Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

precious New York. We don’t have six dailies. The Times is still the best newspaper in town. In New York, you don’t like theTrib, you go to the Times; you don’t like the Times, you go to the Sun or World-Telegram or Post or Daily News or whatever. What can I do here—work for Hearst?”

“You are at the point where you don’t have to work for any newspaper.”

“It’s what I do, Joe, who I am. Novels—that’s not me.”

“So do a blow-by-blow story about Pitts-Callender. We’ll put it in a script.”

She tried a smile. “Maybe . . . someday.”

He finished his coffee and lit up, first one of the day. “My question is simple: why isn’t the Times better? The Chandlers own this town. They are drowning in money. What’s wrong with that family? Why can’t the Los Angeles Times be the New York Times of the West? Why is everything local? Give us national news, foreign news, tell us about the world. People here care about things beyond the city limits. This is a city of foreigners.”

“Rich family newspaper. No real tradition. Clip coupons and bank their dividends. Big houses and cars. Why change?”

“Norman Chandler could do it. He’s the boss, isn’t he?”

“Norman is afraid of his family.”

“What about son Otis, the golden boy—any hope there?’

“Otis comes in every day—when he’s done surfing and weight lifting.”

“Aren’t you sick of it?”

“No.”

“Try your hand at a script. Maybe Howard Hughes and RKO would like it.”

“Howard Hughes doesn’t like me.”

“You haven’t slept with him yet.”

She picked up an orange to throw, but started laughing. “I never compete with Maggie.”

“With the money you’ve got you can do anything you want.”

She stopped laughing. “That money is yours, too.”

“If I didn’t write I would die.”

She smiled. “What would Hollywood do without Memory Laine?”

“You don’t like my nom de plume?”

“It’s cute—just that everybody knows it’s you.”

“Buddy’s tired of the game. He’ll put my name back up one of these days.”

“My point is, money doesn’t change a thing, does it?”

“Why don’t you do something useful with it?”

“Like give it to the Sierra Club?”

He laughed. “Cal would name a mountain after you.”

“Not to change subject again,” she said, “but back to Robby.”

“Any ideas?”

“I keep telling myself it’s a phase, but he doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

“Doesn’t talk . . . ?”

“Not a word. Something boiling in there.

“He doesn’t say much to me either.”

“No,” she said quickly, “it’s different with you. No hostility with you.”

“Hostility?”

Agitated, she was tapping on the table. “I don’t know what else to call it. I guess I’ve never been much of a mother. Never home. Loved my work too much. He noticed.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, it’s not. My mother was always meddling, and I figured—Maggie, too—that I’d let my kid grow up as he wanted. But that doesn’t seem to work either.”

“You did it the way you wanted. Robby’s the same way. He’ll turn out the way he wants. We all do. So what’s new?”

“What do we do?”

“Send him to Bel Air?”

“He doesn’t get along with Didi—or Nelly, for that matter.”

“Sounds vaguely Oedipal. Anyway, Bel Air is University High. At twelve—they’d kill him.”

“Private school?”

“Every decent boys’ school in Los Angeles is a military school: Black Foxe, Harvard, California Military Academy. I’ve checked. Cold War phenomenon.”

“So what about that?”

“Hey, I’m supposed to be a pacifist.”

“I wonder about military school. He already seems so . . . so . . .” She had to think a minute. “Hostile is the word that keeps coming back.”

“There’s always boarding school back East. The British built an empire that way. Theory is that schools are better than parents at raising children. Less emotional. More professional. I’d miss the little bugger. Did some of my best writing with him banging on his crib.”

She smiled. “Why did you have to make him so smart?”

“Me? He scores on math tests, not English.”

“A complete genetic aberration. Two literary parents who can’t balance a checkbook.”

“So what do we do?”

“Send me away!”

Lizzie jumped, turned and saw him standing on the porch. He’d slipped through the house without a sound and been listening, how long they didn’t know.

“Shame on you!”

“Why shouldn’t I listen?”

“It’s not listening, it’s spying,” said Joe. “You want to listen, you come to the table.”

“Then you’d stop talking.”

He looked twelve, with the delicate face bones and smooth, pink cheeks of pre-puberty. He was scrawny, but had the kind of frame that would fill out. The face was Lizzie’s, more girlish than boyish, but with Joe’s foxy eyes, watchful, myopic, a little dangerous. The nose was pug but would grow out, and the eyebrows too thick for his face. Another boy might have come bursting outside with tales from the night’s sleepover, but not Robinson Morton. He didn’t like showing emotion, didn’t like others to know what he’d been doing and didn’t like finding his parents at breakfast discussing his future without him.

“Sit down,” said Lizzie, calmer now. “Did you have a good time at Tommy’s?”

He didn’t answer.

“You want to go to the beach today?” said Lizzie.

“Nah, stuff to do.”

“Like?”

“Just stuff.”

Joe stood up. He didn’t like one-word conversations. “I’ve got stuff, too.”

“Why are you talking about me?” demanded Robby.

“We have to find you a school,” said Lizzie.

“Do I get a vote?”

“Of course you do,” said Joe.

“It didn’t sound like it.”

“No,” said Lizzie, “we were just thinking out loud.”

“Just so it’s not Uni High.”

“No,” she said, “not Uni High.”

“Which means going away,” said Joe. “Somewhere.”

“Tommy’s brother’s at Harvard Military.”

Joe and Lizzie exchanged a glance, which Robby instantly understood.

“What’s wrong with military school?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Joe.

“As if I didn’t know.”

“There are other options,” said Lizzie.

He turned to leave. “Be sure and let me know.”

Chapter 36

They agreed to meet at Jack’s at the Beach and hash it out. They’d been sitting on the estate money like Mother Goose on her precious eggs. So far, the only ones getting any use from it were Nelly and her dance studio and the bankers, whose fees kept climbing, though neither sister was clear about what they did to earn them.

The