"Should I ring it up?" Cassie asked. "Or should we wait until morning?"
Lily was all for giving the number a call, but when Cassie suggested waiting, Lily had to agree with her. For now, the important question had been answered, Carter Denning had access to a phone. That suggested any number of new thoughts to Lily's mind. All of which required some time to process.
"We should wait." Lily replied. "I wouldn't know what to say just now." She managed to smile at that, thinking herself oh so clever.
"He sent the video and Denning's contact info as well," Cassie explained.
"Did he?" Lily asked. "What do you say? Should we fire up the computer and see how they used to make books?"
She was hitting a strange frame of mind, she could tell. Just a little too tired, she decided. It let her believe she was enormously funny. Not even Cassie was fool enough to believe that.
Cassie wrinkled her forehead at Lily, "Ok, let me turn it on."
They settled down on the sofa with the laptop playing the file. Cassie was interested in watching the documentary again, even though she had seen it a few days ago. Lily was less fascinated with the details of 1960s publishing, and found it difficult to focus.
"Why did we want to see this again," Lily asked impatiently. It wasn't terrible, but she didn't share Cassie's vested interest in the industry, and was struggling to care at this time of day.
"I'm not sure there was a reason," Cassie admitted. "We were talking about Denning being at the conference because he was featured in the film, and they offered to send it. It seemed polite to watch, if nothing else."
"Didn't you say it was just a short clip that had him in it? Let's check that out." Lily was running on fumes, and wanted to call it a night.
"Let me cue it up," Cassie said. "I think it was about an hour in..." She stopped talking as she scrubbed the video, looking for the short segment featuring Denning. Lily studied her intensity as she concentrated on her task. It made her smile. She began watching the video advance, and realized she had not seen a picture of Denning, and wouldn't recognize him even when the scene was found.
"What did he look like?" She asked.
Cassie paused and looked at Lily. "Who? Denning?"
"Yes. I realized I've never seen a picture of him. I wondered what he looked like when you saw him. Was he aging well?" Lily asked, with a chuckle. "Seriously, you said he was in his 80s - did he seem to be healthy still? That sort of thing."
Cassie turned back to the video, fine tuning it to the beginning of the scene with Denning. "I see. I don't remember him looking so bad. He looked like he was 80, but a healthy 80. I think he had a cane, but he seemed to move about steadily enough. He was balding with a fringe of white hair, but you can see he was thinning badly even when this was shot," she added, pointing at the screen.
They sat back and ran the tape. The scene that was running showed a tall, dark-haired man moving around an art board in a mildly cluttered office. He moved with a casual litheness that seemed to flow rather than start and stop. Lily wondered at that. He always appeared to be in motion, even when he was standing still. It was a curious effect.
Cassie noted how handsome Denning was. The lithe grace that he showed when he moved carried an animal attraction that held her gaze. It was easy to see how Grace must have been enamored by him. She found it hard to take her eyes off him, following him around the studio as he gathered pencils and pens, preparing to begin work.
