The Color of Light. by William Goldman

Author:William Goldman [Goldman, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Warner Books, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

EXPERT EXPERIENCED RESEARCHER

Speed matched only by accuracy. No subject too arcane. Low rates. Call 212-555-4001; seven days 9-5.

Three Sundays later, Chub stared at his ad in the back of the Book Review section. There were half a dozen competing researcher ads, but his was unquestionably the best. He had not been in the Sunday Times since Joyce Carol Oates had called Under the Weathers “considerable achievement” (some things you just remember) but the way his ad jumped out at you was something you just couldn’t feel bad about.

And the day—you couldn’t bitch about that either. Cool and dry, that first hint of fall. He dressed, went out and celebrated by buying a couple of buttered bagels, along with a container of coffee, from a deli around the corner and spent the next hours watching a tight baseball game in Riverside Park between really good competing teams of Puerto Ricans. Then he took a long walk by the Hudson, stopping at the Seventy-ninth Street boat basin, where a couple of big yachts were anchored. On one of the yachts a party was blasting along, and there was a lot of laughter but, watching the tanned faces, Chub doubted the sounds.

He lay down on the grass awhile, getting a start of a tan, and when the afternoon was moving along, headed back up into the Nineties, where his luck held: The Thalia was playing a Bergman double feature, Winter Light and The Seventh Seal, masterpieces both, and he was amazed when he left that they were better even than he remembered.

Getting dark now. He hadn’t eaten since the bagels and he treated himself to a pig-out at the local Hunan spot that had recently opened. It was after seven when he got back to his place and after eight when the phone rang.

Chub answered and a male voice said, “Is this the ‘expert experienced researcher’ that ran an ad in today’s Times?”

“Yessir, it is.”

“Well, I have but one question.”

Chub grabbed a pad and paper, got ready. “Shoot.”

“How in the name of bleeding Jesus am I supposed to reach you between nine and five when there is no one there to answer the fucking phone between nine and five?”

Chub tried not to laugh at himself but sometimes he really was the asshole of the world: Obviously he had intended to be absent—who gave a damn about Puerto Rican baseball?—because what if the phone didn’t ring? Or what if it did? Or both. “Busy on a job,” he said.

“I have waited for you, young man, because you were the only one who had the audacity to use the word ‘arcane’—most writers haven’t the least idea what it means.”

See? It really was the best ad.

“I am Elliott double ‘l’ double ‘t’ Carter,” the voice said. Then: “Yes, the Elliott Carter to forestall your question.”

Chub didn’t know who in hell the guy was, though maybe he should have. (Carter turned out to be a Donald Westlake type—only without Westlake’s talent—a factory in himself, who turned out close to a dozen books a year, mainly mysteries, under several pseudonyms.

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