999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [314]
“I told you, it was business.”
“Are you shtupping for the Mafia now, my precious, and no longer, as usual, for all of mankind?”
“Oh, fuck you, Terry.”
“Darling, thousands have tried; only hundreds have succeeded.”
Looking chic in her navy Armani suit, the Realtor stopped pacing and coughed into her fist. “Gotta quit,” she resolved, her eyes smarting and teary. She clattered to a table where she stubbed out her cigarette in a large white seashell ashtray. “Look, I told you, they don’t run this kind of stuff. Not normally.”
“No, not normally,” Dare said inscrutably.
“He’s the publisher; he does what he wants.”
She kept crushing and tamping the burnt-out butt.
“When and where did you commit this unspeakable act?”
Freeboard flopped down into a chair by a window, crossed her arms and stared sulkily at the author. “Jesus, Terry, you could write it in a week.”
“When and where?” Dare persisted.
“At the dinner party Friday. In my bathroom.”
“In your bathroom?”
She gave a little shrug.
“It’s okay. We ran the water real loud.”
The author appraised her as if he were measuring the distance to a star. In her small green eyes set close together he could find no trace of blush or guile; their expression was just as he had always observed it to be, which was blank and vaguely expectant. It was as if she were eternally awaiting further comment. Her soul is a wide-open window, he reflected; she’s as simple and direct as a shopping cart.
“You could write the fucking thing in an hour.”
And more tenacious than the grip of a deep tattoo.
“Now let’s see if this is right …” Dare started expressionlessly.
She looked away and rolled her eyes. “You always do this.”
“You’ve been offered the exclusive listing on Elsewhere,” he reviewed, “but the problem, it would seem, is that it’s haunted and—”
“It’s no such thing! Nothing’s happened there in years! I mean it’s just that it’s got this shitty-creepy reputation.”
The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Literature stared numbly.
“Shitty-creepy?”
“So okay, I’m not a writer.”
“You’re a criminal. You’ve lined up Anna Trawley, the world-famous psychic; the renowned Dr. Gabriel Case of NYU, the authority in all such matters, smile-smirk; the four of us then spend a few nights in the house, and while Trawley and Case take baths in the vibes and discover nothing ghostly or unusual whatever, I observe, making copious notes, of course, and then I write a little shitty-witty article about it that thoroughly debunks the idea that it’s haunted; your pipe-smoking bathroom incubus prints it, the house’s reputation is now Caesar’s wife and you sell it and get filthier rich than ever. Does that sum it up fairly, my Angel of the Closings?”
“I’ve been offered a triple commission on this, Terry. That’s seven fucking figures.”
“Must we really use the eff word so incessantly?”
“We must!”
“Then might we please pronounce it ‘fyook’ or something, precious? I mean, really.”
Aloofly, he turned and examined the painting, a swirling mélange of varied shades of vivid yellow. Freeboard leaped up from her chair and approached him. “You owe me, Terry!”
Dare lifted his brush to paint.
“Now it comes, the deadly rocket attack on my guilt.”
“You’re denying that you owe me?”
“Sigmund Freud would have killed for your gifts.”
She planted herself in front of him and folded her arms across her chest. “You’re denying it?”
He looked down at his bright red Nike tennis shoes and then shook his head and sighed. “No, I owe you,” he admitted. “I owe you immensely. You’ve always been there for me on the Dawn Patrol, all those endless, awful nights when I needed a shoulder that I knew wasn’t padded with secret envies and lies and spites.” His eye caught a glistening blue on his palette. “You’re steadfast and loyal and completely unexpected, my Joan; you’re the