Jonathan Carrol l- The Land Of Laughs

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THE LAND OF LAUGHS

by Jonathan Carroll

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE LAND OF LAUGHS

thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

First published in Great Britain by Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1982.

An Orb Edition

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Design by Heidi M. G. Eriksen

ISBN 0-312-87311-5 (alk. paper)

First Orb Edition: February 2001

For June, who is the best of all New Faces,

and for Beverly -- The Queen of All

Be regular and orderly in your life like a

bourgeois, so that you may be violent and

original in your work.

-- Flaubert

Part One

"Look, Thomas, I know you've probably been asked this question a million

times before, but what was it really like to be Stephen Abbey's --"

"-- Son?" Ah, the eternal question. I recently told my mother that my

name isn't Thomas Abbey, but rather Stephen Abbey's Son. This time I sighed

and pushed what was left of my cheesecake around the plate. "It's very hard to

say. I just remember him as being very friendly, very loving. Maybe he was

just stoned all the time."

Her eyes lit up at that. I could almost hear the sharp little wheels

clickety-clicking in her head. So he _was_ an addict! And it came straight

from his kid's mouth. She tried to cover her delight by being understanding

and giving me a way out if I wanted it.

"I guess, like everyone else, I've always read a lot about him. But you

never know if those articles are true or not, you know?"

I didn't feel like talking about it anymore. "Most of the stories about

him are probably pretty true. The ones I've heard about or read are." Luckily

the waitress was passing, so I was able to make a big thing out of getting the

bill, looking it over, paying it -- anything to stop the conversation.

When we got outside, December was still there and the cold air smelled

chemical, like a refinery or a tenth-grade chemistry class deep into the

secrets of stink. She slipped her arm through mine. I looked at her and

smiled. She was pretty -- short red hair, green eyes that were always wide

with a kind of happy astonishment, a nice body. So I couldn't help smiling

then too, and for the first time that night I was glad she was there with me.

The walk from the restaurant to the school was just a little under two

miles, but she insisted on our hiking it both ways. Over would build up our

appetites, back would work off what we'd eaten. When I asked her if she

chopped her own wood, she didn't even crack a smile. My sense of humor has

often been lost on people.

By the time we got back to the school we were pretty chummy. She hadn't

asked any more questions about my old man and had spent most of the time

telling me a funny story about her gay uncle in Florida.

We got back to Founder's Hall, a masterpiece of neo-Nazi architecture,

and I saw that I had stopped us on the school crest laid into the floor. Her

arm tightened in mine when she noticed this, and I thought I might as well ask

then as anytime.

"Would you like to see my masks?"

She giggled a giggle that sounded like water draining from a sink. Then

she shook her finger at me in a no-no-naughty-boy! way.

"You don't mean your etchings, do you?"

I had hoped that she might he half-human, but this dirty little Betty

Boop routine popped that balloon. Why couldn't a woman be marvelous for once?

Not winky, not liberated, not vacuous . . .

"No, really, you see, I have this mask collection, and --"

She squeezed me again and cut off the circulation in my upper arm.

"I'm just kidding, Thomas. I'd love to see it."

Like all tight-fisted New England prep schools, the apartments that they

gave their teachers, especially single teachers, were awful. Mine had a tiny

hallway, a study that was painted yellow once but forgot, a bedroom, and a

kitchen so old and fragile that I never once thought of cooking there because

I had to pay all of the repair costs.

But I had sprung for a gallon of some top-of-the-line house paint so

that at least the wall that the collection was on would have a little dignity.

The only outside door to the place opened onto the hallway, so coming in

with her was okay. I was nervous, but I was dying to see how she'd react. She

was cuddling and cooing the whole time, but then we went around the corner

into my bed-living room.

"Oh, my _God!_ Wha . . . ? Where did you get . . . ?" Her voice trailed

off into little puffs of smoke as she went up to take a closer look. "Where

did you get, uh, him?"

"In Austria. Isn't it a great one?" Rudy the Farmer was brown and tan

and beautifully carved in an almost offhand way that added to his rough,

piggy-fat, drunken face. He gleamed too, because I had been experimenting that

morning with a new kind of linseed oil that hadn't dried yet.

"But it's . . . it's almost real. He's shining!"

At that point my hopes went up up up. Was she awed? If so, I'd forgive

her. Not many people had been awed by the masks. They got many points from me

when they were.

I didn't mind when she reached out to touch some of them as she moved

on. I even liked her choice of which ones to touch. The Water Buffalo,

Pierrot, the _Krampus_.

"I started buying them when I was in college. When my father died, he

left me some money, so I took a trip to Europe." I went over to the Marquesa

and touched her pink-peach chin softly. "This one, the Marquesa, I saw in a

little side-street store in Madrid. She was the first one I bought."

My Marquesa with her tortoiseshell combs, her too-white and too-big

teeth that had been smiling at me for almost eight years. The Marquesa.

"And what's that one?"

"That's a death mask of John Keats."

"A death mask?"

"Yes. Sometimes when famous people die, they'll make a mold of their

faces before they bury them. Then they cast copies . . ." I stopped talking

when she looked at me as if I were Charles Manson.

"But they're just so _creepy!_ How can you sleep in here with them?

Don't they scare you?"

"No more than you do, my dear."

That was that. Five minutes later she was gone and I was putting some of

the linseed oil on another mask.

My father used to say whenever he finished making a movie that he'd

never do it again as long as he lived. But like most of the other things he

said, it was bullshit, because after a few weeks of rest and a fat deal cooked

up for him by his agent, he'd go back under the lights for a forty-third

triumphant return.

After four years of teaching I was saying the same thing. I had had my

fill of grading papers, faculty meetings, and coaching ninth-grade intramural

basketball. There was enough money from my inheritance to do what I wanted,

but to he honest, I had no real idea of what to do instead. Correction: I had

a very specific idea, but it was a pipe dream. I wasn't a writer, I didn't

know the first thing about doing research, and I hadn't even read all the

things that he'd written -- not that there were that many of them.

My dream was to write a biography of Marshall France, the very

mysterious, very wonderful author of the greatest children's books in the

world. Books like _The Land of Laughs_ and _The Pool of Stars_ that had helped

me to keep my sanity on and off throughout my thirty years.

That was the one wonderful thing that my father did for me. On my ninth

birthday -- momentous day! -- he gave me a little red car with a real engine

in it that I instantly hated, a baseball that was signed "From Your Daddy's

Number One Fan, Mickey Mantle," and as an afterthought I'm sure, the

Shaver-Lambert edition of _The Land of Laughs_ with the Van Walt

illustrations. I still have it.

I sat in the car because I knew that was what my father wanted me to do

and read the book from cover to cover for the first time. When I refused to

put it down after a year, my mother threatened to call Dr. Kintner, my

hundred-dollar-a-minute analyst, and tell him that I wasn't "cooperating." As

always in those days, I ignored her and turned the page.

"The Land of Laughs was lit by eyes that saw the lights that no one's

seen."I expected everyone in the world to know that line. I sang it constantly

to myself in that low intimate voice that children use to talk-sing to

themselves when they're alone and happy.

Since I never had any need for pink bunnies or stuffed doggies to ward

off night spooks or kid gobblers, my mother finally allowed me to carry the

book around with me. I think she was hurt because I never asked her to read it

to me. But by then I was so selfish about _The Land of Laughs_ that I didn't

even want to share it with someone else's voice.

I secretly wrote France a letter, the only fan letter I've ever written,

and was ecstatic when he wrote back.

Dear Thomas,

The eyes that light The Land of Laughs

See you and wink their thanks.

Your friend,

Marshall France

I had the letter framed when I was in prep school and still looked at it

when I needed a shot of peace of mind. The handwriting was a kind of spidery

italic with the Y's and the G's dropping far below the line, and many of the

letters of the words weren't connected. The envelope was postmarked Galen,

Missouri, which is where France lived for most of his life.

I knew little things like that about him. I couldn't resist some amateur

sleuthing. He died of a heart attack at forty-four, was married, and had a

daughter named Anna. He hated publicity, and after the success of his book

_The Green Dog's Sorrow_, he pretty much disappeared from the face of the

earth. A magazine did an article on him that had a picture of his house in

Galen. It was one of those great old Victorian monsters that had been plopped

down on an average little street in the middle of Middle America. Whenever I

saw houses like that, I remembered my father's movie where the guy came home

from the war, only to be killed by cancer at the end. Since most of the action

seemed to take place in the living room and on the front porch, my father

called the movie _Cancer House_. It made a fortune and be was nominated for

another Oscar.

In February, the month when suicide always looks good to me, I taught a

class in Poe that helped me to decide at least to apply for a leave of absence

for the following fall before something dangerous happened to my brain. A

normal lunkhead named Davis Bell was supposed to give a report to the class on

"The Fall of the House of Usher." He got up in front of us and said this. I

quote. " 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' by Edgar Allan Poe, who was an

alcoholic and married his younger cousin." _I_ had told them all that several

days before in hopes of stimulating their curiosity. To continue. ". . .

married his younger cousin. This house, or I mean this story, is about this

house of ushers . . ."

"Who fall?" I prompted him, at the risk of giving the plot away to his

classmates, who hadn't read the story either.

"Yeah, who fall."

Time to leave.

Grantham gave me the news that my application had been approved. As

always, smelling of coffee and farts, he hung his arm across my shoulder, and

pushing me toward the door, asked what I was going to do with my "little

vacation."

"I was thinking of writing a book." I didn't look at him because I was

afraid his expression would be the same I'd have if someone like me had just

said that he was going to write a book.

"That's great, Tom! A biography of your dad, maybe?" He put a finger to

his bps and looked dramatically from side to side as if the walls were

listening. "Don't worry about me. I won't tell a soul, I promise. Those things

are very in these days, you know. What it was really like on the inside, and

all that. Don't forget, though, that I'll want an autographed copy when it

comes out."

It was really time to leave.

The rest of the winter trimester passed quickly, and Easter break came

almost too soon. Over the holiday I was tempted to back out of the whole thing

several times, because leaping into the unknown with a project I didn't even

know how to begin, much less complete, was not at all inspiring. But they'd

hired my replacement, I'd bought a new little station wagon for the trip out

to Galen, and the students certainly weren't pulling on my coattails to stay.

So I thought that no matter what happened, getting away from the likes of

Davis Bell and Farts Grantham would do me good.

Then some strange things happened.

I was browsing through a rare-book store one afternoon when I saw on the

sales desk the Alexa edition of France's _Peach Shadows_ with the original Van

Walt illustrations. The book had been out of print for years for some reason,

and I hadn't read it.

I staggered over to the desk and, after wiping my hands on my pants,

picked it up reverently. I noticed a troll who looked as if he had been dipped

in talcum powder watching me from the corner of the store.

"Isn't that a superb copy? Someone walked right in out of the blue and

plunked it down on the desk." He had a Southern accent and reminded me of some

character who lives with his dead mama in a rotting mansion and sleeps under a

mosquito net.

"Its great. How much is it?"

"Oh, well, you see, it's already sold. It's a rare one. Do you know why

it's not around anymore? Because Marshall France didn't like it and refused to

let them reprint after a certain time. Now, he was a strangey, that Mr.

France."

"Could you tell me who bought it?"

"No, I've never seen her before, but you're in luck, because she said

she'd he in to pick it up" -- he looked at his wristwatch, which I noticed was

a gold Cartier -- "around now, eleven or so, she said."

She. I had to have that book, and she was going to sell it to me, no

matter what the cost. I asked him if I could look at it until she came, and he

said that he didn't see why not.

As with everything Marshall France had written, I fell into the book and

left the world for a while. The words! "The plates hated the silver, who in

turn hated the glasses. They sang cruel songs at each other. Ping. Clank.

Tink. This kind of meanness three times a day." The way all of the characters

were so completely new, but once you'd met them you wondered how you'd ever

gotten along without them in your life. Like the last pieces in a jigsaw

puzzle that go right in the middle.

I finished and quickly went back to passages that I'd particularly

liked. There were a lot of them, so when I heard the bell over the front door

ring and someone come in, I tried to ignore whoever it was. If it was she, it

could end up that she wouldn't sell it and I wouldn't have another chance to

see the book again, so I wanted to eat as much of it as I could before the big

showdown.

For a couple of years I collected fountain pens. Once when I was at a

flea market in France I was walking around and saw a man in front of me pick

up a pen from a seller's table and look at it. I saw immediately from the

white six-pointed star on its cap that it was a Montblanc. An old Montblanc. I

stopped in my tracks and started a chant inside of me: PUT IT DOWN, DON'T BUY

IT! But it did no good -- the guy kept looking more and more intently at it.

Then I wanted him to die right there on the spot so that I could pull it out

of his lax hand and buy it myself. His back was still to me, but my loathing

was so intense that it must have pierced him somehow, because all of a sudden

he put the pen down, looked fearfully over his shoulder at me, and scurried

away. The first thing that I saw when I looked up from the France book was a

nice denim-skirted fanny. It had to be her. PUT IT DOWN, DON'T BUY IT! I tried

to cut my look straight through the denim and skin underneath all the way to

her soul, wherever it was. GO AWAY, LADY! I WHAMMY YOU TO GO AWAY AND LEAVE

THIS BOOK HERE HERE HERE!

"The gentleman over there is looking at it. I didn't think that you'd

mind."I suddenly had this wild romantic hope that she would be lovely and

smiling. Lovely and smiling because she had the world's best taste in books.

But she was neither. The smile was only partly there -- a little confusion and

beginning anger mixed together -- and her face was pretty/plain. A clean,

healthy face that was raised on a farm or out in the country someplace, but

never in the sun that much. Straight brown hair but for a small upward flip

when it reached her shoulders, as if it were afraid to touch them. A sprinkle

of light, light freckles, straight nose, wide-set eyes. More plain than pretty

the more you looked at her, but the word "healthy" kept going through my mind.

"I wish you hadn't."

I didn't know which one of us she was talking to. But then she marched

over and pulled it out of my hand like my mother catching me with a dirty

magazine. She brushed the light-green cover twice, and only then did she look

directly at me. She had thin, rust-colored eyebrows that curved up at the

ends, so that even when she was frowning she didn't look too mad.

The dealer came dancing up and whisked my beloved out of her hands with

a "May I?" and moved back behind the desk, where he started wrapping it in

beige tissue paper. "I've been right here on this corner for twelve years, and

sometimes I've had quite a few Frances, but usually it's a drought with him,

just an absolute desert drought. Certainly _Land of Laughs_ in the first

edition is easy enough to find, because he was so popular by then, but _The

Green Dog's Sorrow_ in a first or any edition is as hard to find as the

Hydra's teeth. Say, listen, I think I have a _Land of_ in the back of the

store if either of you'd be interested." He looked at us, eyes atwinkle, but I

already had a first that I'd paid a fortune for in New York, and my opponent

was digging around for something in her handbag, so he shrugged off the No

Sale and went back to wrapping. "That'll be thirty-five dollars, Ms. Gardner."

Thirty-five! I would have paid . . . "Uh, Ms. Gardner? Uh, would you be

willing to sell the book to me for a hundred? I mean, I can pay you right now

for it, cash."

The guy was standing behind her when he heard my price, and I saw his

lips move up and down like two snakes in pain.

"A hundred dollars? You'd pay a hundred dollars for this?"

It was the only France book that I didn't have, much less in the first

edition, but somehow the tone of her voice made me feel dirty-rich. But only

for a moment, only for a moment. When it came to Marshall France, I'd be dirty

all day, so long as I could have the book. "Yes. Will you sell it?"

"I'm really not one to interfere, Ms. Gardner, but one hundred dollars

is quite an extraordinary price even for this France."

If she was tempted and if the book meant as much to her as it did to me,

then she was feeling pain. I almost felt sorry for her in a way. Finally she

looked at me as if I'd done something nasty to her. I knew she was going to

say yes to my offer and disappoint herself.

"There's a color Xerox machine in town. I want to have it copied first,

then I'll . . . then I'll sell it to you. You can come over and pick it up

tomorrow night. I live at 189 Broadway, the second floor. Come at . . . I

don't know . . . Come at eight."

She paid for it and left without saying anything more to either of us.

When she was gone, the man read the little slip that had been in the book and

told me that her name was Saxony Gardner and that besides Marshall France

books she'd told him to keep an eye out for any old books on puppets.

She lived in a section of town where you rolled your windows up in the

car as soon as you drove into it. Her apartment was in a house that must have

once been pretty snazzy -- lots of gingerbread and a big comfortable porch

that wrapped around the whole front of the place. But now all that it looked

out on was the singed skeleton of a Corvair that had been stripped of

everything but the rearview mirror. An old black guy wearing a hooded gray

sweatshirt was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, and because it was

dark, it took me a moment to see that he had a black cat on his lap.

"Howdy doody, partner."

"Hi. Does Saxony Gardner live here?"

Instead of answering my question, he brought the cat up to his face and

crooned, "Cat-cat-cat" to it, or at it, or something. I don't like animals too

much. "Uh, I'm sorry, but could you _tell_ me if --"

"Yes. Here I am." The screen door swung open and there she was. She

walked over to the old man and touched him on the top of his head with her

thumb. "It's time for bed, Uncle Leonard."

He smiled and handed her the cat. She watched him go and then vaguely

motioned me to his chair with a wave of her hand.

"Everyone calls him Uncle. He's a nice man. He and his wife live on the

first floor, and I have the second." She had something under her arm, which

after a while she took out and shoved at me. "Here's the book. I never would

have sold it to you if I didn't need the money. You probably don't care about

that, but I just wanted to tell you. I sort of hate you and am grateful to you

at the same time." She began to smile, but then she stopped and ran her hand

through her hair. It was a funny trait that was hard to get used to at first

-- she rarely did more than one thing at a time. If she smiled at you, then

her hands were still. If she wanted to brush the hair away from her face, she

stopped smiling until she'd brushed.

After I had the book I noticed that it had been neatly rewrapped in a

piece of paper that must have been a copy of some old handwritten sheet music.

It was a nice touch, but all I wanted to do was tear it off and begin reading

the book again. I knew that'd be rude, but I was thinking about how I'd do it

when I got home. Grind some beans in the Moulinex, make a fresh pot of coffee,

then settle in the big chair by the window with the good reading light . . .

"I know it's none of my business, but why on earth would you pay a

hundred dollars for that book?"

How do you explain an obsession? "Why would you pay thirty-five? From

everything you've said so far, you can't afford _that_."

She pushed off the post she'd been leaning on and stuck her chin out,

tough-guy style. "How do you know what I can afford and what I can't? I don't

have to sell it to you, you know. I haven't taken your money yet or anything."

I got up from Leonard's tired chair and dug into my pocket for the fresh

hundred-dollar bill I always carry hidden in a secret compartment of my

wallet. I didn't need her, and vice versa, and besides, it was getting cold

and I wanted to be out of that neighborhood before the jungle war drums and

tribal dancing began on the hood of the Corvair. "I've, uh, really got to go.

So here's the money, and I'm very sorry if I was rude to you."

"You were. Would you like a cup of tea?"

I kept flashing the snappy new bill at her, but she wouldn't take it. I

shrugged again and said okay to the tea, and she led me into the House of

Usher.A three-watt brown-yellow bug light burned in the hall outside what I

took to be Uncle Leonard's door. I had expected the place to smell like low

tide, but it didn't. In fact it smelled sweet and exotic; I was sure it was

some kind of incense. There was a staircase just past the light. It turned out

to be so steep that I thought it might lead to the base camp on El Capitan,

but I finally made it up in time to see her going through a door, saying

something over her shoulder that I didn't catch.

What she probably said was watch your head, because the first thing I

did when I walked through her door was wrap myself in a thousand-stringed

spiderweb, which gave me a minor heart attack. It turned out to be puppet

strings, or I should say one of the puppets' strings, because they were

hanging all around the room in elaborately different macabre poses that

reminded me of any number of dreams I'd had.

"Just please don't call them puppets. They're all marionettes. What kind

of tea would you like, apple or chamomile?"

The nice smell came from her apartment, and it was incense. I saw

several sticks burning in a little earthenware bowl full of fine white sand on

her coffee table. There were also a couple of strange, brightly colored rocks

on it and what I assumed to be the head of one of the marionettes. I had it in

my hand and was checking it out when she came back into the room with the tea

and a loaf of banana bread she'd baked.

"Do you know anything about them? That one's a copy of the evil spirit

Natt from the Burmese Marionette Theater."

"Is that what you do for a living?" I swept the room with my hand and

almost dropped Natt on the banana bread.

"Yes, or I did until I got sick. Do you take honey or sugar in your

tea?" She didn't say "sick" like I was supposed to ask what kind of sick, or

was she feeling better now?

After I drank what had to be the foulest cup of hot liquid I've ever

consumed -- apple or chamomile? -- she took me on a guided tour of the room

She talked about Ivo Puhonny and Tony Sarg, Wajang figures and Bunraku, as if

we were all best friends. But I liked the excitement in her voice and the

incredible similarity between some of the puppet faces and my masks.

When we were sitting down again and I liked her about a hundred times

more than at first, she said she had something to show me that I'd like. She

went into another room and came back with a framed photograph. I had seen only

one picture of France before, so I didn't recognize this one until I saw his

signature in the lower-left-hand corner.

"Holy Christ! Where'd you get this?"

She took it back and looked at it carefully. When she spoke again her

voice was slow and quiet. "When I was little I was playing with some kids near

a pile of burning leaves. Somehow I tripped and fell into it, and the burns on

my legs were so bad that I had to be in the hospital for a year. My mother

brought me his books and I read them until the covers came off. Marshall

France books, and books on puppets and marionettes."

I wondered then for the first time if France really appealed only to

weirdos like us: puppet-obsessed little girls in hospitals and

analyzed-since-five boys whose fathers' shadows were stronger than the kids'.

"But where did you get this? I've seen only one picture of him, and that

was when he was young, the one without his beard."

"You mean the one in _Time_ magazine?" She looked at hers again. "You

know when I asked you why you'd be willing to spend so much money for _Peach

Shadows_? Well, do you know how much I spent for this thing? Fifty dollars.

I'm one to talk, huh?"

She looked at me and swallowed so hard that I heard the _grumph_ in her

throat. "Do you love his books as much as I do? I mean . . . having to give

this to you actually makes me almost sick to my stomach. I've been searching

for a copy for years." She touched her forehead and then ran her fingertips

down the side of her pale face. "Maybe you should take it now and just go."

I shot up off the couch and put the money on the table. Before I left, I

wrote my name and address on a slip of paper. I handed it to her and jokingly

said that she could come and visit the book whenever she wanted. Fateful

decision.

About a week later I stayed up one night to get some reading done. For

once it was nice to be in my mouse-hole apartment because one of those winter

storms was blowing outside that go back and forth between mean, hard rain and

wet snow. But I've always liked the changes in Connecticut weather after

having lived in California, where every day is the sunny same.

Around ten o'clock the doorbell rang and I got up, thinking some clown

had probably torn a sink off the wall in the boys' bathroom or thrown his

roommate out the window. Living in the dormitory of a boarding school is maybe

the third or fourth circle of hell. I opened the door with a halfhearted snarl

ready on my lips.

She was wearing a black poncho that hooded her head and then went all

the way down to her knees. She reminded me of an Inquisition priest, except

that her robe was rubber.

"I came to visit. Do you mind? I brought some things to show you."

"Great, great, come on in. I was wondering why _Peach Shadows_ was so

excited today."

She was in the midst of pulling the hood off her head when I said that.

She stopped and smiled up at me. It was the first time I realized how short

she was. Against the black, rain-shiny poncho, her face glowed wet white. A

kind of strange pink-white, but nice and sort of babylike at the same time. I

hung up the dripping coat and pointed her toward the living room. At the last

moment I remembered her puppets and that she hadn't seen my masks yet. I

thought about the last woman who'd come to see them.

Saxony took a couple of steps into the room and stopped. I was behind

her, so I didn't get to see the first expression on her face. I wish I had.

After several seconds she moved toward them. I stood in the doorway wondering

what she would say, wondering which ones she'd want to touch or take down off

the wall.

None of them. She spent a long time looking, and at one point reached

out to touch the red Mexican devil with the great blue snake winding down his

nose and into his mouth, but her hand stopped halfway and fell to her side.

Still with her back to me, she said, "I know who you are."

I leveled one of my best smirks at her lower back. "You know who I am?

You mean you know who my father is. It's no big secret. Turn on the television

any night to _The Late Show_."

She turned around and slid her hands into the little patch pockets of

the same blue denim dress she'd worn in the bookstore that day. "Your father?

No, I mean you. I know who you are. I called the school the other day and

asked about you. I told them I was from a newspaper and was doing a story

about your family. Then I went to an old _Who's Who_ and some other books and

looked up things about you and your family." She two-fingered a little square

of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it. "You're thirty and you had a

brother, Max, and a sister, Nicolle, who were both older than you. They were

killed in the same plane crash with your father. Your mother lives in

Litchfield, Connecticut."

I was stunned both by the facts and by her chutzpah in so calmly

admitting what she'd been doing.

"The school secretary said that you went to Franklin and Marshall

College and graduated in 1971. You've taught here for four years, and one of

the kids in your American literature class that I talked to said that you're

'all right' quote-unquote as a teacher." She folded the paper up again and

slid it back into her pocket.

"So what's with the investigation? Am I under suspicion?"

She kept her hand in her pocket. "I like to know about people."

"Yeah? And?"

"And nothing. When you were willing to pay all that money for a book on

Marshall France, I wanted to know more about you, that's all."

"I'm not used to people getting up dossiers on me, you know."

"Why are you quitting your job?"

"I'm not quitting. It's called a leave of absence, J. Edgar. What's it

to you, anyway?"

"Look at what I brought to show you." She reached behind her and pulled

something out from beneath her gray pullover sweater. Her voice was very

excited as she handed it to me, "I knew it existed but I never thought I'd be

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THELANDOFLAUGHSbyJonathanCarrollThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisnovelareeitherfictitiousorareusedfictitiously.THELANDOFLAUGHSCopyright(c)1980byJonathanCarrollAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbook,orportionsthereof,inanyform.Thisbookisprintedonacid-freepa...

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