Glimmering Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I know, I know. But . . .”
    His voice trailed off. Jule snorted in annoyance: Jack had never quite gotten over an intense relationship with Leonard that had seen him through his twenties. “But nothing.” Jule gazed with distaste at one of Leonard’s prints, framed in silver on Jack’s desk. It showed the charred carcass of an Antarctic snow petrel, now extinct. “He’s gonna fuck you up again, Jackie, you know he will. Don’t do it, Jackie. Don’t talk to him.”
    Jack stared at the ceiling through half-closed eyes. After a moment he shrugged. “Well, anyway, he has this idea to help bail me out. I just want you to look over the proposals and make sure I’m not liable for anything.”
    He handed Jule the thick folder Leonard had sent via bike courier that morning. His friend took the package and stuck it into his knapsack, then stood to go.
    “Right.” Jule pushed a lock of longish graying hair from his forehead, grimaced, and tugged at his shirt collar. “God, I hate fucking court appearances. The phones are dead, so you can’t call anyone, you get down to the courthouse and you’re fucked ’cause the DA couldn’t get a fucking message to you that the case has been dismissed. I haven’t had a decent haircut in a year. Do I look like an asshole?”
    Jack laughed. “You look very nice, Jule. Emma pick out your tie?”
    Jule looked wounded. “No, she did not.”
    “I figured.” Jack pointed with his pencil. “It’s got something on it.”
    “Shit! Really?” Jule stared down in alarm.
    “Ha-ha. Made you look.”
    Jule glared at him, then started toward the door. “Later. Don’t sign anything till you hear from me.”
    “How long will that be?”
    “Who fucking knows? Maybe tomorrow if the phones are up, maybe a week. See you, Jackie.”
    When Jack was alone again he sighed. On his desk scattered bills and manuscripts, collection notices, and invitations to charity dinners formed a jagged white plain, like a field of broken ice. He picked up a small card, hand-lettered in pale blue ink on Crane’s stationery.
    Dr. Peter Fulbright & Ms. Anna Herrin-Fulbright
Request the Honor of Your Presence at the
1998 Harlequin Ball
Proceeds to Benefit
The World Wildlife Fund Genome Project
     
     
    Jack tossed it into an overflowing wastebasket. It had been a decade since The Gaudy Book could afford a secretary, or even an ambitious high school student, to help him in the office.
    “Well.” His chair thumped noisily as he leaned forward and swept the papers off his desk and into a cardboard box. “Time to re-ordure.”
    The office was filled with paper. Boxes and filing cabinets, wastebaskets and piles of unopened manila envelopes. A moosehead with antlers draped with ticker tape from the 1974 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Two IBM Selectric typewriters with old contracts still sitting in them; the Underwood typewriter on which Jack had learned to write. There were also several Macintosh computers that had been difficult to service even before the glimmering, and a Telex machine that occasionally sputtered to life with strange queries from readers in Bangkok or Iowa City. Leonard Thrope found it all very quaint. He had never stopped mocking Jack’s refusal to invest in nascent technologies when he had the chance.
    “Netscape, man! I called you about that! And Evans Laboratories, you were crazy not to go with them!”
    Now, perversely, Leonard wanted to save Jack’s magazine. Once Jule gave the go-ahead, he organized the special Memento Mori issue and its concomitant exhibition at the Whitney. It was the biggest-selling issue of The Gaudy Book in twenty-three years, and the most controversial show ever mounted at the museum. And, despite Jule’s best efforts—he was a very good man, but a rather bad lawyer—there were lawsuits, as there inevitably were if Leonard Thrope was involved. These came in the wake of Leslie Harcourt’s unassisted planned suicide (a ticketed event and a sellout), but