Page 40 - The Myth and the Moment

Afternoon

Paranoia feeds on coincidence, Nate. Why would Kolpak want The
Myth and the Moment? He wouldn’t. He would want grist for his
teleplay mill, and he assumed I was still writing that kind of stuff. He
undoubtedly also sensed my hostility this morning: never work for
him, never sell to him. Probably go home and hide my work, in fact.
So he had to strike immediately. My God.
“Hey, you all right, Nate?”
“Eh? No, I’m feeling rather ill at the moment. I’ve got a suspicion
that Kolpak is behind my rooms being ransacked. I knew he was an
unscrupulous son-of-a-bitch, but this is too much!”
“Say, that’s a heavy accusation, man. Why do you think Phil would
want to mess with your stuff? You’re not part of that scene anymore.
He’s got all kinds of people ready and willing to write scripts for
him.”
“Yeah, I agree he’d have no rational motive I can figure out. But I
don’t know what goes on his head. I think he sees the world very
differently. All successful people must. You and I, we’ve kicked
around without getting anywhere special; we’ve learned to live with a
modest position, so to speak, in the social order. We don’t see the
need or feel the pressure to keep succeeding. Phil does.”
“You really know the man! But you say you haven’t seen him in
years?”
“I guess I’ve reached the age where my long-term memory is better
than the short-term. One reason I’m so freaked out is that I’m going
to have to reconstruct my most recent work without any notes, and it
will be a strain. But I can easily quote whole passages from things I
did twenty or thirty years ago.”
“Hey, I’m like that with songs, you know? I always thought it was
because the new ones just ain’t memorable, you dig? Or else being
young and full of hormones was conducive to imprinting the lyrics of
the day on one’s cerebral cortex.”
“Ham! You sly old dog! Nothing wrong with your mind, let me tell
you. A lot of people have gone on this anti-intellectual kick since the
reactionaries came to power, and I’m glad to see you’re still
thinking.”
“Ah, come on with that flattery bullshit. You’re just congratulating
yourself for being smart enough to understand me, that’s all. Listen,
I’ve got to run. You all right now?”

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