Love in a Blue Time Read Online Free Page A

done. He was in a hurry to begin shooting. Private satisfactions were immaterial. The film had to make money. When he was growing up, the media wasn’t considered a bright boy’s beat. Like pop, television was disparaged. But it had turned out to be the jackpot. Compared to his contemporaries at school, he had prospered. Yet the way things were getting set up at home he had to achieve until he expired. He and Clara would live well: nannies, expensive schools, holidays, dinner parties, clothes. After setting off in the grand style, how could you retreat to less without anguish?
    All morning his mind had whirled. Finally he phoned Clara, She’d been sick, and had come downstairs to discover Jimmy asleep on the floor amid the night’s debris, wrapped in the tablecloth and the curtains, which had become detached from the rail. He had pissed in a pint glass and placed it on the table.
    To Roy’s surprise she was amused. She had, it was true, always liked Jimmy, who flirted with her. But he couldn’t imagine her wanting him in her house. She wasn’t a cool or loose hippie. She taught at a university and could be formidable. Most things could interest her, though, and she was able to make others interested. She was enthusiastic and took pleasure in being alive, always a boon in others, Royfelt. Like Roy, she adored gossip. The misfortunes and vanity of others gave them pleasure. But it was still a mostly cerebral and calculating intelligence that she had. She lacked Jimmy’s preferred kind of sentimental self-observation. It had been her clarity that had attracted Roy, at a time when they were both concerned with advancement.
    Cheered by her friendliness towards Jimmy, Roy wanted to be with him today.
    *
    Jimmy came out of the bathroom in Roy’s bathrobe and sat at the table with scrambled eggs, the newspaper, his cigarettes and ‘Let It Bleed’ on loud. Roy was reminded of their time at university, when, after a party, they would stay up all night and the next morning sit in a pub garden, or take LSD and walk along the river to the bridge at Hammersmith, which Jimmy, afraid of heights, would have to run across with his eyes closed.
    Roy read his paper while surreptitiously watching Jimmy eat, drink and move about the room as if he’d inhabited it for years. He was amazed by the lengthy periods between minor tasks that Jimmy spent staring into space, as if each action set off another train of memory, regret and speculation. Then Jimmy would search his pockets for phone numbers and shuffle them repeatedly. Finally, Jimmy licked his plate and gave a satisfied burp. When Roy had brushed the crumbs from the floor, he decided to give Jimmy a little start.
    ‘What are you going to do today?’
    ‘Do? In what sense?’
    ‘In the sense of … to do something.’
    Jimmy laughed.
    Roy went on, ‘Maybe you should think of looking for work. The structure might do you good.’
    ‘Structure?’
    Jimmy raised himself to talk. There was a beer can from the previous night beside the sofa; he swigged from it andthen spat out, having forgotten he’d used it as an ashtray. He fetched another beer from the fridge and resumed his position.
    Jimmy said, ‘What sort of work is it that you’re talking about here?’
    ‘Paying work. You must have heard of it. You do something all day –’
    ‘Usually something you don’t like to do –’
    ‘Whatever. Though you might like it.’ Jimmy snorted. ‘And at the end of the week they give you money with which you can buy things, instead of having to scrounge them.’
    This idea forced Jimmy back in his seat. ‘You used to revere the surrealists.’
    ‘Shooting into a crowd! Yes, I adored it when –’
    ‘D’you think they’d have done anything but kill themselves laughing at the idea of salaried work? You know it’s serfdom.’
    Roy lay down on the floor and giggled. Jimmy’s views had become almost a novelty to Roy. Listening to him reminded Roy of the pleasures of failure, a