Her ears popped in the absolutely silent, carpeted elevator. In twenty seconds she was stepping off on the thirty-second floor, ignoring the receptionist and walking straight to the ceiling-to-floor window that offered an awesome view of Central Park, Harlem, the Bronx, Westchester, and the ends of the earth.
Rune was hypnotized.
"May I help you?" the receptionist asked three times before Rune turned around.
"If I worked here I'd never get any work done," Rune murmured.
"Then you wouldn't be working here very long."
Reluctantly she pried herself away from the window. "This is the view you'd have if you flew to work on a pterodactyl." The woman stared. Rune explained, "That's a flying dinosaur." Still silence. Try being adult, Rune warned herself. She smiled. "Hi. My name's Rune. I'm here to see Mr. Weinhoff."
The receptionist looked at a chart on a clipboard. "Follow me." She led her down a quiet corridor.
On the walls were posters of some of the studio's older movies. She paused to touch the crisp, wrinkled paper delicately. Farther down the hall were posters of newer films. The ads for movies hadn't changed much over the years. A sexy picture of the hero or heroine, the title, some really stupid line.
He was looking for peace, she was looking for escape. Together, they found the greatest adventure of their lives.
She'd seen the action movie that line referred to. And if the story had been their greatest adventure, well, then those characters'd been leading some totally bargain-basement lives.
Rune paused for one last aerial view of the Magic Kingdom, then followed the receptionist down a narrow hallway.
Betting herself that Mr. Weinhoff's would be one totally scandalous office. A corner one, looking north and west. With a bar and a couch. Maybe he'd be homesick for California so what he'd insisted they do to keep him happy was to put a lot of palm trees around the room. A marble desk. A leather couch. A bar, of course. Would he offer her a highball? What was a highball exactly?
They turned another corner.
She pictured Weinhoff fat and wearing a three-piece checkered suit, smoking cigars and talking like a baby to movie stars. What if Tom Cruise called while she was sitting in his office? Could she ask to say hello? Hell, yes, she'd ask. Or Robert Duvall! Sam Shepard? Oh, please, please, please ...
They turned one more corner and stopped beside a battered Pepsi machine. The receptionist nodded. "There." She turned around.
"Where?" Rune asked, looking around. Confused.
The woman pointed to what Rune thought was a closet, and disappeared.
Rune stepped into the doorway, next to which a tiny sign said S. WEINHOFF.
The office, about ten feet by ten, had no windows. It wasn't even ten by ten really, because it was stacked around the perimeter with magazines and clippings and books and posters. The desk--chipped, cigarette-burned wood--was so cluttered and cheap that even the detective with the close-together eyes would've refused to work at it.
Weinhoff looked up from Variety and motioned her in. "So, you're the student, what's the name again? I'm so bad with names."
"Rune."
"Nice name, I like it. Parents were hippies, right? Peace, Love, Sunshine, Aquarius. All that. Can you find a place to sit?"
Well, she got one thing right: he was fat. A ruddy nose and burst vessels in his huge cheeks. A great Santa Claus--if you could have a Jewish Santa. No checkered suit. No suit at all. Just a polyester shirt, white with brown stripes. A brown tie. Gray slacks.
Rune sat down.
"You want coffee? You're too young to drink coffee, you ask me. 'Course my granddaughter drinks coffee. She smokes too. God forbid that's all she does. I don't approve, but I sin, so how can I cast stones?"
"No, thanks."
"I'll get some, you don't mind." He stepped into the corridor and she saw him making instant coffee at a water dispenser.
So much for the highballs.
He sat back down at his desk and said to her, "So how'd you hear about me?"
"I called the public relations department here?" Her voice rose in a question. "See, I'm in this class--The Roots of Film Noir, it's called--and I'm writing this paper. I had some questions about a film and they said they had somebody on staff who'd b