Page 256 - Some Dance to Remember

226 Jack Fritscher

“Brave or stupid, he’s dead. I’m stoned.”
“They shot him?” Ryan asked.
“Maitland assures us that the witnesses heard, and I quote, ‘the thump
of Opel falling to the floor.’ The thump of Opel? Bring me the head of
Maitland Zane.”
“You’re really upsetting me.”
“Think how upset Robert Opel was. He didn’t die at the gallery. The
robbery started about 9 p.m. and he was pronounced curtains at San
Francisco General at 10:40.”
“His final performance art.”
“Sweet Maitland talks about that too. It says here that Robert
pranced....”
“Robert never pranced.”
“Maitland thinks so. Stop interrupting me. Stoned people have a hard
enough time remembering what they’re saying. It says here in print that
Robert, five years ago, pranced across the 1974 Oscar stage as David Niven
was introducing Liz Taylor.”
“That description, prancing, is fag-bashing rhetoric.”
“So write Maitland.”
“I might. Robert was a legend.”
“That’s all he is now.”
“Maitland gets very National Enquirer. Does your inquiring mind
want to know?”
“What’s worse than to know he’s dead and fag-bashed?”
“Nothing, really. Just how Robert stripped in front of Police Chief
Davis, that well-known fascist pig, at an El Lay City Council meeting
to protest the banning of nudity at city beaches. He was acquitted of
indecent exposure.”
“I know that.”
“But he was convicted of disrupting a public meeting.”
“Nothing like a naked cock to disrupt a meeting.”
“Remember that. It may come in handy,” Solly instructed.
“God! You’re bitchy when you’re stoned.”
“Getting stoned only makes anyone more of what they already are.”
“So how’s Camille?”
“I only know what Maitland knows.”
“Such as?”
“Survivors include Opel’s mother and a sister.”
“Poor Robert.”
“So...how’s that grab you? You try and tell me about good and evil,

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK