“No trainers,” the porter repeats, seemingly oblivious even to the hair.
“You may not have recognized me,” says Max. This, he has learned, is politer than “Don’t you know who I am?”
“I certainly recognize you, Mr. Highfield,” says the porter. “From the films and such. It is a great pleasure to have you here at The Wilberforce, but I’m afraid that trainers are not allowed. Even on your esteemed feet.”
Max chooses to reason with the man. “But these trainers cost over seven hundred pounds.”
The porter simply raises a single eyebrow and asks, “What, each?”
Max is allowed everywhere. Wearing anything. This is the man who went to a royal wedding barefoot and in a sarong. An Alexander McQueen sarong, certainly, but a sarong all the same. This is some insane nonsense right here. Keep your cool, though, Max: don’t forget, the little people buy tickets.
“I’m meeting Henk van Veen,” says Max. Henk’s name will carry some weight here, Max is sure of it.
“Certainly, sir,” says the porter. “I believe Mr. Van Veen is waiting for you in the library. Wearing shoes.”
“Can I borrow some shoes?” Max asks.
“Certainly, Mr. Highfield. What size would you like?”
Max Highfield’s feet are a size six. “Ten, please.”
The porter disappears into a closet and returns with a pair of size ten brown brogues.
“Brown?” says Max. “But I’m wearing black.”
“They’re the only size tens I have, I’m afraid, sir,” says the porter. “I have a black in a nine if you think you could squeeze into them?”
“Even tens are tight,” says Max. “I’ll take the brown. But I need absolute assurance I won’t be photographed while I’m in the building.”
“Sir, this is The Wilberforce,” says the porter. “Within these walls you have more chance of being oil-painted than photographed.”
Max nods, takes himself over to an antique banquette, and slips on his new shoes. He is proud of how he handled himself there. Old Max would have lost his temper, screamed the place down, but therapy is working nicely for him.
“I very much enjoyed Rampage 7, sir,” says the porter. He’s actually not that bad a guy. Just doing his job.
“Thanks, man,” says Max. “I read a lot of Chekhov and Ibsen before filming. I think it showed.”
“It shone through,” confirms the porter.
Max feels his toes finish their journey roughly halfway down the shoe. He doesn’t feel great coming to see Henk, but Jeff Nolan is no longer returning his calls. So you go to the next best option, right? It’s pretty much the same service. Henk knows that Max will bring him other clients too, so there’s a deal to be done there.
And another message arrived on the heels of the first. A note slipped under the dressing-room door. You will die, Highfield.
As to where Jeff Nolan is, that’s a question for other people to work out. Max has only one rule in life. Keep moving forward and never look back. Or is that two rules? His therapist asked him to think long and hard about whether this was a good tactic. Is it healthy for you, and those around you, the people you work with, the people you love, to only look forward?
Max had taken the therapist’s advice. He had a long, hard think about it, before coming to the conclusion that, yes, it was healthy for him, and for those around him. He really does love therapy. It’s even tax-deductible.
He’d explained to his therapist, Melanie—a woman, sure, but older, so it sort of works—that after making Rampage 7 you have to make Rampage 8, right? You don’t go back and make Rampage 6 again, do you? You move forward. She has countered that perhaps you didn’t have to make any Rampage movies at all, and that’s when he realized that, while she might be wise in all sorts of areas, she had no idea at all about box-office numbers. He asked if she even read the trades and she asked what the trades were, so that was that. Therapists can’t do everything. She’s very good on why his dad was never able to truly love him, but very bad on why he is so ambitious.
And then, as it turns out, Rampage 8 is actually going to be a prequel, so you can go forward and backward at the same time. Where does that leave her theory?
“Sir?” says the porter.
“Hmm?” says Max.
“Forgive me, sir, you’ve been whispering something to yourself for the last minute or so, but I wondered if I should interrupt and take you up to the library?”
“Yes, yes,” says Max, standing. He stands and hands the porter his trainers. Neon blue and pastel pink, charcoal in the sole.
“Can you assure me that no one will steal my trainers while I’m here?”
The porter takes a look at the trainers. “I think I can assure you of that, sir, yes.”
The porter places the trainers behind his desk and leads Max up a small flight of wide, carpeted steps.
Max follows, feet slip-slapping like a police frogman on a steep canal bank.
42
Rosie and Steve are sitting on a cream leather sofa in the Falcon, looking like an extremely ill-matched mum and dad, while Amy sulkily looks at her phone in a velvet armchair opposite them. Amy and Steve are both wearing their seat belts because the pilot had warned them of turbulence. Rosie “doesn’t believe in turbulence.”
Steve and Rosie are singing along to a song about country roads that she has never heard. If someone really is going to kill her, please let it be now.
They will find out what they can about Bella Sanchez. If they can tie her killing to money-smuggling too, everything will point to Loubet. But if it is Loubet, what next? Where is he? Who is he, for God’s sake?
Her phone pings. An unknown number.
I wish to speak with you.
