The Great American Novel by Stephen Vincent & Charles Gorham & Jack Gotshall & Alfred Coppel

Author:Stephen Vincent & Charles Gorham & Jack Gotshall & Alfred Coppel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: literature, fiction, novel, classic, coming of age
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2016-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

NIGHT OF FIRE AND SNOW, by Alfred Coppel

Originally published in 1957.

DEDICATION

For E. A. C.

Book One: Paris-San Francisco

Chapter One

Miguel Rinehart was in the bar with Jean Claude when the speaker system announced that the flight from Frankfort had been delayed by weather and would arrive at Orly thirty minutes late. The female voice, made quite sexless by filtration through tubes and circuits, repeated the message in German and French and there was a multilingual murmur of disapproval from the passengers waiting in the lounge.

Jean Claude’s face was still set in lines of wounded disgust and Miguel looked away. His literary agent had some right to complain of him, but J.C. was characteristically sulking and Miguel, under the circumstances, found it exasperating.

In the mirror behind the rows of spigoted bottles, Miguel could see the reflection of the rainy field outside with its crisscrossing pattern of red, green and amber runway fights gleaming in the dusk. On the concrete ramp under the panoramic sweep of the waiting-room windows, a Sabena Douglas was loading, its door standing open in the gloom. The rain fell listlessly out of a lead-colored sky. Miguel understood now why so much was made of spring weather in Paris. It was the only time you didn’t have to suffer through snow or sleet, or suffocating, muggy heat, or as now, in early September, a constant and depressing rain.

He had mentioned this to J.C. and the Frenchman had only snapped, “You are in a mood to find fault.”

The speaker system abandoned itself to a small combo version of “La Vie en Rose” and Miguel stirred restlessly. The Frankfort flight’s late arrival would delay the New York airplane and that, in turn, would hold up flights destined for Chicago and Tulsa, Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco and on and on like a shock traveling along axons and dendrites so that tomorrow, half a world away, passengers in Hawaii and Buenos Aires would chafe.

Once something was decided, Miguel thought, once a course of action was established, nothing should be allowed to interfere. Airplanes and ships should arrive on time, people should fulfill their functions smoothly and without distemper.

It was almost as though he needed to say to himself: I am Miguel Rinehart, aged thirty-three. American, father, son, brother and husband. I belong. In the canyons of Madison Avenue or in the dry hills of California. Somewhere, surely, please God. But where? The answer had always evaded him.

Jean Claude tasted his Pernod and set the cloudy green glass carefully on the bar. “Of course,” he said, “the job was a small one—”

Miguel realized he was still talking about the story for Réalités that lay three-quarters finished on the abandoned desk in the apartment in Montparnasse.

“Nothing,” the agent continued sadly, “to compare with an offer from Artfilm. I understand that.”

“You can get someone else to do the piece,” Miguel said curtly.

“Yes,” J.C. said.

Meaning no, Miguel thought. Meaning damn you for leaving me in a hole with an uncompleted assignment and an angry editor.

“I’ve told you fifteen times already, Jean.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.