Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 Read Online Free Page A

with original material solicited from the most prestigious
writers and artists of our day, a list to include such as Norman Mailer, Joyce
Carol Oates, Andy Warhol, Jerzy Kosinski, LeRoy Nieman, Jules Feijfer and
Robert Ludlum, among many others. I see my own function as general editor of
this anthology, engaged both in selecting the materials from the past and
negotiating with the contributors of the present.
                In my previous work, as you know, I
have frequently acted as a compiler and interviewer , experience which
will stand me in good stead in re The Christmas Book.
                As I mentioned to you last week, I
would very strongly want this book to appear this calendar year, early enough
for the Christmas season. Because time is relatively short, and because you
have expressed some doubt as to whether Craig, Harry & Bourke would be the
right publisher for this project, I have made a preliminary discussion with
someone from another house. My own feeling, however, is that The Christmas
Book would be given its most careful and conscientious presentation with
you as its editor, so I hope we can shortly come to a meeting of minds.
     
                Yours.
     
                Tom Diskant
     
                 

          Wednesday, January 121b
     
                WHAT a day. My daughter Jennifer got
mugged this morning, which may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Well, no,
I don’t mean it that way, I just mean it caused me to
postpone my meeting with Hubert Van Driin.
                I was just about to leave for that
meeting—in fact, 1 was tying my tie—when the phone rang and it was Mary,
sounding more solemn than usual (she’s often serious, seldom solemn), saying,
“Tom, could you come over right away?” “Gee, I’m sorry, Mary,” I said. “I’m
just off to a meeting at Federalist Press.”
     
                “Couldn’t you cancel it? I wouldn’t
ask, but Jennifer was mugged on her way to school.”
                So I canceled, of course. Van Driin
took it well, with his normal reaction to the world we live in: “The barbarians
are among us, Tom. They came through the gates a long time ago, the liberals
just waved the bastards in. Animals. The Duke knew.”
                “I’ll call you later,” I said, and
left the apartment, and went down to 17th Street ,
where I found Mary and Jennifer in the kitchen, both bravely not having
hysterics.
                My kids go to public school because
that’s all I can afford. (That Ginger’s kids go to private school, at Lance’s
expense, is an unstated bone of contention between Mary and me, never mentioned.) Bryan had sixty cents taken from him at school
last year, which technically counts as a mugging though he wasn’t harmed or
actually threatened in any way, but this was Jennifer’s first experience of
street crime. Both the kids know enough not to offer resistance if you are
outweighed, out-meaned or outnumbered; still, an assault for money is a tough
experience for any person, and particularly so for an essentially nonviolent
kid, as both of mine are.
                Upon arrival, I crossed the kitchen
to where mother and daughter sat at the table, and went down on one knee beside
Jennifer’s chair, resting my hand on her upper arm, saying, “How are you,
tiger?”
                She tried a smile, but her voice was
shaky when she said, “I’m okay now.”
                “There was a knife,” Mary said.
                “Oh, Jesus,” I said, and clasped her
arm harder. “You weren’t cut, were you? You weren’t—”
                “No, they just. ...” She shook her
head, frowned at her mother as though bewildered by some stray thought, then
said, “He just had it in his hand. He didn’t even say anything, he just held
the knife up and showed it to me and grinned