Not the End of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

psychological thing, one might say.
    So, having dried off, got dressed and familiarised himself thoroughly with the hotel’s fire regulations, room‐
service menu, laundry arrangements and international dialling literature, and having flicked through the vacuous TV channels and satisfied himself that the BBC were wrong not to market the test‐
card as a format overseas, he had opted for the heretical pursuit of taking a (very) early‐
morning stroll in LA.
    His subversiveness was confirmed by the time he had made it as far as the Pantages Egyptian Theater, another archaeological remnant of the fabled lost city of Hollywood. Steff had seen the place in old movies and in documentaries about old movies, once a palatial showcase for the local product, site of legendary premieres where the gods of a black‐
and‐
white pantheon gathered before crowd and camera. Now it was a second‐
run cinema, showing last season’s hits for two bucks, like an ageing and ruined society beauty turning tricks to pay the rent, wearing the torn and faded dress that wowed ’em three decades ago. From red carpet to sticky carpet.
    Steff had clicked off a whole roll in front of the place, and was moving on again when the patrol car pulled alongside. The window slid down and a uniformed white cop in uniform shades looked up at him.
    ‘Excuse me, would you mind stopping there a minute, sir?’ he said.
    Being stopped didn’t surprise Steff. He didn’t necessarily cut a suspicious figure, but he did cut a conspicuous one. He was six foot seven, broad‐
shouldered but not muscular, and had straight blond hair swept away from each side of his face like curtains, running down to between his shoulder blades at the back. What didn’t help was that his default expression tended unintentionally to convey anything between bored disrespect and flippant scorn, depending on the observer’s particular insecurities. His imposing size had the delicately balanced dual effect of both aggravating those insecurities and diminishing the desire to take the subsequent disgruntlement too far. The real problems arose when the first effect outweighed the second, because that usually meant Steff was facing someone who was a lunatic, armed, or backed up by reinforcements. LA cops scored at least two out of three. For this reason, more than climate, he had listened to a friend’s advice about not bringing the long black coat he wore back home, ‘because it always looks like you’re concealing a shotgun inside it’.
    Steff stopped and held out his hands to gesticulate his co‐
operation.
    ‘Mind telling us where you’re going, sir?’
    ‘Eh, nowhere, really. Just taking a wee walk.’
    ‘Along Hollywood Boulevard at this time in the morning?’
    ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, with a please‐
don’t‐
shoot‐
me smile. ‘I couldn’t sleep. Just flew in yesterday and the time difference has kind of messed up my body clock, you know?’
    The cop looked confused. The weakness in Steff’s tactic was that he had forgotten how few Americans ever travel beyond the place. Jet‐
lag empathy was a long‐
odds gambit. However, his main intention was to give them a taste of his accent and play the no‐
threat dumb‐
foreigner card. His information was that the average LA cop’s ‘you ain’t from round here’ reflex was an amusedly benevolent one. Long as you were white, anyway.
    The cop nodded, his stern expression lightening.
    ‘It’s my first time in Los Angeles and I thought I might as well take a look around while the streets are empty, seeing as I was awake,’ Steff elaborated, trying to capitalise on the breakthrough.
    ‘You don’t sound English. Where you from, Australia?’ Success.
    ‘No.’ He laughed, shaking his head. ‘Scotland.’
    ‘Hey, I was close,’ the cop replied, not, apparently, joking.
    ‘Yeah,’ Steff agreed. Right planet, anyway.
    ‘Well, sir, if I was you, I’d get myself a rental car. You’ll see a lot more of the city