juke joint.
"Now Hollywood wants to buy one of his books, not the Gilles de Rais, the one we thought would be a sure shot, Bury All Towers, but another one, this tiny little novel about a man on death row awaiting execution and another who comes out of a ten-year
coma, been out of print twelve years at least. Ray doesn't have an agent and asked me to negotiate the contract for him, which
I did. But then all of a sudden Ray stopped answering his mail. We call, this man who seldom steps outside the trailer, rolls
from bed to the kitchen counter where he works and back to bed, with time out maybe for a sandwich and three pots of coffee,
he's never home. I send telegrams—no response. Meanwhile the producer's calling us up two, three times a week. We tell him
we're on top of it, naturally.
"Sorry. I've rather torn into it here, haven't I? Forever leaping into things. Always saying sorry too, come to think of it.
Mother was an actress. Grand entrances all her life. And spent most of her life apologizing, trying to explain away her regrets.
"What she really was was one of the first rock-and-rollers, sang background for an awful lot of those late Fifties, Dell Shannon,
Dion, Brian Hyland things. But all her life she insisted on actress, which was the way she'd started out."
Don and I waited. New York seemed to have run down.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gardner," I said.
Don grunted. I could have told you within inches, just from the sound, where he was. "Guess I better get on downtown. Shift
changes in a couple hours and we're half a dozen men short as usual." He'd been put on the desk while recuperating from a
near-fatal gunshot, kept there because with him at the helm, for the first time in years the shipfoiled to run aground. He
hated it. "Later, Lew."
The door fanned open and shut to the sound of recycling laughter.
"You're not up to this, I need to leave, just tell me," Gardner said.
"Company's appreciated. No extra points for distance, though."
"Distance is easy. A thing I'm good at."
"We all have our strengths."
Was there, then, another rusde of wings at the window? A sound like LaVerne's satin dresses or gown.
"People out there in the lobby watching, whatsit, Days of Our Lives" Gardner said. "Doctors playing back tapes they'd made secredy months ago when everyone believed Sylvia was dying and husband
Dean sat there day after day telling her 'all the things I've never told anyone.' Now Sylvia's made this miraculous recovery and it's—organ chord—Truth Time. My mother used to watch that show."
"Lots did. And still do."
"Not exactly Dostoevski or Dickens."
"Not even Irwin Shaw."
"But it's all we have. What we live with."
I listened to my visitor's foot drag towards the window. He pulled the window open. I was surprised this proved possible in
such a building. But yes, there were sudden new tides of air, smell, sound.
"Maybe what people are starting to say, is true. Maybe what those like myself do, everything we believe in—literature, fine
music, fine writing, the arts generally—maybe none of that matters anymore. We're digging up ruins. Quaint as archaeologists."
"I assume your Mr. Amano doesn't write soap operas."
Gardner laughed. "Actually, now that you mention it, he did for a while a few years back. Paid the rent, bought groceries, kept (as he said) slim body and slimmer soul together. Not
something he wants remembered. And they were exceedingly strange soap operas.
"But I've gotten astray of any point, haven't I? Sorry.
"There's that word again.
"Mountain and Mohammed time, I finally decided. Flew in from New York, picked up a rental car and drove out to Kingfisher
Mobile Home Park. The door to fourteen-D was open, naturally. Ray told me he had no idea where the key was. TV on inside,
sound turned down, some old movie, flickers of light. Four plates, rinsed but far from clean, stacked by the side of the sink.
Carry-out cartons in the trash, also a package of
"Now Hollywood wants to buy one of his books, not the Gilles de Rais, the one we thought would be a sure shot, Bury All Towers, but another one, this tiny little novel about a man on death row awaiting execution and another who comes out of a ten-year
coma, been out of print twelve years at least. Ray doesn't have an agent and asked me to negotiate the contract for him, which
I did. But then all of a sudden Ray stopped answering his mail. We call, this man who seldom steps outside the trailer, rolls
from bed to the kitchen counter where he works and back to bed, with time out maybe for a sandwich and three pots of coffee,
he's never home. I send telegrams—no response. Meanwhile the producer's calling us up two, three times a week. We tell him
we're on top of it, naturally.
"Sorry. I've rather torn into it here, haven't I? Forever leaping into things. Always saying sorry too, come to think of it.
Mother was an actress. Grand entrances all her life. And spent most of her life apologizing, trying to explain away her regrets.
"What she really was was one of the first rock-and-rollers, sang background for an awful lot of those late Fifties, Dell Shannon,
Dion, Brian Hyland things. But all her life she insisted on actress, which was the way she'd started out."
Don and I waited. New York seemed to have run down.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gardner," I said.
Don grunted. I could have told you within inches, just from the sound, where he was. "Guess I better get on downtown. Shift
changes in a couple hours and we're half a dozen men short as usual." He'd been put on the desk while recuperating from a
near-fatal gunshot, kept there because with him at the helm, for the first time in years the shipfoiled to run aground. He
hated it. "Later, Lew."
The door fanned open and shut to the sound of recycling laughter.
"You're not up to this, I need to leave, just tell me," Gardner said.
"Company's appreciated. No extra points for distance, though."
"Distance is easy. A thing I'm good at."
"We all have our strengths."
Was there, then, another rusde of wings at the window? A sound like LaVerne's satin dresses or gown.
"People out there in the lobby watching, whatsit, Days of Our Lives" Gardner said. "Doctors playing back tapes they'd made secredy months ago when everyone believed Sylvia was dying and husband
Dean sat there day after day telling her 'all the things I've never told anyone.' Now Sylvia's made this miraculous recovery and it's—organ chord—Truth Time. My mother used to watch that show."
"Lots did. And still do."
"Not exactly Dostoevski or Dickens."
"Not even Irwin Shaw."
"But it's all we have. What we live with."
I listened to my visitor's foot drag towards the window. He pulled the window open. I was surprised this proved possible in
such a building. But yes, there were sudden new tides of air, smell, sound.
"Maybe what people are starting to say, is true. Maybe what those like myself do, everything we believe in—literature, fine
music, fine writing, the arts generally—maybe none of that matters anymore. We're digging up ruins. Quaint as archaeologists."
"I assume your Mr. Amano doesn't write soap operas."
Gardner laughed. "Actually, now that you mention it, he did for a while a few years back. Paid the rent, bought groceries, kept (as he said) slim body and slimmer soul together. Not
something he wants remembered. And they were exceedingly strange soap operas.
"But I've gotten astray of any point, haven't I? Sorry.
"There's that word again.
"Mountain and Mohammed time, I finally decided. Flew in from New York, picked up a rental car and drove out to Kingfisher
Mobile Home Park. The door to fourteen-D was open, naturally. Ray told me he had no idea where the key was. TV on inside,
sound turned down, some old movie, flickers of light. Four plates, rinsed but far from clean, stacked by the side of the sink.
Carry-out cartons in the trash, also a package of
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