Manifesto for the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

the wholesome one, so it was like they were both with me at once. Belle kept her hand where it was until finally I let loose with everything inside and made a noise like an animal grunting around in the dark. Her lips curled then, like I had just proved something she knew all along. Then she left and I lay alone, listening to those crickets outside, and the cicadas and the whip-poor-wills and the katydids, all making a noise like the sound of the Texas night whipping through the windwing as you go roaring down the road, afraid to keep on going, afraid to stop.

NINE
    Thompson woke up in the Aztec Hotel. He felt better than he should feel—a little sore in the gut, a bit wobbly in the knees—but still well enough to find himself a copy of the morning paper. It was full of the usual grim business. Nothing about the girl in the Cadillac, though. If the police had found her corpse, the news of that discovery wasn’t exactly shaking the town.
    Everything will be all right, he told himself. Anyway, he had enough worries. Alberta for one. Money for another. He needed to finalize the deal with Billy Miracle; he needed a publisher.
    He called his editor in New York, a young man by the name of Hector Sally.
    â€œWho did you say you were?”
    â€œThompson. Jim.”
    The secretary grunted, impressed as hell. Then she put him on hold for a million years. A hundred million. The Ice Age came and went. Dinosaurs prowled once more the tar pits at La Brea. On Sunset Boulevard, under the tattered awnings, the figures of the waking world and Thompson’s imagination intermingled. Here was the Okie. Here, Billy Miracle. Here, the Texas drifter, high stepping out of the pages of his novel.
    Hector picked up. “Jim! How are you doing?”
    â€œI have a deal. It’s a book package tied to a movie. I thought you might want to know.”
    â€œWell, have your agent send me the manuscript.”
    â€œForget my agent.”
    â€œWe do have certain protocols, Jim.”
    Thompson tried to explain the deal he had going with Billy Miracle.
    â€œI don’t know,” Hector said. “Your last book. Sales …”
    â€œThis has a tie-in already.”
    Hector hemmed around. He was an Ivy League kid who liked to think he was editing real literature. Only his bosses wanted sales, and to get sales it meant thrillers and good-looking heroes and a host of women just waiting to spread their legs. Morality at the end, though. A hero with a sense of dignity. Affirmation. Bad guys punished and the sluts all murdered.
    â€œLet me talk to marketing. I’ll call you back.”
    â€œYou’re not just saying that, are you, Hector?”
    â€œI’m not that way.”
    â€œI didn’t think you were that way.”
    â€œI’ll call you.”
    â€œYou promise?”
    â€œI said I would, didn’t I?”
    â€œThe heart of every good story’s a good character,” said Thompson.
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œI think this can be an important book.”
    â€œI’ll talk to the folks upstairs.”
    â€œImportant,” he repeated, but Hector was gone.
    Later, Thompson searched his hotel room again, looking for the sweater. What had happened last night, it had happened before. Time disappearing into light. A few minutes, maybe. Even a few hours. It was not just time that got lost. Objects, too. Usually, they would show up again. Where, though, when, he couldn’t be sure.
    He glanced up at the closet. On the high shelf, he had placed his father’s gun, a stack of manuscript papers, clothes. Had he checked there?
    Yes, last night, he was all but sure. He’d torn the place apart.
    Franny was right, he told himself suddenly. She’d told him once: you made a mistake, all those years ago, marrying Alberta. He went now to the phone and dialed the Château. The operator put him through.
    â€œHello?”
    It was her voice. A Midwestern accent. Eastern Nebraska,