divans to lunatic puffs of springs and stuffing, to spike the
mirrorbright finish of the great hall floor with barbarian hoofprints
and flying puddles of urine'
okay Shes there its a story i feel her
* * *
body, making it sag and billow.
'If you like,' he said. 'I didn't even see the cottage from the Shore
Road, Mrs. Leighton. Could you tell me where--'
'Did you drive in?'
'Yes. I left my car over there.'' He pointed beyond the dunes,
toward the road.
A smile, oddly one-dimensional, touched her lips. 'That's why.
You can only see a blink from the road: unless you're walking, you
miss it.' She pointed west at a slight angle away from the dunes
and the house. 'There. Right over that little hill.'
'All right,' he said, then stood there smiling. He really had no idea
how to terminate the interview.
'Would you like to come in for some coffee? Or a Coca-Cola?'
'Yes,' he said instantly.
She seemed a little taken back by his instant agreement. He had,
after 211, been her husband's friend, not her own. The face loomed
above Gerald, moonlike, disconnected, undecided. Then she led
him into the elderly, waiting house.
She had tea. He had Coke, Millions of eyes seemed to watch them.
He felt like a burglar, stealing around the hidden fiction he could
Make of her, carrying only his own youthful winsomeness and a
psychic flashlight.
* * *
My own name, of course, is Steve King, and you'll pardon my
intrusion on your mind-or I hope you will. I could argue that the
drawing-aside of the curtain of presumption between reader and
author is permissible because I am the writer; i.e., since it's my
story I'll do any goddam thing I please with it-but since that leaves
the reader out of it completely, that is not valid. Rule One for all
writers is that the teller is not worth a tin tinker's fart when
compared to the listener. Let us drop the matter, if we may. I am
intruding for the same reason that the Pope defecates: we both
have to.
You should know that Gerald Nately was never brought to the
dock; his crime was not discovered. He paid all the same. After
writing four twisted, monumental, misunderstood novels, he cut
his own head off with an ivory-figured guillotine purchased in
Kowloon.
I invented him first during a moment of eight o'clock boredom in a
class taught by Carroll F. Terrell of the University of Maine
English faculty. Dr. Terrell was speaking of Edgar A. Poe, and I
thought
ivory guillotine Kowloon
twisted woman of shadows, like a pig
some big house
