Read Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 for Free Online Page B

up
again, bent slightly forward for balance, terry-cloth robe fallen from my
knuckly knees and bunched before my crotch. I seem to be half-turned away from
that charming pool of mine, my face seems to be very
near the polite but businesslike and very properly clad knee of my interviewer,
who gazes down past that knee of his at me with what I now perceive to be
horror and shock. What on earth have I been telling him? Oh, gosh, yes, George. Old George. I chuckle.)
                 The
chuckle goads a reaction from my friend with the pad. Repugnance half
strangling his voice, he says, "You went to bed with George Castleberry?"
                 "Waterbed,”
I say, explain, explicate further, and the memory of that oceanic encounter,
full of slipperinesses and heaving and absurd near misses makes me chuckle
again.
                The interviewer is appalled, well
and truly appalled. "But—" he says, stutters, stumbles,
"but—you're completely heterosexual! All those
marriages, all those girlfriends, all those children!"
                 I
shrug, nod, acquiesce, explain : "It was a great
part."
                 "A great part!”
                 "I
wanted it," I say. "I am an actor, that's what I am. When I don't work, when I can't work, I get into all these things, all this trouble. After Miriam,
after Jack Schullmann blackballed me in the theater, after the empty months of
being nothing and nobody and having no idea where I was going or if I was going anywhere, I wanted it. The role of
Biff Novak was the only thing in the world at that particular moment that I
really and truly wanted. So I got it. And the emptiness went away."
                 "You
had sex with George
Castleberry!" Has ever an interviewer before in history had such large,
round eyes?
                 "Mostly,"
I say, "George had sex with me."
                 Those
large, round eyes blink, the mouth purses. "I'm not sure how that
works," he says.
                 I
reach up a hand, mildly surprised at how badly it’s shaking, and tug at his
nearest trouser knee. "It's easy to understand," I say. "Take
off your pants."
                 Nervously,
betraying his nervousness, he taps my knuckles with his pencil to make me stop
tugging at him. "That's not necessary, Mr. Pine," he says.
                 I
remove my hand from him. This hand is really shaking. "The necessary we do right now," I say, watching the hand.
"The incoherent takes a little longer." Turning my head a bit,
bracing myself with a palm against the cool slate so I don't inadvertently
knock myself over with the force of my projection, "Hoskins!" I
shout.
                 "The
point is," the prissy interviewer says, viewing me with loathing,
"the point is , you slept your way to the
top."
                 "I
did not." I frown at him in offended dignity. "I slept my way to the
middle," I correct him frostily. "I clawed my way to the top."
                 "However
it happened," he says, still coldly upset with me, “you did get the part
of Biff Novak, the lead, in Last Seen in Tupelo .”
                 This
is a statement, not a question. Having nothing to answer, I once again turn my
head and raise my voice: “Hoskins, dammit!"
                 Immediately
he appears, as though dropped from an airplane. He is my butler, and by God he looks it. Whitehaired, stoutish without
being obese, stone-faced, dressed in full fig, he is as much a symbol of my
status as my Mercedes. Bowing correctly from the hips, he speaks with that
proper English-butler accent of his (I love it!): “You called?”
                 “I
bellowed, dammit,” I tell him. “That's your line, Hoskins, as you well know.”
Imitating him perfectly, a thing I'm good at, and dipping my head in pale
shadow of his obeisance, I say, “You bellowed, sir?”