Please Write for Details by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

into the new journals, using a portable typewriter equipped with green ribbon. He worked evenings for many weeks, changing many awkward nesses of phrase and expression as he transcribed the records of his success. They were kept in a locked case in his living room, except for the three most recent ones which he had brought with him. They were his trophy room. His fishing log His hunting journal.
    As other men might recall the look of the brown bear or the mountain slope, or the crashing fall of a moose on the short of a Canadian lake, Paul Klauss would remember the precise configuration of a dimpled buttock, or the approximate decibe count of a wordless cry of completion. On those evenings between expeditions, Paul would leaf through his journals. The name of the female person involved was used as a heading for each entry. Directly underneath appeared the dates, showing the duration of the affair. They did not endure long. And they never, never overlapped. After the date appeared certain statistics: her age, and whether it was verified or estimated approximate height and weight and so on. After this appeare two numerical ratings based on a scale of ten. The first ratinwas that of the woman, appearance, energy, co-operativeness. The second rating was that of his own estimate of his own effectiveness in inaugurating, completing and removing himself from the affair. It had been a long time since, out of desperation, Klauss had spent time on any woman who rated less than five on his scale, and equally long since he himself had blundered to an extent where he could rate himself lower than six.
    After the factual data began the text of his entry. “Ruth (Mrs. John Williams) entered my shop at three o’clock on the rainy afternoon of April 3, 1948. She was attractively but not expensively dressed in a green wool suit, a transparent raincape and hood over her dark-red hair. She said that she was interested in buying a present for her husband, and said that she had been thinking of a sports shirt. I told her it would help me if she were to tell me what sort of a man her husband was, thus putting me in a better position to advise her …”
    He thought of his journals as having some special value. It was an account of over six hundred trophies pursued, tamed and released. He thought himself unique in the world, and would have been most distressed to know not only how many others enjoyed the same cold game, but also the rather obvious psychological reason for their enjoyment.
    Each winter he made the best of the rather limited opportunities on the Philadelphia scene, and for the past nine years, he had been able to leave the shop each summer in the charge of a trusted subordinate and go forth to where the game was more abundant, the handicaps fewer.
    For several years he operated on the cruise circuit, but there came to be a disheartening sameness about the shipboard conquest of the adventuresome secretary, schoolteacher or nurse. When, even with the help of his journal, he found it difficult to remember their faces and their mannerisms, he decided to seek other hunting grounds.
    Three years ago he had spent the summer at a music camp and conference in New Hampshire. It had provided nine unique episodes for the journal, and had made him feel as exhilarated as a spear fisherman at Marine Studios. Two years ago he had attended a summer writing conference, and it had been a splendid equivalent. But last summer he had erred dreadfully by signing up for a sculpture course in Florida. The selection had been grossly meager. Of the three entries in the journal, he suspected that he had been overly generous in awarding themall fives. Two could have been considered fours. And one might possibly have been adjudged a three.
    When he had come across the announcement of the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop in the February copy of
Diary of the Arts
, he had clipped it and set it aside. He had been dubious about it, but finally, unable to find anything