Free Beach Music by Pat Conroy Page A

doesn’t make that kind of bread writing about lamb kidneys and
pizza bianca.”
    “Thanks for holding my profession in such high regard, Mike,” I said irritably.
    Ledare studied the figure that Mike had written on the piece of paper, then said, “So this is why everyone in California’s so shallow.”
    “Maybe so,” Mike said, his voice rising slightly to meet the challenge of her irony, “but it sure sharpens your aptitude for higher mathematics.”
    I shook my head as I watched the boat traffic move by them. “I came to Italy to get away from all that.”
    “Hey, I’m not asking you to write the personal stuff. Nothing about you going to the deep freeze. Nothing about Shyla and the bridge shit. I’m talking about the general history. The big picture. My grandparents. Yours, Jack. Capers’ granddad was one of the biggest politicians of his time. I mean, there’s a story there. We come from shit, but our families have this burning desire to make it better for their children and grandchildren, and son of a bitch, they pull it off. Look. It’s got everything. Two world wars. The civil rights movement. The sixties. Vietnam. Right up to now.”
    “How long is this mini-series supposed to be?” Ledare asked.
    “Hey, a lot of telescoping. Lot of voice-over. We hit the high points and cover the century. I think it’s a hell of an exciting idea and if you two don’t a lot of writers want to be part of this project.”
    “Hire them,” I suggested.
    “None of them were there,” Mike said and for the first time I saw the remnants of the old Michael, the boy I grew up with and loved. “Not like we were. They didn’t live through what we lived through. I keep waiting for Ledare to write about what we saw in South Carolina as kids, but everything she writes takes place in a tanning salon for feminists in Manhattan.”
    “Let’s not fight,” I said.
    Mike answered, “Fight, shit. Man, in South Carolina we don’t even know how to fight. In L.A. you know you’ve been in a goodfight when your dick falls into the toilet when you take a morning piss.”
    “I don’t want to work with you, Mike,” I said. “I came here because I was curious and wanted to see what it would be like for all of us to be together again. I get less nostalgic about the past than you do. But I’m nostalgic about us and our innocence and what we went through together and how it might have turned out if we’d been luckier.”
    “Then write it like you wish it’d turned out,” Mike said, leaning toward me. “You want to write it nicer. Great. Make it nice. It’ll be paradise to work with me. I’m a sweetheart to work with. Here’s some numbers I want you to call. Collect. They’ll know you’ll be Ma Belling them.”
    “Numbers?” I asked.
    “People that have worked with me,” he said. “They’ll back me up.”
    “Let me give Jack some other numbers, Mike,” Ledare said. “The people who spit over their left shoulders when your name’s mentioned.”
    “You make enemies in my business,” Mike said. “That’s the nature of the beast.”
    “Then give Jack the numbers of people who’d set you on fire just to see if their lighter worked. Half that town thinks you’ve always been a son of a bitch.”
    “But they didn’t know me as a boy,” Mike said. “Not like you guys did. I wasn’t this way when I was growing up.”
    “I’m sorry, Mike,” Ledare said, “I didn’t mean for it to sound like that.”
    “No problem, Ledare. I know where it’s coming from. I don’t know what happened to me any more than you do. That’s why I want you and Jack to do this project. I’d like you to help me find out. I know I’m alive. I just don’t know how to feel it anymore. Ciao,
amigos
. I got a meeting. You two, powwow.”
    As we made our way toward the elevators, Ledare asked, “You’re not going to take Mike’s offer, are you, Jack?”
    “No. The thing I love about the past most is not thinking about