“ I’ m sorry. I’ ll try to be more careful, Mr. Demiris,” he said evenly.
Demiris got to his feet.“ Do that. I would suggest that you not offend Miss Page any further.” He left the cockpit.
Any further! Larry racked his brain, trying to think of what he might have done to offend her. Perhaps she just did not like his type. Or she could have been jealous of the fact that Demiris liked and trusted him, but that didn’ t make sense. Nothing Larry could think of made any sense. And yet Noelle Page was trying to get him fired.
Larry thought about what it was like being out of a job, the indignity of filling out applications like a damned schoolboy, the interviews, the waiting, the endless hours of trying to kill time with cheap bars and amateur whores. He remembered Catherine’ s patience and tolerance and how he had hated her for it. No, he could not go through all that again. He could not stand another failure.
On a layover in Beirut a few days later Larry passed a movie theater and noticed that the picture playing there starred Noelle Page. On an impulse he went to see it, prepared to hate the picture and its star, but Noelle was so brilliant in it that he found himself completely carried away by her performance. Again he had the curious feeling of familiarity. The following Monday, Larry flew Noelle Page and some business associates of Demiris’ to Zurich. Larry waited until Noelle Page was alone and then approached her. He had hesitated about talking to her, remembering her last warning to him, but he had decided that the only way he could break through her antagonism was to go out of his way to be pleasant to her. All actresses were egotistical and liked to be told they were good, and so now he came up to her and said, with careful courtesy,“ Excuse me, Miss Page, I just wanted to tell you that I saw you in a movie the other night. The Third Face. I think you’ re one of the greatest actresses I’ ve ever seen.”
Noelle stared at him a moment and then replied,“ I would like to believe that you are a better critic than you are a pilot, but I doubt very much that you have either the intelligence or the taste.” And she walked away.
Larry stood rooted there, feeling as though he had been struck. The goddamned cunt! For an instant he was tempted to follow her and tell her what he thought of her, but he knew it would be playing into her hands. No. From now on he would simply do his job and keep as far away from her as possible.
During the next few weeks Noelle was his passenger on several flights. Larry did not speak to her at all, and he tried desperately hard to arrange it so that she did not see him. He kept out of the cabin and had Metaxas handle any necessary communications with the passengers. There were no further comments from Noelle Page, and Larry congratulated himself on having solved the problem.
As it turned out, he congratulated himself too soon.
One morning Demiris sent for Larry at the villa.“ Miss Page is flying to Paris for me on some confidential business. I want you to stay at her side.”