The Crime Writer Read Free

orange paisley—incontrovertible evidence of cantaloupe. Breakfast, September 23. The last concrete presurgery event I remembered. The dishes carried the weight of archaeological relics. I rinsed them out and put them away, then trudged upstairs, toting the bags of mail and my tumor, and down the floating hall my Realtor referred to as a catwalk.
    More industrious cheer from next door— put ON that GRIN and START right in to WHISTLE loud and LONG.
    My office has the best view in the house. The soundproofed French doors that let into the master were now closed. My chair lay on its back, toppled over; it drew into view eerily, like a body, as I came off the stairs. I stared down at it a few minutes before righting it. Knocked over by a cop during the search? An intruder? Yours truly, lost in my brain-tumor blackout?
    Crumpled in my office wastepaper basket were a faxed offer from an Italian publisher, stubs from Dodgers tickets, and a few pieces of junk mail. Remnants of an ordinary day in oblivious progress. I checked my PalmPilot, clicking backward through all the appointments and meetings I’d missed, until I arrived at September 23. The screen was appropriately blank. As I reseated the Palm in its cradle, I was hit by the bizarreness of investigating myself. I was an intruder in my own house.
    I tapped the speaker button on my telephone and reached to dial, figuring I should order takeout in case my appetite ever returned, but after three digits realized that no tones issued forth. I dug through the grocery bags, unearthing a handful of disconnection notices. My other services, fortunately, autowithdrew from my diminishing checking account, like my cell phone dutifully charging on the file cabinet. I stuck my headset into my Motorola and dialed.
    As Pac Bell’s hold music competed with Snow White, still squalling from next door, I retrieved my e-mail. Expressions of support from friends and readers, a few nastygrams from others convinced of my guilt, a surfeit of Viagra and penis-enlargement offerings that I elected to regard as spam rather than targeted marketing. When I scrolled down to the days around Genevieve’s death, I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved to note nothing unusual.
    I logged out of the e-mail account and stared at the blank screen. The thought of writing anything soon—or ever again, for that matter—was daunting. Nothing like a little old-fashioned trauma to bring the self-indulgence of my job to the surface. The impracticality, too. I wished I had a surgery to scrub in for or, failing that, an orphan to mend. Something aside from confronting a monitor and pretending that what I could think up would be of interest to hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom performed jobs that were actually useful.
    Serge finally came on the line asking how he might provide me excellent service. I explained that I’d lapsed in paying my phone bill but would do so now, and that I needed my service restored. After he finished lambasting me with outstanding penalties and reconnect charges, all of which I contritely pledged to pay, he sighed with disappointment and took down my credit-card number.
    “Can I keep my phone number?” I asked, anxious to retain anything familiar.
    “Your service wasn’t disconnected, just interrupted,” Serge said, “so yeah. We’ll send a guy out to reconnect the line.”
    “When?”
    “By next Thursday.”
    “Can’t you get anyone here sooner?”
    “Maybe. But next Thursday’s the first we can guarantee.”
    This didn’t strike me as excellent service.
    “Listen,” I said, “I can’t not have a phone right now.”
    “Then maybe it was a bad idea to ignore your bill for four months?”
    “Did I reach the call center in India?”
    A brief pause, and then he said, “Oh, right. Andrew Danner. You were otherwise detained.”
    But while extenuating circumstances had granted me my freedom, they were no match for the phone company. Serge remained unmoved, so