The Bear Went Over the Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

waddled off into the foliage, and he listened to it going slowly away into the darkness of its own concerns.
    “Porkapines are comical rigs, all right,” said Pinette, coming up beside him in the road.
    Bramhall was sniffing the porcupine, its odor somewhat human, like a heavily perspiring person in a raunchy undershirt.
    “What’s up, Art? You smell something?”
    “You don’t smell it?”
    “Can’t say I do.”
    The porcupine had gone far enough into the underbrush for the sound of its movements to go undetected, but its odor was leaving a vivid picture of it in the night air. Bramhall turned his head around, suddenly aware that he was smelling a night rich with scents of every kind. But the moment he tried to analyze the sensation, something slammed shut, with the sound of a filing cabinet, a door, a window whose sash has snapped, and that snap was his return from whatever perfumed cloud he’d been traveling on, and his heightened sense of smell was gone.

 
    Elliot Gadson was reading the final proofs of an autobiography written by acquitted society scion Barton Balfour III, who’d been accused of having disposed of his wife by serving her up to guests in a light Madeira mushroom sauce. Balfour’s prose style left much to be desired, but the main thing was that the
heart
was there.
    “Mr. Hal Jam to see you, Mr. Gadson.” A young editorial assistant stood at the door, the bear beside her.
    “Ah, Hal, come in, come in. I’m delighted to meet you.” Gadson came around to the front of his desk, holding out his hand. “I loved your book. It was completely real to me. I felt I’d known the people in it all my life.”
    The bear was sniffing the office: coffee, cologne, paper, glue. He liked the life-size cardboard replica of Barton Balfour III with a knife and fork in his hands; it showed a proper esteem for eating.
    “I can’t remember the last time I read such an absorbing work,” continued Gadson, feeling his way carefully, as Jam had the air of a messenger boy who’d been sniffing aerosol cans. “Noticing our other titles? As you cansee, we have a diversified list. A star biography or two, the latest from the Bel Air Diet Doctor …”
    Gadson was not warming to his new author, for Jam was guarded. God, I hope he’s not homophobic, thought Gadson, whose wall carried a poster of Cary Grant in
Bringing Up Baby
, at the moment when he’d put on a woman’s nightgown and cried,
“I just went gay all of a sudden.”
    The bear was not homophobic, as bears have a tolerant sexual attitude. Occasionally young male bears who fail to find a female will hump each other, and no one makes a fuss about it.
    “I’d like you to meet Bettina Quint, our publicity director,” said Gadson, and dialed another office. “Hal Jam is with me now, Bettina.”
    The bear had turned to look out the window, over the bustling city. “Mine,” he said, making his territorial claim. Of course, to firm it up he’d have to shit along the perimeter. All in good time. Hearing a sound at the door, he turned back around, and had the impression that a confused hummingbird had just entered the room.
    Bettina Quint was tiny and moved with great speed. A rapid shift of trajectory, upon spying Hal Jam, caused her to strike a stack of books and send them flying. “Oh shit,” she said, and started picking them up.
    “Please, leave them,” said Gadson with a patient air.
    “This is my second collision of the afternoon. Thefirst one was much more colorful.” Bettina attempted to adjust her flyaway bun of streaked-blond hair. An emerald scarf encircled her twenty-two-inch waist; her constant hurrying flight burned calories in a steady flame. She rushed to her new writer and shot out her hand. “Your book is going to be a blockbuster.”
    Bettina spoke as a hummingbird might, in high-pitched peeps of great excitement. The bear sniffed her discreetly, taking in the aroma of her perfume, makeup, deodorant, hand and face cream, and the