Any Resemblance to Actual Persons Read Online Free PDF

thinking that I could have stepped in earlier. What-if s and if-only s always annoy me, the way people invest so much in what could have been, like a warped belief in alternate universes in which different decisions were made. I can’t change what I didn’t do. I can only try to correct what has been done.
    The next time I saw Edie was in August 1995. The new school year had just started and I was, once again, quite busy, but I managed to make some time for her when she called and asked to meet for lunch. She suggested Jerry’s Famous Deli on Ventura Blvd., a place I’ve always had a mild fascination with simply because of the brilliant tautology of its name. Were it simply Jerry’s Deli, after all, it would not be famous. But it is Famous, and so it is famous. This was, however, my first time inside, and I was delighted to find it a bustling place with geriatric waiters and vaguely sapphic waitresses rushing by, holding trays of sandwiches the size of my head. It reminded me a little ofKatz’s Deli, which I’m sure you New Yorkers are more familiar with; I used to make Oliver take me there whenever I visited your side of the country, and I’d ask him if it was a hot spot of publishing types—was that George Plimpton noshing a pile of pastrami between two slices of rye? the ghost of Max Perkins waiting in line with his ticket for corned beef? an improvised Algonquin Round Table being cleared of mustardy plates?—No, Oliver would say. But, still, you must be familiar with the place. Although, Jerry’s Famous is, in true West Coast fashion, a bit glossier than Katz’s: shinier, the arrangement of celeb-signed headshots on the walls more calculated than casual.
    I met Edie by the front counter, which displayed an impressive array of dessert items, everything looking lacquered with sugar, voluptuous pastries with nippley cherries.
    â€œThanks for meeting me,” Edie said. “You’re a hard one to get a hold of these days. This’ll be on me, okay? A business expense.”
    â€œNo problem, Edie.” I noticed a framed poster of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? over by the corner booths near the restrooms. I could make out a looping signature but couldn’t tell if it was Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. “Do you think we can get one of those corner booths?” I asked.
    She began looking very urgently to the corner booths.
    â€œI know,” I said, “I can’t make out the signature either.”
    â€œListen,” she said, “I want you to meet someone, okay? I’ve been trying to get you two together for a while now. You’ll really like him, I promise. Here he comes. Like each other, okay? Please?”
    She waved to a tall man with slicked-back hair who’d just left the restroom and was walking over to us. When he approached I noticedwhat looked like a pet ferret resting on his shoulder, and I realized that the hair I’d taken to be slicked back was, in fact, pulled back, ponytailed, and I adjusted my prejudices accordingly. Edie introduced us. Rory, this is Paul. Paul, this is Rory. We shook hands. Or rather, Rory shook my hand. That’s the way it felt, at least. Not a mutual action to meet in the middle, but one man taking the hand of the other, moving it around as if checking the integrity of its manufacture, then giving it back. It was hard not to feel like my hand had somehow failed whatever inspection this hawkish man had just made of it.
    â€œPaul, yes,” Rory said. “I’ve heard so much about you. A novelist. Wow. I must say, I have so much admiration for writers.” For a moment, it looked like he had eyes of two different colors, like one of those ridiculous husky dogs, or David Bowie, but then I realized it was just a trick of the light. Both eyes were, in fact, quite green, narrowly set atop a nose that was really, now that I saw it, more Romanesque than aquiline. “Tell me,” he