Free The Man Who Died Laughing by David Handler

only taken seriously in literary circles if your stuff is torturous and hard to read. If you go to the extra trouble of making it clear and entertaining, then the critics call you a lightweight.”
    “They like you. You ain’t dull.”
    “That’s true, I wasn’t. But I also never wrote a second book. They’d have gotten me then.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t do that. It really bugs the hell out of me.”
    “What does?”
    “The way you talk about yourself in the past tense, like you’re eighty years old, or dead. You’re young, you got talent. You’ll write lots more books. Good books. You just gotta work on your attitude. Not I was. I am. Say it: I am”
    I said it, I said it.
    “That’s more like it.” He glanced at the newspaper story again, then bared his teeth, disgusted. “Screw ’em. We’re the ones who have the talent. We know what we’re doing.”
    He reached down and opened up the little refrigerator in front of us and pulled out two small bottles of Perrier. He opened them and handed me one.
    “I just have one question,” I said. “If we’re both so smart and we know what we’re doing, then how come we’re on our asses?”
    His eyes widened in surprise. Then he laughed. He actually laughed at something I said.
    “You’re okay, Hoagy. You’re a no-bullshit guy. Glad we decided to do this. Hey, Vic, how ya doing up there, baby?”
    “Fine, Sonny,” he replied softly.
    “Stop pouting already, will ya? So I blew. I take the blame. I apologize. You’re not a dumb ox. You’re my pally, and you meant well. I’m sorry, okay?”
    Vic seemed to brighten. “Okay, Sonny.”
    “Now how about some sounds? Get us in the groove.”
    “You got it.”
    Vic put on some cassettes, uptempo Sinatra and Torme from the fifties, and we bopped along, sipping our Perriers, the heat shimmering outside on the Devils Playground. It wasn’t the worst way to travel.
    “Merilee used to get letters from cranks,” I said. “Guys who wanted to buy her toenail cuttings. Wear her panties. Never death threats though.”
    Sonny shrugged. “After thirty years you get used to it. Part of the deal, at least it is for me.”
    “What did this one say?”
    He gazed out the window. “It said that I’d never live to see our book in print.”
    “Oh?”
    Sonny polished off his Perrier and belched. He stabbed a finger in my chest. “I know just what you’re thinking—that’s why I maybe want to pull out. Well, you’re wrong. The two things got nuttin’ to do with each other. I’m not that kind of person.”
    “What kind of person is that?”
    “The kind who you can scare. If I worried about the cranks out there, I’d go outta my head. Besides, I got my Vic. Right, Vic?”
    “That’s right, Sonny.”
    We hit the first signs for the Vegas casinos when we crossed the Nevada state line.
    “What exactly are you supposed to do for this pageant?” I asked him.
    “Show up. Everything’s already written for me. I just introduce the girls, eyeball their tits, wink at the audience. We walk it through this afternoon. Go on at five-thirty. You like showgirls?”
    “What’s not to like?”
    “Red-blood American boy, huh?” He grinned, man to man.
    I grinned back. “Type O.”
    He furrowed his brow. “What can I tell ya? I wish I didn’t have to be doing it. It’s cheese all the way. But I got no choice. If you’ve had personal problems like I have, you start at the bottom again. Prove you can deliver. In this business, you’re a prisoner of people’s preconceptions of you.”
    “Not dissimilar to life in general,” I said.
    “You can say that again.”
    “Not dissimilar to life in general,” I repeated.
    He gaped at me in disbelief.
    “You forget something important about me,” I told him. “I grew up on you.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.”
    He looked me over and scowled. “Coulda done worse.”
    “You can say that again.”
    After so many hundreds of miles of pure barren desert, Las Vegas rose up