The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer Read Free Book Online Page A

he didn’t have any plans, he’d decided to walk. The Chicago weather was oppressive, steamy; the bricks of air-conditioned buildings sweated out heat as Conner strode north on Clark Street, making his way past the singles’ bars and restaurants of the near north side. He strolled by the tony homes of heirs and heiresses to industrial fortunes on the Gold Coast, then on through Lincoln Park, once home to David Mamet, Stuart Dybek, and a handful of other writers Conner admired. He took a shortcut through the Lincoln Park Zoo, where even the animals seemed to be having a hard time contending with the heat. Sad rhinos were gathered in small, muddy pools; the weary and somewhat mangy polar bear didn’t seem to want to get out of the water; the gorillas were in a better mood—they had air conditioning.
    Near the gift shop on his way out, Conner caught sight of a lone coyote that seemed almost to blend in with the slab of slate upon which he was standing. Conner spent some time staring into that animal’s pale blue eyes. “You and me, man,” Conner told that coyote. “You and me. We’re just doing what we have to do to survive, and here we are, man, doin’ it on our own.”
    When Conner got to Diversey Avenue, he started to feel more upbeat about his life. He was healthy, strong. He had a great wife, a beautiful son, both his parents were still alive. The streets and sidewalks were busy and the people on them seemed young, full of energy.
    There was a line of people in front of the bookstore; the line was made up mostly of tweens with dyed hair accompanied by their parents and black-clad Goth kids on their own. Two news vans and a limo were parked in a loading zone, and a couple of bodyguards were standing by the front door, speaking furtively into their mouthpieces. Conner half convinced himself his interview on NPR had gone better than he had imagined and had generated this crowd. He also half convinced himself that Barack Obama was in town, perhaps visiting one of his major fund-raisers, Penny Pritzker, who lived in the area. Maybe the president and the Pritzkers were fans of his work and wanted their very own copies of Ice Locker . Only when he got to the front door did Conner realize he was at the wrong bookstore—this was not Borders; this was the Barnes & Noble across the street, a relic of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when people actually thought a neighborhood could support two big-box bookstores. The people outside the B&N were waiting to meet Margot Hetley, who would be reading from The Fearsome Shallow­: Wizard Vampire Chronicles #8 , or WVCVIII , as fanboys and fangirls referred to it. Everybody in line had a copy of WVCVIII­; no one was holding Ice Locker . Across the street at Borders­, a sign in the window read conner joyce reading tonight! but no one was waiting in line outside.
    Inside Borders was a more depressingly familiar scene—rows of mostly unoccupied folding chairs upon a grim, gray carpet; stacks of hardcover Conner Joyce novels no one was waiting in line to buy; a disinterested store manager marking time before the store would close for good and she would get laid off. Yes, there was a better crowd than there had been at the Bloomington store—about fifteen or twenty, Conner estimated—but nothing that would make his next phone conversation with Angie go any better than the previous ones. Nevertheless, he tried to stay focused and positive. When he stood up in front of the audience and took his place at the podium, he performed his usual spiel. Afterward, he answered the usual questions—he said he did the same thing whether he was speaking before five people or five hundred, felt that each person deserved respect. Then he took out his Sharpie and sat down at the signing table.
    The people who waited in a small line to talk to Conner after the reading were the typical amalgam of fans, writing students, and collectors, the