Kissing the Beehive by Jonathan Carroll Read Free Book Online

daughter well enough to know she didn't like any kibitzing until she was good and ready to pass judgment. "Tall or short?"
    "Kind of tall, as I remember."
    "Where'd you get the picture?"
    "It's her senior-year portrait. Out of an old yearbook."
    She shook her head. "Her face is so small. And look at the teeth --
    they're tiny and perfect. I could imagine her being the class brain from this picture, but not the other. Not if this was the only picture I ever saw of her. Do you have others?"
    "Not yet, but I'm working on it."
    Page 19

    Cass looked at the picture again. "She looks too sweet to be dead."

    That evening I brought her to the railroad station. While we were waiting for her train to arrive, she told me a story that stuck in my mind like a piece of chewing gum on the bottom of my shoe.
    One of her friends' mother was an airline stewardess. She was taking a shuttle bus from London out to the airport when they hit a bad traffic jam.
    Apparently the woman is very good looking. During the ride, she and this handsome well-dressed guy across the aisle were making heavy eye contact. But the whole time he was also talking nonstop on a portable telephone and from what she overheard, he was in the middle of pulling off a big deal. She was already late and the bus wasn't moving. Her flight was going to take off soon and finally it was clear she wasn't going to make it on time. Desperate, she went over to the sexy guy and asked if she could borrow his phone to call the airline and tell them about the delay. The guy sputtered a minute and then said very sheepishly that he'd like to help her, but the phone was a fake.
    After putting Cass on the train back to Manhattan, I sat in the car and looked at my hands on the steering wheel. Mr. Telephone gave me the creeps because his story sounded too much like mine. I had been walking around pretending I was a successful big shot too, when in fact I was a stuck buckaroo with a mediocre novel sitting on my desk, staring at me like a gargoyle every time I entered the room. What if I was finished as a writer?
    There were too many stories about novelists who just dried up one day and never found another drop inside. The idea of writing Pauline's story excited me, but what if that came out flat and lifeless too? I'd have no excuses then.
    My still ringers began drumming and jumping around on the wheel. What if? What if? I didn't need any more doubts in my life, but sitting there alone on a pretty Sunday evening in summer with nothing to do, the what-if's poured out of my brain like a swarm of killer bees.
    There was a large billboard on a wall advertising a new kind of yogurt.
    It pictured a beautiful female hand holding a silvery spoon with a blop of violet yummy on the tip. The tag line read, "Heaven is only a spoonful away."
    Looking at it, I suddenly remembered Spoon, Cassandra's girlfriend who'd had her vagina tattooed. One tattoo led to another and reaching into my back pocket for my wallet, I took out the bunch of calling cards I kept there.
    Shuffling through them, I found Veronica Lake's with the picture of the tattooed Russian criminal. I looked at it a few seconds, considered what other prospects I had for the night ahead, and picked up the telephone.
    It rang four times before her machine clicked in. Answering-machine messages tell a lot about people. Cassandra's mother said only, "You know the drill," and then came the beep. The most humorless man I know has the most embarrassingly unfunny attempt at being funny on his tape.
    It never fails to make me cringe. My credo is if it ain't there, don't try to record it.
    Veronica's voice came on, crisp and friendly. "Hi. This is 555-2338. Leave a message and I'll call you as soon as I can." I felt a small tug of disappointment that she wasn't there, but thought it best to say something so she would know I'd been thinking of her.
    "Ms. Lake, this is Samuel Bayer --" Before I could say more, the phone clicked and she picked it up.
    "Hello,