Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 Read Online Free PDF Page B

unbearable degree. Such as, to take the example that slots neatly
into its chronological space at this juncture, the funeral of Miriam. Facing
the patient silent interviewer with my blandest and most untroubled smile, I
relive that troubled time.
                 A
lot of people blamed me for what happened to Miriam, but my doctors said it
wasn't my fault. She'd already had two minor strokes, which she hadn't told
anybody (including me) about, and it could have happened at any time. And, as
far as I was concerned, Miriam had checked out just exactly the way she would
have wanted, coming and going at the same glorious moment. But you couldn't
explain that to a lot of thin-lipped nieces and nephews.
                 Miriam
had found me an agent—her own, of course, Jack Schullmann—and Jack phoned to
say if I went to the funeral he’d drop me as a client and do his best to blackball
me in the theater. He was an important man in that bitchy world, but I told him
to go fuck himself. If he and the rest of them wanted to take away everything
that Miriam had given me, that was all right, too.
Bury me with her like an Egyptian servant, I didn't care.
                 So
I did go to the funeral, and a hard-eyed usher made me sit in the back row. No
one spoke to me or acknowledged my presence in any way, but that was the first
time my picture ran in the National
Enquirer. Is that funny, or what?
                 Jack
Schullmann was as good as his word; after Miriam's funeral, when I finally came
out again, I too was dead. But really dead. I made the rounds the same as ever, hit the
auditions, sent my resume to every other agent in town (none of them wanted me,
not then), but nothing happened, and in truth my heart just wasn't in it. But
then one night . . .
                 But
this is something I can report aloud, a spot where I can bring the interviewer
aboard again, give him a little whadayacallit— frisson. That's it. Got a frisson for you, pal. “After Miriam’s death," I begin, but then I cloud over
briefly, and when my internal sky once more is clear the interviewer is still
there, politely waiting, pen poised, eyebrows lifted in respectful attention.
“Yes,” I say. “After . . . that, I was lost for a while. I didn't know where to go, what to do, who I should try to be. I still had my
friends from the classes and all that, we still all hung out together, went to
parties, but I felt distant, not really a part of the scene. I knew that no
matter how it might look from outside, I didn't care for anybody else, and nobody
else cared for me. And without the acting, without using myself, with nobody to be but me, I was empty, I was nothing.
I guess that's about as alone as I ever got."
                 The
interviewer nods, viewing me with faint (possibly professional) sympathy.
"How long did that go on?" he asks. "That sense of . . .
separateness?"
                 "Separateness?" I laugh, hurting my throat. “That’s permanent," I say.
"But the trouble after Miriam died? Almost a year, all
in all. Until the following summer, when one night at a party I ran into
Harry Robelieu, the director of the play where I'd met Miriam, and he asked me
what I was doing that weekend, was I free or what, there was somebody he wanted
me to meet. So I told him I was free, and God knows that was true, and that was
how I first went to Fire Island Pines and met George Castleberry."
     

           FLASHBACK 7
     
     
                 The
far blue sea was full to the brim, rolling up the white sand lip of shore and
receding again, flowing and ebbing, frothing white, whispering to itself while
up on the silver-bleached wooden deck the pretty people in white trousers and
powerful people in multicolored muumuus chattered together amid a jingling
music of ice cubes. The deck served as collar for an oval swimming pool in
which two bronzed young men in bikini briefs played and