Dreams Die First Read Online Free PDF Page B

office in Beverly Hills.”
    “I’ll be there.”
    “Good night, Gareth.”
    “Good night, Uncle John.”
    The door closed behind him and I turned to Verita. “I guess we’re in the publishing business,” I said.
    She didn’t speak.
    “You’ll come with me, of course.”
    “But my job.”
    “I’m offering you a better one. A chance to do what you trained for. Besides, I need you. You know I’m not a businessman.”
    She looked at me for a moment. “I can take a leave of absence while we see how it works out.”
    “That’s okay with me. At least that way if I go on my ass, you won’t get hurt.”
    “I’ve got the strangest feeling,” she said in a hushed voice.
    “What’s that?”
    “Your stars have crossed. And the path of your life will change.”
    “I don’t know what that means. Is it good or bad?”
    She hesitated. “Good, I think.”
    There was a knock at the door. I started to open it, but Bobby got there first. The bodyguard looked over the boy’s head. “Mr. Lonergan asked if you wanted a car sent for you.”
    “Please thank him,” I answered. “But tell him I have transportation.”
    The door closed. Bobby came back toward me, his eyes wide. “Are you really buying a newspaper?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Not much of a paper, but it’s something.”
    “I was art director of my college paper,” he said.
    I laughed. “Okay. You got a job. You’re now the art director of the
Hollywood Express
.”
    Suddenly we all were laughing and none of us really knew why. Except that maybe Verita was right. Our stars had crossed and somehow the world had changed.

CHAPTER 6
    I held the small gold spoon carefully to my nostril and took a deep snort. The cocaine exploded in my brain like a sunburst and I suddenly felt energized as if there were nothing in the world that I could not do.
    Bobby and Verita had just finished off the dishes. When I began to laugh, they both turned to look at me.
    “Dynamite,” I said. “Pure dynamite. Where’d you get it?”
    “The dealer told me it was pure,” Bobby said.
    I laughed again. “Superpure.” I gave the spoon and the vial of coke to him. “That’s rich.”
    Bobby looked at Verita. She shook her head. “No, thanks. I get headaches.”
    He had a snort and put it back in his jacket pocket. His eyes were shining. “Did you mean what you said?”
    “What did I say?”
    “About my being art director on your paper?”
    “Sure, but I can’t pay a big salary.”
    “That’s not important. It’s the opportunity I want. Nobody ever offered me a real job before.”
    “Well, you’ve got it now.”
    “What kind of paper is it?”
    “Right now it’s an advertising throwaway. But that’s not what it’s going to be when I get through with it.”
    “What will it be then?”
    “A cross between the underground papers and
Playboy
. We’re going to hit people where they live. In the balls.”
    “I don’t understand,” he said.
    “
Playboy
fudges,” I said. “They airbrush their articles just like they airbrush the pussies off their girls. The underground press shovels the shit so hard your fingers smell from just holding one of their rags. I think there’s a balance, a way of telling it how it is and at the same time not make the reader feel he’s covered with dirt.”
    “But that’s not what Lonergan wants,” Verita said. “He wants the kind of paper that it is.”
    “What Lonergan is buying is a laundry. Four pages of advertising to convert his cash. He doesn’t give a damn about the rest of it. You can print it on toilet paper for all he cares.”
    “I don’t know,” Verita said doubtfully.
    “I do. I’ve known him all my life. Money is his only passion.”
    “You called him Uncle John,” she said.
    “He’s my uncle, my mother’s brother.”
    She took a deep breath. Now she understood. “You don’t like him?”
    “I don’t feel one way or the other,” I said. But it wasn’t true. If anything, I felt too much. There was