Countess Dracula Read Online Free PDF

fucking noise, right?’
    ‘You always were in tune with the art of this business.’
    ‘Art? I tell you what art I like, Frankie boy: pictures of dead presidents. Those portraits are food for the soul.’
    Elizabeth appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the pool. She was still dressed only in her silk robe, her hair vaguely brushed. She wouldn’t dream of making an effort for Fabio – he wasn’t important enough to her – though she kissed both his cheeks with such enthusiasm that a casual observer might have thought otherwise.
    ‘Darling Fabio,’ she said. Was she trying to mask her accent a little? Nayland thought she was. ‘How lovely to see you, as always.’
    ‘And you, sweetie,’ he replied, ‘and as beautiful as ever.’
    She gave him a scathing look which he had the common sense to ignore.
    ‘So what brings you here?’ she asked. ‘Countless offers of work, no doubt?’
    ‘A movie role for Frankie, yeah,’ Fabio replied. ‘A great opportunity to bring him in front of a whole new audience.’
    ‘It’s a horror picture,’ Nayland muttered.
    Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. ‘I can’t abide them.’
    ‘Thankfully the great American public doesn’t agree with you. It’s all they want these days,’ Fabio retorted.
    ‘And nothing for me?’ she asked, knowing the answer but wanting to goad him.
    ‘I thought we agreed that we would hold off on staging your comeback until you’d completed your sessions with Lundy?’
    ‘Oh, but I grow impatient.’
    ‘Timing is everything, dear heart – unless you would be happy to let the studio redub your voice?’
    ‘Any director who tried that with me …’ She smiled. ‘Well, I doubt I’d ever talk to him again.’
    Nayland could see that Fabio was considering making a joke of that but thankfully the manager decided against it at the last moment. Instead he just shrugged. ‘Then I guess we just have to bide our time –’ he couldn’t resist a final dig, ‘– and hope that people don’t forget you. Hollywood has a short memory.’
    ‘They won’t forget,’ she replied, ‘as you’ll see at our party at the end of the month. Anyone who’s anyone will be there.’
    ‘A party, is it?’ Fabio rubbed his hands together. ‘If there’s one thing nobody could forget it’s the sort of shindig you guys used to throw.’ He looked at Nayland. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
    ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘Did I forget to mention it?’ Elizabeth smiled and offered her best attempt at ‘coy’. It made Nayland think of a panther eyeing up the grisly remains of a gazelle. ‘I’m such a scatterbrain.’
    In fact, she had only just decided on the idea. As Fabio had rightly pointed out, their parties had been legendary in the business and if there was a better way of making herself feel important again she didn’t know of it.
    ‘Well, you know I like a good party,’ said Fabio, ‘so at least one important mover and shaker will be there!’ Neither Elizabeth or Nayland deemed that worth a reply. ‘I might bring a new client of mine. Lovely boy.’ He glanced at Elizabeth. ‘You’d like him, I’m sure. He’s going to be huge …’
    ‘I hate him already,’ Nayland replied, not altogether joking.
    ‘The world will always be full of bright young things,’ Fabio said. ‘You can’t put your foot down on Wilshire Boulevard without stepping on a beautiful face.’
    ‘All the more reason to wear heels.’ Elizabeth smiled around the filter of a cigarette and both men wondered whether she meant to eat it or smoke it.
    ‘Those things will kill you, so I hear,’ said Fabio, who smoked like a chimney himself.
    ‘Darling,’ Elizabeth said, smiling, ‘
nothing
could kill me.’
    Fabio left finally, after he’d persuaded Patience to provide them with a couple of jugs of fruit punch and bored both Nayland and Elizabeth to distraction with his pompous tales of life at the cutting edge of Hollywood business. Most of his stories were bullshit