Free The Manor by Scott Nicholson

Beatles revival, then had gone Yorkshire in the wake of "The Full Monty." Fads came and went, and so did his accent. He occasionally slipped in a "righty-right" or "bit of the old what for," but Americans didn't notice his errors. The only time he had to be careful was when he met a real Brit. And a fat bloody chance of that here, he thought, smiling to himself. He had reached the edge of Spence's circle now.
    "And they say there are hermeneutic elements in Look Homeward, Angel," Spence said, his jowls quiver-ing for emphasis. "I submit to you that Gant is no more than a symbol for the human heart. A flimsy extended metaphor propped up by a billion adjectives. If you sent that to an editor today, she'd say, 'Wonderful, now can you make it read like Grisham?' "
    The eyes of the onlookers brightened with awe. This man was a master, a snake charmer. His ego was as ample as his belly. None dared to dispute his ephemeral pronouncements.
    Spence drained half of his martini before continu-ing. "The worst book of the twentieth century?
    Perhaps not. That jester's crown must go to Hemingway's A Move-able Feast. The critics raved about the undercurrent of tension that supposedly wends through the novel. Clap-trap. It is nothing but Hemingway-in-a-bottle, quintes-sential Ernest. Too earnestly Ernest, one might say." Spence paused for the requisite laughter. It came.
    Roth smiled. Spence was as great a deceiver as Roth himself. And he played the celebrity game just as successfully. Roth was constantly amazed by people's hunger for idols. Bring on your false gods. The masses needed an opiate, and that bit.
    Roth worked his way to Spence's left, edging be-tween a blue-haired biddie and an old chap with a hunched back. The cute litle bird with the nice knock-ers was at Spence's side. She hadn't spoken a word all evening, even during dinner. Roth knew, because he had watched her and Spence at their private table. Roth calculated the chances of working her for a bit of the old in-out. That would be a dandy feather in the cap. Spence blathered on about the moral instructions encodified in The Great Gatsby. The crowd nodded in approval, and occasionaly dared to murmur. Roth fig-ured the time was right to make his presence known. "I say, Mr. Spence, didn't some editor supposedly say, 'Fitzgerald, get rid of that Gatsby clown and you'll have yourself a good book'?"
    All eyes turned to Roth and then back to Spence. The writer looked at Roth as if measuring the reach of an adversary. Then Spence smiled. "Purely apocryphal. Though it contains the seeds of possibility. Sir Wiliam Roth, is it?"
    "Yes, a pleasure to meet you, my good man," Roth said, extending his hand. A tingle of pleasure surged through him as the "little people" oohed and aahed at this meeting of the gods. Spence polished off his drink and handed the empty glass to his shapely companion. "So what do you think of my analysis of Gatsby?"
    "Scintillating. And I agree that Wolfe's book is ab-solute poppycock." Out of the corner of his eye, Roth watched the girl's shimmering rear as she walked to the bar.
    Spence turned away from his admirers and squared off with Roth. The photographer nudged Spence toward the corner of the room. The crowd took its cue and broke into small groups, some stepping onto the porch for smokes, others refiling their drinks.
    "What brings you to Korban Manor, Mr. Roth?"
    Roth roled his scotch-and-water between his hands. "Business, sir. Always business with me."
    "The devil, you say. That's just what the world needs, another four hundred negatives of this place. Or are you hired for a publicity shoot?"
    "I'm freelancing."
    "Hmmph. I'm working, too, if you can believe it."
    Roth knew that Spence hadn't finished a novel in years. He had blustered his way through some opinion pieces and essays, and had penned a scathing introduc-tion to The New Southern Voices Collection that had likely driven some of the anthology's contributors to tears. The critics had given him