Jeffery Deaver - Manhattan Is My Beat

Yo, Fairy Godmother! Yo! Wave your magic wand and get me the hell out of here.

"Listen, you want to stay? Have some wine?"

That'd be a pretty picture, she thought. The three of us sipping wine while he's waiting for me to leave so he can put the Tantra moves on too-tall Karen.

"No, think I'll go."

"Sure. I'll walk you to the elevator."

Oh, don't argue too hard now.

Richard continued. "Oh, wait, let me get you what I have for you."

"My surprise?"

"Right. I think you'll like it."

"So, Rune, how do you know Richard?" Karen was calling from the kitchen.

Yeah. He picked me up the other night and's been trying to fuck me ever since.

"Met in a video store. We talk about movies some."

"I love movies," Karen called. "Maybe we could all go sometime.

"Maybe."

Richard appeared from his bedroom. He was carrying a white envelope.

That's my present?

"Be right back," he said to Karen.

"This sauce is so good," she called from the kitchen. She stuck her pert head into the doorway.

"Nice meeting you. Oh, love the earrings!"

As they walked to the elevator Richard said, "Karen's a friend. We work together."

Rune wondered: How does somebody work with you when you write novels?

They got four doors down the corridor before he said, "This's a little awkward but she and I really are just friends."

"We are going out, aren't we? You and me, I mean."

"Sure, we're going out. I mean, we aren't going out all the time though, right? We can have other friends."

"Sure. That's the way it has to work."

"Right."

I am absolutely going to murder Frankie Greek…

He pushed the down button.

Aren't we in a hurry.

"Oh, here." He thrust the envelope at her.

She opened it. Inside was an application to the New School, over on Fifth Avenue.

A joke. It had to be a joke.

"I've got a buddy works for admissions," Richard explained. "He told me they're starting this new program. Retail management. You don't even need to get a degree. You get a certificate."

She felt sick. "Wait. You're giving me career counseling?"

"Rune, you're so smart, you've got so much energy, you're so creative… I'm worried about you wasting your life."

She stared, numb, at the paper in her hand.

Richard said, "You could work your way up in the video store business. Become a manager. Then maybe you could buy a store. Or even a chain. You could really be on a hell of a vertical track."

She laughed bitterly. "But… that's not me, Richard. I'm not a vertical-track kind of person. Look, I've worked in that diner I told you about, in a bike repair shop, a deli, a shoe store. I've sold jewelry on the street, done paste-ups and mechanicals for a magazine, sold men's colognes at Macy's, and worked in a film lab. And that's just in the couple years I've been here. Before I die I'm going to do a lot more than that. I'm not going to devote my life to being manager of a video store. Or any other one thing."

"Don't you want a career?"

She felt utterly betrayed. More so than if she'd found Karen and Richard in bed, an event that was probably only minutes away.

When she didn't answer he said, "You should think about it."

Rune said, "Sometimes I get this idea I should go to school. Get a degree. Law school, maybe business school like my sister. Something. But then, you know what happens? I have this image. Of myself in ten years at a cocktail party. And somebody asks me what I do. And-this is the scary part-I have an answer for them." She smiled at him.

"Which is…?"

He didn't get it. "That's the point. It doesn't matter; the scary part is that I have an answer. I say, 'I'm a lawyer, an accountant, a hoosey-whatsis maker.' Bang, there I am. Denned in one or two words. That scares the hell out of me."

"Why're you so afraid of reality?"

"My life is real. It's just not, apparently, your kind of reality."

He said harshly, "No, it's not real. Look at this game of yours…"

"What game?"

"Find-the-hidden-treasure."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Do you understand that a man. was killed? Did it ever occur to you that it wasn't a game to Robert Kelly? That you could get hurt? Or a friend of yours could get hurt? That ever occur to you?"

"It'll work out. You just need to believe…"

She gasped as he took her angrily by the shoulders and led her to a window at the end of the hallway. Pointed outside. Beneath them was a mass of highways and rail sidings and rusting equipment-huge turbines and metal parts. Beyond that was a small factory, surrounded by standing yellowish water. Mud. Filth.

"What's that?" he asked.

She shook her head. Not understanding.

"What is it?" His voice rose.

"What do you mean?" Her voice crackled.

"It's a factory, Rune. There's shit and pollution. It makes a living for people and they pay taxes and give money to charity and buy sneakers for their children. Who grow up to be lawyers or teachers or musicians or people who work in other factories. It's nothing more than that. It's not a spaceship, it's not a castle, it's not an entrance to the underworld. It's a factory."

She was completely still.

"I like you a lot, Rune. But going with you is like living in some movie."

She wiped her nose. The cars below whined past. "What's wrong with movies? I love movies."

"Nothing. As long as you remember they aren't real. You're going to find out I'm not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money-which I think is the craziest frigging thing I've ever heard-but that it's spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you'll never find it. And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to fantasy, waiting for something you don't even know what it is."

"If that's your reality you can keep it," she snapped, wiping her nose.

"Fairy stories aren't going to get you by in life."

"I told you they don't all have happy endings!"

"But even if they don't, Rune, you close the book, you put it on your shelf and you go on with your life. They. Aren't. Real. And if you live your life like you're in one you're going to get hurt. Or somebody around you's going to get hurt."

"So why're you the expert on reality? You write novels."

He sighed, looked away from her. "I don't write novels. I was trying to impress you. I don't even read novels. I write audiovisual scripts for companies. 'Hello, I'm John Jones, your CEO, welcome to Sales-Fest '88…' It's not weird. It's not fun. But it pays the bills."

"But you… you're just like me. The clubs, the dancing, the magic… we like the same things."

"It's an act, Rune. Just like it is for everybody who lives that way. Except for you. Nobody can sustain your kind of weirdness. When you're frivolous, when you're irresponsible, you miss trains and buses and dinner dates. You-"

"But," she interrupted, "there'll always be a next train." She wiped her eyes and saw the mascara had run. Shit. She must look pathetic. She said softly, "You lied to me."

The elevator arrived. She pulled away from him and stepped into the car.

"Rune…"

They stood three feet away, she inside, he out. It seemed to take forever before the doors started to close. As they slowly did she thought that Diarmuid, or any knight, wouldn't let her get away like this. He'd push in after her, shove the doors aside, hold her.

Tell her they could work out these differences.

But Richard just turned and walked down the corridor.

"There'll always be another train," she whispered as the doors closed.

" 'Your stepsisters keep you in tatters like this? No, no, no, dear, that will never do. How can you be the fairest one at the ball in these rags? Now, let me see what I can do. Yes, oh, my, that should be just right…'