Джон Эскотт (John Escott)Goodbye, Mr Hollywood
By John Escott
Chapter One
Mystery girl
It all began on a beautiful spring morning in a village called Whistler, in
Canada - a pretty little village in the mountains of British Columbia.
There was a cafe in the village, with tables outside, and at one of these tables sat a young man. He finished his breakfast, drank his coffee, looked up into the blue sky, and felt the warm sun on his face. Nick Lortz was a happy man.
The waiter came up to his table. ‘More coffee?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Great,’ said Nick. He gave the waiter his coffee cup.
The waiter looked at the camera on the table. ‘On vacation?’ he said. ‘Where are you from?’
‘San Francisco,’ Nick said. He laughed. ‘But I’m not on vacation - I’m working. I’m a travel writer, and I’m doing a book on mountains in North America.
I’ve got some great pictures of your mountain.’
The two men looked up at Whistler Mountain behind the village. It looked very beautiful in the morning sun.
‘Do you travel a lot, then?’ asked the waiter.
‘All the time,’ Nick said. ‘I write books, and I write for travel magazines. I write about everything - different countries, towns, villages, rivers, mountains, people
. . .’
The waiter looked over Nick’s head. ‘There’s a girl across the street,’ he said.
‘Do you know her?’
Nick turned his head and looked. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well, she knows you, I think,’ the waiter said. ‘She’s watching you very carefully.’ He gave Nick a smile. ‘Have a nice day!’ He went away, back into the cafe.
Nick looked at the girl across the street. She was about twenty-five, and she was very pretty. ‘She is watching me,’ Nick thought. Then the girl turned and looked in one of the shop windows. After a second or two, she looked back at Nick again.
Nick watched her. ‘She looks worried,’ he thought. ‘What’s she doing? Is she waiting for somebody?’
Suddenly, the girl smiled. Then she walked across the street, came up to Nick’s table, and sat down. She put her bag down on the table. The bag was half-open.
The girl came up to Nick’s table.
‘Hi! I’m Jan,’ she said. ‘Do you remember me? We met at a party in Toronto.’
‘Hi, Jan,’ said Nick. He smiled. ‘I’m Nick. But we didn’t meet at a party in
Toronto. I don’t go to parties very often, and never in Toronto.’
‘Oh,’ the girl said. But she didn’t get up or move away.