Voice of Our Shadow by Jonathan Carroll Read Free Book Online

shrugged at her correction. It was unimportant to him. No one said anything, and the only sounds were cars passing on the Ringstrasse.
    “See, Joe, I gave him my address and telephone number, right? But he never called, the rat. Ah, what did I care? I just wrote him off as some little twit in his ugly Hawaiian shirt and didn’t think about him again until he called me two years later when I was living in Los Angeles.”
    “Two years ? How come you waited two years, Paul?” I wouldn’t have waited two seconds to claim India Tate.
    “Hmm. I thought she was okay and all, but nothing to go nuts about.”
    “Thanks, mac!”
    “You’re welcome. I was still in the Navy and my boat put into San Francisco for Thanksgiving. We were given a couple of days’ liberty. I thought it would be fun to call her up. She wasn’t living in her old digs anymore, but I was able to trace her through a roommate to Los Angeles.”
    If it’s possible, India was glaring and smiling at him at the same time. “Yeah, I was working at Walt Disney Studios. Doing fascinating things like drawing Mickey Mouse’s ears. Neat, huh? I was bored, so when he called and asked if I would come up and spend the holiday with him, I said yes. Even if he was a twit in Hawaiian shirts. We ended up having a good time, and before he left he asked me to marry him.”
    “Just like that?”
    They nodded together. “Yup, and I said yes just like that. You think I wanted to draw Scrooge McDuck for the rest of my life? He shipped out, and I didn’t see him this time for two months. When I did we got married.”
    “You and Scrooge McDuck?”
    “No, me and twit.” She hitchhiked her thumb his way again. “We did it in New York.”
    “New York?”
    “Right. In Manhattan. We got married and had dinner at the Four Seasons and then went to a movie.”
    “ Dr. No ,” Paul piped up.
     
    We had ordered more coffee despite the waiter’s having made it clear to us by his curtness that it was closing time and he wanted us out.
    “So, what are you working on now, Joe?”
    “Oh, I’ve been poking around this one idea I’ve had for a while. It would be a kind of oral history of Vienna in World War II. So much has already been written about the battles and all that, but what interests me is recording the stories of the other people who were involved — especially the women, and others who were kids then. Can you imagine living through years of that? Their stories are just as incredible as the ones of the guys who fought. Really, you’d be knocked out if you heard what some of them went through.”
    I was getting excited because the project interested me and because I had told only a few people about it. Until that moment it had been one of those “gotta do that someday” dreams that never get done.
    “Let me give you an example. There is a woman I know who worked for an insane asylum out in the Nineteenth District. The Nazis ordered her bosses to get the whole bunch of cuckoos out of there. This woman ended up carting them out of the city and up to an old Schloss on the Czech border, and amazingly they survived until the end of the war. It was straight out of that film King of Hearts .”
    India shifted in her chair and rubbed her slim bare arms. The night had grown suddenly cooler and it was getting late.
    “Joe, do you mind if I ask you something?”
    Thinking it would be about the new book, I was completely taken off guard by her question when it came.
    “What did you think of The Voice of Our Shadow ? Did you like it? The whole play is so different from your short story, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, you’re right. And to tell you the deep, deep truth, I’ve never liked the play, even when I saw it with the original cast in New York. I know that’s biting the hand that fed me, but everything was distorted so much. It’s a good play, but it isn’t my story, if you see what I mean.”
    “Did you grow up with guys like that? Were you a tough guy?”
    “No. I