The Immaculate Read Online Free PDF Page A

himself a cigarette over lunch once this was over.
    He reached the opposite pavement without being recognized, which was not entirely surprising, for in truth Jack was unremarkable in appearance. He carried perhaps half a stone too much weight for his five-nine frame, though this was easily concealed beneath baggy clothes. He had coffee-brown hair, slightly wavy, which he combed back from his forehead and over his ears. His face was pleasant, endowed—when he chose to display it—with a generous smile and eyes every bit as blue as Paul Newman’s. If Jack had the chance to alter one aspect of his appearance it would be his jaw, which he considered far too prominent. At best he thought he looked like Desperate Dan, at worst a chubby piranha fish. Sometimes he wore silver-framed spectacles, and in his left ear was a silver ring, which he had not removed for some half-dozen years.
    On the photo in the Strange Worlds window Jack’s hair was longer than usual and he was not wearing his spectacles, so maybe he would be able to sneak in without anyone noticing. Sitting behind a table piled with books with a pen in his hand would make him feel more confident. What was it he had said to Gail, only half-jokingly, last night? He had said that writing was the profession of disturbed people: obsessives, neurotics, schizophrenics, egotists. “Which one are you?” she had asked him teasingly. He had rolled his eyes, cackled, given her his most crooked smile and hissed, “All of them.”
    He was a dozen yards from the shop’s entrance when he was spotted. He had his head down and his hands in his pockets, but heard the shuffle of feet increase, the buzz of voices raise a notch, and knew immediately what it signified. He raised his head in resignation, preparing to smile. “Hiya, Jack.” “Hello, Mr Stone.” “I loved
Consummation.
” “When does
Splinter Kiss
come out in paperback?”
    Jack did his best to reply to as many greetings and answer as many questions as possible; he hated the thought that there were those in the queue who might feel snubbed before the event had even begun. He reached the glass door and tapped on it to alert the muscle-man in the
Strange Worlds
T-shirt who was standing just inside, acting as security guard. In what he hoped was a loud voice he said to the crowd, “Please excuse me. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to speak to you all inside.”
    It was obvious the muscle-man did not recognise Jack. He scowled and took his time strolling to the door, and once there kept his hands clasped behind him. Jack felt embarrassed and annoyed; he was aware that everyone in the queue was craning to look at him. Determined not to shout, he pointed very deliberately at the window display, then at himself, and then he mimed writing. The muscleman’s scowl softened to a frown as realisation began to dawn. The man at the front of the queue, who was around twenty with slicked-back hair and a hooded grey track suit jacket, said in an exaggeratedly dopey voice, “Duhh, my brain hurts.” He helped out by holding up his rare first edition hardback of Jack’s first novel,
Bleeding Hearts,
and pointing from the name on the cover to the man himself.
    The muscle-man finally got the message. He twisted a key in the left half of the door and tugged it open. Jack slipped inside, thanking him curtly. “Uh . . . sorry, Mr. . . . uh . . . Stone,” the muscle-man said in a voice that sounded as if it were being played at too slow a speed.
    The owners of the shop, Pete and Barry, were far more enthusiastic. Pete rushed forward, flinging out his hand. When the handshake came it was a disappointment, the kind that Gail always referred to as a damp dishcloth. “We’re
so
pleased to see you,” Pete enthused. “It’s going to be a super function. Well, you’ve seen for yourself, the hordes are massing outside.”
    Jack merely smiled