Free Cocksure by Mordecai Richler Page B

Laura Ryerson phoned.
    “Do you remember,” she asked, her voice quivering, “the very first birthday gift I ever gave you?”
    Boys’ Own Paper . “ ‘Fear God,’ ” Mortimer said warmly, “ ‘honor the crown, shoot straight and keep clean.’ Does that answer your question?”
    “I was just inquiring about the price of a subscription for Doug. It’s stopped, Mortimer. There’s to be no more Boys’ Own . After eighty-eight years!”
    Mortimer was flipping idly through the Evening Standard when he looked up from his desk to see Polly Morgan filling the door to his office, lips parted, tapping her teeth with her thumbnail. “May I come in?” she asked.
    “Certainly.”
    The Standard was opened at a full-page ad for The Longest Day , now at popular prices.
    “Ken Annakin,” Polly said, indicating the ad, “Andrew Marton, Bernard Wicki. Zanuck. 20th. 1962. Grossed 15,100,000 so far.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’ll only take a second of your time,” Polly said, sitting down.
    Polly wore a black leather Dutch boy’s cap and a tight sweater, right half white, left half blue: one high and lovely breast circumscribed by a yellow bolt, the other by a green one, and Mortimer aching to do nothing so much as tighten them.
    “Just wanted to say that … like we’re having a scene on Saturday night. At Timothy’s pad.”
    “Oh,” Mortimer said, heart leaping.
    “It should be jolly good fun. Do you want to come?”
    Unfortunately Mortimer realized he was only being invited because he was such a good friend of Ziggy Spicehandler’s – a relationship which confounded the hipsters among his acquaintances.
    “Well, thanks. Um, I’ll give it some thought.”
    Then Mortimer made his gaffe. Error in etiquette. As Polly rose from her chair he shot round without thinking to open the office door for her. Polly, to her credit, did not laugh, but Mortimer was bloody embarrassed and he knew right then he would not go to the party because he was bound to do the wrong thing. Make a fool of himself. Though he’d remember to say “cunt” often, saying it he’d betray self-consciousness.
    “You’re shy,” Polly said.
    “Am I?”
    “I know you like a book, Mortimer Griffin.”
    He laughed lamely.
    “You’re going to stop fighting me,” Polly said, stepping closer to him, “aren’t you?”
    Avoiding The Eight Bells, Mortimer took Polly to a pub on Mount Street for lunch.
    “This will be our special place now,” she said, crinkling her nose. “Won’t it?”
    Mortimer agreed emphatically.
    “I want to understand you. Who you are. What you are.”
    But when Mortimer returned from the bar with a second round of drinks it was to discover that Polly was no longer at their table. She hadn’t left the pub, however. Polly sat at another table on which there were at least a dozen empty glasses and an overflowing ashtray. “I’m going to be ill,” she said. “You must hate me.”
    “No, no. But I don’t understand –”
    “Please take me home.”
    Mortimer dashed outside, where he soon found a taxi, but when he returned to fetch Polly it was too late: she had already vanished.
    Polly did not return to Oriole House in time to watch the Star Maker being interviewed on TV .
    Getting the Star Maker to appear on TV was no mere matter of fees or flattery or agreeing to questions or an appropriately obsequious interviewer. It was much more complicated than that. Wherever the ageless, undying Star Maker went, an emergency medical unit, unrivaled for excellence, had to be accommodated. The kidney-cleansing technicians had first to check the power plugs and establish themselves with batteries in the event of a power failure. The cardiologists and their awkward pump, complete with artificial valves and mechanical heart, had to be similarly catered to. So did the blood plasma boys and nurses. The Star Maker’s irreplaceable urinologist had to be satisfied, so did the sexologist, a Danish fusspot, newly arrived, and