of Sunset Boulevard were the Garden of Eden–”
`Ì never heard it called that before,” I remarked.
“–and there was a snake in it, one I saw and you didn’t. A snake named Peoria
Smith.”
Outside, the frozen world that he’d called my Garden of Eden continued to darken, although the sky was cloudless. The
Red Door, a nightclub reputedly owned by Lucky Luciano, disappeared. For a moment there was just a hole where it
had been, and then a new building filled it–a restaurant called Petit Déjeuner with a window full of ferns. I glanced up
the street and saw that other changes were going on–new buildings were replacing old ones with silent, spooky speed.
They meant I was running out of time; I knew this. Unfortunately, I knew something else, as well–there was probably
not going to be any nick in this bundle of time. When God walks into your office and tells you He’s decided he likes
your life better than His own, what the hell are your options?
`Ì junked all the various drafts of the novel I’d started two months after my wife’s
death,” Landry said. `Ìt was
easy–poor crippled things that they were. And then I started a new one. I called it .
. . can you guess, Clyde?”
“Sure,” I said, and swung around. It took all my strength, but what I suppose this geek would call my “motivation”
was good. Sunset Strip isn’t exactly the Champs Elysees or Hyde Park, but it’s my world. I didn’t want to watch him
tear it apart and rebuild it the way he wanted it. `Ì suppose you called it Umney’s Last Case.”
He looked faintly surprised. “You suppose right.”
I waved my hand. It was an effort, but I managed. `Ì didn’t win the Shamus of the Year Award in 1934 and ’35 for
nothing, you know.”
He smiled at that. “Yes. I always did like that line.”
Suddenly I hated him–hated him like poison. If I could have summoned the strength to lunge across the desk and choke
the life out of him, I would have done it. He saw it, too. The smile faded.
“Forget it, Clyde–you wouldn’t have a chance.”
“Why don’t you get out of here?” I grated at him. “Just get out and let a working stiff alone?’
“Because I can’t. I couldn’t even if I wanted to . . . and I don’t.” He looked at me with an odd mixture of anger and
pleading. “Try to look at it from my point of view, Clyde–”
“Do I have any choice? Have I ever?”
He ignored that. “Here’s a world where I’ll never get any older, a year where all the clocks are stopped at just about
eighteen months before World War II, where the newspapers always cost three cents, where I can eat all the eggs and
red meat I want and never have to worry about my cholesterol level.”
`Ì don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
He leaned forward earnestly. “No, you don’t! And that’s exactly the point, Clyde!
This is a world where I can really do
the job I dreamed about doing when I was a little boy–I can be a private eye. I can go racketing around in a fast car at
two in the morning, shoot it out with hoodlums–knowing they may die but I won’t–and wake up eight hours later
next to a beautiful chanteuse with the birds twittering in the trees and the sun
shining in my bedroom window. That
clear, beautiful California sun.”
“My bedroom window faces west,” I said.
“Not anymore,” he replied calmly, and I felt my hands curl into strengthless fists on the arms of my chair. “Do you see
how wonderful it is? How perfect? In this world, people don’t go half-mad with itching caused by a stupid, undignified
disease called shingles. In this world, people don’t go gray, let alone bald.”
He looked at me levelly, and in his gaze I saw no hope for me. No hope at all.
`Ìn this world, beloved sons never die of AIDS and beloved wives never take overdoses of sleeping pills. Besides, you
were always the outsider here, not me, no matter how it might have felt to you. This is my world, born in my