I took the news with me out to a late breakfast at Courtown. Late breakfast, hell, all of the breakfasts were late. It was ten thirty by the time I got there with the cable folded in my pocket.
I walked in on Ricki and John and Jake Vickers over their eggs, bacon, and biscuits. Jake was over visiting, helping John figure out Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King for a film up ahead. John must have smelled the cable in my shirt, for he studied my face as I regrouped my omelette on my plate and made faces on the eggs with ketchup.
“Well, if that doesn’t look like the cougar that ate the boa constrictor, head and tail. Cough it up, kid.”
“Naw,” I said, pleased.
“Come on, son, tell!”
I took the cable from my shirt and tossed it across the table.
John read it thoughtfully and then handed it over to Jake.
“Well, now, if I won’t be damned. We’ve got a bloody genius under the roof.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Nor would I, kid. A figure of speech. Did you read that, Jake?”
“Sure did.” Jake passed the cable to Ricki, with a look of stunned surprise. “God! You write literature, do you?”
“For Dime Detective and Weird Tales,” I said, to take the edge off everyone’s attention.
“Read that out loud, Ricki,” said John.
“You already read it.” Ricki laughed and ran around the table to give me a hug. “Congratulations!”
She stood by my side and read the cable out loud. That was a mistake. John hadn’t really intended for her to do so. He went back to cutting his ham and buttering his toast. “Now, now, kid,” he said, gazing at his food, “you made up your mind, just what you’re gong to do with all that money?”
“Do?”
“Yes. Do. Spend. How do you figure to get rid of that astounding sum, O Son of Jules Verne?”
“I don’t know,” I said, flushed with joy, glad for their attention. “I’ve only had the cable for about three hours. I’ll talk it over with Maggie. We’ve been in our new tract house three years. Some of the rooms still don’t have furniture. And I work out in the garage where we don’t have a car, so I have an old Sears Roebuck sixty-dollar desk. Maybe I’ll buy me more bookcase space. Maybe a set of golf clubs for my dad, who’s never had a decent set in his life—”
“Jesus, God, what a list!” shouted Huston.
I glanced up, thinking he was praising me. Instead, I saw that he had collapsed back in his chair in a misery of concern for my future.
“Jake, did you just hear?”
“Yep,” said Jake.
Hold on, I thought. Wait—
“Isn’t that the damnedest dumbest list you ever heard? My God,” cried John, “you are a great writer of science fiction, are you not? And a fine and superb writer of fantasy and the imagination?”
“I try,” I said.
“Try! My God,” said John, “use your head! All of sudden you’ve got moola, money, cash! You’re not going to put that stuff in the bank and let it rot there, are you?”
“I had imagined—”
“Hell, you didn’t imagine anything!”
Ricki had been standing beside me during all this. Now I felt her fingers clutch the back of my neck, urging will power and strength. Then, sure that her act had been unseen, she marched back to her place at the head of the table, to douse her bacon with ketchup.
“Well, it sure looks like you’re going to have to leave the investment of your Grand Prize Award to people who know how to live, which means Jake and me. Don’t you agree, Vickers?” said John.
Jake nodded and gave me a big wink.
“Son, we’ll put our minds to it,” said John. “We really will. Okay, Jake? And by sunset today, we’ll have found a way for you to invest … how much was it—?”
“Five thousand dollars,” I said, weakly.
“Five thousand smackeroos! How much would you figure, Jake, we could earn for Flash Gordon’s bastard brother here?”
“Twenty thousand, maybe …” said Jake, his mouth full.
“Let’s figure fifteen to be fair. Let’s not get greedy.” John lay back like a scarecrow in his chair. “The main thing is, you can’t let money sit. It rots. Right after breakfast, kid, first thing we do, the three of us, is find a way for you to get really rich this week, no waiting, no delays!”
“I—”
“Shut up and eat your mush,” smiled John.
We ate in silence for a time, everyone casting glances at everyone else. John watching me, Jake watching John, me watching both of them, and Ricki, in the odd moment, giving me a brave nod to hold fast and fight fair in the midst of foul.
John watched me stir my food into a slow maelstrom and push it back. Then he changed the subject completely.
“What sort of reading do you do, kid?”
“Shaw. Shakespeare. Poe. Hawthorne. The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s, the Old Testament. Faulkner. Steinbeck—”
“Uh, huh,” said John, lighting a cigarillo. He sipped his coffee. “I see.”
And at last, he dropped the other riding boot.
“Havelock Ellis?” he said.
“Sex?” I said.
“Well, now, he’s not all sex and ten yards wide,” said John, casually. “You got any opinions on same?”
“What has this to do with the prize I just got?”
“Patience, son. Not a thing. It’s just, Jake and I, well, we’ve read up. There’s this Kinsey report a few years back. Read it?”
“My wife sold copies in the bookstore where I met her.”
“Do tell! Well, what about all that homosexual stuff in there, kid? I find that rather interesting, don’t you?”
“Well,” I said.
“I mean,” said John, gesturing for more coffee and waiting for Ricki to refill the cups, “there’s not a man or boy or old man on earth that hasn’t at one time hankered for another man. Right, Jake?”
“That’s common knowledge,” said Jake.
Ricki was staring at us all and twitching her mouth and sliding her eyes at me to run, get away.
“I mean isn’t it just plain human nature, with all the love in us,” said Huston, “that we fall in love with the football coach or the track star or the best debater in the class? Girls fall in love with their badminton lady instructors or some dance teacher. Right, Ricki?”
Ricki refused to reply and looked ready to bound up and leap out of the room.
“Sometimes confession is good for the soul. I don’t mind telling you,” said John, stirring his coffee and looking deep into the cup, “when I was sixteen, there was this runner in my high school— my God, he could do anything, high jump, pole vault, hundred yards, four forty, cross-country, you name it. Beautiful boy. How could I not just think he was the greatest set of cat’s pajamas in the world? And, Jake, fess up, now. Same thing happen to you?”
“Not to me,” said Jake. “But to friends. A ski instructor took a pal of mine down the slopes, and if he had said, ‘Marry me,’ my friend would have. Maybe not stayed, but … sure.”
“There, you see?” John nodded from Jake to Ricki to me. “All perfectly normal. Now it’s your turn, kid.”
“My tum?”
“Why—” he seemed a trifle astonished, “to fess up. I mean, if Jake here is a gut wonder of strength to share with us his pal’s ski instructor—”
“Yeah,” said Jake.
“And I am big enough to tell you about that all-American, cross-country, beefsteak-eating son-of-a-bitch, well, then,” he sucked his cigarillo, “it’s time,” he sucked his coffee, “for … you.”
I took a deep breath and let it out.
“I got nothing to confess.”
“Now hold on!” said John.
“Nope,” I said. “I wish I could, but nothing ever happened to me, age fifteen or sixteen or seventeen. From eighteen on, nothing. Nineteen? Twenty?—zero. Twenty-one to twenty-six, only my writing. A few girls, but like my friend, Ray Harryhausen, who put all his libido in dinosaurs, I put all my libido in rockets, Mars, alien creatures, and one or two unlucky girls who, when I brought my stories over to the house, ran off whining with boredom after the first hour—”
“You don’t mean to say?” said Jake.
“Nothing at all?” accused John.
“Wish there had been a gym coach, wish there had been a ski instructor,” I admitted. “Wish I had been as lucky as both of you with a little off-trail smittance. But, no strange ones, no oddballs, no kumquats, no queens. Pretty boring, eh?”
I looked over at Ricki. She was dying with admiration for me, but said nothing.
“But surely!” said John.
“Come off it,” said Jake. “We all have these foibles, these little dirty yearnings.”
“Not me,” I blinked. “No boy David. Only Aphrodite and the Venus de Milo. Girls’ bums, not boys’ behinds. I realize that makes me unusual. I tried. I really tried. But I just couldn’t fall in love with Hugo Dinwiddy, my hygiene coach at L.A. High.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Huston.
“Neither do I,” said Vickers.
“Now, you, John,” I said. “I’m in love with you. But that’s different, yes?”
He backed off. “Sure. I mean, yeah, of course.”
“And, Jake,” I said. “I’ll be knocking at your door tonight. Leave it unlocked.”
I saw the air going out of his Montgolfier balloon. “Sure,” he said.
“Hooray!” Ricki rushed around the table, kissed me on the cheek, and fled the room. “Bravo.”
Bloody Marys were served in silence.
During the silence I thought, Watch it. I served myself more eggs and sat down, waiting for John to try again.
“About that money of yours,” said John, at last.
“I
