💾 Archived View for spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › stories › crazy.hum captured on 2023-06-16 at 20:33:56.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
CRAZY GLUE a novel by Jerry Slaff (C) 1986 Jerry Slaff This work may NOT be reproduced in any form, printed or electronic, except for personal use by subscribers of CompuServe. This work may NOT be retransmitted to other electronic services. Any inquires should be addressed to the author by CompuServe EasyPlex at 72777,2022, or by mail to his agent, Susan F. Schulman, 454 West 44th Street, New York, New York 10036 (phone 212-713-1633). CHAPTER_ONE It was two in the morning when Billy realized that any attempt at falling asleep would be futile. He could hear everything that went on in Lisa's bedroom, on the other side of a thin New York tenement apartment wall. Billy could make out specific sounds coming from the room; their interpretation, however, was up in the air. Which is where he figured Lisa was right now, judging from what he heard. He had seen her come in at seven-thirty that night, an early night out, alone. He had also seen Rich come in at eight, after dinner and a few drinks with an old college roommate. Rich slept on the living room couch, and paid fifty dollars less a month toward the rent than Billy and Lisa did. The three of them got along well, with a minimum of fights, and did a lot of things together. Tonight, at two in the morning, Billy was beginning to feel left out. He clicked on a light above his bed, yawned, scratched, threw back the heavy winter blanket on his single bed, and rose five and a half hours before he was supposed to. What the hell do I do now, he thought. His brain was barely functioning, and he instinctively ambled toward the kitchen stove and the instant coffee. He stared at the untouched couch as he loped through the living room, and didn't know whether to smile or shake his head. He poured himself a cup of coffee, and turned on the TV, finally settling on a Mary Tyler Moore rerun he had seen three times before. It was the perfect embodiment of what television executives call the "Least Objectionable Program" theory--that viewers are intent on watching something, anything, and would rather watch All-Star Wrestling, if it came to that, rather than turn the damn thing off. It was a theory Billy had submitted to his editor at Dutchess & Abraham as an idea for a publishable book. She rejected it, because another editorial assistant at another publishing house, Noble & Blake, had already pushed the same idea, and had arranged for a former network programmer with a huge cocaine habit to write it. The book, Why_You_Watch_What_You_Watch, was scheduled to come out soon. The editorial assistant was promoted to full editor, and doubled his salary. Billy's proposal was three weeks late. Can't go on like this, he muttered. I've been there three years and I'm only making thirteen thousand. Got to get something going. The noise from Lisa's room was becoming louder. Should I ask them to keep it down? Not those exact words, of course. We're all adults. They'll understand. I've got to get my sleep. He took a slug of coffee, yawned, stretched, scratched again, sat down, got up and walked to her room. Should I knock? Only decent thing to do. Courtesy. Same consideration I'd want. If I ever got into this situation. How long has it been since I was in this situation? Karen. Oh yes. Karen. What ever happened to her? Check out last year's address book later. Eating Moo Shu Pork in bed together. Very messy and greasy, but that's what we liked about it. He knocked on the door once, lightly. The noise stopped. There was a light shuffling sound. "Who is it?" It's the King of fuckin' Persia, babe. "Leese? Leese, it's Billy." And the capper. "Everything all right?" "Uh, yes," she answered, through the closed door. "It's just...I was trying to sleep and the noise..." "Oh--did we wake you?" "Yeah, sort of." We? "Gee, I'm sorry." The door opened. Lisa was wearing a long Rolling Stones nightshirt. Her light brown hair was neat, and fell straight down over her shoulders. Rich had on a blue work shirt and jeans; they were both barefoot. He was sitting on her bed, alternately strumming his guitar and stroking his beard. "We wake you?" "No. Yes." Lisa galloped across the room and sat on her bed. She was always galloping. "We were trying to figure out how Rich could play 'Sympathy for the Devil' on the guitar. He was doing the melody, and I was doing the chords and the 'whoop-woos'." "Kind of late for the Stones, Rich." "He's right." Lisa laid back on her bed, leaning on her elbows. "I've got to get to sleep, too. My father's in town tomorrow morning, and I've got to wake up early to meet him for lunch." Wake up early for lunch, huh? Lisa was one of the many critically over-monied and under-employed young women in a city where every third person under 30 was living off Daddy's American Express card. Preferably Gold. "No sweat, Lisa," Rich said. "We can finish the rest of the song over some coffee tomorrow morning." He picked up his guitar, touched her shoulder lightly, and left. Billy watched him go, and leaned against the door post. "Uh, did I, uh, break anything up just now?" "What do you mean?" "You know what I mean." "Go to sleep, Billy." She closed the door, leaving him in the hallway. Finish my coffee and go to sleep. Great combo. Billy took his coffee back to his bedroom, and sat on the side of the bed. The gray sheets and blanket needed a washing, but he had never gotten around to it. He cradled the mug, which had the word "BOSS" printed on it in big brown slanted letters--a gift from his parents when he got his editorial job--and felt the last waves of the coffee's heat his chilly hands. He sighed, and felt as if he were stranded in the Ardennes. He couldn't see anything in the dark room. The green glow of the alarm clock on his nighttable showed "2:43," and lit up one crawling, medium-sized, unidentifiable bug who had become inured to the attention. A car door slammed outside, followed by the wail of its burglar alarm. No sleeping now. A pile of old magazines sat on the floor near the bed. Billy turned on a small light, picked one up absent-mindedly, and started to leaf through. He subscribed to more magazines than he or anyone else could read, more for the feeling of intellectual security than anything else. He never read his monthly copy of The_Nation, but thought it was nice to know it was there. He checked the cover. Ah, the New_Yorker. I'll be asleep in a minute. After looking over the capsule movie reviews and the cartoons, neither of which made much sense to him, he attempted to tackle the Talk of the Town. This issue's lead topic was a walking tour of Harlem. "As we were wandering through central Harlem last week," he read to himself in a snooty Ivy League accent, "up the tight woebegone alleys of Lenox Avenue and down the broad esplanade of St. Nicholas, we were approached by a young man in shirtsleeves (in deference to the weather, no doubt), who queried us as to our intentions in the vicinity. We replied that we were merely compiling a Baedeker for the roads less travelled in Gotham, and could he please direct us to the nearest eatery. Being a most hospitable sort, our new confrere offered to take us to what we believe he referred to as 'a really boss joint,' or words to that effect, where there would be much merriment and gaiety. We agreed wholeheartedly--here was a man, or 'dude,' as he called himself, who had single-handedly allayed all our fears of the great North Country above Central Park. He later inquired if we were in need of various hallucinogens, which he said he could supply at a reasonable rate because we were his 'main man.' After a short internal debate, we declined his gracious offer..." I could do that, Billy thought. I could walk around the city and act like a pretentious asshole, too. Future career plans if I don't make editor in a year. He reminded himself to update his resume. He flipped past the short humor piece, glanced at the filler underneath it, and skimmed the first two pages of the short story. Another piece where a young single woman in New England has a cat, two lovers and an epiphany in 15 pages. He had no use for the magazine, which was already six months old, and put it aside. It was three-thirty. He would have to be up in four hours, four and a half if he stretched it. At least make an attempt to fall asleep. He threw the magazine on top of the alarm clock, covering its display and forcing the bug to scramble. The room turned dark. The car alarm, which had been shut off, came back on, but now with alternating pitches. Someone blew a car horn that played the first three bars of the theme from The_Godfather over and over. By the eighth lulling rendition, Billy was asleep. The next morning, coming out of the bathroom at exactly seven forty-three, Billy bumped into Rich, who, according to schedule, had dibs on the bathroom after him. "How ya doin'?" Billy mumbled. It was all he could get his mouth to do in public at that hour. "All right, I guess." Rich looked down at the floor. "I did break up something last night, right? You can tell me. I've got ears, you know." "We were just singing. Maybe later...who knows. I just...you ever feel as if nothing you do really matters? As if you're going to be stuck doing what you're doing for the rest of your life, no movement ahead, not even any back, but just the same fucking thing over and over again?" Rich played his guitar for change on Sixth Avenue outside the Time-Life Building. He usually cleared four to five hundred a week, tax-free. Billy looked at him. He's better looking than me, he thought. He's got more money, a better job, he's doing what he wants to do, and he's probably tight with Lisa. And he's complaining to me at seven-forty five in the morning. Poor bastard. I'd tell him a thing or two if I wasn't still sleeping. "You know what I'm talking about, Billy?" "Yeah. Some fuckin' world, huh?" "That's exactly what I mean." A_kindred_soul_at_last! "I gotta get dressed. See ya." Billy turned to go back to his room. "You want it this morning?" Rich asked. "Sure, give me a hit." Rich reached into the medicine cabinet and threw Billy a vial of smelling salts. Billy took a whiff, and was thrown back against the wall, cracking plaster and sending paint chips floating down from the ceiling. "Thanks." He tossed the bottle back and checked to see if his nose was still attached to his face. "Anytime. And thanks for the talk. Good to have somebody around here who knows his shit." Rich closed the bathroom door, and Billy walked to his room, a bit straighter and more erect than before. After five minutes of trying to smooth the wrinkles out of the tan slacks he had thrown on his upholstered chair the night before, Billy gave up. It's publishing, for Christ's sake. No one cares what I wear. He pulled an old comfortable pair of Levi's out of his closet, dodging mildewed Yankee caps that fell from the shelf and landed among boots and galoshes he didn't realize he had collected over the years. A blue button-down oxford shirt--image, it's all image--but no tie. Or maybe a loose knit. Yeah. Casual, like I really don't need the job. What does Doris always say? "You're here to learn, not to earn." Assuming that when she leaves, I'll take her editor's chair. Can't she get bumped upstairs? Or get really sick? Sometime soon? He slipped on his shoes, brown loafers, and pulled the looser parts of his socks over two large holes near his big toe. His down jacket lay on the chair, near yesterday's pants. He put one arm partway down a sleeve, and felt something wet and cold. The coat, and a large part of the chair, the only good piece of plush furniture in the entire room, were soaked. He went further down into the sleeve, and came back with a few crystals of ice. It took him a while to remember. Since he had come back from work the day before in vaguely high spirits--the lease on the apartment had been renewed without an increase--he thought he would surprise Lisa with an impromptu snowball fight in the living room. But she wasn't home when he got in, and he forgot about it. He ran to the closet again, and was pelted with everything on the shelf that hadn't fallen before. Plastic shopping bags from kosher butchers, cassette tapes, unpaid telephone bills, books by the dozens, things he didn't know what they were, all descended on him like the snowfall that started this. He remembered having another coat, a real stupid looking coat. Outside, he saw people walking by in parkas and sheepskins, and quickly rejected the combination of a light sport jacket and a sweater. His navy blue pea coat peered out at him; Billy had purposefully hung it against the wall, hidden it behind three-dollar all-polyester shirts and a pair of madras plaid pants he had bought once on a bet. It wasn't a horrible looking coat, and it fit him well, but it was filled with bad memories. He had bought it when he first got to New York, and didn't take it off the entire first fall and winter he spent in an off-campus icebox on lower Broadway, not far from where he was living now. It was in this coat that he failed more tests, struck out with more women, and threw up more times from too much beer than he ever had or ever intended to. It was only beginning to dawn on him that this could be attributed more to his extreme youth at the time than to the fibers in the coat, but he still felt strange wearing it. He had no other coat, however. It was either the badluck pea coat, or freeze. He thought it over, and grabbed the coat, silently praising himself for his pragmatism and growing maturity. Something to read. Maybe buy a newspaper. He checked his change--nothing smaller than a ten. Nobody's going to change a ten for a 30-cent newspaper. They don't need my business. He looked around, and spotted the old copy of the New_Yorker. It'll have to do. He rolled it up, and put it in his pocket. Hmmm. Wonder where Lisa and Rich are? The apartment was silent except for his mad rush to get out. Nobody tells me anything anymore. After bolting two of the three locks on the apartment's front door--what he lacked in security he made up for in strategy--and racing down two flights of stairs without incident, he began his usual walk to the subway. Almost immediately as he stepped out of the building, the third button down on the pea coat snapped off, and rolled underneath a dented parked taxicab. Billy sized up the situation. Nah--he'd probably think I was hot-wiring the ignition. Arrested on suspicion of being a mad taxi bomber. So I'll look like a jerk with my coat open. What else is new? Maybe I'll get a seat. The morning sun winked off the office building on Publisher's Row. The glass tower stood out against the gray November sky like the beacon of truth and enlightenment its inhabitants assumed it was. At least that was the impres sion it sent out to the general public and to young English students all over the country who dreamed about setting foot in the building, eating lunch at the company cafeteria--being on_staff_at_Dutchess_&_Abraham--actually occupying a desk at the only publishing house in New York that would choose Literature over Thin_Thighs_in_30_Days. Billy pushed the elevator button, and leaned against the wall. Another day of typing, filing and rejecting unreadable novels by unredeemable writers. When he first started the job, the egotist in him enjoyed it. "Dear Jerk-off," he would say to himself, as he addressed another rejection letter to a Texas housewife who had sent in 300 pages about a trip she had taken in a mobile home to her daughter in Arizona. While this in and of itself was not enough to consign her manuscript to the dustbin (one of his favorite phrases--he used it every chance he could), it did not help that the lead character began every sentence alternatively with either "Well," or, as a sign of anger, frustration, excitement, or just plain boredom, "Kee-rist!" But he had been reading and rejecting manuscripts for close to three years, and he no longer looked forward to it. In fact, he could pinpoint the change in his attitude to the day he received, along with a horribly written, poorly typed, 1,200-page time-spanning, metaphysical novel, a copy of a picture of the author cut off a driver's license or college ID card. She was a pretty young woman with a sad blank stare. What looked in the black and white photocopy to be dirty blonde hair framed her face and fell to her shoulders. It was not so much a look of white-trash southern poverty-she was from Arkansas--as it was of a need to escape. She wanted out, out of whatever she was doing, out of her marriage (Is she married?, Billy wondered for a tenth of a second), out of her town, out of her dull life (or so she said in her long handwritten, incredibly personal letter addressed to "Dear Editor"). She wanted Billy's life--living in New York, walking down Fifth Avenue at sunset, reading books for a living, riding the subways--freedom, she would call it. Excitement. Intellectual stimulation. She would give anything to be me, he thought. It was the picture that turned him off rejecting books. After getting a look at a real author, after attaching an actual, honest-to-God face to a manuscript (and not a face that belonged in Bellevue, but a comely, pleasant face), he could no longer be his vituperative self. He sat in front of his typewriter and tried to think what to write to her. "Dear Miss Fredericks," he wrote, and stopped. And? He used the standard opening he used whenever he was stuck, thanking her for thinking of Dutchess & Abraham. This was followed by the standard middle, which concerned the corpo rate intricacies of Today's Publishing World. He then noted that nothing really happened in her novel, whose three ream boxes had taken up most of his desk. "This is not enough to consign your novel to the dustbin," he wrote, "providing we could find a dustbin large enough to accommodate it." He leaned back in his chair, ripped the page out of the typewriter, crumpled it up, and practiced his sitting jump shot. The balled up page hit the edge of the wastebasket, bounded away, and finally came to rest against the wall. The elevator stopped on his floor, and Billy excused himself past two secretaries with bright red nail polish, three corporate types, and a production editor with no finger nails. As the elevator doors snapped shut behind him, the tail of his pea coat became enmeshed in its gears and workings, pulling him back like a hook at a vaudeville show. He prided himself on his quick thinking, and did the only thing he could have done, or wanted to. The coat rose the length of the slit between the elevator doors, and disappeared into the ceiling. He watched it being pulled into the shaft--first the tail, then the pockets, then the lapels and he collar, until the entire coat was gone. Two of the buttons fell back to earth. Billy picked them up and put them in his pocket, as a reminder. He was not quite sure exactly what they were a reminder of, but he knew they would be important, some day. Like any other office worker, which is really all he was he had realized a long time ago, Billy was afraid of at least two things. One was hearing, upon coming to work a few minutes late, a receptionist yell out "Here he is!" between chomps on her Dentyne. This usually meant he had screwed up, but what ever damage was minimal, and only needed his presence to clear up. All in all, not pleasant, but manageable. Billy's desk was out in the open, one of four steel desks crowded into a space meant for two. Its left side was flush against the metal divider that separated him from his editor's office. As he walked down the hall, he turned toward the coat closet, but soon realized that he had nothing to put in it, even if he could find a hanger, which he usually couldn't. (He had requisitioned one from supplies two months ago, and had yet to follow up on it.) When he got to his desk, only five minutes late, which at Dutchess & Abraham was half an hour early, he noticed something amiss. Someone had straightened up his desk. Pencils were in his pencil can, and not all bunched up against the out box. His paper clips, which were usually scattered helter-skelter and stuck into the blotter, were not only in a small pile in the middle of his desk, but were untwisted and unbent. His files were not only all neatly stacked next to the clips, but had been alphabetized. This was the second thing he was afraid of. What did I do now? he thought. Something was missing, that was it. He couldn't be sure just what was missing--his preferred filing system was to leave things where they fell, eventually assuming some sort of chronological order. Things were misplaced, but they were seldom lost. He could usually find what was missing rather quickly. It became harder, though, when he had to figure out what was missing before he found it. He slumped in his chair, and looked across the hall at Brenda, his department's 22-year old receptionist with the largest, loveliest brown eyes he had ever seen. She was proofreading a junior college term paper due that night while listening to Bruce Springsteen on the radio. She was cheerful, pleasant, content with her life and at peace with herself--everything Billy knew he was not. He suddenly longed to be back in school, to be stripped of responsibi lities, to answer phones and run a xerox machine for a living. He then realized that, basically, that was what he did. He decided to ask her to lunch later. Doris leaned her head out of her office behind Billy's desk, and said she been waiting to talk to him. Billy jumped to his feet, and stepped inside her office as if he were the first man to be brought before the Supreme Court on a traffic ticket. Ever since she had been made an editor fifteen years ago, Doris had told each of her countless, anonymous editorial assistants--she averaged a new one every eight months--that she had started right where they were now, and that with enough initiative and spunk (one of her favorite words), they too would have a good chance to be an editor, providing they could prove themselves by bringing a publishable book to the company on their own. "You've got to be alert at all times, Will," she told him. She liked to call people by different names each week, and Billy often thought she had hired him because of the many variations possible with his name. "You could find possibilities anywhere. The subway, for instance. Advertising on the subway over the years. See?" Doris was unmarried, unattached at the moment, attractive in an intellectual sort of way, and could be counted on to laugh at the dumbest jokes. Billy had often thought of giving her a shot, even with their 20-year age difference. "You want me to get someone for the subway book?" he asked. "No--it's a lousy idea. But that's not the point." She got up and began to pace. "You've got to come up with your own ideas, find your own books, follow through on them, if you want to be an editor. You do want to be an editor, don't you?" "Ever since I was in college," he said, with total sincerity. "Since before. It's all I've ever wanted to be." "Well, when am I going to see something out of you? You've been at that desk for three years. Three years of typing my letters, reading bad novels, making coffee. Is that what you want to do?" She stopped at looked at him. "Ken told me yesterday that there's an unofficial policy about editorial assistants. If you haven't made editor in four years, you're gone." Ken was the head of the entire editorial department. He was also drunk most of the time, which made working with him undemanding, but dealing with him a pain in the ass. "Doesn't give me much time, does it?" Billy was leaning over one side of the chair. He felt vaguely ill. "A year. That sounds like a long time, but it's not. Not in this case. A year's a long time for Santa Clauses between Christmases. When you haven't gotten laid in a year, it's a long time. A year is a short time when you're looking for a publishable book. Incidentally, when was the last time you got laid?" His head flipped involuntarily. He needed a cup of coffee. "I'm doing research. Sex lives of young professionals and all. We'd sell a million copies if I could find someone to write it. And young professionals who don't lie." Eight months, he thought, but did not say. "So now. I want to see something from you, Will. Soon. Very soon. Like three months. I don't want to put pressure on you. Or maybe I do. You've got a cute ass. Move it." Hmmm. She's awfully concerned with sex this morning. "Just keep my eyes open?" "Exactly. There's a book out there with your name on it. Not really your name--I don't condone plagiarism." She handed him a stack of contracts. "Make me six copies of each of these, okay?" She really didn't need the copies. It was her way of saying the meeting was adjourned. He walked out of her office, but then stuck his head back in. "Did you clean up my desk this morning, Doris?" "I wanted to find one of those manuscripts. Flesh_and Fantasy. The author sent in another chapter. You hadn't written the rejection yet, so I took it off your desk and put it in. Here." She gave him a double-sized box of paper. "Get rid of it quickly." He strained under the weight of the paper, and flung the novel on his desk as he passed. He remembered glancing through it when it came in. It was the kind of novel in which every bedroom scene was permeated with the scent of sex, as if it were a new brand of room deodorizer. As he was about to make copies of the contracts, he saw that Brenda had finished correcting her term paper and wasn't doing much. He threw the contracts on top of the novel. Brenda did not realize she was stylish, but she was. She was everything that was in style among young people who declined to color their hair purple. She wore no makeup, did nothing or very little to her hair. Her short brown hair framed an oval face with just a hint of baby fat beneath the chin. She usually wore ribbed cotton blouses tucked neatly but not fastidiously into a long prairie skirt, which fell midway down brown vinyl low-heeled boots. She did not pick up this all-American wardrobe from any fashion magazine--this was just the way she dressed. It was comfortable, it was fairly inexpensive, and she liked herself in it. Billy liked her in it, too. In fact, he was entranced with her, and often thought of running away with her to the Midwest, her prairie skirt whipping in the Iowa wind as he decided whether it was time to harvest the corn. "How are you, Brenda?" he said, wondering whether or not he should sit on the corner of her desk. Not yet, no. "Awright. You?" She was from New Jersey. "I'm a little tired. Couldn't get to sleep last night." "Oh? Something happen?" Yeah, I thought my roommates were fucking, and I wasn't invited. "Nothing really," he said, thinking quickly. "Probably too much coffee." "You should drink decaf. Hey--do you want some coffee?" She began to fumble in her pocketbook for change for the coffee machine. "It's on me," Billy said, sticking his hand in his pocket. "I don't want any--I've had. I thought you might want." "No, not really. I could have used some before, but I'm not in the mood now." "Oh." She smiled at him. It's time, Billy thought. Shit, I'm 26 years old-doesn't this ever get easier? "I was thinking," he said, picking up a pencil from her desk and examining it thoroughly, "maybe you'd like to have lunch with me. Today." She didn't move. Oh my God, she can't believe her ears. Why_would_I_want_to_have_lunch_with_you? "Sure. When--about 12:30?" "Uh, sounds good. I've got to make copies for Doris. I'll see you then." Her telephone rang. "Okay. Twelve-thirty." Brenda picked up the receiver. "Dutchess and Abraham?" Men are always amazed when women they secretly pine for, or not so secretly pine for, acknowledge them. When they manage to actually make a date with one of them, they are astounded, and chalk the whole thing up to a lucky roll of the dice, or an extremely flattering haircut. Since Billy had not had a haircut in a few months, he decided it was pure luck. He made a silent oath not to screw this one up. He felt he was consistently screwing up possible relationships; he didn't know how he was doing it, but thought he must be doing something wrong. Everyone else he knew was attached to someone, often with the strength of crazy glue. Everyone except his friend Mike from Seattle. But Mike didn't count, because he weighed 400 pounds and had to buy an extra seat on the plane the last time he flew out. Still, that gave him an extra chance to get lucky with a stewardess. He sat down at his desk, and picked up a box holding another goddamn novel. It was 10:30. He figured that there was no better way to speed time on its way than to get engrossed in a really awful book. This one was called Grab the_Puma_by_Its_Tail; God knows what the hell that meant. He rolled a piece of rejection letter stationary into his typewriter before he cracked open the box. Finding a comfortable position in his chair, he hunkered down with someone's guts and waited for lunchtime. After an hour and a half of poorly written chase scenes in and out of a zoo--there actually was a puma in this; it was the comic memoir of a one-armed African game warden who had yet to divulge how he had lost his other arm (probably by grabbing a puma by its tail, Billy mused)--he noticed that he was being watched. No, glared at. From two feet away. "How's my favorite stupid fuck?" Eric asked him. Eric was Ken's editorial assistant. Since his boss was usually snookered, he had nothing to do all day but walk around and call people stupid fucks, which was his favorite term of endearment. It endeared him to no one. "How're you doing, Eric?" "Ah, can't complain. Haven't seen you for a while. Where you been hanging out?" "Right here," Billy said. "Nowhere else." "That's tragic. That's very tragic." Eric took a seat on the edge of Billy's desk and looked as if he were settling in. "Look, I've got some work to do." Billy pointed to the zoo novel. "I've got to tell some poor bastard one-armed author his book stinks." Gee, I wonder how he typed it? "Yeah, I know what kind of work you've got to do." Eric jerked a thumb at Brenda, who smiled back. "What do you mean?" "I'll agree with you. She's cute. Very cute. And no dummy. But I'll tell you something, if you're interested. I have it on good account, not first hand knowledge, mind you, but reliable sources tell me...she doesn't." Billy's mind raced. Bathe? "That's what I've been told," Eric continued, in a low conspiratorial tone. "Reliable sources. Don't ask me to reveal them." "Who told you?" "Linda, from production. They take the same bus from Jersey." "Well, I'm not interested in those things. I am interested in those things, but, well, you know..." Billy trailed off. "And when did Linda tell you this?" "Last night. About two in the morning. On her side. Even when I've got a broad in the rack, I can't stop talking publishing." "I've got work to do," Billy said, returning to the novel. If you say one word to Brenda, you dumb motherfucking piss-eyed prick, so help me, I'll rearrange your face beyond recognition. "You got anything under development?" Eric said, changing the subject. "I'm looking. You?" "Me, too. Rumor is there's an editor spot opening up soon." "Who?" "Could be any number of people. Got to be ready. Any extra ideas you could pass on to me? I'll give you Linda's extension." Give it to him. Serves the prick right. "I was thinking of a big, coffee table book about subway advertising throughout the years." Eric began to salivate. "You're not doing it?" "No time. Besides, I spend enough time on the subways as it is." Eric leaped off Billy's desk. "Thanks, fuckface. I really mean that. Not the fuckface part. Thanks a lot." "Eric?" He turned around, halfway back to his desk. "Don't call me fuckface anymore. Or stupid fuck." "You got it, putz." I want to be in the office when he pitches it to Ken. It'll serve the fucker right. He checked his watch--twelve twenty-five. Might as well go over and get her. Billy got up from his desk, and saw that Brenda was doing the same. That's good, he thought, she's as anxious as I am. That's a good sign. But as he walked toward her desk, she walked toward the elevators, away from him. He quickened his pace--maybe she's hungry. Maybe she can't wait to sit down and talk with me. Maybe she forgot. He caught up to her by the elevators. "I thought we had a...I thought we were going to have lunch," he said, panting and wheezing. "Oh... I'm sorry, Billy, I'm really sorry, but I can't." Billy had been kissed off so many times he had the structure down pat. Here it comes. "Whadaya...what do you mean you can't?" She turned and smiled at him. "My cousin--no, really-my cousin's birthday is tomorrow, I've got to buy him something, and the men's store downstairs is having a sale." "After work...huh?" He began to hyperventilate. "I can't...I know how it sounds...but I've got to get home." She adjusted her coat. "It takes me two hours as it is, and if I stay in the city I just get home later." The elevator chime rang twice, and the doors opened. It was crowded, filled with other people having lunch together. "Can't I shop with you?" he said, more in desperation than anything else. "Billy, I..." The doors were closing, but Billy stuck his hand in and slammed the mechanism, forcing the doors open. "Tomorrow? Huh, Brenda?" "Let it go!" someone screamed from the back. "Maybe tomorrow, okay?" The doors began to close, but Billy stuck his hand in again. "Why maybe?" he shouted. "Yes or no?" "Have lunch with the guy, for God's sake!" came a voice from near the buttons. She took a long look at him, standing there, no jacket, his palms red from hitting the elevator doors, still panting from catching up to her. Either he's desperate, crazy, or he likes me. "Okay. Tomorrow," she said, fiddling with her handbag. "You got a date," the voice from the back said. "You gonna let the elevator go now, or what?" "Tomorrow!" he called back. "Remember--I know where you work!" A deep, wide grin spread over his face. He felt incredibly happy, a joy he quickly realized was disproportionate to what had just happened. If lunch was that tough, how the hell will I get her to go to dinner with me? But it was understandable, he thought, walking back to his desk. After all, she had a life of her own--why must they always have a life of their own? We'll have a nice lunch tomorrow, and take it from there. Okay. Not a strikeout. More like an intentional pass. His lunch plans were thrown off. Who should I eat with? The answer quickly came to him--nobody. I'll go it alone, that's how it must be. He stopped, and resolved then and there to stop quoting Las Vegas song lyrics. As absent-mindedly as he had picked it up the night before, he grabbed the copy of the New_Yorker, and headed for the coffee shop downstairs. Alone, in control--well, sort of, he figured. The elevators were running slow, and had been his nemesis the whole day. First they take my coat, then my lunch date. He ran down the tenflights of stairs to the lobby, stopping on the fifth floor feeling a pain on his left side which he assumed, with his luck, would be a heart attack. I'll never make it to lunch tomorrow. Huh--it figures. After taking the easy way out at the coffee shop and ordering a plain burger and a Coke, he settled into the small vinyl booth, and tried to get comfortable. He wasn't the only one eating alone, but that did not bring him much solace. Just because other people were buried in newspapers or magazines, that didn't make it right, he reasoned. He put the New_Yorker on the table, and flipped through it some more. He finally settled on a long story about the insanity defense. Maybe it would shed some light on his present situation. He propped his elbows on the table, and began to read. "But perhaps the most astounding example of the use of the insanity defense was the case of David Michael Walker. On March 25, 1982, Walker, the sandy-haired 23-year old first-born son of a prominent Connecticut banker, shot and wounded Senator Roger Cheney outside the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. Cheney had stepped outside the hall during a New York City Opera touring production of Il_Trovatore, as Walker took aim and fired from 40 feet away. Walker immediately gave himself up to security guards, claiming that he shot the Senator "to prove myself worthy" of the love of Gina Mullin, a soprano in the chorus. "Walker seemed, to most observers, an unlikely candidate for the insanity defense. He was articulate, well-groomed, and rational, if a bit naive and child-like. However, during the subsequent trial, Walker's attorney introduced evidence that he claimed would prove that his client, and I quote from court proceedings, 'fancied himself a combination Don Juan and John Keats--a great lover who would go down in history, as well as a sensitive, if not almost feminine, poet.' The attorney, James Tunney, produced one of the most bizarre pieces of evidence that this or any other trial had seen-Walker's manuscripts." Billy's hamburger, slickened by ketchup, slipped out of its bun and landed in his lap. He continued eating, and reading. "The manuscripts, thirty in all, contained scraps of poetry and song lyrics, excerpts from screenplays and screen treatments, and five entire short stories. They were written in a lucid style--they were not the work of a raving madman. However, close examination of the themes and tones of the pieces revealed a portrait of a profoundly confused, troubled young man, with a vengeful heart that could only show itself on the printed page. Walker wrote this in a poem entitled 'Sinking,' one of the poems read by his attorney in open court: My life is a mad scramble for a choice deck chair on a doomed Titanic. Life means nothing without my lover, who is somewhere tonight as a vast waterfall of adulation pours over her like Niagara. We belong together, this long-limbed soprano and I, but she does not notice ME. I shower and think of her, and thoughts of her float off my skin, down the drain, where they are carried out to SEA. I feel myself sinking, sinking, sinking in a love I must have, WILL HAVE Can't have. "Clearly," the article continued, "not the work of a lunatic, but, Tunney claimed, of a boy in man's clothing, a lover who could not be loved, a poet who could not be published..." Billy scanned the room. Nope, nobody here from Dutchess. Better hide this anyway. "The jury, shocked and saddened at what had led Walker to commit this heinous crime, gave Tunney and his client what they wanted--a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity to attempted manslaughter in the first degree." No, go to all the used book stores in the city and buy every last copy of the issue. Yeah. Buy out the New Yorker's stock of back issues. Tomorrow. This afternoon. Now. "Walker is currently in therapy at the Ezra Pound Memorial Institute for Mental Health in Washington, where he is expected to remain in relative comfort and security for the rest of his life." Okay. A cheap plane ticket down to D.C., what, twentynine, thirty bucks? Change of clothes, just in case, but it shouldn't be more than a one-day affair. Call in sick, they won't miss me, get the manuscript from this lunatic, and I'm in. A large figure slipped into the other side of the booth. "Hiya, shit-for-brains. Whatcha reading?" Cool. Play it cool. Don't hide it from him, or he'll think something's up. "Nothing, Eric. Just...just old movie reviews, you know." He's not buying it. I can see it. "Thought I'd come over and console you. "Console me?" "Tough luck about you and Brenda. We all strike out. No great loss." Just agree with him. Play along. Change the subject. "Yeah. Guess you're right. You pitch the subway book yet?" "I'm waiting for the right time." "When Ken's sober?" "When he's drunk." The waitress placed a large plate of greasy ravioli, a basket of bread, and a large Coke in front of Eric. Billy realized he would be there for the duration. "You reading one of their short stories?" Eric said, mopping up sauce on a chunk of bread and stuffing it into his mouth. "I gotta go, Eric. I have lots of work to do upstairs." "We hardly see each other anymore, Bill. Hang out for a while." Billy got up from his seat, and took his check, but as he walked toward the cashier, Eric grabbed the magazine out of his hands. "What's the big secret here?" "No secret. Just catching up on my reading." He made a futile swipe for the magazine. "You're reading about the insanity defense? You thinking of killing someone?" Not if a punch in the nose will give the same result. "It's interesting. I like to keep my horizons open. I really have to go upstairs, Eric. Gimme the magazine back." Eric looked past the article, and handed it back to him. "You want my opinion, they should have strung this guy Walker up," he said, spearing three raviolis on his fork. "He's insane like I'm insane." I'll find out soon enough. "You can't tell from TV or a magazine," Billy said. "I'm not condoning what he did, but we're both about the same age. Sometimes I look at guys like him and I think, 'There but for a few chromosomes...'" Eric took a swig of Coke. "That's why you're a jerk," he said. "And I say that as a friend with only your best interests at heart." "See you upstairs, Eric." "Aren't you going to eat with me, Whack-off?" Billy ignored him as he paid his check. He found his his waitress and gave her a dollar tip, afraid Eric would pocket it if he left it on the table. By the time he got home on the subway that night, Billy had it all figured out. He'd wake up extra early, hop a train and bus to LaGuardia, call in sick from the airport, take the first plane down to D.C., find Walker at this loony bin, talk him into giving me the manuscript, grab a cab back to National, a plane back to New York, and be home in time for the six o'clock news. The subway car rumbled through a long dark tunnel. Make sure to talk to Brenda when I call. Maybe she'll feel sorry I'm sick. Sick. It's sick the way men and women have to play with each other's heads, that's what's sick. He looked over the subway advertising. Karen. Met her at a publishing convention in Philadelphia. She was working for a printing company, trying to get small houses to switch printers. All these big publishing types, and here I am, just because nobody at Dutchess & Abraham wanted to go to Philadelphia in February. We played Monopoly in the hotel bar until they kicked us out. We were a team, beat the pants off three other teams, joking, kidding, screwing around. Christ, she was beautiful. Older than what I'm usually seen with. Funny, smart, independent. I remember looking into her eyes, just as she was about to buy Virginia Avenue. Where have you been all my life? And what was the jukebox playing? Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name? She said she liked the Doors, too. We had a lot in common. She smiled at my jokes, even the esoteric ones. It was love at first laugh. One guy from one of the other teams says he's hungry, but room service is closed. Karen calls room service. Room service answers and says there's an all-night diner in Cherry Hill across the river, and could you bring us back a turkey on white with mayo? We pile into the guy's car, the guy in the front seat, me and Karen in the back seat, me trying everything I can seeing as how we only met three hours ago, there's somebody else in the car, and I want to hold on to her and keep her near me for the rest of my life, or at least the next few weeks. The guy looks in his rear view mirror every now and then, like a graveyard shift taxi driver watching his fare try to score. And then the next day at the convention, we act cool, but everybody knows. They_know. And I'm not unpleased. God knows what they're thinking, but it can't do me anything bad. And I see her. I've got to see you back in the city. She says yes, I want to. Let's trade cards. I give her Billy Hudson, Editorial Assistant. She gives me Karen Vail, Vice President. I remember melting. But at work, I'm still playing it cool. Get back to the office, and drop her a note. Yeah. A few jokes. Love to see you. Let's have lunch. I'll call you later in the week. Make her wait. Tell her you're calling, and make her anticipate the call. Then don't call until Thursday afternoon, or even Friday morning. By Wednesday, she's asking "Why isn't he calling?" Is it something I said? Doesn't he like me? Even Vice Presidents. Even indepedent-minded Vice Presidents of major corporations can be insecure and lonely. Just like anybody else. This was a revelation to me. It really was. As he pushed his way out of the subway car, Billy noticed two familiar figures near the token booth. Rich was playing the guitar and blowing a harmonica wrapped around his neck, while Lisa was rapping a tambourine against her thighs, just a trifle off beat. "But I would not feel so all alone," Rich warbled nasally, as the crowd moved past, unnoticing. "Everybody must get stoned..." One of Bob Dylan's less challenging lyrics, Billy thought, but nobody's going to throw you quarters if you're singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'." And Billy could see by the look Lisa and Rich gave each other after each chorus that things were quickly changing between them as well. He averted his eyes from them--they were lost in each other and the music, anyway--and brought his neck down into his collar. He was freezing, not having a coat, and had been the object of more than a few stares. Ducking behind a woman carrying a giftwrapped stuffed giraffe (he assumed and hoped it was a giftwrapped stuffed giraffe, an early Christmas present, and not a new and extraordinarily dangerous firearm, something that could not be discounted on the New York subway system), he fished in his pocket for some spare change, hoping to buy an afternoon newspaper. The newsstand in the subway was sold out, and all that was left were a few weekold TV_Guides and a curious pamphlet adorned with a picture of a woman with the largest pair of breasts he had ever seen, either on paper or in person. After a minor hesitation, he counted the change in his hand--a quarter, two dimes and three pennies--and threw it in the tin can in front of his roommates, who now seemed as inseparable as all his other friends. They began to have an ampersand between their names. Lisa & Rich. Jimmy & Janet. Stu & Debbie. Antony & Cleopatra. Samson & Delilah. Me & Karen. Shit. He scurried away, and ran the three blocks to the apartment. The living room was nearly bare. David's stray clothing was off the floor, and his books were gone. He passed Lisa's room as he went to his own. Her door was ajar, and he peeked in. Boxes and crates were everywhere. A beard comb and a guitar pick lay on her bureau, next to a second alarm clock. Billy sighed, and closed the door. After ten minutes of dodging old socks and scuffed cheap shoes, he found his small shoulder tote buried deep in his closet. Grabbing clothes at random, he stuffed a shirt and pair of pants into the bag. He looked at what remained in the closet, and stopped. His large suitcase stared out at him, the suitcase he had come to New York with, full of blue jeans and aspirations. Its black leather straps were still taut and unfrayed. He pulled it free from the recesses of the closet, and tried the locks. Still have the spring in 'em. The stitching on the handle was still tight. His name was filled out in pen on the tag, but his address, he noticed with a smile, was in faded pencil, erased by the years. He took all of his shirts out of the closet in a great armful, still on their hangers, and laid them in the suitcase, crudely folding the sleeves over the backs. After another excavation, he folded all his pants in two, and put them on top. His down jacket was dry now, and he slipped it on. He slowly inserted the suitcase straps into the buckles, and pulled them tight. The latches snapped with finality. Billy folded the New_Yorker under his arm, and dragged the suitcase down to the street. Damn, he thought. It's going to be hell catching a cab to the airport now. CHAPTER_TWO Though he called it a cell, the doctors assigned to David Michael Walker referred to it as his apartment. They may have had some inkling about the real estate situation in metro Washington. It was ten foot long by ten foot wide. A metal cot was pushed up against one wall, with a small student desk almost touching its foot. A radio and tape player sat on the desk, amid legal pads filled with his creative outpourings. The sharp brightness of the morning sun shone in through a wide double window, nurturing a sill full of green leafy plants. Billy looked around--it reminded him of the college dorm room of an old friend. No rent, three squares a days, and a lifetime lease. What do you have to do to get in here? Walker lay on the cot, lost in a dog-eared copy of Catcher_in_the_Rye. Although the room was comfortably heated, he had pulled the covers up around his neck, leaving his jeans and white basketball sneakers exposed. He turned on his side, wiped the round lenses of his wire frame glasses with the sleeve of his blue institutional shirt, put them back on, and squinted. "And you're here for what again?" Walker asked. As Billy paced the room, he twirled the Stethoscope that hung from his neck. "Your papers. The manuscripts." The small mirror attached to the headband he was wearing was catching the sweat that otherwise would have poured into his eyes. The underarms of the long white smock he wore were soaked, and were beginning to reek. "I think I could get them published pretty easily." Walker put his book down and sat up. "Are you sure you're a doctor? Doctor Nolan told me she was my only doctor, and to accept no substitutes." Accept no substitutes? Was his therapist an ad exec? "I'm consulting on your case. I'd just like to read your writing. I'm sure we could both learn a lot." "I don't know what you could learn from me," Walker said. "Wanna smoke?" Billy shook his head. "C'mon, have a smoke," Walker said. He opened a cabinet stocked with cigarette cartons jammed every which way against each other. "I got regular, I got menthol, I got low-tar, I got high-tar, I got filter tip, I got 'em without filters..." He stopped to draw his breath. He hadn't been this excited since the trial. "You're sure you don't want to smoke, doctor?" Billy had smoked one cigarette in his life, offered over dinner by a high school friend during his first serious date. He thought it would impress his girlfriend at the time, a tall skinny girl with red hair and braces, Barbara. After putting out the fire he started when he dropped the match on his napkin, he lit it, took a long pull, and lay back in his chair, fairly contented. Another drag had a similar lack of effect. He was feeling cocky, and tensed his throat muscles, trying to blow smoke rings. The local dry cleaners were never able to get the resulting stains out of Barbara's dress. He never saw her again. "If you don't smoke, you can't see the papers," Walker taunted him. "I mean you can see them, but I won't let you see them. Precise use of English is very important when you're a writer like me, right? So what do you say?" Walker stood up. He was big, bigger than Billy, weighed more, too. But he seemed soft, as if all he ate were Twinkies and french fries. And his tempermental nature and innocence made him even more imposing, frighteningly so, than did his bulk. It was as if he were the friendly family beagle, playful and happy one moment, with a indefinite uncontrollable streak running through him. One moment Billy thought he was a pushover, and the next he was afraid for his life. He decided to accept the cigarette Walker offered, a menacing-looking Lucky Strike. "L.S.M.F.T.," Walker said. "Excuse me?" "You heard me. L.S.M.F.T. On the package. Know what it means?" Obviously a test, Billy thought. Be honest with him-that's probably the best thing. "No, as a matter of fact. What does it mean?" Good. Make him seem important and knowledgeable. "L.S.M.F.T. 'Lucky Strike Means Fine Taste.' Now that's good writing." Billy lit the cigarette, successfully, and took a long slow drag, like a cool actor in a French film. And began to cough uncontrollably. It was on his third attempt to get past the lobby security guard that Billy had found success. The Ezra Pound Memorial Institute for the Criminally Misguided was situated twenty miles from the White House in suburban Virginia. First an army barracks, then a prison, the fairly lax security inside and around the hospital belied its origins. The parking lot attendant was no problem, since it was visiting day. Billy claimed to be a cousin of a patient, Smith, and promised to be out in less than an hour. The attendant waved him through after he paid the two-dollar parking fee with a five dollar bill and refused change. After an abortive attempt to get past Purvis, the front desk guard who seemed more disinterested and bored than anything else, by simply stating who he was and what he wanted, and an equally unsuccessful try posing as Walker's attorney, Billy had found a laundry bin full of dirty doctor's smocks near where he had parked his rented car, on the lot's outer fringes. He was able to sneak in a side door past the lobby nurses' station while keeping his face shielded behind a used surgical mask. When asked why he was wearing a mask in the halls, he was prepared to answer that he wasn't sure what he had, only that it was catching, and God help anyone without sense enough to keep at least ten feet away from him. Finding Walker's room had not Been difficult. Billy had let his instincts lead him. The tighter the security got, the closer he knew he was. When he saw a bearded, burly guard in a plexiglas booth outside a room whose door had no window, he knew he had found Walker. He breezed in past the guard, mumbling a hello, and was met with no resistance. The greater part of being treated with respect is assuming that respect is due you, Billy had realized a lot time ago. Look official, and you are official. Three ream boxes sat near the foot of Walker's bed. Billy eyed them lustfully. He had done everything he had had to do--he had snuck into Walker's room, he had gained Walker's confidence (in as much as this psychopath's confidence could be gained, he thought), and he was within a few feet of the object of his quest. Of course, there would have to be contracts and such, and certainly a degree of secrecy and anonymity, but he knew any number of down-in the-mouth literary agents who were looking for a big score. They would take care of the formalities, as long as the formalities led to a sure-fire best seller, something Walker's manuscripts had written all over them. Billy shook the ash from his cigarette onto the carpet. Well, have to broach the subject eventually. "Uh, David, now, about your...your papers here..." "Do you really think you could get them published, Doctor?" Walker's eyes glowed. "It would mean so much to me, even if it was in the New_England_Journal_of_Medicine." He lowered his voice. "And to Gina, too, I hope. Have you ever heard her sing at the opera?" Stay on the subject. "No, I haven't. But I'll bet these manuscripts would make her sit up and take notice of you." "Do you really think so? She's back in New York now, you know. I'd love to see her. To see her perform." He looked straight at Billy. "You're from New York, right? You live there, don't you?" Billy nodded. "I'd love to live in New York. If I did, I'd see Gina every time she sang. You have a girl like that, that you'd see every time she did something? I mean anything? Like throw out the garbage. I'd love to see Gina throw out her garbage." "Sort of," Billy said. "This Gina, she sounds really special." "She is. We could have beautiful children." The subject, stay on the subject. "And I'll bet those children would love to read your manuscripts one day," Billy said. A faint odor of incinerating trash came in through a crack in the window. It didn't smell like burning garbage, though. Billy had once read a manuscript about alternative sources of energy, and found out, to his amazement, that one hospital in California, naturally, was burning its "residue," they called it, to create steam. After a quick skim of the material failed to explain just what the author meant by "residue," a closer examination revealed it to be a common euphemism not just for used gauze bandages and plaster casts, but for--he shivered just thinking of it--amputated limbs and other useless tissues. The chapter, though, ended on a subtly gruesome note. "Mercy Hospital," the manuscript read, "is also renowned for its sex change operations." He could feel his testicles ascend just from recalling what one might find in that day's garbage. The smell became more pungent and acrid by the minute. The scent, which Billy thought could be mildly pleasant if taken in smaller doses, was getting stronger and stronger. So strong that Walker began to take note. "I've smelled that before," he said. "I have, too," Billy said, "in my many years as a physician." They continued to sniff. It was beginning to get hot in the room, but Walker took no notice, since his cell was so bright and congenitally overheated. "I know what it smells like," Walker said. "It smells like a..." He twitched his nose like a sommelier sniffing a freshly pulled cork. "Yep. A new Marlboro 100's menthol. That's exactly what it smells like." He sat down on his bed with a satisfied grin. "Marlboro used to be a woman's cigarette, until they came up with the Marlboro man. Just shows how screwed up some people are." He certainly has a lot of odd information, Billy thought. That's what makes a good writer, a good head for just that kind of stuff. He sniffed again. By God--it did smell like a menthol cigarette! This guy has a bloodhound's nose. Not like me. I can't smell if my milk has turned. I can't smell when the pilot light goes out on the gas range. Hell, if I didn't have a smoke detector, I'd probably sleep right through a fire, like that one over there. If there was an audience in Walker's room, Billy would have stared out at it like Jack Benny. Just staring, impassively, refusing to believe. My friends always thought I'd die in prison. The first wisps of flame licked the cigarette cabinet, and the smoke was making it hard to see, like London at night during the Blitz. The easiest thing Billy could do was panic, something he was especially good at after three years of office work. He grabbed the manuscripts from beneath Walker's bed, and bolted for the door. Billy flung the door open, and ran out. As he dashed out, he threw a quick wave to the guard in the glass booth, who waved back and returned to his copy of Penthouse. He also, without thinking, acknowledged and returned a similar greeting from Walker. His eyes popped open shortly thereafter, and he pulled out his radio to alert Purvis at the front desk. Billy slammed through the front entrance, running as fast as he had ever run, clutching the manuscripts to his breast like a schoolgirl holding her notebook. He hugged it close to him as if it were his lifetime lover, as he ran toward the parking lot and his car. A small rag-tag team gave chase, but they were weighed down with guns and nightsticks and things, which they were too surprised to contemplate using. Billy quickly opened the car door, which he had kept unlocked--after all, it was the parking lot of a prison-slammed it shut, and turned the engine over. It purred like a sleeping kitten, ready to pounce. He gunned the engine, and raced through the breakaway parking gate. He took the first turn that would lead him onto the Capital Beltway, an anonymous freeway where he could easily get lost. He circled Washington out of sheer fright for about twenty minutes, until he was sure he had lost Purvis and the rest of the guards. He pulled into a wooded area just off an exit, to catch his breath. Billy's rented car had never seemed more of a home then it did now. He had the manuscript hugged to his chest, his arms criss-crossing it and squeezing it tight. But something was wrong. He adjusted the rear-view mirror, and caught sight of the back seat. "So where are we going now?" Walker asked. He sat up in the back seat. "Would you mind if I went back to sleep here? It's been a tough day." Billy turned around slowly. No. I'm hyperventilating, that's what. Let me catch my breath and check again. He took in a big gulp of air, and laid his right hand on the stick shift. Let it out slowly, gently. There now. He turned around again, but the apparition remained, only he could see now it wasn't an apparition. "Could you turn the heat on full?" Walker said, squirming underneath an old army blanket, trying to get comfortable. "When we get onto the interstate, of course. Wouldn't want you wasting all that heat in stop-and-go traffic." Let me drive some more, he thought. I've obviously overdosed on menthol. He pulled back onto the Beltway. "You're going to New York, right?" Walker cleared his eyes. "Wouldn't you be better off taking the Jersey Turnpike? Eventually, I mean. First the Harbor Tunnel outside of Baltimore, then the turnpike. You are going to New York?" Billy sighed. "Yes." "Good. So am I." He cast a glance at the back seat. "And where are you going to live? Everyone's going to be out looking for you. Where will you live?" "Oh, with you, of course." Walker snuggled in the back. "If you want the manuscript, that is, Doctor. I'll live with you. Until I can persuade Gina to marry me, that is. Do you suppose she's still a virgin?" They crossed the stateline, between suburban Virginia and Maryland. Well, now it's a federal offense. Harboring a known criminal, escape across state lines. Why couldn't I have been an accountant? "You can't live with me," Billy said. "My apartment's too small." My old apartment. Yeah--me, him, Lisa and Rich. A regular laff riot. "Well, we'll get one of our own. You and me, we'll be a team. Two guys, the big city, the single life--I mean, we both have girlfriends, but we're not tied down to them. Not yet, at least." Walker's voice took on an oratorical quality. "'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!'" For_tomorrow_we_all_shall_die, Billy silently said to himself, and continued driving north.