The attorney said, “Therefore, in my presence and in the presence of the witnesses, God help us, is it your wish that you now execute the document and that we sign the document as witnesses thereto?”
Client responded in the affirmative.
“I will then ask, Mr. Crowstairs, that you now initial each and every page in the lower right-hand corner…”
“I’m left-handed.”
“Then do it in the lower
He was standing now, over Jimmy’s right shoulder, behind him, turning the pages to verify each one was properly initialed (and possibly to insure that Jimmy didn’t sign
It went on that way without hindrance. Jimmy had clearly grown bored with the activity and even bored with the japery that had made the proceedings minimally tolerable. Jimmy reached the signature page and filled in the location of execution of the will, then the date, and then he signed it. Then each of the witnesses signed location, date and name. The latter two added their place of residence. The will was returned to Gross, who asked if Jimmy wanted the will kept in the attorney’s vault and a conformed copy provided to Jimmy, or if the client wanted to keep the original with a conformed copy in Gross’s possession. Jimmy waved a hand negligently. “You keep it; send me a copy.”
Gross said he would do so and, painfully aware that the juice was running out of the presentation, said, “For the record, the witnesses need not be present during any videotaping portion which is about to occur and the only people who will be present will be myself, Mr. Crowstairs, and the two camera persons.”
Yo-ho-ho. Here we go. Up there on the screen Missy, Bran and Eusona Parker rose, walked out of camera range and damned certainly out of the room, and Gross turned to Jimmy and said, “Mr. Crowstairs, if you wish, you may say some words to your beneficiaries or for that matter, to anyone who may have been excluded by you under your last will which we have just executed.”
He placed what was obviously a seating diagram of this room as Jimmy had planned it to be arranged on the desk in front of Jimmy, got up, and backed out of camera range. Now all we had on the screen was Jimmy sitting behind his desk, hands folded demurely, staring out at us, looking right to left as if he really could see us, back there four months ago when he had known for certain that he would live forever.
He looked first at SylviaTheCunt, then at me, then at Leslie, then at Bran who was seeing and hearing this for the first time—which may have been why he hadn’t attended the burial ceremonies—and finally, at my right but Jimmy’s extreme left, Missy. She hadn’t spoken all day.
But I’d make book she knew what was coming.
Jimmy stared at us, and we stared back at him. He kept us waiting. I don’t know what the others wanted—vindication, protestations of love, vast wealth, security for their twilight years, remorse, the slam bang of gin and vermouth, a trip to the moon on gossamer wings—but all
On July 28, 1945, a foggy Saturday on the East Coast, Army Air Forces Lt. Colonel William Franklin Smith, Jr. took off from Bedford, Massachusetts in a B-25 light bomber for La Guardia. Field in New York. A few minutes after 10:00 A. M. Lt. Col. Smith crashed his two-engine bomber into the north side of the Empire State Building at the level of the 78th and 79th floors.
On the 75th floor of the Empire State Building an office worker who had come in to do some extra work over the weekend heard a sound. A terrifying, ominous, hurtling-toward-him sound. He looked out the window to see, emerging from the fog, ten tons of screaming airplane rushing toward him at 225 m.p.h.
I sat staring, waiting for Jimmy to speak to us from beyond the grave. I heard a sound, rushing toward me out of the fog at 225 m.p.h.
This is how Jimmy died.
The story was in all the papers.
It was pried loose, finally, from one of the three
Appropriately enough it was Halloween. That’s Bradbury’s favorite holiday; and it’s mine, and it was Jimmy’s. It was last week.
Jimmy had spent the evening at a party thrown by one of the two married couples who had been inside the black, plush velvet, upholstered ropes at the burial ceremonies. Huck and Carol Barkin. She’s an architect, he’s a writer. They were very close to Jimmy.
Around midnight Jimmy had left. He’d only had a couple of glasses of wine, perfectly sober and, in fact, had been drinking Perrier since ten o ‘ clock. That figures in the story.
He took a cold quart bottle of Perrier with him when he left, swigging it straight from the mouth to his mouth in the car. Then he realized he was almost out of gas, probably couldn’t make it back to the Valley and the ancestral manse, went looking for an open station on a holiday, near midnight, in Los Angeles where odd-even allocation is taken seriously.
He found a serve-yourself that was open, but they wouldn’t let him fill up because it was an odd- numbered day and he had license plates that ended in an even number. So he pulled off to one side and waited for the clock to run past midnight when it would be the next day and he could get pumped up.
I wasn’t there, no one was there in his head, but I know what he was like, and from the story the
What we need is a good opening, a tough literary hook.
Kerch Crowstairs slumped behind the wheel of the Rolls Corniche, listening to the second movement, the
No, too esoteric. Not Hammett enough.
How about this:
He was distracted. Thinking about the past, the future, indefinite times and opportunities passing too fast for analysis. Under him the Rolls hummed softly, waiting for the light to change. Beside him three Chicanos in a decked Chevy raced their motor. Drag for pink slips, mister?
No, too diffuse. Not enough oomph.
I can’t do it, Jimmy. I can’t
What happened was…
He filled the tank. He drove back out onto the street. He was listening to the classical music on KFAC-FM. He was smoking his pipe. He was sitting at the light, waiting for it to change, simply enjoying the cool night air and the pleasant music and the smoke rising from the pipe. The empty Perrier bottle lay on the passenger seat. A car pulled up beside him in the left lane. Someone spoke in the night. He was caught up in the gentle feel of the music washing over him, the sense of ease and leisure. He was relaxed. For once, he wasn’t on, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t hyper. He was feeling good; and he paid no attention to the voice. But it spoke again, louder, coarser, directed at him. He looked across. Two young men, late teens, maybe early twenties, in the front seat. Another one in the back seat, looked asleep. The kid closest to him yelled again. “Hey!
