He was carrying a Pan American flight bag over one shoulder. I didn’t get out of the car. I switched off the engine, wound down the window, and then Maugham leaned in. It was a beautiful deep summer evening—the kind of evening for talk of love, not blackmail money and an incriminating photograph. Behind a hedge of thick pink and white oleanders I could hear the water trickling into the swimming pool, and the air was thick with the smell of orange blossom, which was preferable to the absinthe martini and the cigarette corrupting the old man’s mephitic breath, which now poured over me like chlorine gas drifting across no-man’s-land. “Do you want a d-drink before you go?” he asked. “No thanks. I’d best keep a clear head for the rubber I’m about to play with Herr Hebel. But I’ll certainly have one on my return. In fact, tell Ernest I might have several.” “Of course. We’ll even save some dinner for you.”
What do You think about The Other Side Of Silence?
