`Àll right,'' he said, `Ì suppose you've got a point. But why argue it? Arguing with one's self is like playing solitaire chess--a fair game results in a stalemate every time. Let's just say I'm doing it because I can.'‘
I felt a little calmer, all of a sudden. I had been down this street before. When they got the drop on you, you had to get them talking and keep them talking. It had worked with Mavis Weld and it would work here. They said stuff like Well, I suppose it won't hurt you to know now or What harm can it do?
Mavis's version had been downright elegant: I want you to know, Umney--I want you to take the truth to hell with you.
You can pass it on to the devil over cake and coffee. It really didn't matter what they said, but if they were talking, they weren't shooting.
Always keep em talking, that was the thing. Keep em talking and just hope the cavalry would show up from somewhere.
``The question is, why do you want to?' I asked. `Ìt's hardly the usual thing, is it? I mean, aren't you writer types usually content to cash the checks when they come, and go about your business?’
``You're trying to keep me talking, Clyde. Aren't you?’
That hit me like a sucker-punch to the gut, but playing it down to the last card was the only choice I had. I grinned and shrugged. ``Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I really do want to know.'' And there was no lie in that.
He looked unsure for a moment longer, bent over and touched the keys inside that strange plastic case (I felt cramps in my legs and gut and chest as he stroked them), then straightened up again.
`Ì suppose it won't hurt you to know now,'' he said finally. `Àfter all, what harm can it do?’
``Not a bit.'‘
``You're a clever boy, Clyde,'' he said, `ànd you're perfectly right --writers very rarely plunge all the way into the worlds they've created, and when they do I think they end up doing it strictly in their heads, while their bodies vegetate in some mental asylum. Most of us are content simply to be tourists in the country of our imaginations. Certainly that was the case with me. I'm not a fast writer--composition has always been torture for me, I think I told you that--but I managed five Clyde Umney books in ten years, each more successful than the last. In 1983 I left my job as regional manager for a big insurance company and started to write full-time. I had a wife I loved, a little boy that kicked the sun out of bed every morning and put it to bed every night--that's how it seemed to me, anyway--and I didn't think life could get any better.'‘
He shifted in the overstuffed client's chair, moved his hand, and I saw the cigarette burn Ardis McGill had put in the over-stuffed arm was also gone. He voiced a bitterly cold laugh.
`Ànd I was right,'' he said. `Ìt couldn't get any better, but it could get a whole hell of a lot worse. And did. About three months after I started How Like a Fallen Angel, Danny--our little boy--fell out of a swing in the park and bashed his head. Cold-conked himself, in your parlance.'‘
A brief smile, every bit as cold and bitter as the laugh had been, crossed his face. It came and went at the speed of grief.
``He bled a lot--you've seen enough head-wounds in your time to know how they are--and it scared the crap out of Linda, but the doctors were good and it did turn out to be only a concussion; they got him stabilized and gave him a pint of blood to make up for what he'd lost. Maybe they didn't have to--and that haunts me--but they did. The real problem wasn't with his head, you see; it was with that pint of blood. It was infected with AIDS.'‘
``Come again?'‘
`Ìt's something you can thank your God you don't know about,'' Landry said. `Ìt doesn't exist in your time, Clyde. It won't show up until the mid-seventies. Like Aramis cologne.'‘
``What does it do?’
`Èats away at your immune system until the whole thing collapses like the wonderful one-hoss shay. Then every bug circling around out there, from cancer to chicken pox, rushes in and has a party.'‘
``Good Christ!'‘
His smile came and went like a cramp. `Ìf you say so. AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease, but every now and then it pops up in the blood supply. I suppose you could say my kid won big in a very unlucky version of la lotería.'‘
`Ì'm sorry,'' I said, and although I was scared to death of this thin man with the tired face, I meant it. Losing a kid to something like that . . . what could be worse? Probably something, yeah--there's always something--but you'd have to sit down and think about it, wouldn't you?
``Thanks,'' he said. ``Thanks, Clyde. It went fast for him, at least. He fell out of the swing in May. The first purple blotches--Kaposi's sarcoma--showed up in time for his birthday in September. He died on March 18, 1991. And maybe he didn't suffer as much as some of them do, but he suffered. Oh yes, he suffered.'‘
I didn't have the slightest idea what Kaposi's sarcoma was, either, and decided I didn't want to ask. I knew more than I wanted to already.
``You can maybe understand why it slowed me down a little on your book,'' he said.
``Can't you, Clyde?'‘
I nodded.
`Ì pushed on, though. Mostly because I think make-believe is a great healer. Maybe I have to believe that. I tried to get on with my life, too, but things kept going wrong with it--it was as if How Like a Fallen Angel was some kind of weird bad-luck charm that had turned me into Job. My wife went into a deep depression following Danny's death, and I was so concerned with her that I hardly noticed the red patches that had started breaking out on my legs and stomach and chest. And the itching. I knew it wasn't AIDS, and at first that was all I was concerned with. But as time went on and things got worse . . . have you ever had shingles, Clyde?’
Then he laughed and clapped the heel of his hand to his forehead in a what-a-dunce-Iam gesture before I could shake my head.
`Òf course you haven't--you've never had more than a hangover. Shingles, my shamus friend, is a funny name for a terrible, chronic ailment. There's some pretty good medicine available to help alleviate the symptoms in my version of Los Angeles, but it wasn't helping me much; by the end of 1991 I was in agony. Part of it was general depression over what had happened to Danny, of course, but most of it was the agony and the itching. That would make an interesting book title about a tortured writer, don't you think? The Agony and the Itching, or, Thomas Hardy Faces Puberty.'' He voiced a harsh, distracted little laugh.
``Whatever you say, Sam.'‘
`Ì say it was a season in hell. Of course it's easy to make light of it now, but by Thanksgiving of that year it was no joke--I was getting three hours of sleep a night, tops, and I had days when it felt like my skin was trying to crawl right off my body and run away like The Gingerbread Man. And I suppose that's why I didn't see how bad it was getting with Linda.'‘
I didn't know, couldn't know . . . but I did. ``She killed herself.'‘
He nodded. `Ìn March of 1992, on the anniversary of Daniel's death. Over two years ago now.'‘
A single tear tracked down his wrinkled, prematurely aged cheek, and I had an idea that he had gotten old in one hell of a hurry. It was sort of awful, realizing I had been made by such a bush-league version of God, but it also explained a lot. My shortcomings, mainly.
``That's enough,'' he said in a voice which was blurred with anger as well as tears.
``Get to the point, you'd say. In my time we say cut to the chase, but it comes to the same. I finished the book. On the day I discovered Linda dead in bed--the way the police are going to find Gloria Demmick later today, Clyde--I had finished one hundred and ninety pages of manuscript. I was up to the part where you fish Mavis's brother out of Lake Tahoe. I came home from the funeral three days later, fired up the word-processor, and got started right in on page one-ninety-one. Does that shock you?’
``No,'' I said. I thought about asking him what a word-processor might be, then decided I didn't have to. The thing in his lap was a word-processor, of course. Had to be.