Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

was selling a few presidential souvenirs. She had her pick of roles at the Pompey Community Playhouse, and sometimes did the weather with Culvert. She was in charge of attaching the Partly Clouded Sun. However, Culvert was weakening, and she looked tired herself. She needed a project. Julienneannounced she wanted to write Carlotta’s biography, but asked if she might do it in the first person, like a ghostwritten autobiography. Disconcerted by such oblique devotion, and worried by her sister’s haggard appearance, Carlotta conceded. She offered to let Julienne come and live with her, but Julienne said it wasn’t necessary, that she had the whole book already written in her mind. As she was leaving, Julienne tremblingly asked if Carlotta had any news of Cliff. Carlotta had none, and pity and resentment welled up in her, plus the chilling epiphany that she and Julienne were not so different in this frailty. She shivered as they hugged in parting, and this palpable chip in Carlotta’s gilding reassured Julienne that she and her sister were not so different. Julienne left coughing but happier, and Carlotta was shaken to behold herself in one she pitied.
CHAPTER TWELVE
 
DEMANDS IN THE SANDS
    Van’s pledge of Christian cheek-turning made the Allies nervous, and in no time he was tested point-blank. A busload of reporters covering a movie thriller being filmed in the Middle East was hijacked by terrorists, and they were held hostage in a crudely rigged-up broadcasting studio in the trackless desert hills. Since the reporters and hostages were one, and the terrorists gave them free use of the camera, the coverage was excellent and impassioned, and stressedthe crucial importance of their own rescue. The terrorists made no specific demands, but asked that Van make them an offer.
    In a messianic spirit, he offered himself, unprotected, in exchange for the reporters. This didn’t appeal to the terrorists, though, and they asked for Carlotta instead, since most of them had admired her in the dubbed version of
Blood Pressure.
At first Van wouldn’t consider it, but she, eager to do right, convinced him that since he had been willing, she had as much right to self-sacrifice as he did, and it would be vanity in him to forbid her to contribute. After complicated soul-searching, he let her go, “of her own beautiful free will,” to the desert to surrender herself. The public, and even the reporters who were thereby released, saw this as spineless and unmanly, to turn over your own wife to terrorists, and a thunderous outcry arose on their return to their customary newsdesks. People pointed out that Van was short for Vanilla, and Vanilla sounded like a girl’s name.
    Her captors invited Carlotta to become their spokesperson, but before she could negotiate, there was a sudden outbreak of gunfire in the studio, and a group of mercenaries swarmed into the room, and incidentally onto live television. They had spotted the hideaway and, without any idea of its international significance, figured it might have some equipment worth plundering. Once again, her life was saved in a bloody minute, and once again her rescuer was Cliff Burns, the leader of these opportunistic soldiers of fortune. He had hooked up with some survivalists inNorthern California and ended up doing pickup jobs in war-torn areas. Everyone in the studio was killed but Carlotta, and the viewing public never realized she had been spared only by accident.
    Van was hounded from office after her return, though it took several weeks for the convulsions to play themselves out. Carlotta stood by her husband, since she believed he had done the right thing, but her stance was unsteady with the reappearance of Cliff, who was posed hugging her by a jubilant press. Cliff had barely known Van in Vertigo Park, but he revived an old schoolyard taunt and teased the president as Van, Van, Born in a Can. A few faint voices pointed out that Cliff hadn’t even known Carlotta was in the