-35-

He sat on a barstool. Irritable. Shifty-eyed. Vaguely disappointed.
“On the prowl again?” Shirley asked.
“What the hell do you mean?” he sniffed.
“You’ve got that funny look.” She had seen it before when they’d worked on a picture together in Lausanne. On their first night there, at a staid hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, Shirley had difficulty sleeping. At 5 a.m., she flounced out of bed and decided to dress and go down to the lobby in search of either coffee or some company. Waiting for an elevator out in the hall, she glanced through a window and saw the director walking stiffly along the lakeside, hands deep in the pockets of his coat against the glacial winter cold. By the time she reached the lobby, he was entering the hotel. “Not a hooker in sight!” he snapped bitterly, passing her with eyes cast down; and then entered the elevator and went up to bed. When she’d laughingly mentioned the incident later, the director had grown furious and accused her of promulgating ‘gross hallucinations’ that people were ‘likely to believe just because you’re a star!’ He had also referred to her as ‘simply cunting mad!’, but then pointed out soothingly, in an effort to assuage her feelings, that ‘perhaps’ she had seen someone after all, and had simply mistaken him for Thompson. ‘After all,’ he’d pointed out at the time, ‘my great-great-grandmother happens to have been Swiss.’
Shirley moved behind the bar now, and reminded him of the incident.
“Oh, now, don’t be silly!” snapped Thompson. “It so happens that I’ve spent the entire evening at a bloody tea, a faculty tea!”
Shirley leaned on the bar. “You were just at a tea?”
“Oh, yes, go ahead; smirk!”