Teddy's shrink at Bellevue Hospital, is now, at least temporarily, a registered sex offender. Now we send both sites to the printer. You see, the Internet can be fun."
"Wait a minute," said Fox. "I'm starting to feel sorry for Dr. Stanley Fingerhut, though I never thought I'd ever feel sorry for a shrink. Have we destroyed his reputation? What's going to happen to him?"
"Nothing's going to happen to him," said Clyde. "We'll just fax these two pages to the hospital with a little anonymous note—”
"How about this," said Fox." 'Just thought you might want to know that your Stanley Fingerhut has his finger up a little boy's butt.'"
Maybe the Internet was the work of Satan or maybe Fox Harris was Satan himself. All I know is that Clyde and I became suddenly convulsed with raucous laughter and could not seem to stop ourselves even when the mad scientist looked over with a baleful stare. It was just one of the funniest things I've ever heard in my life, and even after all that happened subsequently, I have to confess that it still ranks right up there.
"That's perfect!" said Clyde when she could finally speak. "The hospital will figure this out, of course. But they'll have to lay Fingerhut off for a day or so while they look into it. That's when we make our move. We'll just call in the morning to see if Fingerhut's there, and if he's not coming in, we are."
"Great!" said Fox, with unbridled enthusiasm. "I've always wanted to wear a stethoscope around my neck."
"Shrinks don't usually wear stethoscopes," I pointed out.
"This one does," said Fox.
"You see," said Clyde. "I told you we weren't just doing this for Teddy."
eight
When you're not writing a book, you usually have no idea what it is you're not writing about. Or maybe your mind will fly off in a thousand different directions at once to a million scenes and locations and conversations between contrived characters of invention who have no intention of being remembered by anyone. To attempt such a ridiculous task is to practically guarantee that the result will almost invariably miss the mark, not to mention the wastebasket. In the world of fiction, it is a rare thing indeed for characters to spring up full-blown from the earth and offer their innocence, their nakedness, and their careless suicidal courage to your desperate art. When a novelist who has long suffered the slow death of writer's block is served up these oh-so-human morsels upon a silver tray, it is his blessing and his curse to devour them, lest, no doubt, he himself becomes, inevitably, consumed with eternal regret.
Whenever you introduce live flesh and blood into the secret machinery of fiction, it is bound to become something more than merely a literary procedure. I, of course, did not fully appreciate or understand at the time the nature or the depth of my feelings for Clyde. Nor did I totally comprehend the nature or depth of her feelings for me. I did not know how Fox H. truly felt about me, nor, I must admit, how I truly felt about him. And I still did not have an inkling as to the precise content of the brick and mortar that held so tightly together the relationship between Clyde and Fox.
It is also accurate to say that I had no idea back then exactly where the story was going. All I knew for sure was that I was part of it. And I was proud that I was part of it, and, in a way, I suppose I still am. For I was not merely along for the ride. Though the story flowed wildly like a river over its banks, and I had no control over it really, I was able to capture it. Even in the end, when it lurched terribly out of control, I was able to confine it to those blank white pages, which I would soon observe were no longer intimidating and no longer blank. A typewriter can be sharper than a scalpel sometimes, however. And Clyde, as usual, had not been wrong. When you describe in livid detail a wild, natural thing of human beauty, it does tend to disappear from your life. Maybe every beautiful living moment
"Wait a minute," said Fox. "I'm starting to feel sorry for Dr. Stanley Fingerhut, though I never thought I'd ever feel sorry for a shrink. Have we destroyed his reputation? What's going to happen to him?"
"Nothing's going to happen to him," said Clyde. "We'll just fax these two pages to the hospital with a little anonymous note—”
"How about this," said Fox." 'Just thought you might want to know that your Stanley Fingerhut has his finger up a little boy's butt.'"
Maybe the Internet was the work of Satan or maybe Fox Harris was Satan himself. All I know is that Clyde and I became suddenly convulsed with raucous laughter and could not seem to stop ourselves even when the mad scientist looked over with a baleful stare. It was just one of the funniest things I've ever heard in my life, and even after all that happened subsequently, I have to confess that it still ranks right up there.
"That's perfect!" said Clyde when she could finally speak. "The hospital will figure this out, of course. But they'll have to lay Fingerhut off for a day or so while they look into it. That's when we make our move. We'll just call in the morning to see if Fingerhut's there, and if he's not coming in, we are."
"Great!" said Fox, with unbridled enthusiasm. "I've always wanted to wear a stethoscope around my neck."
"Shrinks don't usually wear stethoscopes," I pointed out.
"This one does," said Fox.
"You see," said Clyde. "I told you we weren't just doing this for Teddy."
eight
When you're not writing a book, you usually have no idea what it is you're not writing about. Or maybe your mind will fly off in a thousand different directions at once to a million scenes and locations and conversations between contrived characters of invention who have no intention of being remembered by anyone. To attempt such a ridiculous task is to practically guarantee that the result will almost invariably miss the mark, not to mention the wastebasket. In the world of fiction, it is a rare thing indeed for characters to spring up full-blown from the earth and offer their innocence, their nakedness, and their careless suicidal courage to your desperate art. When a novelist who has long suffered the slow death of writer's block is served up these oh-so-human morsels upon a silver tray, it is his blessing and his curse to devour them, lest, no doubt, he himself becomes, inevitably, consumed with eternal regret.
Whenever you introduce live flesh and blood into the secret machinery of fiction, it is bound to become something more than merely a literary procedure. I, of course, did not fully appreciate or understand at the time the nature or the depth of my feelings for Clyde. Nor did I totally comprehend the nature or depth of her feelings for me. I did not know how Fox H. truly felt about me, nor, I must admit, how I truly felt about him. And I still did not have an inkling as to the precise content of the brick and mortar that held so tightly together the relationship between Clyde and Fox.
It is also accurate to say that I had no idea back then exactly where the story was going. All I knew for sure was that I was part of it. And I was proud that I was part of it, and, in a way, I suppose I still am. For I was not merely along for the ride. Though the story flowed wildly like a river over its banks, and I had no control over it really, I was able to capture it. Even in the end, when it lurched terribly out of control, I was able to confine it to those blank white pages, which I would soon observe were no longer intimidating and no longer blank. A typewriter can be sharper than a scalpel sometimes, however. And Clyde, as usual, had not been wrong. When you describe in livid detail a wild, natural thing of human beauty, it does tend to disappear from your life. Maybe every beautiful living moment
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