The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry(6)
“ ‘Lamb to the Slaughter,’ ” A.J. said. “The story’s called ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’ and the weapon is a leg of lamb.”
“Yes, that’s it!” The cop was delighted. “You know your stuff.”
“It’s a very well-known piece,” A.J. said. “My in-laws should be here any minute. I’m sorry about before when I referred to you as an ‘unimportant supporting character.’ That was rude and for all we know, I am the ‘unimportant supporting character’ in the grander saga of Officer Lambiase. A cop is a more likely protagonist than a bookseller. You, sir, are a genre.”
“Hmmm,” said Officer Lambiase. “You’re probably right at that. Going back to what we were talking about before. As a cop, my problem with the story is the timeline. Like, she puts the beef—”
“Lamb.”
“Lamb. So she kills the guy with the frozen lamb chop then she puts it in the oven to cook without even thawing it. I’m no Rachael Ray, but . . .”
Nic had begun to freeze by the time they had pulled her car out of the water, and in the morgue drawer her lips had been blue. The color had reminded A.J. of the black lipstick she’d worn to the book party she’d thrown for the latest vampire whatever. He hadn’t cared for the idea of silly teenage girls prancing about Island in prom dresses, but Nic, who had actually liked that damned vampire book and the woman who wrote it, insisted that a vampire prom was good for business and also fun. “You remember fun, right?”
“Dimly,” he had said. “Long ago, back before I was a bookseller, back when I had my weekends and my nights to myself, back when I read for pleasure, I recall that there was fun. So, dimly, dimly. Yes.”
“Let me refresh your memory. Fun is having a smart, pretty, easy wife with whom you get to spend every working day.”
He could still picture her in that ridiculous black satin dress, her right arm draped around the porch column and her comely stained lips in a line. “Tragically, my wife has been turned into a vampire.”
“You poor man.” She crossed the porch and kissed him, leaving a lipstick trace like a bruise. “Your only move is to become a vampire, too. Don’t try to fight it. That’s the absolute worst thing you could do. You gotta be cool, nerd. Invite me in.”
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
1922 / F. Scott Fitzgerald
Technically, a novella. But then novella is something of a gray area. Still, if you find yourself among the kind of people who bother to make such distinctions—and I used to be that type of person—it is best that you know the difference. (If you end up going to an Ivy League college,* you are likely to run into such people. Arm yourself with knowledge against this bumptious lot. But I digress.) E. A. Poe defines a short story as readable in a single sitting. I imagine a “single sitting” was longer back in his day. But I digress again.
Gimmicky, oddball story of the challenges of owning a town made of diamonds and of the lengths the rich will go to protect their way of life. Fitzgerald is in fine form here. The Great Gatsby is unquestionably dazzling, but that novel occasionally seems overgroomed to me, like a garden topiary. The short-story format is a roomier, messier affair for him. “Diamond” breathes like an enchanted garden gnome.
Re: its inclusion. Shall I do the obvious thing and tell you that just before I met you I too lost something of great, if speculative, value?
—A.J.F.
*I have thoughts about this. Remember that a fine education can be found in places other than the usual.
Though he can’t remember how he got there or having taken off his clothes, A.J. wakes in bed wearing only his underwear. He remembers that Harvey Rhodes is dead; he remembers being an * to the comely Knightley Press rep; he remembers throwing the vindaloo across the room; he remembers the first glass of wine and the toast to Tamerlane. After that, oblivion. From his point of view, the evening had been a triumph.
His head is pounding. He walks out to the main room, expecting to find the vindaloo detritus. The floor and the walls are spotless. A.J. digs an aspirin out of the cabinet while silently congratulating himself for having had the foresight to clean up the vindaloo. He sits down at the dining-room table and notices that the wine bottle has also been thrown out. Odd for him to have been so fastidious but not unprecedented. He is nothing if not a neat drunk. He looks across the table to where he’d left Tamerlane. The book is gone. Maybe he only thought he’d taken it out of the case?
As he walks across the room, A.J.’s heart is pounding in competition with his head. Halfway to the bookcase, he can see that the combination-locked, climate-controlled glass coffin, which protects Tamerlane from the world, is wide open and empty.
He pulls on a bathrobe and throws on his running shoes, which haven’t gotten much mileage on them of late.
A.J. jogs down Captain Wiggins Street with his dingy plaid bathrobe flapping out behind him. He looks like a depressed, malnourished superhero. He turns onto Main and runs straight into the sleepy Alice Island Police Station. “I’ve been robbed!” A.J. announces. It was only a short run, but A.J. is breathing hard. “Please, someone help me!” He tries not to feel like an old lady with a stolen handbag.
Lambiase sets down his cup of coffee and takes in the distraught man in the bathrobe. He recognizes him as the owner of the bookstore and the man whose pretty young wife had driven into the lake a year and a half back. A.J. looks much older than the last time he’d seen him, though Lambiase supposes that is to be expected.