Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald by Ron Carlson Read Free Book Online

downtown Rome with the many citizens going about their daily business in the real world. It became pretty obvious by now, as members of the audience passed the ninth round of beer among themselves, that the Alien Visitor was not going to make it; this is just not his world. All the moviegoers’ hair reflected the blinking grey light from the screen, as the projector, oversize in the crowded room, whirred and sputtered, in a small continuous fit of heat and light.
    It was at that moment when Lenore stepped into the plank of hall light from the doorway and took a hold of my elbow. Firmly. Behind her in the hall was friend Gary, the pharmacist. They were overdressed, Gary wearing a sealskin overcoat for some reason, and I saw, not staying. Lenore, looking more at my hand than at me and still holding my elbow, pressed the ring down into the flesh of my palm as if she were putting out a cigarette and Smokey the Bear was watching. They walked to the stairwell and turned. “Think it over, Larry,” was all she said, leaving. Probably for Rome.
    What could I have said? I actually mean this, what could I have said? Ouch? She had looked perfect in a lime-colored dress, light as air, under which as perfection allows there must have been lime underwear. I confess a sublime ignorance of what is supposed to be done. Would I go then years from that night to her front door only to be invited in and expected to ask questions about her babies? How’s little Gary, Jr.?
    Turning back into the room I saw that Eldon had witnessed this little exchange, and he turned his back on the film and sat with his feet on the roof. I shut the door and walked carefully over to Bunny’s, fell on the sofa and lit a cigarette from her plexiglass cigarette box. The initials K.B.L. were cut nicely in the top. Superman once compressed a piece of coal in his bare hand into a diamond to impress a witchdoctor after Jimmy and Lois’s plane had crashed. I rolled the perfect gem between my thumb and first finger, feeling the corners. I thee wed. I threw my feet up on the table and blew three malformed smoke rings at the ceiling. Bunny’s terrace doors were open and the breeze erased the rings, bringing in a large dosage of lilacs. Evidently they had the house surrounded. Trying to pause, to gather, I tried to calculate how many hours I had been awake. My mouth tasted tannic and my closed eyes felt slack. “Oh la.” went the sigh.
    After several long minutes that seemed an interminable exhalation, I heard the general shuffle that told me: end reel two. Ribbo strolled in accompanying one of the nubile cheerleaders. She was fairly drunk, and he was doing his people’s logic voice into her incoherent face, all the while keeping his underground arm around her waist, “1 don’t do football games, because the sanctified violence is absurd. Fans aren’t the people. The people can’t afford to do football games, they’re stuck in the streets …” They went out onto the terrace. Ribbo used the verb “do” for everything. He was going to do some dope. He was going to do some sleep. He was going to do the revolution. That verbal umbrella didn’t bother me as much as going to the salmonella cellar he lived in; I mean, he never did the dishes.
    In our kitchen the empties overflowed the garbage sack. Somebody had started a trend by putting his cigarette out in the sink.
    “How’s the beer?” I asked Eldon.
    “Holding out. How are you?”
    “Holding out. On with the show, I guess.” I stepped back over the people and debris, Dotty playfully grabbed my foot and I nearly fell onto Wesson and Virgil Benson.
    “Dotty!”
    “Yeah, graceful?”
    Never mind, Dotty.
    Wesson had been feigning an interest in the film for an hour and a half, and he looked wasted, shell-shocked. He’d been trying too hard to figure out what disorder would cause people to watch such a movie.
    “Really superb.” Virgil said smiling. I sat down by him a minute. “The animation is amazing.