Sequence of Events (part fifteen)

Sequence of Events

Chapter Two

Mud in Your Eye

iii.

“Louis might as well have called it Whatta Night!, and put nine numbers in.”

Inviting by telephone, Curtis Boardman had requested informality of dress. Two or three of the women wore kimono-style wrappers. Rica Bullard, cozy against him on the very new white Chesterfield, wore herringbone trousers, opera pumps, and a man’s cufflinked shirt.

(“Why, sir?” Luberta had replied to this invitation. “You’re familiar with Harvey’s work?”

“Let’s say I’m issuing him a press pass.”

“I’m sorry to hear the play’s not doing well. Is he allowed to bring a guest?”

“Oh, how I wish he would.”)

And here, in her expanse of taffeta, she stood; whether or not to Curtis’s joy.

As host, he was not unbuttoned. He wore a collar and tie, but no vest. His face—and she was careful that her eyes moved with each speaker, that she never let them linger on his face—had prominent cheekbones, Justinian brows, dark eyes, a mouth it would be pleasant enough to kiss, should this fish rise to the bait. His tone was cynical ennui. He kept an arm draped over the back of the sofa, while his free hand punctuated his talk in dismissal.

An impression was forming. The impression was that Curtis Boardman loathed himself. Talou would come on like temptation foretold, hesitant in the doorway of a smoky lounge, one hand drawing back the flap of his jacket.

“But I don’t know what a crimp is,” Bullard observed.

“Well, stay away from waterfront dives. You’ll wake up on a merchant ship, and they won’t know their error until you’ve had your morning shave.”

“You mean to say…”

The speaker sat on one of the boudoir chairs that passed for furniture in this nook above the dance floor. Too tall for comfort, unable to rest his arms, he turned three-quarters this way and that.

He patted the elfin cushion next to his. “Ma’am, why don’t you have a seat?” And to Boardman: “You were going to call the play Crimps?”

“Louis thought if no one understood the term, they’d assume it was dirty. To Louis, that was not a positive. He insisted on subtitling it, ‘A Tale of the Dockyards’. Then using that crass watery lettering on the poster…”

With a chuckle, the guest interrupted. He patted, and Luberta cocked her head towards the tidal wave that was Harvey Planter, threatening to sweep Boardman off his perch.

The threat was not idle. Harvey had gathered Louis Guion himself. “Louis, your color is excellent. Is it your own?”

(Guion had a bad liver. Harvey had moved him to the front of the file.)

15

Mud in Your Eye

Sequence of Events (part one)

(Stephanie Foster, 2017, 2021, 2026)