New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Television game show hosts -- Fiction
The office door opened and a swarthy man entered briskly. Lennox saw
at once that he was carrying the blue sheets and envelopes of the
threatening letters from "Guess Who." They were stained and discolored
and had been sprayed with a fixative that made them shine. As Lennox
straightened in excitement, Fink spoke.
"Mr. Salerno," he said, "this is Mr. Lennox. He just figured out he's
getting these letters."
Salerno grinned. Lennox was about to speak when suddenly he heard what
Fink had just said. "_Mister_ Salerno," he repeated. "_Mister_ Lennox.
That's the code, isn't it? You're warning him to be careful."
"You see?" Fink said. "It doesn't make any difference if you know.
We're protecting ourselves."
"From me?"
"Not necessarily." Fink stood up. "Now don't worry. We'll try to get
you off the hook by Sunday." He took Lennox to the door and politely
closed it in his face.
Lennox departed, not at all comfortable in his mind, and went home to
change. Cooper was there, in slacks and T-shirt, working feverishly at
the piano. He had a pencil in his mouth, a sheet of manuscript paper
on the music rack, and dozens more scattered around the piano bench.
He was working his way painfully through a chord progression while he
hummed to himself in the high composer's keen that only dogs can hear.
"Fink's crazy," Lennox thought, and resolutely buried the suspicion in
the deepest crevice of his mind.
He tip-toed around the apartment. After he changed, he locked the
Siamese upstairs in his office where they couldn't distract Cooper. He
made fresh coffee and slid a cup against the left side of the music
rack so as not to interfere with Cooper's writing hand. He intercepted
the cleaning woman (this day was vacuum cleaner day for the living
room) and told her to work upstairs first. Exiled from his own office,
he got tools from the kitchen and settled down at the table before the
garden windows to repair his gimmick book.
In some primitive cultures it is believed that a man's soul can be
contained in an object ... an amulet, a bit of stone or wood, a
fetish ... which is carefully concealed by the owner and earnestly
sought after by his enemies. Destruction of the object means
destruction of the man. Lennox would never admit it, but he felt
exactly that way about his gimmick book. That was why he had become so
panicky when it was lost and quarreled so unreasonably with Cooper.
He spent hours at a time sewing it, mending it with scraps of leather
and metal, until it was a patchwork quilt of the original. It never
occurred to him that his soul might also be a patchwork of makeshift
repairs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account