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.”The night watchman was offended.He had often seen Gercheszky on TV—the TV behind this very desk.Gercheszky should have been amazed by the coincidence and flattered by the recognition.After all, how many people sat up all night watching old reruns of Hal Patly? How many people had sat up night after night listening to Paddy Gercheszky whine about his childhood, kvetch about sex, and repent his marriage? The night watchman felt that he knew Gercheszky intimately, as few did.He and Gercheszky had shared a bond.Well, to hell with Gercheszky.The night watchman was glad he’d never bought any of his books.They probably stunk.Few do read Gercheszky’s books these days—unless it is to point out where they deviate from fact.The interest in Gercheszky has shifted since his death almost entirely from the work to the man himself.The biographies now outnumber the novels by a factor of four, with more on the way each year.A Hollywood film, starring funny man Kyle Lipton, is purportedly in the works.It is hard at first to imagine that Gercheszky would mind this trend.But then one realizes that if his life or his childhood had been more interesting, he would never have needed to become a novelist at all.If not the savvy investor, bold entrepreneur, politician, or movie star that he sometimes dreamed of being, he would surely have become in fact what he could only pretend in this life to be: a great memoirist masquerading as a novelist to avoid lawsuits.I think the trend towards biography is unfortunate, because Gercheszky was a great storyteller.He had an instinct for what to borrow and what to leave out.His books, I believe, represent the best of him.The novelist is a sort of sculptor who hews and polishes the rough block of his life down to something beautiful and elegant.The literary biographer by contrast scrutinizes the dust and rubble on the floor, and would happily obscure the sculpture in his effort to restore the rough block to its original state.But I suppose that in writing this character sketch I am guilty of the same desecration.The biographer of another novelist once said that poetry always triumphs over history—by which he meant that a lie well told always outlives the truth.Although parts of his legend survive—this story is called “Paddy Gercheszky” and not “Patrick Gurchase”—I am afraid that, for once, history will triumph over poetry.THE DOOR IN THE WALL“HERE, DUCK.Here, ducky duck.”Laurel Peggery sat on the edge of a park bench, scattering hunks of bread in an appetizing arrangement across the gravel bank.The duck, however, was grooming himself and took no notice.She was a tall, sturdy, stolid woman, dressed neatly in several layers of grey thrift-store sweaters, jackets, and scarves.Her posture was scrupulously correct.A permanently furrowed forehead and deep character lines, running from her nose to the corners of her wide mouth, made her look formidable; but her eyes were moist and beseeching.A man came ambling along the path towards her.She stuffed the loaf into her purse and kicked aside the crumbs on the ground.She crossed her knees and folded her hands and stared resolutely at the trees across the pond.The man took no more notice of her than the duck had, and so was startled when, at the last moment, she fixed her gaze on him and said firmly, as if reproaching herself for some weakness, “Good morning.” He was surprised to see that she was young and attractive.He was past her before he could return her greeting; and though he soon forgot all about the girl on the bench in the park, the rest of his day was haunted by a specter of disappointment and dissatisfaction with life.Laurel watched him till he was out of sight, then shook herself and returned to her task.“Here, ducky.Here, ducky duck duck duck.”A battered seagull flapped to earth twenty feet away and began strutting back and forth, watching her from alternate eyes.She hissed at it and threw a pebble in its direction, but her aim was poor and the gull, unruffled, continued its surveillance.Suddenly a squirrel dashed out from under her bench, seized a hunk of bread in its mouth, and bounded away in undulating leaps.She hissed and stamped her feet after it.“Filthy vermin.” She glared pointedly at the seagull, who had taken advantage of the distraction to come a few steps closer.The duck, meanwhile, had completed his washing-up and sat down at the edge of the pond with his back to her.“Duckeeee,” she whispered, holding out a golden, spongy crumb.The duck ruffled his feathers with luxurious contentment and settled more deeply into the bank.Laurel held the crumb between her thumb and index finger before her eye, like a jeweler appraising a diamond, and, rocking her forearm, carefully took aim.The first crumb landed in the pond, the second, somehow, in a shrub behind her, but the third landed an inch from the duck’s head.He looked at it.She held her breath.He prodded it with his beak.Then he picked it up, and with a toss of his head, flung it into the pond.Laurel, the duck, and the seagull watched as it grew sodden and sank below the surface.“Oh, to hell with you,” she said, and threw the rest of the loaf at the duck.Anger did not improve her aim.The bread rolled into a tuft of marsh grass, where it was promptly rescued by the seagull, who carried it across the pond and began tearing it apart and squawking.Soon the area was swarming with shrieking gulls.Laurel kicked gravel at the duck, then got to her feet and strode home.Lionel Pugg moved to the city to get away from a girl who did not love him and promptly fell in love with a girl who would never love him.He did not know that at first; at first—indeed for four years—he didn’t even know her name.Angel was his waitress at the first café he visited, his first day in the city.She dressed carelessly, like someone at the beach; she wore oversize flip-flops and shuffled penitentially from table to table, her head cocked to one side as if peering around some corner.She took orders standing heavily on one foot.She had a bluff, brash manner that terrified and beguiled him.She nearly gave him a heart attack when she called him “dear.”“All right, what’s it going to be, dear.”Though he was ravenous, he asked for a coffee, not wanting to put her to the trouble of fetching a menu.“Is that it?” she asked irritably.Lionel Pugg was a knobby, gangly, twitchy young man, with sunken eyes, a concave chest, and hunched shoulders.He had thin skin and more than the usual number of nerves, so he quivered like an overwhelmed antenna.Angel thought he looked like a creep.“You can take up the table because it’s slow today,” she said, “but don’t expect me to swoop down every five minutes to refill you, if that’s all you’re having.Somehow I don’t peg you for a big tipper.”Lionel agreed, by gesture, that he was an abominable tipper.He finished his coffee as quickly as its temperature allowed, left a five hundred percent tip, and fled without risking further talk or eye contact.From that day forward, he ate his meals at the café whenever Angel was not working, and sat there quaking with dread that she would appear before he could finish, and left shuddering with disappointment when she did not.He wrote her a novel.It took him three years to complete
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