The Turnglass by Gareth Rubin

Author:Gareth Rubin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2023-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 2

The next morning, he met Gloria outside her apartment. She had a bundle containing a towel and swimsuit in her arms, tied up with ribbon. She was wearing a sea-green kaftan and a blouse and baggy pants of the same hue. Single-colour ensembles were her look.

‘So that people always remember you?’ Ken suggested, pointing to her get-up.

‘You should try it. You need a look for your career.’

Painful as the thought was, he wondered if, at some point in the future, he really would have to have a ‘look’. If he could typecast himself – maybe he could use his small-town background and present himself for cornball parts – it would be a foot in the door. He wasn’t going to claim his granddaddy was a Cherokee Indian, but if there was a part for a farm boy from Georgia he would happily turn up in cowpoke boots and drawl his vowels long enough to fit whole sentences in the gaps. It might work, so long as they overlooked his college education and love of British literature from the previous century.

‘Which way’s the party?’

‘The beach behind Oliver’s house,’ she said. It was just ‘Oliver’ now. ‘Jeez, that place sends me! It’s up the coast, so we gotta take a cab.’

He clamped his own bundle of towel and swimming shorts under his arm and felt for his wallet. There was a lot of room in it. ‘It had better be less than five bucks there and back or we’re walking home,’ he told her.

‘Don’t worry about getting back,’ Gloria instructed him. ‘Someone will give us a ride. They always do.’ She waved at a passing taxi and it stopped so sharply the car behind had to swerve into the neighbouring lane. Its driver thumped the horn. ‘Point Dume,’ Gloria told the cabbie as they jumped in.

‘So, what’s he like?’ Ken asked.

‘Oliver?’

‘Yeah, Oliver.’

She considered. ‘He’s a phony,’ she said as they pulled into the traffic. ‘I don’t like him.’

Her calling Oliver a phony was a level of irony. ‘Phony how?’

‘Oh, he says things but you know he means something else. That kind of phony.’

‘Oh, that kind of phony.’

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.