to the bathroom. Or to the dentist, for that matter, and my first trip to the one listed in Landry’s Rolodex is something I
don’t even want to think about, let alone discuss.
But there’s been an occasional rose in this nest of brambles. For one thing, there’s been no need to go job-hunting in
Landry’s confusing, jet-propelled world; his books apparently continue to sell very well, and I have no problem cashing
the checks that come in the mail. My signature and his are, of course, identical. As for any moral compunctions I might
have about doing that, don’t make me laugh. Those checks are for stories about me.
Landry only wrote them; I lived
them. Hell, I deserved fifty thou and a rabies shot just for getting within scratching distance of Mavis Weld’s claws.
I expected to have problems with Landry’s so-called friends, but I suppose a heavyduty shamus like me should have
known better–would a guy with any real friends want to disappear into a world he’d created on the soundstage of his
own imagination? Not likely. Landry’s friends were his son and his wife, and they were
dead. There are acquaintances
and neighbors, but they seem to accept me as him. The woman across the street throws me puzzled glances from time to
time, and her little girl cries when I come near even though I used to baby-sit for them every now and then (the woman
says I did, anyway, and why would she lie?), but that’s no big deal.
I have even spoken to Landry’s agent, a guy from New York named Verrill. He wants to know when I’m going to start a
new book.
Soon, I tell him. Soon.
Mostly I stay in. I have no urge to explore the world Landry pushed me into when he pushed me out of my own; I see
more than I want to on my once-weekly trip to the bank and the grocery store, and I threw a bookend through his awful
television machine less than two hours after I figured out how to use it. It doesn’t surprise me that Landry wanted to
leave this groaning world with its freight of disease and senseless violence–a world where naked women dance in
nightclub windows, and sex with them can kill you.
No, I spend my time inside, mostly. I have re-read each of his novels, and each one is like leafing through the pages of a
well-loved scrapbook. And I’ve taught myself to use his word-processing machine, of course. It’s not like the
television machine; the screen is similar, but on the word-processor, you can make whatever pictures you want to see,
because they all come from inside your own head.
I like that.
I’ve been getting ready, you see–trying sentences and discarding them the way you try pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. And
this morning I wrote a few that seem right . . . or almost right. Want to hear? Okay, here goes:
When I looked toward the door, I saw a very chastened, very downcast Peoria Smith standing there. `Ì guess I treated
you pretty bad the last time I saw you, Mr. Umney,” he said. `Ì came to say I’m
sorry.” It had been over six months,
but he looked the same as ever. And I do mean the same.
“You’re still wearing your cheaters,” I said.
“Yeah. We tried the operation, but it didn’t work.” He sighed, then grinned and shrugged. In that moment he looked
like the Peoria I’d always known. “What the hey, Mr. Umney–bein blind ain’t so
bad.”
It isn’t perfect; sure, I know that. I started out as a detective, not a writer. But I believe you can do just about anything,
if you want to bad enough, and when you get right down to where the cheese binds, this is a kind of keyhole-peeping,
too. The size and shape of the word-processor keyhole are a little different, but it’s
still looking into other people’s
lives and then reporting back to the client on what you saw.
I’m teaching myself for one very simple reason: I don’t want to be here. You can call it L.A. in 1994 if you want to; I