In the night room Page 0,8

going into comedy? No, the books are back in my apartment, I mean, where else would they be? If I had ESP, I’d have them with me, but no such luck, right? But I live right down the street, be back in five minutes, less, four minutes, time me with your watch, check it out, see if I’m wrong. Okay? We got a deal?”

“Go get the books,” Tim said.

The fan made a pistol with his hand, pointed it at Tim, and dropped the hammer of his thumb. He whirled away and was out the door. Tim realized that he had never given his name. As fans went, this one seemed slightly off, but Tim wished to preserve an open mind about anyone who bought his books. Anyone who did that had earned his gratitude.

Today’s admirer stretched his patience nearly to the breaking point. After twelve minutes, Tim began to simmer. He liked getting to his desk by ten, and it was already 9:40. If he gave up on the eggs he didn’t want and abandoned the puzzle he couldn’t concentrate on well enough to finish, he could avoid dealing with the fan, who had been overassertive, overintrusive, and was unlikely to be satisfied with merely a couple of signatures. He would want to talk, to swap phone numbers, to find out where Tim lived. He’d escalated from “Mr. Underhill” to “Tim” in less than a second. “Tim” did not want to encourage a fan who told him he was a funny guy—it gave him the willies. So did the shooting gesture with which the man had left him.

Again, he saw April before him, cupping her hands and shaping her mouth to shout . . .

Whistle to us? That could not be right.

Tim let his fork clatter to his plate, signaled the waiter for the check, and returned his pen to his pocket. Rain streamed down the windows of the diner, and when the door swung open, a few drops spattered onto the tiles. Tim sighed. A wet hand swept the sodden hood of a sweatshirt off his admirer’s glowing face. The fan held up a yellow bag bearing the likeness of Charles Dickens.

“Did you time me?”

Tim looked at his watch. “You were gone at least twenty minutes.”

“No, six, at the outside. I would have been here earlier, but the rain slowed me down.”

The fan pulled the books one by one from the shiny bag and stacked them about an inch north of Tim’s plate. They were copies of lost boy lost girl, as yet unpublished. He had received his box of author’s copies only a short while before. “These babies stayed dry, anyhow.” The fan wiped his face and pushed the moisture back into his thick black hair. “Must be a great feeling to sign a book you wrote, huh? Like ‘This is my baby, get a good look, ’cuz I’m one proud papa,’ right?”

Tim wanted to get rid of this character as soon as possible. “Where did you get these books?”

The man slid the books nearer to Tim. “Why? I bought them, didn’t I?”

Water dripped from his sleeves, and drops landed on the Times crossword puzzle. In a small number of squares, the ink melted into the paper.

“Okay,” he said, and sat down in the chair opposite Tim. “Sign the first one to Jasper Kohle, that’s Jasper the normal way, and Kohle is K-O-H-L-E. My full name is Jasper Dan Kohle, but I only use my middle name on checks and my driver’s license, ha ha. Inscribe it however you like. Have fun. Use your imagination. You could say, ‘To Jasper Kohle, I yam what I yam.’ ”

The only thing worse than someone ordering you to be inventive when you signed their book was someone telling you exactly what to write. This fan had managed to do both. Tim looked at Jasper Kohle, for the first time actually taking him in, and saw someone whose cheerfulness was laid on like paint. His eyes had no light, and his smile displayed too many teeth, all of them yellow. He was ten to fifteen years older than he had first appeared.

“You didn’t go to your apartment,” Tim said. “You ran all the way to the bookstore, and then you ran back. I don’t understand it, but that’s what you did. But the real problem is this book hasn’t actually been published yet, and it’s not supposed to be on sale. The copies aren’t even supposed to have shipped to the bookstores.”

“Come