Chapter 23 – Shimmey Boy
The next morning Shimmey sat staring at his manuscript on the computer screen, and experienced two things, neither of which was a flow of creative imagination. Where most people would see black words on a white background, Shim saw the cut of Laleh’s jaw and cheekbones. They were aristocratic in line and form, and had captured his fancy the evening before, as they sat on the balcony watching the sailboats. He wanted so badly to kiss Laleh just behind her left jaw and just in front of her ear. That was a sweet spot for a lot of women, and he wanted to see if it was for her. The other thing he was experiencing was a hangover. The bottle of Moutard followed by the bottle of Krug had been great then, but now they were exacting penance from him. He didn’t mine, though; it was worth it.
He hadn’t been part of the June’s Stravinsky ballet production. A bunch of their friends had been, and he was envious. He had spent that year living in Manhattan, apartment sitting for an acquaintance who was traveling around the world watching birds. His friend was one of those people who compete to see who can identify the most birds during a calendar year, and check them off a list. Shim wasn’t sure about this as an objective, but he realized it was a great excuse to travel all over creation. It was a very nice apartment overlooking Central Park, three bedrooms and a doorman. He loved New York, and it had been a great year, hitting every major cultural event and producing two of his six romance novels, both of which had been published and earned him a few bucks. As much fun as that had been, he often wondered what it would have been like to be in Charleston and working for the Junes on the production. They had told a few wild stories about duking it out with Mr. Stirg, and he suspected there were more he hadn’t yet heard.
His new book, the one he wasn’t adding to at the present moment because he couldn’t get Laleh’s profile out of his mind, was about the ballet production. He had heard enough from Gwen and Roger, and from a couple of their mutual friends who had been involved, to know it had been a wild, eight month ride. And just those few stories had convinced him there was a book in it. Over the last two months, very judiciously he had pumped everyone and anyone for facets of the story. He hadn’t gotten a lot in the way of details, but what he had learned was this. Roger and Gwen and Little Jinny Blistov, the small time Russian gangster who had transmogrified himself from enemy to friend, had gone to Saint Petersburg to steal artifacts from the warehouses of the Hermitage Museum. They had worked with other Russians there to pull the heist, and this entire crew had returned to Charleston with a large number of artifacts. One day a huge Borzoi dog owned by a Russian couple who had been on the heist team had been tearing around the house and slipped on the polished hardwood floor, crashing headfirst into an old desk whose previous residence was one of the Hermitage warehouses. Looking in the hole in the side of the desk they had found a manuscript in a hidden compartment. The manuscript was the score for an unknown ballet, written by Igor Stravinsky in 1914, and never before seen by anyone other than the famous composer. That was the start of the production.
The Junes and their very wealthy friends had decided to produce a world premiere of the ballet in Charleston, and had managed to secure the assistance of a few world famous musicians, dancers, and choreographers. They also had managed to secure the enmity of Pmirhs Stirg, who thought it was a crime against nature for this artistic work to be produced in Charleston rather than in its hometown and place of birth, Saint Petersburg. Stirg took the conflict to the mattresses, so to speak, and stole a copy of the score from the Junes. He, also being super wealthy, hired the Mariinsky Ballet Company to do a competing world premiere, and guns were drawn on more than one occasion during this competition. Nobody pushes the Junes around, not even a former Nazi-hunter.
Anyway, this had captured Shimmey’s attention, and he had decided to write a novel about it, titled The Lost Ballet. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know the whole story before he started writing; he knew enough, and figured he'd worm the rest out of the Junes or their friends, over time. The project had been going along reasonably well, and he had been reasonably productive, considering he had a moral obligation to the June’s dog to keep it sound and healthy while his masters were cavorting around London. No matter how much he wanted to stay seated at the computer and write, when the dog required physical and mental health maintenance, his obligation lay there, a fact that had been clear and unequivocal to both him and the dog. Now, however, he was faced with another distraction from his writing. What about falling in love? Did he had a moral obligation to do that? Or, conversely, did he have a moral obligation to his muse, to his profession, to his calling, to his manner of earning money for food and shelter; did he have an obligation to resist falling in love? With Laleh. This was a quandary. Should he fall in love with a beautiful Iranian woman, or should he write a book documenting the adventures in ballet of his friends, the Junes? At first, it seemed to him to be an eitheror proposition. He didn’t think he could handle both tasks, the way Roger might have done. Roger was part of the ballet production team, plus he satisfied the needs of his wife, the hottest woman in Charleston, in the State of South Carolina, and possible on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, the presence of Renee Fleming notwithstanding. Roger could perform both of these tasks simultaneously. Shimmey wasn’t sure he could take on Laleh as a special friend, and write a book at the same time. What a dilemma. Why couldn’t he have been born a bigger man, more like Roger?
The Ayatollah's Money Page 22
