Bodger swore softly, and returned to his own room to shower and dress.
He had some heavy thinking to do.
When, minutes later, he was refreshed, dressed, and ready to appear in
public again, he'd made a decision. He needed to discover the root of
Lloyd's dangerous behavior. And the likely person to know something
about it would be Lloyd's fiancee, Grace Horton.
Bodger left his Unit and started toward the lift. It was still short of
one o'clock, but the Voteplate of the Secondary Speakster cut through a
lot of mechanical red tape.
The lift arrived at Hundred-Level within seconds after his nocking
his plate beside the call-button. He got aboard and began the descent
toward Ninety-Three.
CHAPTER 7
Robert Lennick leaned far back in his swivel chair, and sighed a deep
sigh at the ceiling, being careful it would not be heard by the party
on the other end of the wire.
"Now, listen, sweetheart," he said. "You are good. Got that? Good,
with a capital tremendous. But you don't click in urban dramas. You're
too--" He didn't want to say tall, or gigantic, though these words
were more readily at tongue-tip. "--too Junoesque for the parts
we're casting.... No, I mean it. You just--Well, you're just not the
housewife _type_, darling!"
The speaker crackled in his ear for another minute, and Lennick sat and
studied the piled-up scripts in his in-box with wearily narrowed eyes.
When his chance came again, he said, "No, not today. I'm sorry, Lona,
really I am.... It's impossible, that's why.... All right, if you have
to know--We're shooting Fredric Stanton, that's why--"
The speaker's reply to the phrase made some of the color wash out of
Lennick's smooth-shaven face, and this time he interrupted with a
snarl. "You better watch it, Lona, baby! A smartaleck pun like that can
get you sent to the hospital. You know damned well I mean we're going
to photograph him.... Okay, but simmer down, huh?!... Okay, baby, I
will.... Yes, as soon as _anything_, anything at _all_ in your line
comes by my desk.... Word of honor.... Sure thing.... Yeah, that'd be
lovely. We'll do it sometime.... Okay, Lona--Lona.... I said--....
O-_kay_, Lona!" He spat out the last words, and clamped the phone into
the cradle with vicious pleasure. "Dumb broad!" he mumbled, then got up
and opened the door to his anteroom.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Frank," he said to the tall, gangly youth
who rose from a chrome-and-plastic chair and came into the main office.
The man called Frank sank into a chair and fiddled idly with a button
on his shirt until Lennick had the door closed again. When the youthful
producer was once more back in his swivel chair, eyeing his visitor,
Frank lost his casual air and locked eyes with him, disconcertingly
steady blue eyes, and Lennick had to fight an impulse to wince.
"Trouble?" he said, after a moment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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