Maestro by Gardner John

Author:Gardner, John [Gardner, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480418691
Amazon: B00CE34Y1C
Goodreads: 19096444
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 1993-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

(4)

“SO YOU GOT MARRIED, and lived unhappily ever after, eh?”

They had lunched on shepherds’ pie, which Pucky had made and left to be finished off in the oven. Passau covered his with tomato ketchup—“I got all the worst American vices, and I hate that revolting pseudo haute cuisine.”

It was after the shepherds’ pie that Herbie had to kick-start Passau again.

“So you got married, and lived unhappily ever after, eh?”

The Maestro’s head whipped up, and there was a brief flare of fire in his eyes. But he did not shout. “No, we did not live unhappily. For the first year—almost our whole time together—it was good and very happy. I mean happy. I tell you, Herbie, we were in love, and doing nicely, thank you very much. But you know this really, don’t you? All the books tell it as it was.”

“Not quite, Lou. They say that Rita became difficult to live with, and that led to tragedy.”

“To begin with, it wasn’t difficult. Yes, I was difficult and so was she. Herb, we were artists, what do you expect? Yet our combined artistic temperaments canceled each other out. We were difficult people, but that didn’t make our lives together much of a problem. We were each other’s morning and evening stars. Know what I mean?”

Kruger nodded. Ah, yes, he knew exactly what Louis Passau meant, because spies are like artists—artists and priests. “A clash of touchy egos that brought harmony? That right?”

“You got it. We managed because we enjoyed each other’s work. We were never in competition. Not for the first year anyway.”

The first time they tried to get married “It didn’t take,” as Passau put it, with a gruff laugh.

They had driven off one weekend, heading towards San Diego, but they could not find a judge.

They waited for another couple of months. Already, since their first meeting, Rita had made Autumn Glory, and had almost wrapped The Running of the Deer. Now, they were both starting on what Stefan called the studio’s answer to The Birth of a Nation.

Max Ebius had found what he said was the right story: a book called The Hollow Heart, by an unknown author, Peggy Reed. He put his two best scriptwriters on it, and changed the title to Blood of a Nation—“Max was never one to worry about plagiarism,” Passau said. He then sent for Stefan who read the book and declared it was unfilmable, which meant nothing to Ebius who showed him the script a couple of weeks later. There was a part tailor-made for Rita, though you could never have found it in the book. Stefan agreed, Rita agreed, and Passau began to research music of the War Between the States.

“We had two weeks off when we were supposed to be working on pre-production stuff—or, at least Rita, Stefan and the others were supposed to be hard at it. I gave it out that I was researching the score. One Saturday afternoon, I went over to Rita’s place and found Stefan there. He was going on and on about the movie.

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