The Love Machine Read Free Page B

traveling tourist in planes, sandwiching his six-foot-three-inch frame into a narrow little seat, all-nightflights with fat women and crying babies as seat companions. And the terrible motels, except for a rare case like Philadelphia, when a good hotel suite was included in the deal.
Robin stared at the suite. It was a proper setting for his farewell performance. Thank God it was over: no more tourist planes, no more mingling with the guests … He could forget about the speech—the speech that had gotten so pat he could deliver it stoned. The laughs always came in the same place, the applause was always the same. In the end, even the towns looked the same. There was always the good-looking, toothy Junior League girl on the welcoming committee to greet him, eager to discuss Bellow and Mailer and the state of the arts. And after the first martini he knew she was going to wind up in the kip with him.
Well, he had humped his way across forty-six states. Now he was “Head of Network News.”
With the first lecture money he had taken an apartment. Nothing fancy but it was better than his hotel room. But he never had a chance to spend any time in it. There was the new desk, the big stack of yellow paper, carbons, even a new electric typewriter to replace his tinny portable. But the job at IBC took up his days, booze and broads took care of the nights, the weekends were spent traveling. Well, that was over now. He’d do a hell of a job at IBC, save every damn cent. And he’d write that book.
Sometimes Robin wondered about his writing. Did he really have it? The Pulitzer Prize didn’t prove anything. Journalism didn’t mean you had a book in you. And it was a book he wanted to do. He’d show the effect of war on men in politics—the resurgence of Churchill, the emergence of generals as politicians, Eisenhower—de Gaulle… . After that, he wanted to write a political novel. But most of all he wanted to see his book become a reality, see the yellow paper transformed into text.
Material things meant little to him. When he saw Amanda purr as she showed him a new pair of shoes, he sometimes wondered about his own lack of interest in possessions. Perhaps it was because he had always had them, at any rate until his father had died, leaving the interest on a four-million estate to Kitty. Upon herdeath the principal of the estate would be divided between his sister Lisa and himself. Meanwhile on $12,000 a month, the glorious Kitty was having a ball. Funny how he always thought of his mother that way: “the glorious Kitty.” She was beautiful, small and blond—hell, she might have red hair by now. Two years ago, when she left for Rome, she was what he called a “plaid” blonde. Kitty said it was frosted. He grinned at the memory. For a fifty-nine-year-old broad she looked pretty good.
His life had been good as a kid—it had even been good through college. The old man had lived long enough to give Lisa the biggest wedding in Boston history and now she was living in San Francisco, married to a crew-cut idiot who was one of the richest real estate men on the West Coast. She had two wonderful kids-God, he hadn’t seen them in five years. Lisa was … let’s see he had been seven when she was born—she must be thirty now, a mother, all settled. And he was still on the loose. Well, he liked it that way. Maybe it came from a crack his father had made. He had been about twelve and his father had taken him out on his first round of golf.
“Approach the game as if it was a subject at school, like algebra—something you must master. You’ve got to be good in the game, son. Many a business deal is consummated on a golf course.”
“Does everything you learn have to help toward making money?” Robin had asked.
“It sure does, if you want a wife and family,” his father answered. “When I was a kid I dreamed of being Clarence Darrow. But then I fell in love with your mother and settled for corporate law. I can’t kick. I’ve