“Uh-oh,” he said.

“What is it?”

He handed her the glowing recommendation letter from Kathy’s twelfth-grade English teacher at Ridgewood High School. A Mr. Grady.

A Mr. Gary, aka “Jerry” Grady.

Chapter 14

Myron was startled awake by the telephone. He’d been dreaming about Jessica. He tried to remember specifics, but the details disintegrated into small pieces and blew away, leaving behind only a few frustrating snippets. The clock on his nightstand read seven o’clock. Someone was calling him at home at seven o’clock in the morning. Myron had a pretty good idea who it was.

“Hello?”

“Good morning, Myron. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Myron recognized the voice. He smiled and asked, “Who is this?”

“It’s Roy O’Connor.”

“The Roy O’Connor?”

“Uh, yes, I guess so. Roy O’Connor, the agent.”

“The superagent,” Myron corrected. “To what do I owe this honor, Roy?”

“Would it be possible for us to meet this morning?” The voice had a discernible quake to it.

“Sure thing, Roy. My office, okay?”

“Uh, no.”

“Your office, Roy?”

“Uh, no.”

Myron sat up. “Should I keep guessing places and you can say hotter or colder?”

“You know Reilly’s Pub on Fourteenth Street?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be in the booth in the back right-hand corner. One o’clock. We’ll have lunch. If that’s okay with you.”

“Peachy, Roy. Want me to wear anything special?”

“Uh, no.”

Myron hung up, smiled. A night visit from Win, usually while sleeping soundly in your bedroom, your innermost sanctuary. Worked every time.

He got out of bed. He heard his mother in the kitchen above him, his father in the den watching television. Early morning at the Bolitar house. The basement door opened.

“Are you awake, Myron?” his mother shouted.

Myron. What a goddamn awful name. He hated it with a passion. The way he looked at it, he’d been born with all his fingers and toes, he didn’t have a harelip or a cauliflower ear or a limp of any kind—so to compensate for his lack of ill fortune, his parents had christened him Myron.

“I’m awake,” he answered.

“Daddy bought some fresh bagels. They’re on the table.”

“Thanks.”

He got out of bed and climbed the steps. With one hand he felt the rough beard he’d have to shave; with the other he picked the yellow sleep-buggers out of the corner of his eyes. His father was sprawled on the den couch like a wet sock, wearing an Adidas sweatsuit and eating a bagel oozing with whitefish spread. As he did every morning, Myron’s father was watching a videocassette of people exercising. Getting in shape through osmosis.

“Good morning, Myron. There’re some bagels on the table.”

“Uh, thanks.” It was like one parent never heard the other.

He entered the kitchen. His mom was nearly sixty, but she looked much younger. Say, forty-five. She acted much younger too. Say, sixteen.

“You came in late last night,” she said.

Myron made a grunting noise.

“What time did you finally get home?”

“Really late. It was almost ten.” Myron Bolitar, the late-night scream machine.

“So,” Mom began, struggling to look and sound casual, “who were you out with?” Mistress of the Subtle.

“Nobody,” he said.

“Nobody? You were out all night with nobody?”

Myron looked left and right. “When are you going to bring in the hot lights and jumper cables?”

“Fine, Myron. If you don’t want to tell me—”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Fine. Was it a girl?”

“Mom …”

“Okay, forget I asked.”

Myron reached for the phone and dialed Win’s number. After the eighth ring he began to hang up when a weak, distant voice coughed. “Hello?”

“Win?”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Hello?”

“Win?”

“Yeah.”

“What took you so long to answer the phone?”

“Hello?”

“Win?”

“Who is this?”

“Myron.”

“Myron Bolitar?”

“How many Myrons do you know?”

“Myron Bolitar?”

“No, Myron Rockefeller.”

“Something’s wrong,” Win said.

“What?”

“Terribly wrong.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Some asshole is calling me at seven in the morning pretending to be my best friend.”

“Sorry, I forgot the time.” Win was not what one would call a morning person. During their years at Duke, Win was never out of bed before noon—even on the days he had a morning class. He was, in fact, the heaviest sleeper Myron had ever known or imagined. Myron’s parents, on the other hand, woke up when somebody in the Western hemisphere farted. Before Myron moved into the basement, the same scenario was played out nightly:

Around three in the morning, Myron would get out of bed to go to the bathroom. As he tiptoed past his parents’ bedroom, his father would stir ever so slowly, as though someone had dropped a Popsicle on his crotch.

“Who’s that?” his father would shout.

“Just me, Dad.”

“Is that you, Myron?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Are you okay, son?”

“Fine, Dad.”

“What are you doing up? You sick or something?”

“I’m just going to the bathroom, Dad. I’ve been going to the bathroom by myself since I was fourteen.”

During their sophomore year at Duke, Myron and Win lived in the smallest double on campus with a bunk bed that Win said “creaks slightly” and Myron said “sounds like a duck being run over by a back hoe.” One morning, when the bed was quiet and he and Win were asleep, a baseball crashed through their window. The noise was so deafening that their entire dorm jumped out of bed and rushed to see if Myron and Win had survived the wrath of whatever gigantic meteorite had fallen through the roof. Myron rushed to the window to yell obscenities. Dorm members stamped across the underwear-carpeted floor to join in the tirade. The ensuing reverberations were loud enough to disturb a diner waitress on her coffee break.