Read Online About the Author by John Colapinto - Free Book Online

fairness, and Stewart’s gaunt handsomeness had contained none of my overt sexual threat. But both of us were tall, striking ectomorphs, nice young men from well-to-do families and good schools. . . . And somehow this led me to think about how, if fate had not been diverted by that careless gypsy cab, it
would
be Stewart peering into this mirror, rather than me. It would be Stewart who was waiting for Blackie Yaeger to show up for this all-important lunch date. And what an injustice that would have been! For Stewart would have been here on utterly false pretenses, having stolen
my
life! Having purloined my past, my present and thus my future! What rich justice it seemed that I should be standing here instead—that I was, both literally and figuratively, in Stewart’s shoes, that I had taken back my life story from him and, as a kind of penalty or punishment, seized his bright destiny as my own. Or rather, reappropriated the destiny that was mine in the first place.
    Deep in these rather tangled (and now slightly drunken) philosophical musings, I jumped slightly when I felt a hand grasp my elbow. I turned from Stewart’s reflection and found myself staring into the extraordinary face of Blackie Yaeger.
    “Hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said.
    I felt like telling him I’d been waiting all my life.
    The maître d’ led us to the smoking section (soon to be abolished in the antitobacco mania of the late nineties) and deposited us at a table that, I couldn’t help noticing with an obscure qualm of unease, was set for
three
, complete with three triangulated linen napkins, three inverted water glasses, three heavy sets of silverware—almost as if there were a third, phantom guest who silently took his seat with us.
    “Can I get you anything from the bar?” our waiter asked, mercifully ridding the ghost of his eating utensils.
    Yaeger rapped out an order for a gin-martini-straight-up-with-a-twist. He looked at me inquisitively, lifting a non-existent eyebrow. I said, “The same.”
    The waiter vanished. Yaeger extracted a foreign-looking package from his inside breast pocket and fingered out a slim cigar, which he placed between his lips.
    “So,” he said, striking one of the wooden matches from the small box he’d lifted from the ashtray, “I’ve written up a synopsis of
Almost Like Suicide
—hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of doing that myself; didn’t want to waste time. Anyway, I faxed it straight to my Hollywood contacts.” He touched the flame to the end of his brown cigar, blew out the match with a stream of blue smoke, then dropped the spent match into the ashtray. A busboy immediately materialized, palmed the defiled ashtray, and replaced it with a pristine one.
    I, meanwhile, was wondering if Yaeger was insane.
Hollywood
? Had he somehow mixed me up with someone else? A screenwriter?
    “Um,” I said, carefully, “Hollywood? I wrote a
novel
—”
    Yaeger’s attention was diverted by the arrival of the martinis. He immediately swept his off the table with two forked fingers and held it aloft in an invitation for me to clink glasses with him. We did. “To
Suicide
,” Yaeger growled. He gulped greedily at his drink.
    “Okay,” he said, after rolling the liquid around for a while in his mouth and swallowing. “Let me explain. These days, we don’t—I enjoyed your book
immensely
, by the way.
Immensely
. Have I mentioned that? Thing knocked me on my ass.
But
as I was saying, the trick is to sell the sonofabitch to Hollywood
first
. Create an absolute frenzy among the publishers here in New York—especially if you can convince them that they’re going to get Spielberg to direct and Tom Cruise to star. Gotta think about your end-user.”
    “End-user?”
    “Sorry. Movie talk. You know, TV, cable, videocassettes. Whatever. Because I’m telling you, Cal, you’ve written a hell of a story. Very hot. Very today. And high concept? It’s a fin de siècle
Bright Lights,