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, stuck 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?’
‘The thing is, Doug—’ John made his face radiant. His eyes fastened to mine like Svengali’s. ‘You don’t love me half as much as I love you!’
‘Come on, John—’
‘No, kid, I mean it. God, son, I’d kill for you. You’re the greatest living writer in the world, and I love you, heart and soul. Because of that, I thought you could take a little leg-pull. I see that I was wrong—’
‘No, John,’ I protested, hating myself, for now he was making me apologize. ‘It’s all right.’
‘I’m sorry, kid, truly sorry—’
‘Shut up!’ I gasped a laugh. ‘I still love you. I—’
‘That’s a boy! Now—’ John spun about, brisked his palms together, and shuffled and reshuffled the script pages like a cardsharp. ‘Let’s spend an hour cutting this brilliant, superb scene of yours and—’
For the third time that night, the tone and color of his mood changed.
‘Hist!’ he cried. Eyes squinted, he swayed in the middle of the room, like a dead man underwater. ‘Doug, you hear?’
The wind trembled the house. A long fingernail scraped an attic pane. A mourning whisper of cloud washed the moon.
‘Banshees.’ John nodded, head bent, waiting. He glanced up, abruptly. ‘Doug? Run out and see.’
‘Like hell I will.’
‘No, go on out,’ John urged. ‘This has been a night of misconceptions, kid. You doubt me, you doubt it. Get my overcoat, in the hall. Jump!’
He jerked the hall closet door wide and yanked out his great tweed overcoat which smelled of tobacco and fine whiskey. Clutching it in his two monkey hands, he beckoned it like a bullfighter’s cape. ‘Huh, toro! Hah!’
‘John,’ I sighed, wearily.
‘Or are you a coward, Doug, are you yellow? You—’
For this, the fourth, time, we both heard a moan, a cry, a fading murmur beyond the wintry front door.
‘It’s waiting, kid!’ said John, triumphantly. ‘Get out there. Run for the team!’
I was in the coat, anointed by tobacco scent and booze as John buttoned me up with royal dignity, grabbed my ears, kissed my brow.
‘I’ll be in the stands, kid, cheering you on. I’d go with you, but banshees are shy. Bless you, son, and if you don’t come back – I loved you like a son!’
‘Jesus,’ I exhaled, and flung the door wide.
But suddenly John leaped between me and the cold blowing moonlight.
‘Don’t go out there, kid. I’ve changed my mind! If you got killed—’
‘John,’ I shook his hands away. ‘You want me out there. You’ve probably got Kelly, your stable girl, out there now, making noises for your big laugh—’
‘Doug!’ he cried in that mock-insult serious way he had, eyes wide, as he grasped my shoulders. ‘I swear to God!’
‘John,’ I said, half-angry, half-amused, ‘so long.’
I ran out the door to immediate regrets. He slammed and locked the portal. Was he laughing? Seconds later, I saw his silhouette at the library window, sherry glass in hand, peering out at this night theater of which he was both director and hilarious audience.
I spun with a quiet curse, hunched my shoulders in Caesar’s cloak, ignored two dozen stab wounds given me by the wind, and stomped down along the gravel drive.
I’ll give it a fast ten minutes, I thought, worry John, turn his joke inside out, stagger back in, shirt torn and bloody, with some fake tale of my own. Yes, by God, that was the trick—
I stopped.
For in a small grove of trees below, I thought I saw something like a large paper kite blossom and blow away among the hedges.
Clouds sailed over an almost full moon, and ran islands of dark to cover me.
Then there it was again, farther on, as if a whole cluster of flowers were suddenly torn free to snow
