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Show Acting Alone Page ^ say, intense as intelligence had assumed, the Elder had casually, semi-jokingly introduced the possibility of writing up this new enterprise in paperback form, this encampment project for which he was recruiting Axelrad; the paperback would be intended for some vague future publication date when American morals had become so lax that the bookbuying public had finally come 'round to seeing the Tightness, the beauty of random terrorism, or something like that - the Elder didn't rightly recall exactly what impromptu nonsense had passed his lips; but it had been some such vague semi-gelled idea along lines that would appeal to a little would-be Raskolnikov like Axelrad. Elder Cicerone had asked the youngster whether he might know a cheap, unemployed, young, ideologically malleable ghostwriter, not necessarily located in Chicago. And, alpng with the laughter at the seeming joke, the Elder had received an unexpectedly moving, if oblique, declaration of quasi-homoerotic love such as he'd never heard before. At least that was his interpretation of the self-defensively sarcastic terms of endearment the boy had applied to this writer friend of his: big fat doof, bullyboy, etc. It was the recalled redness of Axelrad's little living face, the quaver in his human voice that moved the Elder to prayers of reparation tonight, even as Axelrad's overgrown hero screamed abuse over the speakerphone. Axelrad was living, but lost. FBI's Ten Most Wanted. Unlocatable. That left Sammy, didn't it? Sammy alone, equally alive, could serve as object for reparation. And the need to make a gesture toward appeasing his miniature godlet was the reason - or was it? - that Elder Cicerone had benevolently decided to allow Sammy an unusual indulgence there at the top of the Holly Sugar |