Read Online Murdering Mr. Monti: A Merry Little Tale of Sex and Violence by Judith Viorst - Free Book Online

approval.”
    “Yes, they did,” I told him, lying only a little. “I was . . . well, I always knew you were brilliant, but—but the sensitivity, Philip. The originality. The . . . the wisdom.”
    What I was doing to Philip was, I’ll readily admit, the verbal equivalent of licking his lower lip. Some might find it excessive. Philip did not. In fact, if I had to bet, I’d bet that my words were turning him on even more than my tongue had. The message in his eyes—those brooding, expressive, deep-set eyes—read, “Don’t stop now.”
    I didn’t. “And I was especially touched,” I said, “by your insights into religion and the environment, when you said . . . Do you remember that part?”
    Did he remember. Philip can quote himself extensively and accurately on any subject he has ever addressed in his twenty-three years as host of “Everything Under the Sun.” He can also quote Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, and Emily Dickinson—but not nearly as movingly.
    “I said that there were many of us who, while havingno belief in a personal God, nonetheless believed in holiness.” He smoothed the neck of his green velours shirt, just in case he was being televised, and kept rolling. “Believed in the holiness of our mountains and rivers and oceans, in the holiness of all creatures great and small, in the holiness of . . .”
    I have often wondered where Philip, who is a graduate Of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, acquired his classy accent, but there it is. William Buckley should only speak that well. Philip’s voice is so modulated, so mellifluous, so mesmerizing, that even when he’s full of shit he sounds profound. But, in fact, if we exclude how he talks when he’s engaging in what he believes to be sexual banter, he really isn’t full of shit that often. (Time or Newsweek once called his “lively and wide-ranging intellect one of our national treasures” and added, “Eat your heart out, Bill Moyers.”) Well, I don’t know about national treasure, but he sure is a whole lot sexier than Moyers, and he is—in a kind of fatiguing way—supersmart. Actually, I tend to think of him as the ultimate Bar Mitzvah boy, who first tasted glory at Temple Beth Shalom, and whose eagerness to learn and digest and explicate virtually everything under the sun derives from his wish to keep hearing the awestruck whispers that filled the temple when he was thirteen: “Oy, is that a genius or is that a genius!”
    Philip had finished with the environment and was now regaling me with brilliant lines from his program on the fantasy life of children. While he spoke, I indulged in my own fantasy. Without going into details, I’ll simply say that it involved the use of crepes, sourcream, and caviar in locations and combinations that hadn’t been mentioned in the original recipe.
    Just as my fantasy was becoming seriously weird, Jake stuck his head into the den doorway. “I’d like to get out of here in a couple of minutes, Bren. You want to start saying your goodbyes?”
    It was time to reel in Philip. “I’ve really loved being with you,” I told him, adding, with a little catch in my voice, “It’s going to be a long time until next New Year’s Day.”
    “Where is it written,” asked Philip, who was gratifyingly eager to be reeled in, “that we have to wait until next New Year’s Day? Can’t we get together for lunch?”
    “I’d love that,” I answered, tossing him what I hoped was a sluttish smile.
    And then I panicked.
    I didn’t want him thinking I was cheap. I didn’t want him talking about me in bars. I wanted him to respect me the next morning. Everything my mother had ever said to me about sex in the days when she still believed she could keep me a virgin suddenly came surging into my consciousness.
    “Listen, Philip,” I told him, “I’m having lunch with you, I’m definitely having lunch with you. But you need to know that I usually don’t—that it really