Daisy Buchanan's Daughter Book 1: Cadwaller's Gun Read Online Free PDF Page A

in West Africa is now a fifty-year-old graphic artist whose bizarre comic books about what he calls the superpower diaspora have, from my limited sampling, a streak of obscenity.
    His mother does her best to keep the median age south of eighty by including a few other relative youngsters besides her son. We generally congregate around them like moths around a crayon we’ve mistaken for a candle, including that year’s charmer: a Snapple-cheeked, BlackBerry-checking female lobbyist who’d met our limberly deboned white knight and gotten an invite to sign on with his Presidential campaign. When her work and prospects got apologetically divulged—after all, she knew we had neither—someone asked how she’d sized him up at her job interview.
    She gave a wrinkle-free frown, that miracle of under-forty skin. “He’s less telegenic in person,” said she, sounding troubled.
    So were we. Luckily, our faces are trained as well as wizened, so we managed to nod without looking noticeably more grotesque than we do anyway. Once she’d traded in our Dubuffet of duffers for our hostess’s hors d’oeuvres, I put up my hand as if leading a tottering school group from Archives to Holocaust.
    “Hell, I’mdone,” I drawled. “Anyone else need a ride to the glue factory?” Frail as a fork but sharp as its tines, Laurel Warren gave a two-fingered salute.
    Forgive me, Andy. I don’t really believe Potus will even be nonplussed by Pam’s protest. Why should he be? I’m eighty-six and eminently 86’able. What’s left of our dapper, boozy, questing, and imperfect generation is just marking time in the Clio Airways lounge as we wait to hear our separate boarding calls for Carole Lombard’s plane. He’s probably never heard of that lovely lost star either, but some parting gesture has to be made.
    Posted by: Pam
    When you’re waiting for a phone call of the unnatural nature I’m waiting for and plan to end it the unnatural way I’m hoping to, said phone’s actual ring is no ordinary event. Baggy heart lurching into bridgework, feet moaning “Haven’t we suffered enough?” from outdated habit as they smacked the rug, I seized Cadwaller’s gun: “ Yes! Hello. This is Pamela Cadwaller.”
    “Believe me, I know,” a tickled voice said. “Pam, are you expecting another call?”
    Gun lowered, heart leakily loping back to business at the old stand. Feet in mild pain, rug’s feelings unknown and frankly unconsidered, I tamed my fat lunettes: “Oh, Andy. It’s you.”
    “I know that too.” He’s always peppier than I at this hour. “But if you’re expecting another call, I can—”
    “No, no! Just snoozing over the paper. Honestly, does anyone think David Broder’s funny?He’s the worst humor columnist I’ve ever read. Andy! How are you?”
    “Oh, fine. More important, how are you? I realize we’re seeing each other tonight, but I thought I’d check on the old birthday girl.”
    “Mf,” I sniffed skeptically. At my age, you come to appreciate how written Hebrew has no vowels. “You didn’t have anything better to do either, huh?”
    “How could I?” said Andy, flipping the meaning to play the chivalry card.
    “Andy, I’m not sure about tonight,” I told him, making the pistol in my lap go do-si-do. Clearly, I miss pet ownership. Sit up! Wink, Cadwaller’s gun. “I don’t really feel up to it.”
    “If you did, I’d ask who the new tenant was. We’re Methuselan, Pam. If we felt wonderful, what would we talk about? It’s like what they used to say about the weather, only now”—never one to look a bon mot in the mouth, Andy chuckled—“the weather is inside us.”
    “That’s exactly right and nothing I can do about it. Some get rained out.”
    “But you won’t have to do anything. I’m handling the cooking. I’ve already shopped,” he said, sounding caught between glee at having had a project and wistfulness it was behind him. “I’ve gotten the movies.”
    “Oh, God. Which?”
    “