Dreams Die First Read Online Free Page A

of forms across the kitchen table. “It’s going to take me some time to sort this out,” she said.
    “How long?” I asked.
    “Maybe the rest of the day. It’s a mess.” She turned to Persky. “Do you have a four-column pad?”
    “What you see is what I got.”
    “I’ll run down to a stationery store and get one,” she said.
    Persky looked at me after she had gone out. “Would you like a beer?”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    I followed him into the kitchen and he took two beers from the refrigerator. We drank from the cans. “Ever run a paper?” he asked.
    “No.” I let the beer run down my throat. It was cool, not cold.
    He saw the expression on my face. “There’s something wrong with the damn refrigerator. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. If you’ve never run a paper, what makes you interested in this one?”
    “I didn’t say I was. It was Lonergan’s idea.”
    “What makes him think you can do it?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe because I used to write and worked on some magazines.”
    “It’s not the same thing,” he said. He looked at me shrewdly. “Lonergan got you, too?”
    “No. I’m straight with him.” That was the truth. At the moment I owed him nothing.
    He was silent for a moment. “Be careful. Lonergan’s got half the world by the balls now and he’s looking to get the other half.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    For the first time an expression of interest came over his face. “Write, you said? What kind of material?”
    “Articles, commentary, poetry, fiction. I tried them all.”
    “Any good at it?”
    “Not very.”
    “I’d settle if I could be even a half-assed writer, but I know now I can’t get enough words together to make a decent sentence. Once I thought I could. That’s how I got into this paper.”
    “What did you do before?” I asked.
    “I was circulation manager for several papers like this around the state. They all did pretty good and it seemed easy, so when I got the chance, I grabbed this one.” He paused heavily. “It wasn’t easy.”
    “How’d you get in with Lonergan?”
    “How does anybody get involved with Lonergan? You run a little short. Next thing you know you’re a lot short.”
    “You had a business. What about the banks?”
    “Zilch. I tapped out with them the first time around.”
    “What do you owe Lonergan?”
    “I don’t the fuck know. How does anybody know with that crazy six-for-five bookkeeping mushrooming week after week? I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a million dollars by now.”
    By the time Verita finished at six o’clock that evening it turned out that he owed Lonergan nineteen thousand dollars. Plus about eight thousand dollars to the printers and suppliers and thirty-seven thousand dollars in withholding taxes to the state and federal governments. And no assets except a couple of lousy old desks.
    “You hit the jackpot. Sixty-four thousand dollars,” I said.
    His voice was a whisper as he stared down at the yellow sheet covered with Verita’s neat little accountant’s figures. “Jesus! I knew it was a lot, but seeing it like that—it’s scary.”
    Verita’s voice was gentle. “You have nothing really to sell. What you should do is go bankrupt.”
    He stared down at her. “Does bankruptcy get me out of the taxes?”
    She shook her head. “No, taxes are not forgiven.”
    “Nobody busts out on Lonergan either. Not if you want to keep your head attached to your neck.” His voice was dull. He turned to me. “What do we do now?”
    I felt sorry for him. Then I got angry at myself. I was feeling sorry for too many people. I had even been sorry for the gooks I lined up in my rifle sights in Vietnam. The first time it happened I couldn’t squeeze the trigger until I saw the bullets tearing into the shrubbery around me and realized that he was my enemy and wasn’t feeling sorry for anybody. Then I squeezed the trigger and saw the automatic fire hemstitch across his middle until he almost