Reed Coleman - Gun Church

“Are you bored with me?”

“What are you talking about?” I sounded annoyed, but regretted it. I spun around and tried to hug her, but she pushed away from me and moved back by the door.

“Does Jim fuck like me?”

“What?”

“Look at me,” she said, rubbing her right hand over her breasts, letting it brush over the trim triangle of dark blond hair between her thighs. “Are you more interested in Jim than me? More interested in that book? Aren’t I enough to keep your attention?”

“Don’t be silly. Come here.”

She didn’t hesitate. I kissed her softly on the mouth and then turned her around so that her bare, muscular back rested against my chest and abdomen. I threw my right arm around her breasts, pulling her so close that not even the Holy Ghost could have slipped between us. Brushing her lush blond hair away with the point of my chin, I ran my mouth over the light down on the nape of her neck, kissed her ears. I let the fingertips of my left hand trace the curve of her hip. I slid my fingers slowly across her flat belly and down into her soft, trimmed thatch of hair. Her breaths grew short and rapid and she was already wet as I ran my fingers gently along her folds. I nudged the tip of my finger into the split at the tip of her labia. Not wanting to rush her, I made lazy, gentle passes, increasing the speed and pressure just a little with each stroke. Finally, she grabbed my wrist and pressed my fingers hard against her. Her back arched, body shuddered. She sighed and relaxed, falling fully against me.

We stood there like that for a few minutes, the tension flowing out of her body. She felt small and vulnerable in my arms. It was dawning on me that I did in fact know far more about Jim than I did about the St. Pauli Girl. I really had cut myself off from women. I’d sleep with them, but I didn’t want to know them or anything about them.

“I’m sorry about before,” I said, kissing her on top of her head. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Why not?”

“Meg’s supposed to be calling soon about the book deal and the tension’s starting to get to me.”

“Oh, the publishing stuff.”

“Yeah, that.” I kissed her again, let her go, and retrieved the file from the desk. “You were asking about this.”

“I found it in bed instead of you,” she said, wrapping herself up in an old quilt thrown over the back of my desk chair.

I brushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear, and kissed her on the mouth.

“What about the file?” she asked, sitting down in my desk chair.

I reached into the file. “You’ve seen me writing lately.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m writing about what’s in here,” I said, handing her a tattered spiral notebook.

“What is it?”

“It’s the diary of a murderer.”

She got a sick look on her face. “A murderer?”

I told her about being sent to do a piece on the Troubles and detailed how I’d met the man who’d hunted me down in Deptford, how he’d given me that damned notebook.

“But why you?” she asked.

“He never said anything except he heard I was looking for a different kind of story. I don’t know. Maybe he could spot a fellow lost soul.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

I laughed. “He wasn’t the kind of man to ask.”

“What makes his story so different?”

“Because he was like the slave ship captain who comes to see the tragedy of what he has done. But unlike the slave ship captain who writes ‘Amazing Grace’ because he believes there is a God to redeem him, McGuinn knows there is no God. McGuinn is so much more a tragic figure because he knows there is no redemption or forgiveness. What is done is done.”

But the book wasn’t done and when Jim called to say he’d be a half hour late, I went back to it.

There he was, the jumpy bollix, ten paces over his left shoulder and about as inconspicuous as a cunt in a cock shop. He was looking everywhere but at McGuinn. Short of stature, he was a mean-faced fooker with opaque eyes. No more than thirty with the bloated muscles and acne of a juicer, he was a real trouble boy, that one. The type of lad that was always spoiling for violence. Maybe, McGuinn thought, he would oblige the lad, as he possessed a knack for violence his own self.

But he had to make a choice quickly. He supposed he could vanish into the crowd like so much smoke and keep going. It wasn’t as if this town held any particular fascination for him. To the contrary, he could recreate his lonely little hell in any of a thousand shite holes along the road. One factory or abattoir was much like another, one bloody and mindless job same as the next. Yet he found he was in no hurry to scurry. He’d been on the run his entire feckin’ life and he was spent. This corner of nowhere was as fine as any other in which to make a stand. Besides, he was curious.

This set up smelled neither of the Prods nor the Brits. Although it had the feel of amateur night at Ralph and Jim’s Bar and Grill, McGuinn couldn’t risk dismissing the possibility that there were forces at play here beyond his experience. Unlikely, for sure, but possible.

The man who believes he has seen it all is a blind fooker and more often than not, a dead one.

Weiler’s writing was, for my money, always less than the sum of its parts. The novels were like long-form versions of Steely Dan songs: slick, well-produced, clever as hell, but rather soulless and incomprehensible.

— E-MAIL FROM HASKELL BROWN TO FRANZ DUDEK

I’d broken the mile barrier on my run that morning and felt like Chuck Yeager. The euphoria was short-lived because when Jim dropped me back off at my house, I noticed the red message-light flashing as I walked through the front door. I recited the procrastinator’s oath to myself- Never do now what you can put off until you die -but I wasn’t a procrastinator by temperament or nature. If I was five minutes early, I felt ten minutes late. Even when I was writing Curley Takes Five , possibly one of the worst books ever written, I was weeks early for my deadline. An editor at Penguin once confided in me that her definition of a perfect author was one who hands in a brilliant manuscript and then gets hit by a bus. In my case, I think Ferris, Ledoux would have settled for the bus and considered themselves lucky. Those were dark days.

That was a long time ago and the red light flashing was now. The message was a terse Kip, call me back. Pronto! Meg . I knew Meg Donovan. Terse messages meant things had gone badly.

I dispensed with the chit chat. “How bad is it?”

“All is not lost.”

“Said the optimistic surgeon to the triple amputee. That’s a little cryptic even for you, Donovan.”

“The rights deal is still on, no problem. They even upped the offer.”

“But the new book is off. That’s what you’re telling me,” I said.

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Fuck!”

“Don’t take it out on me.”

“I said fuck, Meg, not fuck you.”

“Look, Kip, this isn’t all bad. By us throwing a demand for a new book into the mix, we gave Travers Legacy an out, but they didn’t take it and sweetened the pot. They want those books. If the new editions of your books sell well, they might be amenable to tossing you a bone next year.”

“And this tossing me a bone notion is based on what exactly, my horoscope?”

“I had lunch with Mary Caputo last week,” she said. “Mary Caputo is Franz Dudek’s assistant at Travers Legacy. Franz Dudek is the publisher.”

“And … ”

“And Mary told me Dudek was definitely willing to give you a one-book deal, a small deal, but a deal. Before you go bonkers, Kip, you should know it wasn’t a wholly artistic decision on his part. He loves your old stuff, but he was willing to take a flier on the new book for the same reasons he’s including you in the rights deal.”