Lucky Alan : And Other Stories (9780385539821) Read Online Free PDF Page B

there?”
    “I’d be junk in his hands any day,” Clea said defiantly.
    “Well, he’s old and likely pretty harmless by now,” the chief said. “I saw him the other day in the pharmacy, getting himself one of those inflatable doughnuts for sitting on when you’ve got anal discomfort. I’d say from what I’ve heard those sort of troubles are his just deserts. We’re not dummies around here, you know. When he moved up here from the city, a certain number of stories trailed after him. He’s been a bad boy.”
    “He’s the greatest maker of sentences in the United States of America,” I said.
    “I’ve had a look,” the chief said. “He’s not bad. I’m just wondering if you ever troubled with the content of his books, as opposed to just the sentences.”
    “Sentences
are
content,” Clea said.
    The chief lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Fair enough then, I’ve said my piece. Just understand this—whatever my personal views of either his character or his prose, he’s under my protection surely as any other citizen in this town.
Comprende?
”
    “Does everyone up here speak Spanish? Is this a bilingual metropolis?” Clea said.
    “That’s enough out of you, young lady. Here’s the Econo Lodge, and a good day to you both.”
    “Thanks, Chief.”
    We crept inside the Econo Lodge’s slumbering atrium. A uniformed teenage clerk blinked hello, raised his hand. We ignored him. The King of Sentences hovered beside a counter bearing urns of complimentary coffee labeled “Premium,” “Diesel,” and “Jet Fuel.” The King nodded mutely, beckoned to us with a tilt of his chin. We trailed him down a corridor with a tongue-hued carpet. I worked not to visualize an anal doughnut.
    “Inside,” he said.
    The King lit only a lamp at the bedside in the windowless room. We crowded in, the room a mere margin to the queen-size bed. The air conditioner rumbled and hummed. The temperature was frigid. The King took the only chair, gestured us to the bed’s edge. We sat.
    Clea and I began simultaneously, tangling aloud. “We’re—” I said. Clea said, “You’re the—”
    “Let’s not waste time,” the King interrupted. He spoke in an exhausted snarl, all redemptive possibility purged from his voice and manner. Our rendezvous had taken on the starkness of an endgame. “Do you want money?”
    “Money?” I said.
    “That’s right.” He reached into his shirt pocket and revealed a packet of twenties, obviously prepared in advance. It occurred to me wildly that he’d taken us for blackmailers. Perhaps he was blackmailed routinely, had cash on hand for regular payouts. “How much will ittake to make you go away?” He began counting out piles: “Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, two hundred—”
    “We don’t want your money!” I nearly shouted. “You’ve given us enough, you’ve given us everything! We’re here to give something back!”
    “I suppose I’m meant to be glad to hear it.” He repocketed his money carelessly.
    “We’d like you to be glad, yes.”
    He only cocked an eyebrow. “What have you got for me?”
    I untucked my polo shirt and withdrew my chapter, the pages a mass curled and baked in its secret compression against my belly.
    “I knew you looked funny!” Clea cried. I ignored her, handed the pages across to the King. He accepted them, his expression sour.
    “For a moment there I thought you were about to undress,” he said.
    “Would you like that?” Clea blurted. “Should we undress?”
    The King examined us starkly. He placed my chapter ignominiously on the carpet beneath his chair. Perhaps now we were at the crossroads, perhaps we had his attention at last. “Yes,” he said cautiously. “I think that could be … advantageous.”
    We stripped, racing to be the first bared to his view. I’d lose the race either way, for Clea had rigged the game: She had written a sentence on her stomach in blue marker.
The sorcerer