here, but he went on back into the restaurant. Said he couldn’t wait and you could find him at his table. Big tipper.”
Silently grumbling at the Freeway traffic jams that had made him late, Morgan worked past the executives and bar girls and quickly found Montpelier sitting alone at a booth near a window.
He waved and put on his heartiest smile at he approached the booth. The slim, redbearded Montpelier smiled back and Morgan saw a mirror image of his own phony graciousness.
“Hi, Les! How the hell are ya?” Morgan said as he slid into the booth.
