Jonathan Carroll - Kissing The Beehive

VIP免费

2024-12-19 0 0 327.39KB 110 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Jonathan Carroll

KISSING THE BEEHIVE

flyleaf:

Bestselling author Sam Bayer is stuck. Burned out from his third

divorce, bored with the formulaic rut his writing has fallen into, and unable

to deliver the manuscript for which he has been paid a stratospheric advance,

he is desperate for inspiration. But a chance visit to his hometown of Crane's

View, New York, sparks his imagination. Soon he immerses himself in an

unsolved case of murder that took place when he was a teenager -- Sam himself

had discovered the body of the victim, a beautiful and wild teenage girl named

Pauline. At the same time he is drawn into an explosive affair with a gorgeous

but seriously loopy fan with the improbable name of Veronica Lake.

As Sam learns the disturbing facts about his lover's past, Pauline's

murderer reappears -- not only endangering Sam but putting his beloved

fifteen-year-old daughter in jeopardy as well. Not knowing whom to trust, Sam

has to brace himself for the truly unexpected resolution to this decades-old

mystery.

Jonathan Carroll has crafted another of the unique and mesmerizing

novels that have long captivated his devoted following of readers. With wit,

pacing, and this gripping story, Jonathan Carroll continues to astound.

"Jonathan Carroll is far superior to most writers working today,

anywhere. His perceptive, death-haunted tales are so evocative, and

unforgettable, that after reading them it's hard not to imagine that the

events describe did not happen to you." -- _Spin_ magazine

JONATHAN CARROLL is the author of eight previous novels, including _The

Land of Laughs_, _Outside the Dog Museum_, _After Silence_, and _From the

Teeth of Angels_. He lives in Vienna, Austria.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance

to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Lyrics from "Bulls on Parade" written and arranged by Rage Against the

and Retribution Music. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8

permission.

The poem "A Ritual to Read to Each Other," reprinted from _West of Your

William Stafford. Reprinted by permission of the estate of William Stafford.

The poems "XLI" and "XLII" reprinted from _100 Live Sonnets_ by Pablo

Nerucla, translated by Stephen Tapscott, by permission of The University of

Neruda.

Two quotations from _The Book of Job_, translated by Stephen Mitchell,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carroll, Jonathan, 1949 --

Kissing the beehive: a novel /Jonathan Carroll.

p. cm. I. Title.

PS3553.A7646K57 1998

813'.54 -- dc21 97-19399

CIP

ISBN 0-385-48011-3

Printed in the United States of America

January 1998

First Edition

10 987654 3 21

_Book design by Claire Naylon Vaccaro_

Pat Conroy

Stephen King

Michael Moorcock

Paul West

Friends/ Mentors/ Wizards

If you don't know the kind of

person I am and I don't know

the kind of person you are a

pattern that others made

may prevail in the world and

following the wrong god home

we may miss our star.

-- WILLIAM STAFFORD, "_A Ritual_

_to Read to Each Other"_

One

I do not like to eat alone and that is one of the reasons why I became

famous. There is something both pathetic and unattractive about a person

eating by himself in public. Better to stay at home drinking orange soup from

a can with a handful of dry white crackers in front of the TV, than be seen

sitting by yourself waiting for that forlorn single meal to be served.

I was having lunch with my agent, Patricia Chase, when I made this

observation. Patricia is a big beautiful woman with balls of titanium. She

looked at me as she has so often over the twenty years we've known each other

-- her unique mixture of amusement, exasperation and scowl.

"Where do you come up with these ideas, Sam? There's nothing _nicer_

than having a meal by yourself! You bring along a book or your favorite

magazine, you don't have to talk or be the life of the party, you eat at your

own speed . . . I love eating by myself."

I ignored her. "On the other hand, the greatest thing in life is having

dinner in a restaurant with a new woman. You order, and then you really get to

talk with her for the first time. Everything till then has just been chatter.

There's something magical about sitting with that new being in your life in a

nice restaurant . . ."

She smiled and took a roll from the basket. "Well, my boy, you've had

your share of meals with new women over the years. What's the latest report on

Irene?"

"She calls and taunts me with the fact that she's hired one of the best

divorce lawyers in the city. Then she cackles when she says how much she's

going to ask for in court."

"But you had that prenuptial agreement thing."

"Those sound good when you're getting married, but somehow they go up in

smoke when you're getting divorced."

"Irene is your third wife. My God, that's a lot."

"Just because you're mad at the fleas, doesn't mean you burn the

blanket. Whoever said optimism was a good thing?"

"Seems to me that with all the money you're paying the other two, you

should take Irene as strike three and just have girlfriends from now on. And

speaking of money, what's up with your new novel?"

I cleared my throat because I didn't want the next sentence to come out

either a peep or a squeak. "Nothing, Patricia. Zilch. The cupboard is bare.

I'm word dead."

"This is not good news. Parma called and asked what was going on with

you. He's used to chatting. He thinks you're hiding from him."

"I am. Besides, Parma's spoiled. I gave him five books in eight years

and made him a lot of money. What else does he want from me?"

She shook her head. "It doesn't work like that. He gave you a big

advance for the new book and has a right to know what's going on. Look at it

from his side."

"I can't. I have enough to look at in my own life. Everything in the

book is goo. All the characters are stuck in suspended animation and the story

is going nowhere."

"The synopsis looked good."

I shrugged. "It's easy writing a synopsis. Ten pages of snap, crackle

and pop."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Maybe I should get married again. Take my mind off things awhile."

She sat back and had a good laugh. It was nice to see because I hadn't

made anyone laugh for a long time. Especially myself.

The rest of the meal was a wrestling match between my glum and glib

sides. Patricia knew me as well as anyone and could tell when I was faking it.

I assumed her conversation with my editor, Aurelio Parma, had been a bad one

because I was rarely summoned for a business lunch with her. Usually we spoke

on the phone once or twice a month and then had a celebratory dinner whenever

I handed in a new manuscript.

"How far have you gotten?"

"The man's left his wife and is with the girl."

"That was on the first page of the synopsis, Sam!"

"I know, Patricia. That's what I was just telling you."

"Well, what about . . ." She tapped her ringer on the table.

"Forget it -- I've thought through all the 'what abouts,' believe me. I

started a short story but it was so dreary that even my pen threw up. I'm

telling you, it's bad. It's not writer's block, it's writer's _drought_. My

brain is Ethiopia these days."

"You're lucky it hasn't happened before. You've published nine books.

That's quite a few. Sounds like you're just written out."

"Bad time for that to happen. Especially with Irene out there,

sharpening her knives."

We talked about other things, but the subject of my big silence hung

over the rest of the meal like Mexico City smog. When we were finished and

getting up to leave, she suggested I take a vacation.

"I hate vacations! When I was married to Michelle we went to Europe, but

all I wanted to do was stay in the room and watch CNN."

"I liked Michelle."

"I did too until I married her. She thought I could be a great writer if

I only tried harder. What did she think I was doing at that desk all day,

making sushi?"

Patricia gave me one of her wise-old-owl looks. "What would you rather

do, write great books or ones that sell?"

"I gave up trying to astonish people a long time ago. There's a Russian

proverb: 'The truth is like a bee -- it goes right for the eyes.' One of the

few truths I know about myself is I write books that are entertaining, but

they'll never be great. I can live with that. I'm one of the few people I know

who is genuinely grateful for what he's been given. I was in an airport one

day and saw three people reading my books. I can't tell you how happy that

made me."

I thought the subject was finished, but Patricia said, "Need makes you

cry, sing or spring."

"Huh?"

"I know those Russian proverbs too, Sam. I gave you the book, dumbbell!

It's all right to be satisfied with what you're doing if you go to bed at

night feeling good. But _you_ don't anymore.

"You wrote thrillers, they were successful, you were happy. Now you

can't write, you're empty and sad. Maybe it's time to try and write a great

book. See what happens. Maybe it'll get you out of your rut."

There was a long pause while our eyeballs dueled.

"I can't figure out if you're a bitch or a guru for saying that."

"A bitch. A bitch who wants you to get back to work so you can feed all

your ex-wives."

The ironic thing was the day was originally intended to be a

celebration. My latest, _The Magician's Breakfast_, had just been published in

paperback and I was in New York to do a signing at my friend Hans Lachner's

bookstore, Cover Up.

I always like a book signing because it is one of the few times when I

am face-to-face with the people who have shared the most important part of my

life with me -- the time when I am telling them stories. Sure, I get a

screwball now and then who wants me to autograph a towel, or someone I

wouldn't dare sit next to on the subway, but all in all they're nice events

and hearing compliments about my work doesn't hurt either. At first they

scared me because I was convinced no one would show up. I will never forget

the feeling of walking into that first signing session and seeing a horde of

people waiting around for me to arrive. Rapture.

Hans Lachner had worked as an editor for a few years at a famous

publishing house but got fed up with the politics and intrigue. When his

parents died, he took his inheritance and turned it into Cover Up. It was a

small store but beautifully designed, intimate, and his taste in books was

impeccable. I once dropped in and saw him deep in conversation with Gabriel

M?rquez. Later when I told him I didn't know he spoke Spanish, Hans said, "I

don't. But I learned _that_ day."

He had given my third novel, _The Tattooed City_, to a Hollywood

producer he knew who bought it and eventually turned it into a film. I owed

him a great deal and did whatever I could to repay him.

After my lunch with Patricia, I must have walked into his store looking

like Peter Lorre in _M_, because Hans came right over and said I looked like

shit. "Dog or human? There's a big difference."

"What's the matter?"

"I just had lunch with my agent and she fricasseed me."

"Mr. Bayer?"

I turned around wearing an instantaneous big smile and was greeted by a

camera flash square in the puss. When the suns burned onto my retina faded, I

made out a chubby woman wearing a Timberland baseball cap and large

silver-frame glasses.

"Would you mind, Hans?" She pushed her camera into his hand and came

right up next to me. She took my arm. Hans counted to three and flashed my

eyes back into blindness.

"I'm Tanya. When you sign my books, remember I'm Tanya."

"Okay."

She took her camera back and bustled off.

Hans put his arm around my shoulder and steered me toward the back of

the store where a table and chair were waiting. "Tanya always buys two copies

of your books. Gives the second to her sister."

"God bless her."

I sat down and the first people came up hesitantly, as if they were

afraid to disturb me. I tried to be as nice as possible, always asking for

their names and then signing something personal so they could have a smile

when they looked at the inscription. "Breakfast with Charles. Thanks for

sharing this meal with me." "This magician says hello to Jennifer." "To Tanya,

who always buys two and deserves a double thank-you for her support." Time

passed as I signed and smiled and made small talk.

"My name is Veronica. I have a whole bunch, so it's fine if you just

sign them and . . . well, you know, just sign them."

Hans was handing me a Coke when she came to the table, so I didn't look

when she spoke. I put the glass down and saw the book on top of her pile: the

German edition of my first novel.

"Jeez, where'd you get this?" I smiled, looked up at her and froze. She

was a California blond with great waves of hair down to her shoulders. Skin so

radiant and fine that if you hung around her too long you'd have to sit on

your hands or end up in trouble. Her eyes were large, green and friendly but

with a depth and intelligence to them that sized you up while welcoming you at

the same time. The lips were heavy and almost purple, although it was clear

she wore no lipstick. It was a decadent mouth, much too decadent for the

sunniness of the rest of the face. It was a contradiction I didn't know if I

liked. It turned me _on_, but I didn't know if I liked it.

"I bought it in Germany when I was there. I'm trying to collect all

editions of your work, but it's difficult."

"Are you a collector?"

"Not really. I just love your books."

I opened the cover and turned to the title page. "And your name is --"

"Veronica. Veronica Lake."

My pen stopped. "_What_?"

She laughed and it was as deep as a man's. "Yup, that's the name. I

guess my mother was kind of a sadist."

"And you look so much like her! That's like naming your son Clark

Gable."

"Well, in South America they name their kids Jesus."

"Yeah, so when they die they can go to heaven. When _you_ die, you're

going to Hollywood, Veronica."

I signed the book and reached for the next. The Japanese edition. Then

came the Spanish. Outside my own shelves, I'd never seen such a collection.

"You write the kind of books I would, if I could write. I understand

them.""Will you marry me?"

She pouted sweetly. "You're already married."

I went back to signing. "Not for long."

Before we could say anything else, I felt a hand on my shoulder and

smelled the memorable cologne of my memorable editor, Aurelio Parma. "Sam the

Sham. Where are the pharaohs?"

Instantly on guard, I tensed and said, "The _sham_? Are you telling me

something, Aurelio?"

"Nope. I just came down to watch you." Aurelio turned to Veronica. "I'm

his editor," he said condescendingly in his best "L'etat, c'est moi" voice.

Then he flashed his dazzling Italian smile at her.

"I'm his fan." She didn't smile back.

"She's got you there, boss."

Aurelio doesn't like being one-upped. He shot her a glare that would

melt Parmesan, but she looked back at him as if he were an asterisk on a page.

She won and he walked away.

"So Veronica, you're in the diplomatic corps?"

"I came here to see you, Mr. Bayer. I want my five minutes. He gets to

be with you all the time."

"Not if I can help it." I mumbled and picked up my pen again.

"I know this isn't the place to do business, but I'm a documentary

filmmaker. I would really like to do something on you. Here's my card. If

you're interested, please call me. Even if you don't want to be filmed, I'd

love you to call me anyway."

"I'm flattered." I was finished with her books.

She scooped them up and bent down toward me. "And I'm serious."

She looked as good going as she did coming. Her directness was a little

scary, but thrilling at the same time. The next person put a book down on the

table and huffed, "It's about time!"

"Sorry about that. Tell me your name."

Chatting with Veronica had slowed things way down, so I worked fast and

tried to keep my mind on what I was doing. It wasn't till a half hour later

that I looked at the card she had handed me. Another big jolt.

In my novel _The Tattooed City_, the most important moment in the story

comes when the bad guy takes off his shirt and the heroine sees his back for

the first time. In Russian prisons, convicts who have done a lot of time have

their backs tattooed with the most elaborate and Byzantine designs imaginable.

The work is done with a combination of razor blades, needles and inks made

from urine and burned shoe heels. The illustration is the convict's

autobiography -- what crimes he has committed, whether he is addicted to

drugs, where he stands in the prison hierarchy. Each image is symbolic -- a

diamond means he's spent half his life in jail, a spider that he specializes

in burglary, and so on. On my villain, angels, the Russian church, bridges,

dragons, clouds, trees . . . take up almost every inch of his back so that it

looks like a kind of naive painting of the City of God.

Somehow Veronica Lake had gotten hold of the same photograph that

inspired me years ago and used it for her calling card. The exact same

picture, with only her name and telephone number embossed in silver letters

over it. The picture, the memory of how I had worked it into my story,

Veronica's boldness . . . all of them combined to send a big shiver up my

spine. I hadn't been so intrigued by a woman since meeting my last wife.

But the day wasn't finished playing tricks on me. After the signing was

over and I had bullshited my way past Aurelio with a Mormon's zeal about the

new book, assuring him that everything was hunky-dory and boy, wait till you

see it, I hurried out the door. I took a cab uptown to the garage where I'd

parked my car, hoping to beat the rush-hour traffic out of the city. The drive

to my house in Connecticut took a good two hours if there was no holdup, but

gridlock hit as soon as I got on to the West Side Highway. If you have to be

held up anywhere, this road was the most bearable because of its beautiful

view of the Hudson River and the boats of all sizes moving up and down it. I

plugged in a tape of a current bestseller and listened to two chapters of

someone else's words before the cars started moving again. Things got better

once we passed the George Washington Bridge. I sped up, reveling in the

knowledge that this day of forced smiles and false promises was over for me.

However the more I thought, the more I realized no matter how far or

fast I drove up the parkway, my life would still be waiting for me at home.

What the hell _was_ I going to do about this stillborn novel that sat so

lifeless on my desk? For the first time in my writing career, I had discovered

that a novel could be like a love affair that starts off with long kisses and

dancing in fountains, but then turns into your sixth-grade teacher before

you're even aware of what's happening. It had reached the point when I didn't

even like to go into my study because I'd take one look at that pile of pages

and desperately want to beam up to another planet. Any planet, so long as

there were no books, deadlines or Italian editors there. Evil Irene had said

it best: "All the rats are jumping ship, Sam. Even your best friend in the

world -- your imagination."

That was what astonished me most. Until recently it had been so simple.

Every couple of years I would sit down with a couple of characters in mind and

start typing. As I got to know them, got to know their habits and the way they

saw the world, their story would walk out of the fog and right onto the page.

I think it had also been easy because I was nice to them. I never forced them

to do anything. Not all of these characters were my heroes, but I respected

all of them and allowed them to follow whatever course they chose. Some writer

said that in every book he wrote, there came a point when the character took

over and he just let them do what they wanted. For me that happened on the

first page.

What was most disturbing about this new one was how embarrassingly flat

it was. Characters said and did things but you didn't believe any of it

because I hadn't been able to put any blood in their veins or a beating heart

into their fates. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, who had sort of succeeded at

creating life, but not really. Like the doctor's monster, I could see how

patched together and badly stitched my creation was. I knew it was going to go

awry if it ever got up enough energy to stagger off the operating table and

walk into the world.

I was hungry. Hungry and tired and worried. I was going home to a house

that was too big for just me and my dog, Louie. I'd bought the place when a

house in the country with wonderful new wife Irene, a white puppy and a big

room to work in sounded like the best things on earth. Now the house was

haunted, the dog was a misanthrope and my study had turned into Room 101 from

_1984_.

With these cheerful thoughts marching through my head as I entered

Westchester County, I suddenly had an inspiration: I was going to go home.

Home to Crane's View, New York, where I'd spent the first fifteen years of my

life. Although I passed near the town every time I drove to New York, I hadn't

been back there for at least a decade. I'd never been very nostalgic and spent

almost no time thinking about my old days. My second wife Michelle once said

she'd never known anyone who spoke less about their past. I thought about

that, then said I was frankly suspicious of people who went to too many class

reunions or pored over photo albums and high school yearbooks. It seemed to me

something was wrong there -- as if they had left something essential behind,

or were realizing life was never better than back whenever. So I skipped all

of my reunions, lost the few yearbooks I'd kept, and indifferently shrugged at

who I had been growing up.

The last time I'd been to Crane's View was when Michelle and I were

married and she insisted I take her on a guided tour. She was a fanatical

romantic and wanted to see everything. We visited the high school, had lunch

at Charlie's Pizza, and walked up and down Main Street until even she grew

bored of what little there was to see. But those were the days when I was

happy and didn't need a history to sail on into my wonderful future.

It was already seven o'clock when I drove off at the exit, but since it

was high summer, the sky had the golden light of fresh-baked bread. The

winding road to town went past beautiful trees and large estates hidden behind

high stone walls. When I was young, my parents used to take my sister and me

on Sunday drives. How many times had we ridden past these impressive houses

and heard my father proudly announce the names of the people who owned them as

if he knew them personally?

And whatever happened to _that_ nice institution, getting into the

family car and just taking a drive? Sometimes you'd be out for hours, the

parents talking quietly in the front seat, the kids swapping punches or

whispers in the back, all of you delighted to be out together for the day in

the big old black Ford or gold Dodge station wagon. Sometimes you'd stop for

an ice cream or even better at the miniature golf course three towns over

where other families out for _their_ rides had stopped too.

Memories like slow-moving tropical fish swam through my mind as I rolled

toward Crane's View. That's the corner where Dave Hughes fell off his bike,

Woody Barr's house, St. Jude's Church where all my Catholic friends crossed

themselves whenever we walked by. As expected, everything seemed smaller and

gave off the faint aroma of a cologne you had once used but not for years.

It struck me I didn't think much about my childhood because I had had a

good one, albeit nothing special. A wholesome meal that filled me but didn't

stand out in any way. My father worked for Shell Oil all his life and liked

nothing more than to pad around our house in sneakers and khakis, smoking his

pipe and fixing things that didn't always need to be fixed. My mother was a

homemaker in the days when that wasn't a dirty word. They married straight out

of college and enjoyed each other's company for thirty-four years.

We spent our summers in a small house in a town called Sea Girt on the

New Jersey shore. We had a dog named Jack, a series of station wagons; we ate

dinner together in front of the television set watching either Walter Cronkite

or Perry Mason. For dessert we'd have Breyers vanilla ice cream covered with

Bosco chocolate sauce. Television was black-and-white, your hair was a crew

cut, girls wore dresses. What could be simpler?

Just past the high school, Scrappy's Diner was my first stop of the

evening. Decent food, the closest pay telephone to the school, and the patient

good humor of its owners made it one of the two important places for kids in

Crane's View. The other was Charlie's Pizza, but it was so small all you could

do there was buy your slices of pizza and hang around outside on the street

while you ate.

The diner, on the other hand, was large, air-conditioned and full of

comfortable screaming-turquoise Naugahyde booths. There was music and a menu

we could afford. It was ours. Kids own nothing -- everything is either

promised, borrowed, longed for or exaggerated. Scrappy's gave us a place to

plan, dream and regroup. The way it broke down, if you needed to meet on your

way to somewhere else, see you in front of Charlie's. If you needed to talk,

it was Scrappy's.

The place was almost empty when I entered. I stood a moment in the

doorway and let a quazillion memories hit me square in the brain. Every corner

and booth was full of my life. Just seeing the room and smelling the familiar

aroma of Bunn-O-Mat coffee, frying meat, body odor, floor cleaner and wiped

tables reminded me so vividly of another now that had once been as important

as today's. I sat at the counter and turned the revolving seat left and right.

A young waitress wearing too much lipstick and too little energy came

over. Everything about her emanated that slumping spirit that comes from being

on your feet too long or just being eighteen years old and life weighs too

much for you.

"What'll you have?"

"A menu, please."

She opened her mouth to say something but stopped and closed it. Instead

she slowly reached under the counter and came up with a long red menu.

"Today's specials are turkey pot pie and meat loaf." She sighed.

"Do you still make the California burger?"

"Sure! You want one?" To my surprise, her eyes brightened and she let

loose a very friendly smile. Watching her, I saw that this young woman had

only so much energy in her and would consume it all by the time she was only

thirty-five or forty. After that, her life would be sighs and tired gestures

but enough intelligence to realize she'd used up her share long before she

should have. The thought crossed my mind like a shooting star and then was

gone. I looked at the name plate over her breast. Donna.

"Donna? I know a woman named Donna. She has two birds. Two cockatiels."

"Yeah? _And_?"

"Annnd, well, I guess I'll have that California burger, Donna."

As she turned to go, I put up a finger. "Wait a sec. Do you go to the

high school?"

"Unfortunately."

"Does Mrs. Muzroll still teach there?"

"She don't teach, mister, she _naps_. That's where you do your homework,

in Mrs. Muzroll's class. You went to Crane's View?" She threw a thumb over her

shoulder in its direction.

"A long time ago."

She smiled again. "I wish I went there a long time ago!"

"Still bad, huh?"

"Naah, not so bad. I just like complaining. I'll get your burger."

I watched her walk away, then checked out who else was there. A moving

van was parked outside and I assumed the two giants down the counter eating

meat loaf belonged to it.

I stared too long at a teenage couple in a booth who were having fun

shooting paper wrappers off straws at each other. I remembered sitting in that

same booth with Louise Hamlin one night after we'd had a heavy make-out

session behind the school. We drank cherry Cokes and stared at each other with

the delight and gratitude that comes only after hours of monumental

fourteen-year-old kissing. Something deep in my chest tightened at the thought

of that night, and of Louise Hamlin with her strawberry blond hair.

"Here you go. Something to look at while you're waiting." Donna put a

book down in front of me. It was the _Periauger_, the Crane's View high school

yearbook. "It's from last year. I thought you might like to see what it's like

there now."

"Wow, Donna, that's really sweet! Thank you so much."

"I've been keeping it in the back. You can see if Mrs. Muzroll looks any

different."

"I doubt it. Thanks again."

It was the perfect yellow brick road back into my old hometown. So much

was familiar, so much wasn't. I knew none of the kids but the faces in any

yearbook always look the same. Same unnatural smiles, straight posture, tough

guys, geeks, future poets and fools. Only the size of the hair and the styles

change but the faces were the same everywhere. The school had built a new

gymnasium and had knocked down the old auditorium. Mr. Pupel (known and hated

far and wide as Mr. Poodle) still taught French and looked as gay as ever.

Mrs. Bartel still had the biggest tits in the world and Coach Ater still

looked like a warthog thirty years on. All these things heartened me and I

read through the yearbook, even after my good cheeseburger with all the

trimmings had arrived.

"See anyone you know?" Donna leaned over the counter and looked at the

book upside down. Her long brown hair was luminous and thick. Up this close, I

could smell her perfume. It was smoke and lemon at once.

"Lots! It's hard to believe some of these people are still at the

school. Pupel used to make the best-looking boys in class sit in the front

rows. He once tried that with Frannie McCabe, but Frannie knew what _he_ was

up to and sneered, 'What, so you can look up my dress?' "

Hearing the name of the infamous McCabe, Donna reared back and put her

hands on her hips. "Frannie McCabe is my _uncle_!"

"Really? He's still in town?"

"Sure! What's your name? I'll tell him I saw you. You were in his

class?"

"Yes. My name is Samuel Bayer. Sam. We were great friends. He was the

toughest guy I ever met. What does he do now?"

"He's a cop."

"Frannie McCabe is a _cop_? Donna, there's no way on earth Frannie

McCabe could be a cop."

"Yeah, well, he is. He was bad when he was a kid, huh?" The pleased look

in her eye said she'd heard her share of stories about Uncle Frannie.

"The worst! Donna, when I was a kid, if there was one person I knew

who'd end up on death row, it was your uncle. I do not believe he's a _cop_."

"He's good too. He's chief."

I slapped my forehead in astonishment. "When we were kids, if I'd said

he was going to be chief of police here one day, he would have been insulted."

"Hey, Donna, how 'bout some coffee down here?"

She looked at the moving men and nodded. "You should go to the station

and say hi. He'd like that. He's always down there." She picked up a coffee

pot and walked away.

I continued looking through the book as I ate. The football team had

done well, the basketball team hadn't. The spring play was _West Side Story_.

The makeup on the kids was so bad, all of the actors looked like they were

from _The Addams Family_. I flipped through the pages past the computer club,

chess club, kitchen and janitorial staff. Ninth grade, tenth grade and then

there it was, a face I didn't know, but a name I _did_ know, and a memory as

large as my life: Pauline Ostrova.

"Jesus Christ! Donna? Could you come here a minute?" My voice must have

been way too loud because both she and the moving men looked at me with wide

eyes. "Yeah?"

I pointed to a picture. "Do you know her? Pauline Ostrova?"

"Yes. I mean I know her, but she's not like a _friend_ or anything.

Why?" "What's she like?" For a moment I didn't realize I was holding my breath

in anticipation.

"Sort of weird. Smart. Into computers and stuff. She's a brain. Why, you

know her family? You know _about_ them?"

"Uh-huh. I know a lot about them."

She leaned in closer, as if about to tell me a secret. "You know about

the other Pauline? Her aunt? What happened to her?"

"Donna, I found the body."

I left the diner feeling so good that I could have rumbaed around the

parking lot. In the car I turned the radio on full blast and sang along to the

Hollies' song "Bus Stop."

I _had_ it. I finally had it again and the fact was so glorious and

exciting that I felt bullet-proof. _I had it_! It was almost nine at night

when I picked up the car phone and started dialing the office number of

Aurelio Parma, editorial gargoyle, afrit and human Ebola virus to tell him

_Ha_! I have the idea for an incredible new book! Plus everything is already

_there_: no need to create a thing. The phone rang in his office until,

through the rocket's red glare of my enthusiasm, I realized he had gone home

hours before. But I had to talk to someone about this. I got out my address

book and found Patricia Chase's home number. In all the years we had worked

together, I had never once called Patricia at home. Now I knew I'd have an

embolism if I didn't.

I waited while her phone rang. Across the street was a gas station that

had once been Flying A, then Gulf, Sunoco, then Citgo. Now it was Exxon and

looked very hi-tech modern, although there was no garage where cars could be

repaired. Just the gas pumps and one of those tiny markets that cater to

people's addictions -- cigarettes, lottery tickets, junk food and _The

National Enquirer_.

In its earlier incarnation, the station had been where we always rode

our bikes after school to the bright red Coke machine in front. Drinks cost a

dime and that vaguely green glass bottle would come banging down from inside,

ice-cold and curving perfectly into your hand. We'd stand there with our bikes

balanced between our legs, drinking in long bottle-emptying glugs. In between,

we'd watch cars pull in and out for gasoline or to be repaired. We'd name the

makes if they made the grade. "Fuckin' 4-4-2." "Nice 'Vette." "That Z-28'd

kick _your_ ass!" Eavesdropping on the mechanics' conversations as they worked

in the garage had taught us the importance of these great machines, as well as

all the dirty words a nine-year-old needed to know. At home, the pictures on

our walls were of Shelby Mustangs or Cobras, a Chevrolet 327 engine, a

tucked-and-rolled custom-leather interior, the drag racers Don Prudhomme or

"Swamp Rat" Don Garlits.

"Hello?"

"Patricia, it's Sam Bayer."

"Sam! Is Aurelio holding you prisoner?"

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

JonathanCarrollKISSINGTHEBEEHIVEflyleaf:BestsellingauthorSamBayerisstuck.Burnedoutfromhisthirddivorce,boredwiththeformulaicruthiswritinghasfalleninto,andunabletodeliverthemanuscriptforwhichhehasbeenpaidastratosphericadvance,heisdesperateforinspiration.ButachancevisittohishometownofCrane'sView,NewYor...

展开>> 收起<<

Jonathan Carroll - Kissing The Beehive.pdf

共110页,预览22页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Jonathan Carroll - Kissing The Beehive

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: