Next day in my room at noon, Alaia sits at the table to phone Lucan from the landline, while I perch on the table beside her and Evelyn stands by. “I just have to bite the bullet and do this,” she says, dialling. “How do I phrase it?” she asks us. “Oh, I’ll just blurt it out… Hi Lucan, it’s Alaia, about my phone call to you last night, I just meant to add that I didn’t hear anything from anybody else about what we were talking about—nothing at all. I knew about that thing, only because we were just tuning in to Angel a bit, through Jaymi’s psychic sight, you know, just to test that sight—” She pauses. “It’s not bullshit and I’m going to prove it: I’m going to lend you a copy of what he tuned in to, on DVD… Good, I’m going to deliver it to you today, what time d’you want me to come and deliver it?… What time, Lucan, I’m going to come and deliver it. OK, I’ll come to your front door at one o’clock and just give it to you. Goodbye…” She carries on listening to the receiver, glancing up at us. “No, just Angel. Bye then. What?… Oh, really? Tonight at your place? What time?… Oh, well, I don’t know, maybe… OK bye, thanks, yeah, bye.” She hangs up and stares at us. “I didn’t sound very cool and collected, did I? So much for the Sound & Vision ice-goddess. Anyway, I think that went OK, maybe. But then the funny thing was, he invited us to a party.”
“I half-heard he was having one,” says Evelyn. “Did he invite all of us?”
“Yeah. Is it some kind of trap? It must be a trap.”
Evelyn considers this, then grins. “No, girl, I think it’s just a party!” She shrugs. “Well OK then, we should go. But we should go early and not stay so long and not have too much fun, because we need to keep it together and not get too involved over there—we’re still under contract with Jason and we’re meant to carry on keeping a low profile.”
Alaia’s phone vibrates. “That’s my new therapist,” she says, peering at the incoming number. “I’m going to take this outside, I’ll be right back,” and heads for the door.
Evelyn stares after her, then back at me. “She is so New York… But yeah, I’ve been to a few parties at Lucan’s.”
“Fun?” I ask, casually picking up the brown envelope I’ve been noticing beside Alaia’s bag on the table beside me. It is unsealed and bears Lucan’s name. I glance inside.
“Sure.” Evelyn grins: “Just go easy on the weed there, it’s Humboldt County… We may find out if he still thinks Shigem left those heads.”
I nod thoughtfully, only half-attending to her words because I’m seeing something interesting here in my hands. Half-pulling the DVD from its envelope, I’m struck by its labelling, in Rik’s scrawl: it reads not “Angel”, as it should have read, but rather “All 4”…
“I’m due to call Jason and Marc now,” Evelyn is saying. “D’you want a word with them?”
I replace the disc and the envelope on the table, just as they were before. “Oh, yes please.”
Alaia re-enters the room, looking tense. “How was the therapist?” I ask.
“Fine. I told her about my call with Lucan just now.”
“You what?” says Evelyn. “You told some stranger out there about our dealings with Lucan?”
“I didn’t give anything away that I shouldn’t have. I only said I’d just had to make a demanding phone-call, which had taken it out of me. She said I should lie down and take a rest.”
Evelyn raises her eyes. “Jesus, and you pay her for that? Anyway, I didn’t think starving artists could afford therapists.”
“I finished starving last month. Now I’m well-fed. But I still have the same issues. Believe it or not, I’m actually quite high-tension.”
“Surely not,” says Evelyn. She shakes her head, as if to clear it.
[…]
For more about "The Imagination Thief" by Rohan Quine, see
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