The Land of Laughs Read Online Free Page A

out of my greedy hands and brushed her fingers across the cover, as if reading braille. “It was the novel he was working on when he died. Isn’t that incredible? A novel by Marshall France! He even supposedly finished it, but his daughter, Anna, won’t release it. This” — her voice was angry, and she stabbed her finger accusingly at it — “is the only part anyone’s ever seen. It’s not a children’s book. You almost can’t believe that he wrote it, because it’s so different from his other things. It’s so eerie and sad.”
    I slid it back out of her hand and opened it gently.
    “It’s only the first chapter, you see, but even so, it’s really long — almost forty pages.”
    “Do you, uh, do you mind if I sort of look at it alone for a minute?”
    She smiled nicely and nodded. When I looked up again, she was coming into the room with a tray loaded down with cups, my brass tea kettle puffing steam, and all of the English muffins I’d planned to eat the next two mornings for breakfast.
    She put the tray on the floor. “Do you mind ahout these? I haven’t eaten anything all day, and I’m starved. I saw them in there… .”
    I closed the book and sat back in my chair. I watched her devour my muffins. I couldn’t help smiling. Then without knowing how or why, I blurted out my plan about the France biography.
    I knew that if I talked to anyone before I began this book it should be her, but when I finished I was embarrassed by all of my enthusiasm. I got up and walked to the mask wall and pretended to straighten the Marquesa.
    She didn’t say anything and she didn’t say anything, and finally I turned from the wall and looked at her. But her eyes slid away from mine, and for the first time since we met, she spoke without looking at me. “Could I help you? I could do your research for you. I did it for one of my professors in college, but this would be so much better, because it’d he looking into his life. Marshall France’s . I’d do it really cheaply. Really. Minimum wage — what is it now, two dollars an hour?”
    Uh-oh. A very nice girl, as my mother used to say when she introduced me to another of her “finds,” but I didn’t need or want anybody helping me on this, even if she knew a lot more about France than I did. If I was really going to go through with it, then I didn’t want to have to worry about someone else, especially a woman who struck me as potentially bossy or selfish or, worst of all, moody. Yes, she had her good points, but it was just the wrong place at the wrong time. Sooo, I hmmm’d and haaa’d and nibbled around the edges, and it wasn’t long before she got the point, thank God.
    “You’re basically saying no.”
    “I … basically … You’re right.”
    She looked at the floor and crossed her arms over her chest. “I see.”
    She stayed there for a minute, then turned on her heel, and picking up the France book, made for the front door.
    “Hey, look, you don’t have to go.” I had this terrible picture in my mind of her slipping that book back up under her sweater. The thought of that woolen bulge broke my heart.
    Her arms were spread high to let the still-wet poncho slide down onto them. For a moment she looked like a rubber Bela Lugosi. In fact, she kept her arms up like that when she spoke.
    “I think you’re making a really big mistake if you’re serious about doing this book. I truly think that I could help you.”
    “I know what … uh, I …”
    “I mean, I could really help you. I don’t see at all … Oh, forget it.” She opened the door and closed it very quietly behind her.
    A couple of days later I came back to my place after a class and found a note stuck to the door. The writing was in thick Magic Marker, and I didn’t recognize it at all.
    I’M GOING TO DO THIS ANYWAY. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. CALL ME WHEN YOU GET IN#####I’VE FOUND SOME GOOD STUFF. SAXONY GARDNER.
    All I needed was for one of my goody students to read that