Piranha to Scurfy Read Free Page A

managers.
    “We have it, of course,” she said with a radiant smile and picked the paperback off a shelf. He was sure she was going to point out to him in schoolmistressy fashion that he had already had it in hardcover, she quite distinctly remembered, and why on earth did he want another copy. Instead she said, “Mr. Owlberg is here at this moment, signing stock for us. It’s not a public signing, but I’m sure he’d love to meet such a constant reader as yourself. And be happy to sign a copy of his book for you.”
    Ribbon hoped his shudder hadn’t been visible. No, no, he was in a hurry, he had a pressing engagement at twelve-thirty on the other side of town, he couldn’t wait, he’d pay for his book.... Thoughts raced through his mind of the things he had written to Owlberg about his work, all of it perfectly justified of course, but galling to the author. His name would have lodged in Owlberg’s mind as firmly as Owlberg’s had in his. Imagining the reaction of
Paving Hell
’s author when he looked up from his signing, saw the face, and heard the name of his stern judge made him shudder again. He almost ran out of the shop. How fraught with dangers visits to the West End were! Next time he came up he’d stick to the City or Bloomsbury. There was a very good Waterstones in the Grays Inn Road. Deciding to walk up to Oxford Circus tube station and thus obviate a train change, he stopped on the way to draw money out from a cash dispenser. He punched in Mummy’s pin number—her birth date, 1-5-27—and drew from the slot one hundred pounds in crisp new notes.
    Most authors to whom Ribbon wrote his letters of complaint either did not reply at all or wrote back in a conciliatory way to admit their mistakes and promise these would be rectified for the paperback edition. Only one, out of all the hundreds, if not thousands who had had a letter from him, had reacted violently and with threats. This was a woman called Selma Gunn. He had written to her, care of her publisher, criticizing quite mildly her novel
A Dish of Snakes,
remarking how irritating it was to read so many verbless sentences and pointing out the absurdity of her premise that Shakespeare, far from being a sixteenth-century English poet and dramatist, was in fact an Italian astrologer born in Verona and a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci’s. Her reply came within four days, a vituperative response in which she several times used the f-word, called him an ignorant swollen-headed nonentity, and threatened legal action. Sure enough, on the following day a letter arrived from Ms. Gunn’s solicitors, suggesting that many of his remarks were actionable, all were indefensible, and they awaited his reply with interest.
    Ribbon had been terrified. He was unable to work, incapable of thinking of anything but Ms. Gunn’s letter and the one from Evans Richler Sabatini. At first he said nothing to Mummy, though she, of course, with her customary sensitive acuity, could tell something was wrong.Two days later he received another letter from Selma Gunn. This time she drew his attention to certain astrological predictions in her book, told him that he was one of those Nostradamus had predicted would be destroyed when the world came to an end next year and that she herself had occult powers. She ended by demanding an apology.
    Ribbon did not, of course, believe in the supernatural but, like most of us, was made to feel deeply uneasy when cursed or menaced by something in the nature of necromancy. He sat down at his computer and composed an abject apology. He was sorry, he wrote, he had intended no harm, Ms. Gunn was entitled to express her beliefs; her theory as to Shakespeare’s origins was just as valid as identifying him with Bacon or Ben Jonson. It took it out of him, writing that letter, and when Mummy, observing his pallor and trembling hands, finally asked him what was wrong, he told her everything. He showed her the letter of apology. Masterful as ever, she