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Show Acting Alone Page 42? a slim portion of his enthusiasm for what awaited him topside dampened by the customary twinges of claustrophobia that he'd suffered ever since being nearly smothered to death in some primordial backyard campout under the sleeping bag of the homicidal son of a certain former henchman of Mussolini, a war criminal fugitive-type who'd come to Salt Lake City for the sympathy local standards could provide him (a different story with next to no pertinence here). But Sam had maintained his happiness and excitement on that long express elevator ride by delving deep into the new, professionally-employed writer's soul deep inside of him, the self-objective, resourceful, tough-as-boiled-owl- shit professional author. The man with the book contract. He had told himself that he would fend off panic and hysteria in the inevitable power outage by simply using his writerly imagination and journalistic investigative skills to escape for fresh, open air into the spaces contained inside his elevatormates all around him. Then, of course, he'd noticed that they were all wearing that certain vapid smile that he'd lived with and been strangely terrified by as a boy. His elevatormates were all Mormons. And Sam got scared again. This time for reasons other than mere infantile-traumatic claustrophobia. But even that fear put only a slight hamper on the intensely high feeling of Having Arrived that he felt as he entered the office which was to be his creative home for the next several weeks, or months. Such an eager beaver had Sam been, in fact, so overwhelmed had he been with unaccustomed sensations of personal excellence, that even his ultra-cheery, professionally optimistic agent had been compelled to give him something of a sobering warning: "Serious psychosexual biography is just like anything else, son," the |