Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut [52]
And the boy left his full newspaper bag at Trout’s feet, with the customer book on top. It was up to Trout to deliver these papers. He didn’t have a car. He didn’t even have a bicycle, and he was scared to death of dogs.
Somewhere a big dog barked.
As Trout lugubriously slung the bag from his shoulder, Billy Pilgrim approached him. “Mr. Trout—?”
“Yes?”
“Are—are you Kilgore Trout?”
“Yes.” Trout supposed that Billy had some complaint about the way his newspapers were being delivered. He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.
“The—the writer?” said Billy.
“The what?”
Billy was certain that he had made a mistake. “There’s a writer named Kilgore Trout.”
“There is?” Trout looked foolish and dazed.
“You never heard of him?”
Trout shook his head. “Nobody—nobody ever did.”
Billy helped Trout deliver his papers, driving him from house to house in the Cadillac. Billy was the responsible one, finding the houses, checking them off. Trout’s mind was blown. He had never met a fan before, and Billy was such an avid fan.
Trout told him that he had never seen a book of his advertised, reviewed, or on sale. “All these years,” he said, “I’ve been opening the window and making love to the world.”
“You must surely have gotten letters,” said Billy. “I’ve felt like writing you letters many times.”
Trout held up a single finger. “One.”
“Was it enthusiastic?”
“It was insane. The writer said I should be President of the World.”
It turned out that the person who had written this letter was Eliot Rosewater, Billy’s friend in the veterans’ hospital near Lake Placid. Billy told Trout about Rosewater.
“My God—I thought he was about fourteen years old,” said Trout.
“A full grown man—a captain in the war.”
“He writes like a fourteen-year-old,” said Kilgore Trout.
Billy invited Trout to his eighteenth wedding anniversary which was only two days hence. Now the party was in progress.
Trout was in Billy’s dining room, gobbling canapés. He was talking with a mouthful of Philadelphia cream cheese and salmon roe to an optometrist’s wife. Everybody at the party was associated with optometry in some way, except Trout. And he alone was without glasses. He was making a great hit. Everybody was thrilled to have a real author at the party, even though they had never read his books.
Trout was talking to a Maggie White, who had given up being a dental assistant to become a home-maker for an optometrist. She was very pretty. The last book she had read was Ivanhoe.
Billy Pilgrim stood nearby, listening. He was palpating something in his pocket. It was a present he was about to give his wife, a white satin box containing a star sapphire cocktail ring. The ring was worth eight hundred dollars.
The adulation that Trout was receiving, mindless and illiterate as it was, affected Trout like marijuana. He was happy and loud and impudent.
“I’m afraid I don’t read as much as I ought to,” said Maggie.
“We’re all afraid of something,” Trout replied. “I’m afraid of cancer and rats and Doberman pinschers.”
“I should know, but I don’t, so I have to ask,” said Maggie, “what’s the most famous thing you ever wrote?”
“It was about a funeral for a great French chef.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“All the great chefs in the world are there. It’s a beautiful ceremony.” Trout was making this up as he went along. “Just before the casket is closed, the mourners sprinkle parsley and paprika on the deceased.” So it goes.
“Did that really happen?” said Maggie White. She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away. She hadn’t had even one baby yet. She used birth control.
“Of course it happened,” Trout told her. “If I wrote something that hadn’t really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That’s fraud.”
Maggie believed him. “I’d never thought about that before.”
“Think about it now.”
“It’s like advertising. You have to tell the truth in advertising, or you get in trouble.