Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

8. A Thankfully Uneventful Trip to Iowa City, Iowa

Anxious to get me away from his cats and to atone for what they had done to me, Ed suggested we take a ride from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City, where we could have a pleasant stroll through Prairie Lights, a large and nationally known bookstore, then have an earlyish dinner (as Gerda and I had to rise at dawn to resume our journey to California). He assured us that Iowa City also boasted a feline slaughterhouse where we could go to compare the stink of cat kill to that of a hog kill.

Aside from a hair-raising ride due to the sheer contempt in which Ed holds those lane-dividing lines on public highways, our side trip to Iowa City was uneventful. Just good conversation — much of it book talk — and a nice dinner. I had another soda cracker. I was able to keep it down with little trouble. I was quite sure that, in a month or so, the memory of the hog-kill stench would have faded sufficiently to allow me to eat normally again, certainly before my weight had slipped much lower than ninety pounds.

9. Ed Gorman, the Phone Company, and Me

As I write this, it is nearly three years since our stay in Cedar Rapids and our two days with Ed and Carol. As both of us are to some degree workaholics and as neither of us, therefore, is much of a traveler, Ed and I have not yet managed to get together again face to face. We stay in touch by reading each other’s books — and with the help of the telephone. Our conversations continue to be punctuated with a lot of laughter — a precious, vital medicine in this madhouse world. Here’s a cute anecdote: sometimes at three in the morning, Ed calls up and, with a couple of handkerchiefs over the mouthpiece of his phone, distorts his voice and makes obscene threats, apparently because he’s concerned about keeping my life interesting and full of color, and I am always touched by his genuine concern that I never become bored, by the fact that he would take the time and trouble to entertain me in such a fashion. He doesn’t realize that I know the identity of the obscene caller, and he would surely be embarrassed to know that I am aware of his thoughtfulness. But you see, no matter how much he distorts his voice, those cats are in his study with him, and even long-distance my lips go numb and my eyes begin to bleed.