Free 1 Breakfast at Madeline's by Matt Witten Page B

remembered this was where The Penn always used to sit. My brain swam a little, the events of the last forty-eight hours catching up to me. To say nothing of that blow to my head.
    I greedily guzzled my java, trying to get rid of the dizziness so I could interrogate Gretchen properly about Penn’s NYFA application. But when she finally arrived at the table, before I could even open my mouth she immediately began filibustering. "Stunning work," she exclaimed, gesturing at the pointillist obese people defacing the walls. "By Joanne Clemson—do you know her? Such a fabulous artist. I'm featuring her in our very first exhibit at the new Arts Center. I just know the tourists who come up for the ballet in July will love Joanne. It could really put her on the map!"
    Joanne Clemson wasn't the only starving artist Gretchen hoped to put "on the map" this summer, as she went on to explain. She had thought things out very carefully. Offbeat types like Clemson would be exhibited in July, when the New York City Ballet did its thing at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, a huge but elegant amphitheater in the state park right outside of town. Gretchen would exhibi t more main stream artists in August, when the middlebrows came to Saratoga for the horse races. I watched Gretchen, no longer listening to her words exactly, just mesmerized by the constant exuberant gesticulations of her arms. This woman was so totally d edicated to helping starv ing artists. I personally knew two painters and one sculptor who had been catapulted to nationwide prominence, and economic solvency, by Gretchen's Herculean efforts. And soon, with the help of her new Arts Center, Gretchen would be leading even more starving artists to that promised land.
    And this was t he woman that I suspected of... of what? Some kind o f chicanery with Penn's NYFA ap plication? Something that might help explain my bur glary? And what about that crazy business about threats to Penn's life? I tried to remember what Molly had said about Gret chen, but my thoughts were some how echoing strangely all over my head. I poured some more Ethiopian down my throat, but it didn't help. What exactly did I...
    "So what exactly did you want to talk to me about?" asked Gretchen.
    Damned if I knew . The coffee cup was getting aw fully heavy. It fell from my hands.
    "Jacob? Jake?"
    And everything went black.

12
     
    I truly hate hospitals. I can't even watch ER, have to leave the room when Andrea turns it on. So I'll spare you the details. Let's just say that when I woke up later that day, I was in some crummy bed with flimsy sheets, there were plastic tubes attached to various parts of me, and some doctor type in a white jacket was blabbing at some other doctor type in a white jacket about "dela yed concussion syndrome." Appar ently my nerves, coffee, Jack Daniel's, aspirin, and adrenaline all wore down at the same time, and my body finally decided to close up shop for a while . For tunately the prognosis was good, as long as I steered clear of any pressure cookers in the near future, and stayed in the hospital long enough for them to rack up some exorbitant fees.
    Andrea bopped in around dinnertime with Gretzky, Babe Ruth, and a bunch of daisies, and I smiled bravely and we did that scene as best we could. But the Sultan of Swat started to cry and the Great One peed in his pants. So let's just do a quick Cut To, as they say in the biz.
    Speaking of the biz, when Andrea came to visit by herself later that nig ht, she brought me a FedEx pack age from L.A. I opened it. Inside was a contract full of fancy legal language which boiled down to this: By June 15—one month from today, I noted—I would complete a rewrite of The Night of the Mutant Beetles.
    For which I would be paid $750,000.
    I looked at Andrea. Andrea looked at me.
    It's one thing to turn down huge amounts of money when it's just talk on t he phone. After all, most Holly wood deals fall through anyway. But it's another thing to turn