The Land Of Laughs

I heard about it from A

"I don't know what any of this means now, Thomas." I could hear things bustling, people talking, someone being paged over the loudspeaker in the background.

"What what means?"

"This is the first thing that has gone wrong again since you started writing the biography. I don't understand what's going on."

"Look, A

A Dr. Bradshaw was paged while I waited for her to speak.

"A

"Richard." She hung up.

I started working like a man possessed. Two, three, four pages a morning, research in the afternoons, three or four more pages at night.

I had never gotten over the initial shock of "discovering" Galen, but being there every minute of the day forced me to accept it. I was the moth and the town was the flame, and the damned place had me going in such circles that I didn't know what to do much of the time except to keep writing.

I was living in the middle of the greatest artistic creation in the history of the world. In my own tiny way, I was chronicling the life of the man who had done it. Whether that chronicle would bring him back to life… No, no, that's not true. I was going to say that it made no difference to me whether that chronicle brought him back to life, but that's a bunch of bullshit. He had said that it was possible, and then his daughter had chosen me to do it. That's partly why I sent Saxony away. The other "part" was of course A

I went out very rarely. Mrs. Fletcher started cooking for me, and A

Joa

A

Saxony called and asked if I was aware of the fact that she had already been gone a month.

I wrote Tom Rankin back and told him that I would try very hard to get back for his graduation in June.

My mother wrote, and feeling guilty for having been out of touch since September, I called her and chatted on about how wonderful things were for me these clays.

Joa

I had had enough work for one day and decided to go over to the Green Tavern for a drink. It was nine at night and the town was dead quiet. The snow was slushy in the streets, but up on the sidewalk it was still white and crunchy under your feet. A silent, nasty wind drilled through the dark. Once in a while it stopped, waited for you to come up out of your shell, and then shot back, sniggering. The telephone wires were glazed over, but when the wind gusted it shook them and the ice fell into the street in short straight pieces. By the time I got to the bar I knew I either should have stayed at home or else taken the damned car. It was that cold.

The place had a thick oak front door that you really had to get your shoulder behind to open. A warm blast of stale heat, cigarette smoke, and George Jones's voice from the jukebox. The bar dog – really a dog, as far as I knew – whose name was Fa

Because of the dark outside it didn't take long to get accustomed to the dark fog light in the bar.

I knew most of the people in there: Jan Phend, John Esperian, Neil Bull, Vince Fly

"How are you doin', Tom?"

I turned around and squinted into the darkness. Richard Lee got up from a table and came over.

"What're you having, Tom?"

I sniffed back my ru

"A beer and a shot. That sounds good to me. Joh

Richard smiled and came closer. He slapped me on the arm and kept his hand there. "Come on over and sit down at the table with me, Tom. Fuck these up-your-ass bar stools."

I took off my coat and hung it on a wooden peg by the door. There were other smells in the room now: perfume, potato chips, wet leather.

"So, kid, how're you doing over there at Goosey's? Here's the drinks. Thanks, Joh

I took a sip of beer and a taste of whiskey. One bitterer than the other, the whiskey thick and fiery in my stomach. But it felt good after being outside so long.

"I bet I know one thing for sure, buddy. Ever since Phil Moon's accident, I bet A

"You've got a point there." I drank some more whiskey.

"Yep, that's what I figured. Did you hear about the Collins baby?"

"Yes. Is it still… a dog?"

Lee smiled and drank off the rest of his beer. "I guess so. The last I heard it was. Things are changing around here so fast lately, you never know." He drank some of the whiskey and stopped smiling. "I'll tell you one thing, buddy, it scares the hell out of me."

I hunched in close to the table and tried to talk as quietly as possible. "But why you, Richard? I can see it for the others – the worrying, I mean – but you're normal." I lowered my head toward him and said the word in a whisper.

"Normal, shit! Sure I am, but my wife isn't, and neither are my kids. You know what's been happening to my Sharon lately? I rolled over in the bed one morning last week, and there was fucking Krang on the pillow next to me! Can you believe that?"

I didn't say anything, but I believed it. I had seen it happen the night we went over there for di

"I'm not shitting you, Tom. All of a sudden all of Marshall's characters are begi