V. CRICKETS

Late that Wednesday afternoon, Rosie almost floated into the Hot Pot. She ordered a cup of tea and a pastry and sat by the window, slowly eating and drinking as she watched the endless river of pedestrians outside-most of them office-workers at this hour, headed home for the day. The Hot Pot was actually out of her way now that she was no longer working at the Whitestone, but she’d come here unhesitatingly just the same, perhaps because she had had so many pleasant after-work cups of coffee here with Pam, perhaps because she wasn’t much of an explorer-not yet, at least-and this was a place she knew and trusted. She had finished reading The Manta Ray around two o’clock, and had been reaching under the table for her bag when Rhoda Simons had clicked through on the speaker. “do you want a little break before we start the next one, Rosie?” she had asked, and there it was, as simple as that. She had hoped she would get the other three Bell/Racine novels, had believed she would, but the relief of actually knowing could not be matched. Nor was that all. When they’d broken at four, already two chapters into a lurid little slash-and-stalk thriller called Kill All My Tomorrows, Rhoda had asked Rosie if she would mind stepping down to the ladies” bathroom with her for a few minutes.

“I know it sounds weird,” she said, “but I’m dying for a smoke and it’s the only place in the whole damned building I dare to sneak one. Modern life’s a bitch, Rosie.” In the bathroom, Rhoda had lit a Capri and perched on the sink-ledge between the two basins with an ease that bespoke long familiarity. She crossed her legs, hooked her right foot behind her left calf, and looked at Rosie speculatively.

“Love your hair,” she said. Rosie touched it self-consciously. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing she’d had done in a beauty-shop the previous evening, fifty dollars she could not afford… and had been unable not to spend.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Robbie’s going to offer you a contract, you know.” Rosie frowned and shook her head.

“No-I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

“He may look like Mr Pennybags on the Monopoly Community Chest cards, but Robbie’s been in the audio-book biz since 1975, and he knows how good you are. He knows better than you do. You think you owe him a lot, don’t you?'

'I know I do,” Rosie replied stiffly. She didn’t like the way this conversation was going; it made her think of those Shakespearian plays where people stabbed their friends in the back and then reeled off long, sanctimonious soliloquies explaining how unavoidable it had been. “don’t let your gratitude get in the way of your self-interest,” Rhoda said, tapping cigarette ash neatly into the basin and chasing it with a squirt of cold water.

“I don’t know the story of your life and I don’t particularly want to know it, but I know you did The Manta Ray in just a hundred and four takes, which is fucking phenomenal, and I know you sound like the young Elizabeth Taylor. I also know-because it’s just about taped to your forehead-that you’re on your own and not used to it. You’re so tabula rasa it’s scary. Do you know what that means?” Rosie wasn’t entirely sure-something about being naive, she thought-but she wasn’t going to let on to Rhoda.

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. And don’t get me wrong, for Christ’s sake-I’m not trying to cut in on Robbie, or cut my own piece out of your cake. I’m rooting for you. So’s Rob, and so’s Curtis. It’s just that Rob’s also rooting for his wallet. Audio-books is still a brand-new field. If this were the movie business, we’d be halfway through the Age of the Silents. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?” “sort of.”

“When Robbie listens to you reading The Manta Ray, he’s thinking of an audio version of Mary Pickford. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. Even the way he met you adds to that. There’s a legend about Lana Turner being discovered in Schwab’s Drugstore. Well, Robbie’s already making a legend in his own mind about how he discovered you in his friend Steiner’s pawnshop, looking at antique postcards.”

“Is that what he told you I was doing?” she asked, feeling a surge of warmth for Robbie Lefferts that was almost love.

“Uh-huh, but where he found you and what you were doing there doesn’t really matter. The fact is that you’re good, Rosie, you’re really, really talented. It’s almost as if you were born to this job. Rob discovered you, but that doesn’t give him a right to your pipes for the rest of your life. Don’t let him own you.”

“He’d never want to do that,” Rosie said. She was frightened and excited at the same time, and also a little angry at Rhoda for being so cynical, but all of these feelings had been suppressed beneath a bright layer of joy and relief: she was going to be all right for a little longer. And if Robbie really did offer her a contract, she might be all right for even longer than that. It was all very well for Rhoda Simons to preach caution; Rhoda wasn’t living in a single room three blocks from an area of town where you didn’t park your car at the curb if you wanted to keep your radio and your hubcaps; Rhoda had an accountant husband, a house in the suburbs, and a 1994 silver Nissan. Rhoda had a VISA and an American Express card. Better yet, Rhoda had a Blue Cross card, and savings she could draw on if she got sick and couldn’t work. For people who had those things, Rosie imagined, advising caution in business affairs was probably as natural as breathing.

“Maybe not,” Rhoda said, “but you could be a small goldmine, Rosie, and sometimes people change when they discover goldmines. Even nice people like Robbie Lefferts.” Now, drinking her tea and looking out the window of the Hot Pot, Rosie remembered Rhoda dousing her cigarette under the cold tap, dropping it in the trash, and then coming over to her.

“I know you’re in a situation where job security is very important to you, and I’m not saying Robbie’s a bad man-I’ve been working with him off and on since 1982 and I know he’s not-but I’m telling you to keep an eye on the birds in the bush while you’re making sure the one in your hand doesn’t fly away. Do you follow me?”

“Not entirely, no.”

“Agree to do six books to start with, no more. Eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, right here at Tape Engine. A thousand a week.” Rosie goggled at her, feeling as if someone had stuck a vacuum-cleaner hose down her throat and sucked the air out of her lungs.

“A thousand dollars a week, are you crazy?”

“Ask Curt Hamilton if he thinks I’m crazy,” Rhoda said calmly. “remember, it’s not just the voice, it’s the takes. You did The Manta Ray in a hundred and four. No one else I work with could have done it in less than two hundred. You have great voice management, but the absolutely incredible thing is your breath control. If you don’t sing, how in God’s name did you get such great control?” A nightmarish image had occurred to Rosie then: sitting in the corner with her kidneys swelling and throbbing like bloated bags filled with hot water, sitting there with her apron held in her hands, praying to God she wouldn’t have to fill it because it hurt to throw up, it made her kidneys feel as if they were being stabbed with long, splintery sticks. Sitting there, breathing in long, flat inhales and slow, soft exhales because that was what worked best, trying to make the runaway beat of her heart match the calmer rhythm of her respiration, sitting there and listening to Norman making himself a sandwich in the kitchen and singing “daniel” or

“Take a Letter, Maria” in his surprisingly good barroom tenor.

“I don’t know,” she had told Rhoda, “I didn’t even know what breath control was until I met you. I guess it’s just a gift.”