Fascination by William Boyd Read Free Book Online

‘and wonder what on earth I went through on the plane. Pressure of work? A mini nervous breakdown? These signs of aberrant behaviour can afflict the individual out of the blue in this manner, I know, but up until now I’ve lived a life entirely free of these stress crises, however stressful the situation I’ve found myself in. Now I feel tired, but entirely normal. I called Stella in London but decided to tell her nothing of what happened. Wise? Who knows? There seemed no point in worrying her unduly. Tomorrow to Demarco’s and a walk through of the relandscaping plans. John-Jo flies in Tuesday.’
    The rest of that evening passed unexceptionally: I called room service, ordered and ate a plate of angel-hair pasta and drank half a bottle of Chardonnay, trying to stay awake as long as possible, to mitigate the effects of jet-lag, to hoodwink my body clock, still functioning on London time. I walked through the cool, discreetly lit gardens of the hotel and thought again about what had happened to me on the plane, running through the sequence of events, seeing if further analysis provided any answers. No ready explanation came to hand. Back in my room I took out my notebook, looked at my defaced sketches for the Demarco house andpondered the dense clustering of cryptic signs that my hand had written across the pages. What were those elongated x’s? What could they signify? I turned the page through ninety degrees and was none the wiser. Vertically they looked like schematic hour-glasses or egg-timers. They seemed to make no sense at all. I copied one on to the pad of hotel notepaper, suddenly wondering if this act might unleash new symptoms, but my hand was obeying my brain this time. What was it Hamlet had said to Horatio? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy…’ I switched out the light and went – relatively swiftly – to sleep.
    John-Jo Harrigan – my old friend and partner – ruffled his thinning gingery hair and screwed up his eyes as he shifted his gaze from the sea’s blurry blue horizon and turned to stare at me, frankly baffled.
    ‘Demarco’s very worried,’ he said. ‘He liked your original drawings. Very much.’
    ‘They were wrong. Everything was wrong. The shape of the pool was wrong.’
    ‘He wants a rectangular pool. His wife is a compulsive swimmer. Likes to do her laps every day.’
    ‘When he sees the new plans he’ll change his mind. I don’t know what I was thinking of. Wait till you see them, J-J.’ I reached forward and patted his hand. ‘The house will look sensational.’
    ‘He says he won’t brook any delay.’ John-Jo lit one of his malodorous little cigars.
    ‘I like that: “brook”.’
    ‘He’s got a Ph.D. from Princeton. He’s not a stupid billionaire.’
    ‘We’re not stupid architects. There will be no delay.’
    We walked back along Malibu pier towards the beach.
    ‘I think smoking’s allowed on the pier,’ I said.
    ‘Actually, I think what really upset him,’ John-Jo said, musingly, ‘was that you hadn’t shaved for the meeting.’
    ‘I’m a landscape architect, not an accountant.’
    ‘Are you growing a beard?’ John-Jo chuckled, as if the notion was improbable.
    I touched my spiky, raspy chin. ‘Just haven’t felt like shaving,’ I said, frowning. ‘California dreaming.’
    ‘You’re just a fucking hippy.’ John-Jo laughed. ‘I warned Stella, she wouldn’t listen. I said, I remember: Stella, darling, you’re marrying a goddam hippie.’ He smiled at me. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said, gesturing at a bar-restaurant that was just opening. ‘Then I’ll go and persuade Demarco you’re a genius.’
    I moved out of the elegant, impossible hotel with its dank, lush gardens in order to rework the plans for the Demarco landscaping in ideal solitude. I rented a one-room studio apartment in Venice, a block back from the beach, with a day bed, a shower room and a kitchenette. It was sparse and, after