The Eldorado Network Read Free Page B

pictures, headlines, expenses; getting a sense of the way a daily newspaper gradually winds itself up from a slightly bleary sluggishness through a brisk professionalism to a manic, mannerless, get-the-hell-out-of-my-way rush, as if the paper itself were a wild beast which had to be set free; and then the slump, the anti-climax, the taste of flatness when there was nothing left to do but read the damn thing.
    He quite enjoyed it but after a couple of weeks he was still just a copy boy.
    The paper published its film reviews on Tuesdays and Fridays. The following Tuesday, as he picked up the cinema critic's copy, Luis respectfully asked him which film he intended to honour with his comments on Friday. When Friday came round, Luis again collected the man's words, took them to the entertainment's editor, and hung around until he was given the pages to be set. He went away and hid them inside his shirt. The typesetters, he knew from observation, would need about twenty minutes to do their work. He delayed until the last possible moment, and then gave them his own film review.
    It almost got through. The printers accepted it -- Luis's version looked convincing, even to the extent of a few corrections in the entertainment's editor's green ink -- and after that, time was so short that nobody bothered to read the proof very closely. This was not unusual: the film critic was stiflingly tedious. In fact Luis's rogue column was actually printed in a few thousand early issues meant for the suburbs. As the bundles were being loaded onto the vans, they were recalled for pulping. His headline had given him away.
    New French Film Is Good News For Insomniacs, the editor read as he glanced through his rush copy. He read it again. It looked odd; not like the usual stuff: too crisp, too sharp. He read the opening paragraph and laughed aloud, twice. Then he picked up the phone, killed the column, (they put in a picture of swans at sunset instead) and fired Cabrillo on the spot.
    Luis found out later where he had gone wrong, and it taught him a lesson. 'You can be too good,' he told his father. 'Now if I'd written a dull, boring headline, the kind of thing they run every week, my piece would have gone through.'
    'So why didn't you?' His father never went to the cinema and rarely read a newspaper.
    'Because the whole point was to show them how much better it can be done.'
    'For God's sake,' his father complained, 'I thought you said that's why they sacked you.'
    'So it is,' Luis said angrily. 'And I lost a week's pay.'
    'Well, serve you right. You knew your job, didn't you? You should have stuck to it. Suppose I needed a locomotive -- '
    'I'm not a damn locomotive,' Luis said. His father stared. 'Oh, to hell with them,' Luis muttered. 'It was a lousy job anyway.'
    'Then get yourself another. I can't keep you in cinema-tickets.'
    He went to work for a wine merchant and for ten days he corked bottles. Next morning he arrived with both hands heavily bandaged. 'Broke my fingers in a boxing-match,' he announced. 'Can't cork.'
    The owner swore a bit, found him a fairly clean white coat and put him in the front office, to help attend to customers.. At first the arrangement worked well. Luis was quick and courteous. He was old enough and grown enough to have the beginnings of a presence, yet he still conveyed some of the innocence and vulnerability of youth. And he was handsome as only a young Spaniard can be, with a trace of melancholy, a hint of tragedy, and a glimmer of amusement that anyone should be taken in by either. His eyes were a cool, dark brown. His skin was flawless, shaded olive and stretched over high cheekbones and strong-brows in memory of some distant Moorish ancestor. He had a brief but brilliant smile for the customers' wives which made them forget their boring husbands. For the husbands, sampling wines, he had an attitude of interest and respect which made them feel like Baron Rothschild. Luis rarely spoke, he simply attended; but he was