The Angel's Cut by Elizabeth Knox Page B

Cole’s promiscuity. He liked mechanics, carpenters and suchlike—young men, hungry, poorly educated, pliant, and in California in oversupply. The movie stars whom Cole wooed and loved and lavished his attentionon might, in the end, be interchangeable, but these others, these semi-literate nobodies, were disposable . The stars had Cole’s goodwill, gifts, free publicity, his interest in their careers. The mechanics and carpenters were generally taken up, turned to use, and sacked. Flora was rather surprised Cole had introduced her—surprised that he’d done anything to acknowledge the presence of this person.
    Flora didn’t want to look at the guy. She wanted to spare him any further embarrassment. And herself, too.
    â€˜Flora McLeod,’ Cole added after a pause, speaking around his sandwich. ‘She’s editing my film.’
    â€˜Cutting-room Flora,’ said the young man, softly. It took Flora a moment to realise he’d made a pun, and one that seemed aimed to claim her attention more than entertain Cole.
    She had been carrying Cole’s bow tie balled in her first. She opened her hand and it unravelled. She smoothed its length between her fingers and put it on the table. She did so pointedly, as though Cole were her lover. She did it to warn the man, then looked at him to see what he made of it.
    â€˜I don’t know this guy’s name,’ Cole said, to Flora. He sounded delighted.
    â€˜Let me think about that for a moment,’ said the man.
    â€˜I don’t even know what he’s doing here,’ Cole said, laughing still.
    The young man said, ‘Yesterday Frank somebody flew one of your Fokkers out of here. He burst his eardrum and had to put down elsewhere. I believe he’s at St Mary’s hospital. I promised to return the plane.’
    Cole had been listening, looking keen and meek, and lipreading, Flora realised. She had scarcely ever seen Cole showing such a need to know what was being said to him. But then, when he had understood, his face stiffened. He finished chewing, swallowed, and said, ‘Elsewhere, you say? But I know that St Mary’s is in Santa Monica, and that Clover Field is where Conrad Crow is shooting stunts for his little film. My Fokker has been at Clover Field, hasn’t it? Being used by Crow—isn’t that right? I hope you don’t take me for a fool.’
    Flora reached in the paper sack, pulled a sandwich in half, then, after some thought, into quarters. She was always watching her weight, hated it when her belt of unyielding scar tissue tightened even a little around her hips. She nibbled the sandwich and looked from Cole to the man. She felt sorry for him, though relieved to find that he was a pilot—better than a mechanic, better able to defend himself against Cole’s fresh-faced mad Roman emperor act.
    Flora might have felt sorry for the young man, but she gave him up for lost. She had known Cole for some time, had seen him being generous one moment and brutal the next, bashful then tyrannical, anxious then overpowering. She stayed in the hangar only because she knew her presence might mitigate the degree of humiliation to which the young man would be subjected. She had long ago divined that things went worse for people who displeased Cole when there were no witnesses.
    Cole was saying how the writer Ray Paige had told him a story some years back, that he had used as a basis for his film Flights of Angels . ‘The story is about some aces. Paige let mebuy it. But Paige has been working on Crow’s film and he reckons he’s reusing his story. But I bought the story, so it’s mine. Because I’m in no hurry to finish Flights of Angels they think they can do that. Crow thinks he can do that to me.’
    There was something odd here. Not in the situation—Cole scoring, undressing some stranger, then, later, dressing him down—but in the figure, the stranger. Flora was looking