Dolly and the Starry Bird-Dorothy Dunnett-Johnson Johnson 05 by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

paper has the most peculiar advertisements.
Dynamic experienced poised bilingual executive secretary needed for financial office in center, Italian hours
.”
    I considered it. “It sounds almost normal.”
    “Yes,” said Di. “That’s just what I mean. Well, what about this one?
WHO has white American Turkeys for Thanksgiving? The Zoo Farm. Order yours now
.”
    “No, thanks,” I said. Another advertisement had caught my eye. It said, FALL FAIR, 7th Nov., 2.00 to 5.00, and underneath:
Museo Nazionale, Palazzo Barbenni, Tuesday Nov. 7th. Bring the kids. Home-baked Goodies; Ready-wear Rack; Games; Tombola; Genuine Auction
. A chorus of loud cries, rending the scarlet plush baroque ambience of the Greco and causing the antico oil paintings to tremble on the silk damask walls heralded the arrival of Di’s current party on a wave of Patou and Madame Rochas. I gave Di her
Daily American
and lit out.
    Gladioli and carnations and roses were massed at the foot of the Spanish Steps. I walked there behind two soldiers with black tricorn hats and broad red stripes on their trousers; their tailcoats beat in rhythm like blackbirds all the way past the fountain and up the first flight of steps. A group of Indians with a guitar was sitting on the steps just above, strumming and talking with a man in a brown woolen pullover who was accompanying on comb and tissue.
    It was Johnson Johnson. He got up as I stepped around the pendants and said, “Well, Christ, at last. I take it you’ve left Di behind you?”
    He was jacketless and his trousers were bagged. The bifocal glasses glittered under a lot of black hair. I said, “She’s at the Caffe Greco,” and moved my skirt away from the guitarist’s expert fingering. I added, “Waiting for you.”
    “Hardly,” said Johnson. He jerked his head toward the big yellow hotel at the top of the steps. “I’m at the Hassler. I saw you both pass from the roof terrace. If you don’t believe me, come and have lunch with me.”
    “Instead of Di?” I looked at him. “Hardly,” I added.
    “Instead of Charles,” said Johnson politely.
    That is the great thing about Rome. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.
    I am not in want, but I don’t lunch every day at the Hassler, either. Among the other reasons why I accepted Johnson’s invitation was the conviction that anyone who could stand up to Maurice’s twin-urn burials of his friends’ reputations could stand up to a mad portrait painter with an eye to the main chance like Johnson. Ah, well. Ah bleeding well, Russell.
    The Hassler is built on the Pincio Hill. Through the plate-glass walls of the roof restaurant you can see all of Rome and her hills and monuments and bits of the Tiber. You can also see, as Johnson reported, the Piazza di Spagna and the steps. I sat at a window table with Johnson and had an amber antiseptic negroni with lemon and ice balls, and watched the corner into the Via Condotti to see if Di would come out and where she was lunching. Johnson said, “You don’t think he’s in Naples?”
    I said, “Do you live here? Or are you living with Maurice?” Monogrammed napkins had appeared; iced water, rolls and butter in ice. The headwaiter drifted around us in his gray jacket like a shadow, smiling when the bifocals glittered.
    “I stay with Maurice for the gossip,” Johnson said. “I come to Rome for the action. If you want to know where he is, I can find out for you. I have a boat at Naples, with radio telephone.”
    “The
Dolly
,” I said. The lenses, dazzling into my eyes, reflected the yellow-fringed swags of the pavilion. I said, “Did Maurice send him to Naples?”
    “Maurice,” said Johnson, “is a legal escape clause to himself, as you will recognize. All I have said is that if you want to speak to Charles, I can arrange it.”
    I said, “I’m not interested in where he is now. I only want to know where he wants to be.”
    There was a pause. “Married to you, I imagine,” said Johnson.
    The