Read Online Foul Matter by Martha Grimes - Free Book Online

and was possibly the only writer who ever lived to do so. This was why the table in the window at the front was known as Saul’s table, and, by virtue of being both a writer and his friend, Ned’s table, and by further extension, Sally’s. Sally worked at Mackenzie-Haack, assistant to Ned’s editor. But they had not met there, oddly. Saul and Ned and Sally had met in the little park when a page of Ned’s manuscript had kited away in a stiff wind, and Sally, walking toward them, had made the most acrobatic jump they’d ever witnessed and caught it.
    Every once in a while someone would shamble up to the table with a copy of the nine-year-old book and a request that Saul sign it. Most of these people had never gotten through an entire book in their lives and for the most part, such intellectualism was looked upon with deep suspicion. But having this award-winning writer in their bar, one in whom they had a proprietary interest, well, that was different. Saul had thus achieved a kind of Swillian celebrity.
    There were the other writers, but none of them well known and most of them as yet unpublished, at least in book form. Three of these were poets: b. w. brill (who disdained a capitalized name, in the fashion of e. e. cummings, whom he resembled not at all), Alison Andersen, and John Laughlin. b. w. brill had actually published a book of his own and won a lesser known award. Before the prize he had been a pack-a-day Camel smoker. Now he smoked a pipe and wore corduroy jackets with leather elbows. The other two, Andersen and Laughlin, had thus far published only in little magazines and anthologies. It was therefore left to b. w. brill to steer the poetry table in the right direction. They flocked together in the back like pigeons to annoy one another. They talked about Stanford and Iowa and Bread Loaf and Yaddo.
    Ned was thinking of this when he saw b.w. waving his pipe in the air either by way of saying hello or gesturing for him to come to the poets’ table. Ned preferred to interpret it as the first and waved back.
    “Were you ever at Yaddo?” Ned asked the others.
    “Me? No,” said Saul.
    Ned shrugged. “Neither was I. What’s that other one?”
    Sally said, “You mean Bread Loaf. That’s in Vermont, isn’t it?”
    “It’s not Bread Loaf; that’s one of the writers’ conferences. You can buy your way into those. I’m talking about the retreats, where you have to be invited. You have to apply. Depending on the circumstances, you could stay for one month or six. Yaddo is one.”
    “The MacDowell Colony,” said Saul.
    “That’s it.”
    “I hate those places.”
    “Why?” asked Sally.
    “Because we love to complain about not having enough time, or that we lack a proper writing environment. We don’t want any more time, and any environment will do, if we’re honest. Writing’s just damn hard. It can be torturous. I don’t want to torture myself any more than is absolutely required. Besides, can you imagine having to sit down to dinner with thirty or forty other writers?”
    “Is that what they do?” asked Sally.
    “You’re in your room all day until dinner. Your lunch is delivered to your door,” said Ned. “It sounds like a great deal for someone who’s broke. Room and board and quiet.”
    “Until dinner,” said Saul.
    “But you guys are always complaining about distractions and not having enough time,” Sally said.
    “Then we guys are lying. It’s what I just said. Writers always lie about things like that. I mean, really, look at me; I live alone. I have plenty of time and a five-bedroom house and no one to tell me what to do—”
    “Five bedrooms. Hell, start another retreat,” said Ned.
    “I probably have the ideal environment; so does Ned. So if we talk about distractions and too little time, we’re just lying. Anyway, as to these retreats—so called, I mean—I can’t see many writers getting much out of them. Writing is an antisocial act. Dinner with thirty is not