`Ànd when you wrote San Diego on your gadget there and it came into my head at the same time . . .”
He nodded, encouraging me.
`Ìt isn’t just the Fulwider Building you own, is it?” I swallowed, trying to get rid of a large blockage in my throat that
had no intention of going anywhere. “You own everything.”
But Landry was shaking his head. “Not everything. Just Los Angeles and a few
surrounding areas. This version of Los
Angeles, that is, complete with the occasional continuity glitch or made-up
addition.”
“Bull,” I said, but I whispered the word.
“See the picture on the wall to the left of the door, Clyde?”
I glanced at it, but hardly had to; it was Washington crossing the Delaware, and it had been there since . . . well, since
Hector was a pup.
Landry had taken his plastic Buck Rogers steno machine back onto his lap, and was bending over it.
“Don’t do that!” I shouted, and tried to reach for him. I couldn’t do it. My arms had no strength, it seemed, and I could
summon no resolve. I felt lethargic, drained, as if I had lost about three pints of blood and was losing more all the time.
He rattled the keys again. Turned the machine toward me so I could read the words in the window. They read: On the
wall to the left of the door leading out to Candy-Land, Our Revered Leader hangs . . .
but always slightly askew. That’s
my way of keeping him in perspective.
I looked back at the picture. George Washington was gone, replaced by a photo of
Franklin Roosevelt. F.D.R. had a grin
on his face and his cigarette holder jutting upward at that angle his supporters think of as jaunty and his detractors as
arrogant. The picture was hanging slightly askew.
`Ì don’t need the laptop to do it,” he said. He sounded a little embarrassed, as if I’d accused him of something. `Ì can
do it just by concentrating–as you saw when the numbers disappeared from your
blotter–but the laptop helps.
Because I’m used to writing things down, I suppose. And then editing them. In a way, editing and rewriting are the most
fascinating parts of the job, because that’s where the final changes–usually small
but often crucial–take place and the
picture really comes into focus.”
I looked back at Landry, and when I spoke, my voice was dead. “You made me up, didn’t you?’
He nodded, looking strangely ashamed, as if what he had done was something dirty.
“When?” I uttered a strange, croaky little laugh. `Òr is that the right question?’
`Ì don’t know if it is or isn’t,” he said, `ànd I imagine any writer would tell you about the same. It didn’t happen all at
once–that much I’m sure of. It’s been an ongoing process. You first showed up in Scarlet Town, but I wrote that back
in 1977 and you’ve changed a lot since then.”
1977, I thought. A Buck Rogers year for sure. I didn’t want to believe this was
happening, wanted to believe it was all a
dream. Oddly enough, it was the smell of his cologne that kept me from being able to do that–that familiar smell I’d
never smelled in my life. How could I have? It was Aramis, a brand as unfamiliar to me as Toshiba.
But he was going on.
“You’ve grown a lot more complex and interesting. You were pretty one-dimensional to start with.” He cleared his
throat and smiled down at his hands for a moment. “What a pisser for me.”
He winced a little at the anger in my voice, but made himself look up again, just the same. “Your last book was How
Like a Fallen Angel. I started that one in 1990, but it took until 1993 to finish.
I’ve had some problems in the interim.
My life has been . . . interesting.” He gave the word an ugly, bitter twist.
“Writers don’t do their best work during
interesting times, Clyde. Take my word for it.”
I glanced at the baggy way his hobo clothes hung on him and decided he might have a point there. “Maybe that’s why