The Land Of Laughs

"How are they reacting to it?"

"How the hell do you expect? They're scared shit!"

"How many people has it happened to so far?"

He shook his head and turned the shot glass upside down on the table. "I don't know. Not that many yet, but everybody's scared that they'll be next. What I want to know is when you're going to finish that goddamned book."

The jukebox was still playing, but the talking had stopped all around us.

I fought down a yawn and wanted very badly to be out of there. "I've done a lot. But there's still so much more to go. I have to tell you that. I don't want to lie about it."

"That don't answer his question, Abbey."

"What can I say? What do you want me to say? That it will be done in ten minutes? No, it won't be done in ten minutes. You all want this thing to be good and right, but then you all want it done now. Argh, there's a contradiction there, don't you see?"

"Fuck your contradiction, asshole!"

"All right, fuck it! Fuck it! You say that because you're not writing it. If it stinks in the end, then nothing is going to happen here. That's why France was so great, don't you understand? That's why you're all here. He could write like no one else in the world. For God's sake, why don't you understand that? Whoever writes this book has got to try to write it as well… I don't know, better than he wrote his books…. The journals, everything, everything that he wrote. It's got to be better. It's got to be."

Another voice climbed out of the swampy gloom at the bar. "Fuck that noise, Abbey. You just get that book done soon or we'll fuck you up like we did that other biographer."

The door opened and a fat man and woman came in, beaming. I had never seen them before and assumed that they were from out of town. Normals. The man was slapping his hat against his leg. "I don't know what the hell the name of this town is, Dolly, but so long as they got a drink for me, then it's friendly territory. How are you doin' there, friend? Colder than the dogcatcher's heart out there, huh?"

They sat down on bar stools in front of me and I was so glad that they had arrived, I could have kissed them. I got up to go. Richard had an empty whiskey glass in his hand and was slowly turning it round and round on his fingertips. He watched me get up but didn't say anything more. I went over to get my coat. I glanced at the bar and saw the fat couple talking animatedly with the bartender.

When I got outside, the wind ate me alive, but this time it felt like ambrosia. A Ford Econoline van pulled into the parking lot. The Priest of Spiders from The Land of Laughs got out and turned up the collar of his red mackinaw. He saw me and gave a half-wave. "How arc you doing, Tom? How's your book going?"

He loped over to the big oak door and went through it, still the Priest of Spiders.

I stopped where I was and waited to see what was going to happen. If the fat couple hadn't been in there, it would have been all right, but they were there, and who the hell was going to explain what they were seeing?

The door flew open and three men came racing out, the Priest of Spiders held fast in the middle. The door bammed shut, and the only sound was feet moving through the slush. They were almost to the van when Mel Dugan saw me and stopped.

"You finish that fucking book, Abbey! You finish it or I'll cut off your fucking balls!"

I checked the TV Guide for late movies. Cafй de la Paix was on at 11:30. It was 11:25, SO I got a Coke from the icebox and some green-pepper cheese that I had bought at the market.

The television was an old wooden Philco black-and-white with a huge screen. It also made a great foot warmer on cold nights. I pulled my rocking chair up, arranged the TV table with the Coke and cheese, and put my stocking feet on the side of the set. The music stomped on a combination of "The Marseillaise," "Rule Brita

A shot of the Eiffel Tower. A slow pan down the Champs-Elysйes. It's plastered everywhere with Nazi flags. Cut to a tabac where a little fat guy in a beret is selling newspapers to a kid, cigarettes to an old man, then a bunch of magazines from under the counter to a hand which takes them but doesn't pay. Shot of the fat guy's face as he hands them over. Pure adoration. He says "Merci" as the sound comes up. The camera moves slowly up – the hand, the arm, the face. His face. He winks and walks out of the tabac, the magazines up under his arm. A morning's read at the corner cafй.

I had a slice of cheese in my hand and was about to eat it when I started crying.

He walks slowly down the street – this guy is in no hurry. Tanks rumble past him. Motorcycles with sidecars full of important-looking men in German uniforms.

I got up out of my seat and turned off the sound. I just wanted to watch him. I didn't want to think about the movie, the plot, or the action. I wanted to watch my father. The lights were off in the room. Only the castoff glow from the set onto the living-room floor.

"Pop?" I knew it was crazy, but suddenly I was talking to the screen, to him. "Oh, Pop, what am I going to do?" He walked into a corner bakery and pointed to three pastries that he wanted inside the display case.

"Pop, what the hell am I going to do?" I closed my eyes as tightly as I could. The tears cut wet lines in my face that I felt when I put my hands up to cover it. "Jesus God." I squeezed the heels of my palms into my eyes and watched the perfect colored patterns explode outward. When the pressure began to hurt I took my hands away and watched him through the last of the receding colors. He was in the back of the bakery now, climbing down the steps of a trapdoor ladder. Right before his head disappeared, he stopped and took off his hat. The sound was off but I knew what he said. "Watch my hat, Robert. I just got it for my birthday and she'll boil me in oil if I get it dirty!"

"Fuck you! Fuck you, Father! Everything's always so good for you! Your fucking new hats and everybody loves you. You even get to die the right way. Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" I turned off the set and sat in the darkness watching the screen grow gray, brown, black.

My eyes opened and I was wide-awake. I looked at the green glow of my watch and saw that it was three-thirty in the morning. When I click awake like that I can't get back to sleep for a long time. I put my arms behind my head and looked into the darkness above me. The only sound was the frantic ticking of my watch and the wind blowing outside. Then there was something else. Outside. Outside in the wind and the blue-black night. I turned my head to the window. It was right there, its face and paws pressed up and squashed against the glass. Its body glowed like an unlit white candle.

The moment I heard Mrs. Fletcher drive away, I pulled my suitcase out of the closet and started yanking sweaters, shirts, and pants off hangers. One bag. What the hell did I need? One of Saxony's skirts fell on my head. I tore at it and threw it on the floor. I told myself to be calm, be cool, you have at least an hour before she'll be back. You can be packed and out of here in fifteen minutes if you don't flip your lid, I stopped and tried to breathe regularly. I sounded like a dog in heat.

What do you take when you're ru

The phone rang. I was going to ignore it, but people knew that I was at home, A