Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Nineteen

Because of the early hour I made myself a cup of strong coffee, not the strong drink I would have preferred at the moment.

First I read the handwritten pages of the manuscript. Then compared it to the flowery prose of Melanie Joan Hall. Neither work was great literature. But I felt that the anonymous pages that had been left for me were better, less overwritten. Much easier to read than A Girl and Not a God.

But the beginning of the manuscript was, at the very least, the beginning of the same story, set in Boston, turn of the twentieth century. The names were different. Much of the dialogue was different. But Athena Mars was Cassandra Demeter. Our Dickensian heroines were giving us basically the same introduction to their up-from-the-bootstraps beginnings.

Hundred percent.

I called Spike and asked him where he and Melanie Joan were.

“Zegna,” he said. “Copley Place Mall.”

“I know where Zegna is.”

“I’m almost embarrassed to tell you that she wants to buy me a jacket.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

“I meant no way you’re embarrassed.”

“So strong,” he said. “And yet so weak sometimes.”

I asked when he expected to have her back at the house. He said soon.

“Shopping is a lot like sports,” Spike said. “Her legs just finally gave out.”

I was waiting for them when they returned to River Street Place. Spike carried most of the shopping bags, some from Newbury Street, some from the high-end stores at the mall. Melanie Joan carried a couple herself, one from Fendi, one from Christian Louboutin. It had been their first shopping date. I was worried that next they’d want to go to the aquarium.

“We need to talk,” I said to Melanie Joan.

The pages were now in the middle of my coffee table. She hadn’t yet noticed them, still in a post-shopping glow.

“Well, that sounds serious,” she said.

“Kind of.”

“Do I have time for a glass of wine first?”

“You decide,” I said as I handed her the pages. She squinted at them.

“I need my reading glasses,” she said.

She reached into her purse for her oversized reading glasses with the thick black frames, then plopped down on the couch and began to read, stopping after the second page.

“This is someone trying to copy me,” she said. “And not doing a very good job of it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go with that.”

She tossed the pages back on the coffee table.

“Who wrote this dreck?” she said.

I said, “I was hoping you might be able to tell me.”

“And why is that?” she said.

“Because if the person who wrote this isn’t copying you,” I said, “then a cynical person might think you copied them.”

Our exchange devolved from there.