Read Voice of Our Shadow for Free Online Page A

I was being regularly published now, and there were even a few people around who knew who I was. Not many, but some.
    After living a couple of years in Vienna, what I missed most was having a good close friend. For a while I thought I’d found one in a sleek, classy French woman who worked as a translator for the United Nations. We hit it off from the first and for a few weeks were inseparable. Then we went to bed, and the familiarity that had come so easily was pushed aside by the purple mysteries of sex. We were lovers for a time, but it was easy to see we were better as friends than as lovers. Unfortunately too, because there was no way back once we had turned the lights down low. She transferred to Geneva, and I went back to being prolific … and lonely.

PART TWO
1
    India and Paul Tate were movie crazy, and we originally met at one of the few theaters in town that showed films in English. Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train was being revived, and I had done quite a bit of homework preparing for it. I had read Patricia Highsmith’s Thomas Ripley books before I tackled the novel on which the movie was based. Then I read MacShane’s biography of Raymond Chandler with the long section in it on the making of the classic.
    In fact, I was finishing the biography while I sat in the theater lobby waiting for the show to begin. Some people sat down next to me. In a few seconds I realized they were speaking English.
    “Come on, Paul, don’t be a dodo. It’s Raymond Chandler.”
    “Nunnally Johnson.”
    “Paul —”
    “India, who was right about the Lubitsch film? Huh?”
    “Stop dangling that dumb movie in my face. So what if you were right once in your life? P.S., who was right yesterday about Fielder Cook directing A Big Hand for the Little Lady ?”
    Normally that kind of argument between a couple is tacky and loud, but the tone of their voices assured you they were not really arguing; no lurking anger or bared fangs anywhere.
    “Excuse me? Uh, do you speak English?”
    I turned and nodded and saw India Tate for the first time. It was summer; she had on a lemon-yellow T-shirt and new dark blue jeans. Her smile was a challenge.
    I nodded, inwardly delighted to be talking to such an attractive woman.
    “Great. Do you know who wrote this movie? I don’t mean the book, I mean the screenplay. I’m having a fight with my husband here about it.” She shot her thumb in his direction as if she were hitchhiking.
    “Well, I’ve just read a whole chapter on it in this book. It says Chandler wrote it and Hitchcock directed, but then they ended up hating each other when it was done.” I tried to phrase it so both of them would feel that they had won the argument.
    It didn’t work. She turned to her husband and stuck her tongue out at him for a split second. He smiled and, reaching over her lap, offered me his hand. “You don’t have to pay any attention to her. I’m Paul Tate, and the tongue here is my wife, India.” He shook hands the way you should — strong and very much there.
    “How do you do? I’m Joseph Lennox.”
    “You see, Paul? I knew I was right! I knew you were Joseph Lennox. I remember seeing your picture in Wiener magazine. That’s why I made us sit here.”
    “Recognized for the first time in my life!”
    I fell in love with her on the spot. I was already halfway gone once I’d seen her face and that wonderful yellow T-shirt, but then her knowing who I was …
    “Joseph Lennox. God, we saw The Voice of Our Shadow two times on Broadway and then once up in Massachusetts in summer stock. Paul even bought the O. Henry collection with ‘Wooden Pajamas’ in it.”
    Nervous now and unhappy that the recognition was due to the play, I fumbled with the Chandler biography and dropped it on the floor. India and I simultaneously bent over to pick it up, and I caught a faint scent of lemon and some kind of good sweet soap.
    The usher walked by and said we could go in. Getting up, we made quick plans to go