by Pete Hamill
During the introduction, he peered out at the faces, and they were different, too. Most were in their thirties, lean and intense, or prepared to be critical, or wearing the competitive masks of aspiring writers. About a dozen African Americans were scattered through the seats, with a few standing on the sides. He saw several men with six or seven copies of his books: collectors, looking for autographs to sell on eBay or some fan website. He didn’t see any of the older faces. Those faces still marked by Galway or Sicily or the Ukraine. He didn’t see the pouchy, hooded masks that were worn by men like Seanie Mulrane.
His new novel and five of the older paperbacks were stacked on a table to the left of the lectern. He began to relax. Thinking: It’s another signing. Thinking: I could be in Denver or Houston or Berkeley.
Finally, he began to read, focusing on words printed on pages. His words. His pages. He read from the first chapter, which was always fashioned as a hook. He described his hero being drawn into the mysteries of a grand Manhattan restaurant by an old college pal who was one of the owners, all the while glancing up at the crowd so that he didn’t sound like a professor. The manager was right: it was a great crowd. They listened. They laughed at the hero’s wisecracks. Carmody enjoyed the feedback. He enjoyed the applause, too, when he had finished. And then the manager explained that Carmody would take some questions, and then sign books.
He felt himself tense again. And thought: Why did I run, all those years ago? Why did I do what I did to Molly Mulrane?
I ran to escape, he thought.
That’s why everybody runs. That’s why women run from men. Women have run from me, too. To escape.
People moved in the folding chairs, but Carmody was still. I ran because I felt a rope tightening on my life. Because Molly Mulrane was too nice. Too ordinary. Too safe. I ran because she gave me no choice. She had a script and he didn’t. They would get engaged and he’d get his BA and maybe a teaching job and they’d get married and have kids and maybe move out to Long Island or over to Jersey and then—I ran because I wanted something else. I wanted to be Hemingway in Pamplona or in a café on the Left Bank. I wanted to make a lot of money in the movies, the way Faulkner did or Irwin Shaw, and then retreat to Italy or the south of France. I wanted risk. I didn’t want safety. So I ran. Like a heartless, frightened prick.
The first question came from a bearded man in his forties, the type who wrote nasty book reviews that guaranteed him tenure.
“Do you think if you’d stayed in Brooklyn,” the bearded man asked, “you’d have been a better writer?”
Carmody smiled at the implied insult, the patronizing tone.
“Probably,” he answered. “But you never know these things with any certainty. I might never have become a writer at all. There’s nothing in the Brooklyn air or the Brooklyn water that makes writers, or we’d have a couple of million writers here.…”
A woman in her twenties stood up. “Do you write on a word processor, or longhand, or on a typewriter?”
This was the way it was everywhere, and Carmody relaxed into the familiar. Soon he’d be asked how to get an agent or how he got his ideas and how do I protect my own ideas when I send a manuscript around? Could you read the manuscript of my novel and tell me what’s wrong? The questions came and he answered as politely as possible. He drew people like that, and he knew why: he was a success, and there were thousands of would-be writers who thought there were secret arrangements, private keys, special codes that would open the doors to the alpine slopes of the bestseller lists. He couldn’t tell them that, like life, it was all a lottery.
Then the manager stepped to the microphone and smiled and said that Mr. Carmody would now be signing books. “Because of the large turnout,” the manager said, “Mr. Carmody will not be able to personalize each book. Otherwise many of you would have a very long wait.” Carmody thanked everybody for coming on such a frigid night and there was warm, loud applause. He sat down at the table and sipped from a bottle of Poland Spring water.
He signed the first three books on the title page, and then a woman named Peggy Williams smiled and said, “Could you make an exception? We didn’t go to school together, but we went to the same school twenty years apart. Could you mention that?”
He did, and the line slowed. Someone wanted him to mention the Dodgers. Another, Coney Island. One wanted a stickball reference, although he was too young to ever have played that summer game. There was affection in these people for this place, this neighborhood, which was now their neighborhood. But Carmody began to feel something else in the room, something he could not see.
“You must think you’re hot shit,” said a woman in her fifties. She had daubed rouge on her pale cheeks. “I’ve been in this line almost an hour.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and tried to be light. “It’s almost as bad as the motor vehicle bureau.”
She didn’t laugh.
“You could just sign the books,” she said. “Leave off the fancy stuff.”
“That’s what some people want,” he said. “The fancy stuff.”
“And you gotta give it to them? Come on.”
He signed his name on the title page and handed it to her, still smiling.
“Wait a minute,” she said, holding the book before him as though it were a summons. “I waited a long time. Put in, ‘For Gerry’—with a G—‘who waited on line for more than an hour.’”
She laughed then, too, and he did what she asked. The next three just wanted signatures, and two just wanted “Merry Christmas,” and then a collector arrived and Carmody signed six first editions. He was weary now, his mind filling with images of Molly Mulrane and Seanie’s face and injuries he had caused so long ago. All out there somewhere. And still the line trailed away from the table into a crowd that, when viewed without his glasses, had become a multicolored smear, like a bookcase.
The woman came around from the side aisle, easing toward the front of the line in a distracted way. Carmody saw her whisper to someone on the line, a young man who made room for her with the deference reserved for the old. She was hatless, her white hair cut in girlish bangs across her furrowed brow. She was wearing a short down coat, black skirt, black stockings, mannish shoes. The coat was open, showing a dark, rose-colored sweater. Her eyes were pale.
Holy God.
She was six feet away from him, behind two young men and a collector. A worn leather bag hung from her shoulder. A bag so old that Carmody remembered buying it in a shop in the Village, next door to the Eighth Street Bookshop.
He glanced past the others and saw that she was not looking at him. She stared at bookshelves, or the ceiling, or the floor. Her face had an indoor whiteness. The color of ghosts. He signed a book, then another. And the girl he once loved began to come to him, the sweet, pretty girl who asked nothing of him except that he love her back. And he felt then a great rush of sorrow. For her. For himself. For their lost child. He felt as if tears would soon leak from every pore in his body. The books in front of him were now as meaningless as bricks.
Then she was there. And Carmody rose slowly and leaned forward to embrace her across the table.
“Oh, Molly,” he whispered. “Oh, Molly, I’m so, so sorry.”
She smiled then, and the lines, like brackets, that framed her mouth seemed to vanish and Carmody imagined taking her away with him, repairing her in the sun of California, making it up, writing a new ending. Rewriting his own life. He started to come around the table.
“Molly,” he said. “Molly, my love.”
Then she took the nickel-plated revolver from the leather bag, the sweet smile frozen on her face.
Carmody thought: Oh, God. Oh, yes, God. Oh, yes. Do it.
She shot him four times in the chest, while women screamed and men shouted and many simply ran. She dropped the revolver on the floor beside Carmody and began to weep. One of the collectors said later that as the bullets tore into Carmody, he smiled and looked relieved.
Acknowledgments
&n
bsp; Acknowledgment is made to the following publications, in which the stories in this collection first appeared, some with different titles or in slightly different form. New York Daily News: “The Christmas Kid,” “The Price of Love,” “A Death in the Family,” “A Christmas Wish,” “The Love of His Life,” “Good-bye,” “Changing of the Guard,” “Footsteps,” “A Poet Long Ago,” “The Car,” “Just the Facts, Ma’am,” “6/6/44,” “The Trial of Red Dano,” “Leaving Paradise,” “Lullaby of Birdland,” “The Boarder,” “The Radio Doctor,” “The Challenge,” “A Hero of the War,” “The Final Score,” “Gone,” “You Say Tomato, and…” “’S Wonderful,” “The Warrior’s Son,” “The Second Summer,” “The Sunset Pool,” “The Lasting Gift of Art,” “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” “The Hitter Bag,” “Trouble,” “Home Country,” “The Waiting Game,” “The Home Run.” Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin: “The Book Signing.” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine: “The Men in Black Raincoats” (reprinted in Brooklyn Noir 2, edited by Tim McLoughlin).
About the Author
PETE HAMILL is a novelist, journalist, editor, and screenwriter. He is the author of twenty-one previous books, including the bestselling novels Tabloid City, Forever, and Snow in August and the bestselling memoir A Drinking Life. He lives in New York City.
Also by Pete Hamill
NOVELS
A Killing for Christ
The Gift
Dirty Laundry
Flesh and Blood
The Deadly Piece
The Guns of Heaven
Loving Women
Snow in August
Forever
North River
Tabloid City
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Invisible City
Tokyo Sketches
JOURNALISM
Irrational Ravings
Tools as Art
Piecework
News Is a Verb
MEMOIRS
A Drinking Life
Downtown: My Manhattan
BIOGRAPHY
Diego Rivera
Why Sinatra Matters
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Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
About These Stories
The Christmas Kid
The Price of Love
A Death in the Family
Wishes
The Love of His Life
Good-bye
Changing of the Guard
Footsteps
A Poet Long Ago
The Car
Just the Facts, Ma’am
6/6/44
The Trial of Red Dano
Leaving Paradise
Lullaby of Birdland
The Boarder
The Men in Black Raincoats
The Radio Doctor
The Challenge
A Hero of the War
The Final Score
Gone
You Say Tomato, and…
’S Wonderful
The Warrior’s Son
The Second Summer
The Sunset Pool
The Lasting Gift
The Man with the Blue Guitar
The Hitter Bag
Trouble
The Home Country
The Waiting Game
The Home Run
Up the Roof
The Book Signing
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Pete Hamill
Newsletter
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2012 by Deidre Enterprises, Inc.
Cover design by Julianna Lee; cover photo-illustration by Marc Yankus, © Susan Tansil/shutterstock.com
Cover copyright © 2012 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-0-316-23277-7