The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [0]
Lawrence Block
Writing as Jill Emerson
TYPICAL COP-OUT
This is a work of fiction and it’s set in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and that’s really asking for it. None of the characters are based on real people, living or dead. I’d say that anyway to avoid a libel suit, but it also happens to be true. Not that anyone’s likely to believe it.
I thought of changing New Hope, Pennsylvania, to Blue Pope, Illinois, but all that would do (besides making extra work for me) is encourage people to play the game of figuring out what each invented name stood for, and they would carry this through to the characters, which is precisely what I’m hoping to avoid. None of these people are anybody.
Years ago I wrote a novel in which a major character was my fictional interpretation of myself. A girl I barely knew stopped speaking to me because she thought that particular character was supposed to be her and she was offended. God knows why on both counts. He also knows I don’t know enough about anybody’s private life to put him in a book. I suppose the intelligent thing to do would be to set all books in New York, where nobody gives a damn.
—JILL EMERSON
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR
A BIOGRAPHY OF LAWRENCE BLOCK
I
Virgins and Pure Pools
The all pervasive symmetry
Of yews spruced up, and bushes trebly sheared
Offend the eye. Nature has forms
She chose herself. It’s virgins and pure pools
That make a garden… .
—LORETTA KALLETT
ONE
“You’re the only one open. But I guess you knew that, huh?”
She looked up. Interruptions were not likely to startle her. Customers were infrequent during the off-season, and in the time she had worked at the Lemon Tree, Linda Robshaw had learned to lose herself in a book in their absence and to become quickly alert on their appearance.
She said, “Oh, hi, Tanya. What time is it, anyway?”
“Five-thirty, quarter of six. I was just getting my hair done.”
“It looks nice.”
“Well, it’s the same, but thanks. I just let him wash it. I can never get it as clean as I like it. It seems silly to pay money for what you could do standing under a shower. But I wanted to look decent for tonight.”
“Tonight? Oh, the play.”
“The Crucible. It’s the best part I’ve had so far. I don’t understand all of it, though.” Tanya had been walking back and forth in one of the aisles. Now she took a small doll from an eye-level teak shelf. “‘Made in Taiwan,’” she read. “Made in Taiwan by spastics. Who would pay four ninety-five for a dime’s worth of wood and a nickel’s worth of cloth?”
“The same kind of nut who would buy any of the crud we sell.”
“Don’t let the boss catch you talking that way.”
“Oh, Olive says the same thing herself,” Linda said. “She says contempt for your customers and their lack of taste is a form of local patriotism.”
“What are you reading? Sylvia Plath. She’s the one killed herself?”
“Uh-huh. A poem at a time.”
“Oh, poems? Any good?”
“Very. But depressing.”
“Why read something that’s gonna depress you?”
“Good question,” she said. She closed the book, got to her feet. “Wait while I close up and I’ll walk you home.”
“Well, I was going to the theater, Linda. They want me to go over a couple of things. I could walk you as far as—”
“No, go ahead,” she said. “I’ll be a few minutes.”
After Tanya had left, Linda sat for a few moments at the desk, the copy of Ariel in her hand. Then she locked the cash drawer, turned off the lights, closed and locked the door of the little gift shop, and walked down the corridor and out of the small shopping mall.
The streets were dark, with only a few stores still open. She crossed to the grassy triangle at the corner of Ferry Street, skirted the old cannon with its mound of cannonballs, walked down Main past the playhouse and across the bridge to Mechanic