The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams by Richard Sanders Read Free Book Online

a séance.”
    “I can’t buy it,” I said.
“Two people who don’t like you—you don’t think they’re doubling up
on you?”
    “I don’t know. That I
don’t know.”
    He grabbed for another
fistful of cheese to console himself.
    “Will you stop it!” said
Genevieve. “”Get your fat ass out of my kitchen!”
    Nickie and I went with him
to the living room, Wooly standing in front of Georgiana’s photo,
giving it a long look.
    “I can believe her trying
to off me. Her, absolutely. Not Monte.”
    “Tell me about the
lawsuit,” I said, “meaningless as it is.”
    “What’s to tell? He came
to me with some product, I tested it, it sucked.” He turned away
from the photo. “Thing about Monte, he has no respect for the
testing process. Doesn’t take it seriously. To him it’s just some
unnecessary blockage , a fucking lark. But your test results, your whole reputation rests on your
test results. That’s how you go out in the world. You gotta go out
proclaiming the strength of your product, the dura— Wait, wait , out here, I wanna
show you something.”
    He yanked us through the
double Mormon Tabernacle doors and dragged us out to the weird
living room set on the front lawn. The cast aluminum couch, ottoman
and armchairs, the plugged-in floor lamps.
    “Now this ,” he said, “look at this.” He
plopped on the couch and pounded the mattresses at his sides. “This
is fabric .”
    Nickie and I each took an
armchair. “What is this stuff?” I said.
    “It’s the best material
you’ll ever find. Or I ever found. We tested it once—it stood up
to everything we
threw at it. More than stood up to it. It’s the most durable fabric I ever came
across.”
    “But why a living room
outdoors?”
    “Oh I don’t know. It’s
just something I wanted to do. I thought it would be
cool.”
    “You ever use it?” said
Nickie. “You ever sit out here?”
    “No, it’s just, you know,
decoration. It’s just something to, I don’t know, spruce up the
place.”
    Durable as the fabric
might be, it wasn’t very comfortable. I got up, walked around the
rest of the furniture. “Can you give me some details about the
lawsuit?”
    “Details, sure. Like
what?”
    “You tested Monte’s
product.”
    “I tested it.”
    “It sucked.”
    “Big time.”
    “So he sued
you.”
    “Well, no, not exactly.
First he says to me, can I keep the results quiet? The answer
is no —I can’t do
shit like that. Then he offers me a bribe. Can I retest the stuff
in a different way? With different results? The answer, again,
is no . I can’t
compromise the integrity of my quality checks. So I tell him that,
no uncertain terms, and that’s when he files the suit. Claims my testing
standards’re too high, they constitute unfair business practices,
etc. etc.”
    “And this wouldn’t want to
make him kill you?”
    “On the basis of the suit?
No. It’s baseless and he knows it. You know what the most valuable
thing about that lawsuit is? The paper clip it came
with.”
    Nickie wasn’t getting it.
“So why’s he asking for 12 million?”
    “Ah who the fuck knows?”
Wooly stood up, stretched his back, circled around the couch.
“Maybe he thinks I’ll settle, pay him off some just to get rid of
him. You know, this is the trouble with Monte. He can’t accept that
he fucked up. He still wants more. He wants more and more and more.
Just like everybody fucking else these days—they all want more . They all want the
old smoreeny .”
    I was standing in the
middle of the setting, studying the floor lamps—the wires running
across the lawn, thinking about the work that went into this
lunacy—when I heard the car. Nothing unusual about traffic on the
road. Two or three cars had already gone by while we were out
here.
    What was unusual was hearing Nickie shout
“Get down!” and me suddenly getting hit in the back by a flying
tackle. A body landed on top of me as I did a face-first on the
lawn and a sharp ping rang against the