The Cold Blue Blood Read Free Page A

Coast,” she said crisply. “Serious old money—more millionaires to the square mile than East Hampton. It’s also charming and unspoiled and way New Englandy. Artists have been drawn to it for years. The Dorset Academy of Fine Arts is there. You’ve heard of it, surely.”
    “Vaguely,” Mitch grunted.
    Lacy managed a tight smile. “Hell, I wish I were going.”
    “So why don’t you? I’ll stay here and work on my Laurence Harvey piece.”
    “It’s a perk, Mitch. A freebie. Only columnists and chief correspondents are supposed to get them.”
    “So how did I get so lucky?”
    “I thought you could stand to get out of the house for a change,” she replied.
    She was right. Mitch knew this. And she was trying to help him the only way she knew how. Mitch knew this, too. He was becoming a recluse. Whole days went by when he spoke to no one. If he didn’t watch out he might turn into Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets . He needed to take charge of his life again. He needed to heal. He knew this. Healing was right up there near the top of his list of things to do—pick up shirts at cleaners, punch out Oliver Stone, play shooting guard for the Knicks, heal. It was right up there. But knowing it and doing it were two vastly different things. Especially when it was so much more comforting to sit watching old movies for days at a time in wounded, Olestra-free isolation.
    “Go to Dorset,” Lacy commanded him. “Write about what you see. And don’t think about anything else for a couple of days, okay? Look, I don’t do the nurturing mother thing particularly well. I know this about myself …” Like all self-absorbed New York media people, Lacy turned every conversation about somebody else’s feelings into a conversation about her own feelings. “But this is what is known in the trade as a wake-up call. Your work hasn’t been up to your usual high standards lately. In fact, your Adam Sandler review was downright hostile.”
    “Okay, time out,” Mitch objected defensively. “That movie was total crap.”
    “Everyone else at the paper thought it was hilarious. The scene in the elevator? I wet my pants.”
    “So did he!”
    “Frankly, Mitch,” she shot back scoldingly, “you no longer seem able to comprehend the concept of comedy.”
    Mitch didn’t disagree. He could smile from time to time, but he did not know how to laugh anymore.
    “Naturally, I’ve understood,” Lacy added tactfully. “We all have. But when you get back we need to talk about where your life is headed.”
    The West Coast, if he didn’t watch out. Oblivion.
    “The getaway is for two,” Lacy added gamely. “Why don’t you take someone?”
    “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

    He took his Power Book, in the hope that he might at long last get rolling on his new reference book on Westerns. He had a ton of notes and raw material on floppy disks, but he couldn’t seem to get started on the actual writing. And it was rapidly becoming overdue. The computer rode next to him on the passenger seat, along with a generous bag of goodies from the Cupcake Café, as Mitch reluctantly piloted his rental Toyota out of Manhattan, his hands gripping the wheel tightly. Mitch Berger was a true child of the pavement—a product of Stuyvesant Town, Stuyvesant High and Columbia. Being a native New Yorker, he almost never drove. And driving in Manhattan, with its cab drivers, potholes, delivery trucks, bike messengers and pedestrians, was no easy task. Particularly during rush hour on a muggy Friday afternoon in May.
    He had stowed his weekend bag in the backseat. Maisie had tried in vain to pep up his semi-shlumpy wardrobe, having once described his look as two-parts teddy bear and one-part tornado. Now that she was gone, he had reverted to what he had always worn—wrinkled button-down collar shirts, roomy V-neck sweaters and rumpled khakis. He owned two sport coats: an olive corduroy and a navy blazer. He had brought along the corduroy in case