my shorts. I sat there until got chilled. That took about fifteen minutes, which meant I had four more
hours to go.
I kept waiting for the phone to ring, expecting her to call the whole thing off. The suspense was awful.
I took the phone off the hook but it started screeching like bad brakes do and I hung it up. I sat on the
bed and took it off the hook and waited until it screeched; then I?d depress the little bar and wait a
minute and let it up again. I killed another fifteen minutes that way until my finger got tired.
About six o?clock I ordered a steak, potatoes, salad, and coffee. I had forgotten how bad room-service
food is until I took the first bite. I wasn?t hungry anyway. The coffee was in one of those ugly purple
Thermos pitchers that always look dirty and it was lukewarm but I drank it because it was something
to do.
I was killing time. Hell, who am I kidding, I was watching it crawl by on its hands and knees,
checking the clock every five minutes. In desperation I started to read Cisco?s report on Dunetown. It
might just as well have been written by the chamber of commerce for all it told me. I dropped it in the
wastebasket and stared at the television set for another thirty minutes.
At about seven I decided to take a bath, soak my tired muscles, and kill another half hour. I turned on
the spigots and the radio. The water was so hot it took ten minutes f juggling and dipping before I
settled in. A bath is great therapy,, particularly when it?s just about too hot to bear. It opens up the
head, clears away the cobwebs, helps you sort the real stuff from the bullshit. Kind of like medication.
About ten minutes after I got into the tub the muses began to whisper to me. They were saying things
I didn?t want to hear. The muses don?t always cooperate.
Wake up, Kilmer, the voices said, you made Dutch a promise. No scandal, you told him, and he took
you at your word, no questions asked.
Wake up, Kilmer, you can?t erase twenty years with a kiss and a smile and a roll in the hay. 1963 is
history. You had prospects then. What have you got now? Stick spelled it out, the Holiday Fucking
Inn, that?s what you?ve got. Now that would really give Doe a laugh—for about the first five minutes.
Wake up, Kilmer. You don?t even know what?s real and what?s fantasy anymore.
I was getting pretty fed up with the muses, and the radio didn?t help. It was set on one of those easylistening stations and Eydie Gorme was singing “Who?s Sorry Now?” Just what I needed, background
music with a sob in every note.
I lifted my foot and turned on the hot water with my toes and waited until I had to grit my teeth to
stand it. The water was reaching the boiling point when I turned it off. That killed another fifteen
minutes.
I needed to get a little perspective on things, separate what was real and what I wanted to be real. I
