“No, kid, no.” He fixed his gaze far into the darkness, savoring his melodrama. “I lived here ten years. Death’s out there. The banshee always knows! Where were we?”
He broke the spell as simply as that, strode back to die hearth and blinked at my script as if it were a brand new puzzle.
“You ever figure, Doug, how much The Beast is like me? The hero plowing the seas, plowing women left and right, off round the world and no stops? Maybe that’s why I’m doing it You ever wonder how many women I’ve had? Hundreds! I—” He stopped, for my lines on the page had shut him again. His face took fire as my words sank in.
“Brilliant!”
I waited, uncertainly.
“No, not that!” He threw my script aside to seize a copy of the London Times off the mantel. “This! A brilliant review of your new book of stories!”
“What?” I jumped. “Easy, kid. Ill read this grand review to you! You’ll love it. Terrific!” My heart took water and sank. I could see another joke coming on or, worse, the truth disguised as a joke.
“Listen!”
John lifted the Times and read, like Ahab, from the holy text.
“‘Douglas Rogers’s stories may well be the huge success of American literature—’” John stopped and gave me an innocent blink. “How you like it so far, kid?”
“Continue, John,” I mourned. I slugged my sherry back. It was a toss of doom that slid down to meet a collapse of will.
“‘—but here in London,’” John intoned, “we ask more from our tellers of tales. Attempting to emulate the
ideas of Kipling, the style of Maugham, the wit of Waugh, Rogers drowns somewhere in mid-Atlantic. This is ramshackle stuff, mostly bad shades of superior scribes. Douglas Rogers, go home!’”
I leaped up and ran, but John with a lazy flip of his underhand, tossed the Times into the fire where it flapped like a dying bird and swiftly died in flame and roaring sparks.
Imbalanced, staring down, I was wild to grab that damned paper out, but finally glad the thing was lost.
John studied my face, happily. My face boiled, my teeth ground shut. My hand, struck to the mantel, was a cold rock fist.
Tears burst from my eyes, since words could not burst from my aching mouth.
“What’s wrong, kid?” John peered at me with true curiosity, like a monkey edging up to another sick beast in its cage. “You feeling poorly?”
“John, for Christ’s sake!” I burst out. “Did you have to do that?”
I kicked at the fire, making the logs tumble and a great firefly wheel of sparks gush up the flue.
“Why, Doug, I didn’t think—”
“Like hell you didn’t!” I blazed, turning to glare at him with tear-splintered eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Hell, nothing, Doug. It was a fine review, great! I just added a few lines, to get your goat!”
“I’ll never know now!” I cried. “Look!”
I gave the ashes a final, scattering kick.
“You can buy a copy in Dublin tomorrow, Doug.
You’ll see. They love you. God, I just didn’t want you to get a big head, right. The joke’s over. Isn’t it enough, dear son, that you have just written the finest scenes you ever wrote in your life for your truly great screenplay?” John put his arm around my shoulder.
That was John: kick you in the tripes, then pour on the wild sweet honey by the larder ton.
“Know what your problem is, Doug?” He shoved yet another sherry in my trembling fingers. “Eh?”
“What?” I gasped, like a sniveling kid, revived and wanting to laugh again. “What?”