The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald Read Online Free Page A

Penn was bringing the house down as Duke Mantee. And Merilee was considered a shoo-in for another Tony nomination for her portrayal of Gabby Maple, the Arizona truck-stop waitress who reads François Villon and dreams of running off to France.
    Me, I was facing the gloomy realization that my season in the sun had passed. I was closing in on forty and didn’t have much to show for it — two small rooms, $657 in the bank, some yellowing clippings, a huge ego, and a basset hound who eats Nine Lives canned mackerel for cats and very, very strange dogs. I had no future. I was looking for one when Boyd Samuels called.
    His assistant returned with a steaming Bang coffee mug. I thanked him. He lingered, examined the carpet. He was painfully shy. Not a positive quality in an agent, unless it can be harnessed into naked ambition.
    “For what it’s worth,” he finally got out, “I thought Such Sweet Sorrow was an even better novel than Our Family Enterprise . I really loved it.”
    “That makes you and my mother — and her I’m not so sure about.”
    “What I mean,” he added, reddening, “is I think the critics were wrong to punch you out.”
    “Could be. But don’t forget they weren’t necessarily right when they lavished praise on me before. They simply misunderstood me to my advantage.” I sipped my coffee. “Todd, isn’t it?”
    “Why, yes,” he replied, startled. He was not used to people remembering his name.
    “Thank you, Todd.”
    “Sure thing,” he said brightly.
    “Been working for Boyd long?”
    “Ever since he started out. We were friends in college. Well, sort of friends. What I mean is … ”
    Before he could finish explaining, Hurricane Boyd hit. The man seemed to explode into the room. He was a human exclamation mark. “Whoa, sorry about the delay, amigo!” he exclaimed as he hurled his bulging briefcase on his desk, whipped off his Ray-Bans, and stuck out his hand. “Glad to meet ya! Indeed!”
    I shook it, half expecting to get an electrical shock.
    Boyd Samuels was burly and bearded and over six feet tall in his ostrich-skin cowboy boots. He had thick black hair and he wore it shoulder length and didn’t bother to comb it. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his thick, hairy forearms, a bola-string tie of turquoise and hammered silver, and pleated khaki trousers.
    “Coffee, Toddy!” he ordered as a greeting to his assistant.
    “Right away, Boyd,” Todd said, hurrying off.
    Lulu stirred on the sofa next to me. Boyd fell to his knees and patted her. “Hey, pretty baby, what’s happening?” She yawned in response. He made a face, turned back to me. “Jeez, her breath smells kind of … ”
    “She has funny eating habits.”
    “What’s she eat — old jock straps?”
    “We’re going to pretend we didn’t hear that.”
    Todd came back with the coffee. Boyd took it, dropped into his desk chair, and gave him the name of an editor he wanted on the phone at once. Todd nodded, retreated.
    There was a bottle of Old Overholt rye whiskey in his desk drawer. Boyd poured a generous slug of it into his coffee, then offered me the bottle. I was starting to reach for it when a soft, low growl came from the sofa next to me. My protector. She was concerned that I was slipping back into my bad habits I had before when things went sour. I glowered at her. She glowered right back at me, baring her teeth like Lassie trying to protect Timmy from a hissing rattler. I was definitely losing the upper hand.
    Boyd put the bottle away, struck a kitchen match against the sole of his boot, and lit an unfiltered Camel with it. Then he sat back with his boots up on the desk, smoking, sipping his laced coffee. The whole routine was pretty down-home shit-kicker; especially for an optometrist’s son from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Only the eyes spoiled it. The eyes taking me in from across that desk were shrewd and alert and as piercing as twin laser beams. The man didn’t blink.
    Not until his