The Cutting Room by Laurence Klavan Read Free Book Online Page A

Brenner was heading toward her purple Taurus parked across the street.
    I started to run up the block toward Melrose. As I got there, Beth was just pulling out behind me and, making twice the time, heading the same way.
    At Melrose, I took a quick right and saw Jeanine’s car parked at a mini-mall, as we had arranged. Meanwhile, Beth had stopped behind me, at the light at the corner.
    “Let’s go,” I said, getting in. “There she is.”
    Jeanine waited until the light changed, and Beth had taken a quick right onto the boulevard. Then she peeled out after her, into traffic.
    “I can’t believe she actually called the cops,” I said.
    “I told you she might. Good plan, right?” she said.
    “Great plan.”
    “I did our charts last night, and we make a good team.”
    “I’m happy to know that. Get left.”
    “Okay.” Jeanine did. “Let me ask you something else?”
    “What’s that?”
    “How do you know that’s even her?”
    “I, uh, don’t.”
    Suddenly, it was a packed boulevard, all cars speeding, heedlessly. In the same lane, Beth’s purple car had weaved ahead and was covered by a larger vehicle. Jeanine put on her turn signal and was about to get parallel. But she was suddenly cut off by a tiny white Porsche zooming in ahead.
    A tanned yuppie was at the wheel. Moving at top speed, he pulled up alongside Beth. Honking his horn, he gestured for her window to come down. When it did, neither one slowing, Beth looked over, and he yelled, “Could you give me some directions?”
    “Where do you want to go?”
    “To your place!”
    Flipping the finger, Beth zipped the window up and increased her speed. The yuppie kept pace, still honking, in a game of romantic chicken.
    The car ahead of us, blocking us from Beth, now pulled out, cut across lanes, and exited. We were right behind Beth and then, as she floored it, right beside the lovesick yuppie.
    He turned and, through his expensive shades, saw two trivial misfits waving at him and blowing kisses. Then—
    “Jeanine!”
    Beth had suddenly taken a U-turn. To escape her paramour, she cut over double lines and flew across the boulevard, going the other way.
    Jeanine, of course, followed.
    As she did, a pizza delivery truck shrieked to a halt, swiveling into a skid. But Jeanine was too busy veering behind Beth to care.
    “He went through a red light, anyway!” she yelled.
    I gripped the door handle, my foot hitting the floor over and over, in an impotent
brake
gesture. Then Beth took an immediate right, off the boulevard, onto neighborhood roads.
    Jeanine peeled after her.
    She slammed on the brakes, spinning the car half around. An elderly matron stood in the road, blithely overseeing her corgi doing his business. Staring at us, screaming, the woman’s mouth was as round as a blow-up sex doll’s.
    Meanwhile, Beth was disappearing, cruising left, in the near-distance. Jeanine took a fast half-circle around the woman and the dog, and kept on Beth’s behind.
    “Lunatic!” the woman screamed after us.
    We soared left, completing the oval that would get us all back onto the boulevard. At the end of the lane, Beth was at a stop sign, waiting to return to the action. Jeanine pulled up behind her, very innocently. When there was a secondary break in traffic, Beth zipped out, Jeanine tailing her like a small child holding her mother’s hand.
    There was a symphony of swearing as the two of us dodged other drivers and sailed across four lanes of traffic, going both east and west. Avoiding at last a station wagon filled with a family, we followed Beth into a small mall, Jeanine barreling behind her into the parking lot.
    Then she slowed and parked, just another patron at one of about ten tacky stores.
    I wiped the sweat from my face.
    “I don’t know why people from New York hate L.A.,” Jeanine said.
    “Maybe they just don’t know how to enjoy it,” I replied.
    Then we sat and waited as Beth fixed her hair.
    Beth took forever.
    “What did you tell the