The Land of Laughs Read Online Free Page B

note and instantly interpret “stuff” as “dope” and start to spread the word about old Mr. Abbey’s behind-the-closed-door follies. I didn’t even know Saxony’s telephone number and I wasn’t about to look it up. But she called me that night and sounded angry the whole time we talked.
    “I know you don’t want me in on this, Thomas, but you should have called anyway. I was in the library a long time getting all of this for you.”
    “Really? Well, I really appreciate that. I mean, I do!”
    “Then you’d better get a pencil and paper for this, because there’s quite a lot.”
    “Go ahead. I have one here.” Whatever her reasons for doing it, I had no intention of turning off Radio Free Information.
    “Okay. First of all, his name wasn’t really France — it was Frank. He was born Martin Emil Frank in Rattenberg, Austria, in 1922. Rattenberg is a little town about forty miles from Innsbruck, in the mountains. His father’s name was David, his mother’s name was Hannah, with an H.”
    “Wait a minute. Go ahead.”
    “He had an older brother, Isaac, who died at Dachau in 1944.”
    “They were Jewish?”
    “There’s no question about it. France arrived in America in 1938 and moved to Galen, Missouri, sometime after that.”
    “Why Galen? Did you find out?”
    “No, but I’m still looking. I like this stuff. It’s fun working in the library and trying to pull out things on someone you love.”
    After she hung up I stood there holding the receiver and then scratched my head with it. I didn’t know whether I felt good or bad about the fact that she’d call again when she found out more.
    According to her (a couple of days later), France went to Galen because his Uncle Otto owned a little printing business out there. But before he went west, our man lived in New York for a year and a half. For some reason she couldn’t discover what he did there. She got a little nutty about it, and her calls got angrier and angrier.
    “I can’t find it. Ooo, it drives me crazy!”
    “Take it easy, Sax. The way you’ve been digging around, you will.”
    “Oh, don’t patronize me, Thomas. You sound just like your father in that movie I saw last night. Old James Vandenberg, good-hearted farmer.”
    My eyes narrowed and I tightened my grip on the phone. “Look, Saxony, you don’t have to be insulting.”
    “I’m not … I’m sorry.” She hung up. I called her right back but she didn’t answer. I wondered if she’d called from some little phone booth out in the middle of nowhere. That thought made me feel so sorry for her that I went down to a florist and bought her a Japanese bonsai tree. I made sure that she wasn’t home before I left it in front of her apartment door.
    I thought that it was time I did something for a change instead of letting her do all the chasing around, so when the school had a long weekend at the end of April, I decided to go down to New York to talk to France’s publisher about doing the biography. I didn’t tell her that I was going until the night before I left, and then she was the one who called, all aglow.
    “Thomas? I found it! I found out what he did in New York when he lived there!”
    “Great! What?”
    “Are you ready for this? He worked for an Italian undertaker named Lucente. He was his assistant or something. It didn’t say what he did for him, though.”
    “That’s pleasant. But do you remember that scene in Land of Laughs when the Moon Jester and Lady Oil die? He’d have to know something about death to have written that part.”

4
    I always have the same feeling when I go to New York. There was a bad joke about a man who married a beautiful woman and couldn’t wait for the wedding night to get to her. But then when the time came, she pulled a blond wig off her bald head, unscrewed her wooden leg, and took the false teeth out that made her smile so alluring. She turned to him coyly and said, “I’m ready now, darling.” That’s me and New York.