“Nonetheless…” and he said this hurriedly, because Gross was making the kind of strangling noises that, had he uttered them in a good restaurant, would have brought the maitre d’ running to administer the Heimlich Maneuver, “nonetheless, moving right along to the serious stuff, folks, here’s my friend and advisor, the world-famous corporate attorney, Mr. Kenneth L. Gross, who’d like to say a few words. Let’s give him a big funeral day welcome… Kenny Gross!”
The attorney was the color of old toothpaste as he read from a prepared form. “Mr. Crowstairs, you have now established your identity for those who may be seeing this recording at a later date. You have retained this office in connection with estate planning and more specifically to prepare your will. The document I now show you (handing will to client), is the final draft of that will. Would you please take a moment to review it?”
The screen now went to split-frame, the right side being a copy of the will. Jimmy took the document Gross handed him and scanned it. “But this is a laundry list, Kenny.” The attorney damned near fainted. Jimmy laughed and hurriedly corrected himself. “I’m kidding, I’m just kidding; this is my will; honest to God, I swear it is!”
Gross was breathing hard. I felt for the poor devil. “Is this the document that you have, hopefully, previously read?”
“Yes, it is. But you don’t mean hopefully, Kenny. You mean I hope, or it is to be hoped, or one hopes. You see, when you use the word ‘hopefully,’ you’re reporting a subjective state of mind; that is, full of hope. Your error is in attributing your hope to the object, in this case the will… or is the object me? I’m never really sure of parts of speech. In any case, if you were to reverse the word, you’d see how wrong it’s being used: hopelessly I’ve read it. See what I mean? Good grammar, Kenny; always good grammar. Your mother and I have chided you about this on numerous occasions…”
Gross exploded. “Mister Crowstairs! If you will, sir! This is a serious undertaking! Now is this, or is this not the document previously read by yourself?”
“It is, it is! Nag, nag, nag.”
Gross gave it up. He bulled. forward. Not happily. “Are you executing this document or prepared to execute this document… no, wait… I’m out of sequence! Damn it, Kerch!”
Jimmy grinned infectiously. He was never happier than when he was stirring up the soup. He laid a placating hand on Gross’s. “Take it easy, Kenny. Don’t fumfuh.”
Gross swallowed; as they say, he looked daggers at his client, pulled a weathered pipe with a large Oom Paul bowl and a bent stem from his vest pocket, puffed it alight with a kitchen match taken from his other vest pocket, harrumphed once, and began again
“All right, then: In my presence, and in the presence of these witnesses, and cognizant of the fact that these proceedings are being videotaped, does this document reflect your exclusive and entire wishes with regard to the disposition of your property?”
Testator responded in the affirmative: “I respond in the affirmative.”
The attorney now turned to the three witnesses. “Each of you has known Mr. Crowstairs for many years. You have been asked to participate in these proceedings for the purpose of further identification. Will you now, each in turn, declare who you are, your relationship to Mr. Crowstairs, and verify that this is, in fact, Mr. Kercher Oliver James Crowstairs.”
Camera came into closeup on the first witness as the splitscreen went to solo image.
“My name is Brandon Winslow. I have been a close personal friend, house guest and sometime-collaborator of Kercher Crowstairs for almost fourteen years; and I hereby declare that the man over there with all the credit cards is, in fact and as he’s stated, the Crowstairs he says he is.”
Well, well, I thought, oh my ears and whiskers.
“Sometime-collaborator.” Now there’s one phrase I never thought I’d hear in connection with Jimmy. So Bran had been paying off the loans and the live-in companionship with something more valuable than coin of the realm. He had worked on some of the books. That went a long way toward explaining how Jimmy could turn out his novel and a short story collection every year as regular as the swallows visiting Capistrano, plus finding the time for all the introductions, newspaper columns, background pieces for TV Guide; the lectures, the television talk show appearances, the writing workshops; and the women. He had another laborer in the vineyard. A bond slave.
I cast back through the long list of Crowstairs publications trying to figure out which ones had been co-written—entirely ghost-written?!?!—no, it was unthinkable—but then, collaboration had been unthinkable till Bran had let the black cat cross the path—and I came up with two immediately.
Bakelite Radio Fantasies and Fearsome Noises. They were gentler, more thoughtful than was Jimmy’s wont. There was greater lyricism in them, closer in tone to Bran’s own solo novel—his only novel—Knowledge of Two Kinds. They were a couple of my favorite Crowstairs creations.
And my heart contracted in my chest as I realized that in some way Bran Winslow had sold himself to Jimmy, had denied his own career, to add a few more chapters to the myth of Kercher Crowstairs. I didn’t want to know what Jimmy had had on Bran, that could make him, seemingly willingly, put aside his own work, to become a secret shadow of the public Kerch.
To me, it was unthinkable. The more I thought about it, the more often the word unthinkable burned in the darkness. Unthinkable: Jimmy was many kinds of a man, but blackmailer wasn’t one of them. Unthinkable: Brandon Winslow was as fiercely committed to his art as was I, as was Jimmy…
Unthinkable!
No one has that kind of charisma. I simply wouldn’t go for it. There had to be something deeper, something more potent. It was unthinkable that a writer of Bran Winslow’s sincerity and dedication would simply give over his life to Jimmy; it was unthinkable that Jimmy’s fever could be passed on to another writer—possibly a better writer, a more important writer, an intrinsically more valuable, a worthier writer—to cause him to deny the song of his own Muse. But now that I’d thought it, as unthinkable as it had seemed…
Kercher Crowstairs refused to acknowledge the night.
He had a quote from Thomas Carlyle taped to the molding of the bookcase right over his typewriter:
Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God’s name! ‘Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work.
He refused to cower against the fear of scaled or furry or fanged creatures moving toward him. in the night.
He was a sharpened stick.
He was in motion, no sitting target.
He did not play poker, yet he never sat with his back to the door.
But such a level of energy has to dissipate itself before it can consume another writer. It has to! Sheer force of will, massed totality of personality, unleashed waves of charismatic power… no one has that. No one! Unthinkable goddam you Kerch Jimmy!