His hair was in a tangle. This neat and tidy structure with its dark-red paint and neat cream-colored trim looked like the five-car garage of a well-to-do country squire masquerading as a barn.

That was what came next. "Im sorry I hit you, Geoffrey ? truly sorry, my dear old man, and Im sure you know it ? but I must. Or at the end of Chapter 9, Fiery Doom, hed be tied to a chair in a burning warehouse. Lighter fluid had pooled under it and now pale-blue tongues of flame shot up between the keys.

"If you can get into that chair all by yourself, Paul,she said at last, "then I think you can fill in your own fucking ns. She killed Pomeroy with that same axe.

"There,she said, almost conversationally, and walked away m the direction from which she had come running. Other ones, too ? when they werent writing wonderful stories they were drinking and whoring and shooting dope and heaven knows what else.