Free Cast in Doubt by Lynne Tillman Page B

rumored that the junta intended to invade Turkey, too. Madness, madness.
    I read the newspaper every day. Reading the newspaper is addictive. But do I do more than observe and keep up, in an endless race with time. I am acquainted with the events of the day and try to stay involved, engaged, and attentive to the world. I rue injustice. But sometimes I fear that I merely repeat others’ analyses, that their involvement and knowledge provide me with a semblance of comprehension, about which I am too often uncritical. This is part of my insecurity. Gwen wrote once that I was, in a way, too accepting, that that was a facet of my appeal. It is funny—appeal. Alicia appeals to me, as do Duncan, Yannis, and Gwen, of course—and Helen. She touches me. Of course she is masculine in her independence, androgynous, I suppose, yet quite female. In a disquieting and subtle way, there is something dangerous about her, something in her that I fear and something that I fear for her. I’ve never thought that before.
    My detective Stan Green is not afraid of anything except snakes, which is why he refuses to work in Texas, where the three poisonous snakes of the United States meet, another demonstration of nature’s nefarious design. Green revels in the bar-room brawl. He’s quick with his hands and dances on his feet, like Joe Louis, though he’s not brazen like Muhammad Ali. I still want to call him Cassius Clay. Cassius is a fine Civil War name. But it is also a slave name, and I can see why a black man would want to be rid of it. Certainly the answer to the question, what’s in a name, would fill a book, and does.
    Stan Green is not a bigot but works with cops who are. These are the people he enjoys hitting, as I would, were I not so morbidly afraid of violence and blood. When I was a small child, I accompanied my mother on her visit to the doctor. The doctor allowed me in the room with her when he took her blood. I fainted dead away. I was never interested in experimenting with any drugs that required needles, and this was another reason the poets around the Beat Hotel in Paris disdained me. I first met Wallace there but I’m not sure he remembers. I hope not.
    A letter from an old school chum, who, years ago, started to write me for reasons I cannot assay, lies nearby. He, like Gwen, wishes to keep me abreast, though, in his case, I am not sure why. He has enclosed some clippings, but without their dates. President Ford fell down on his arrival at Salzburg, where he had traveled to see Bruno Kreisky and to hold talks with Anwar Sadat. I’ve never been to Salzburg and have no desire to go. In fact I have almost no desire to travel anywhere. My friend has also sent me a picture of Nelson Rockefeller in a Mickey Mouse cap, with a caption noting that Rockefeller’s bogus commission has cleared the CIA of domestic civilian surveillance. “There was no widespread pattern of illegality.” Does anyone believe this?
    What was it I meant to do? Have Stan Green investigate the murder at the scene of the crime. He must enter the town of Bedlam, where he will view the corpses, study the autopsy report, and, upon arriving at the home of the young alleged murderer, describe in detail the cruel and sadistic manner in which the young murderer stabbed to death his mother and father, after which he dragged their bodies, wrapped in blankets, to the backyard. There the son buried their mutilated corpses—near the grave of the family poodle, Fifi. Unfortunately I can’t make reference to Edith Wharton who, at her summer home, The Mount, had a cemetery for her dogs. Stan Green wouldn’t read Edith Wharton. Perhaps the murderer’s mother would have. Still, it’s improbable that the family buried their dog, complete with a tombstone, in imitation of Edith Wharton. In any case I can’t for the life of me figure a way to work that into the plot.
    From the records of that time, weather reports, and so on—the murder occurred on January 14,