Stagpole rubbed his toes harder. “I’m not, really. I’m just trying to indicate something to you: I am a master, Aaron. You could not begin to lick the shoes of an apprentice and I am a master!”
“Your breath smells,” Aaron whispered.
“Wonderful,” Stagpole applauded. “Not only stern but spunky.” He left the bed and pulled a chair over beside Aaron. Then he sat down, reached out, made a finger stiff and jabbed it at just below Aaron’s left ear.
Aaron groaned.
“What is a writer actually,” Stagpole asked, “but an exposer of nerves?” He pressed down again, and again Aaron groaned. “There are various places on your body, Aaron, which, when pressed will cause certain rather unpleasant reactions. I am going to press, from time to time, those places. Now hear me: if you suffer silently, I will let up. If you are audible, well, so much the worse for you.” He reached down quickly, jammed a knuckle into Aaron’s neck.
Aaron yelled.
Stagpole jabbed again, much harder.
Aaron bit his lip.
“Splendid,” Stagpole said.
Aaron panted, color draining.
Stagpole sat up and lit a cigarette, inserting it into an elegant holder. “Mustn’t have you fainting, Aaron,” he said. “Not before the ship has even sailed. I hate rushing things, don’t you?”
Aaron managed to lick the perspiration from his lips.
“Now what we have in you, Aaron,” Stagpole went on, “what you are is a writer and a sadist and a pervert. Well, small world, so am I. Except that I am a master of those crafts! I am unexcelled. And you ...” Stagpole shook his head. “Well, it’s just too bad about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you like to know your future? I’ll tell you. If you’d like.”
Aaron said nothing.
Stagpole bent down, pressed a finger lightly on Aaron’s eye. “Say you’d like.”
Aaron bit his lip. “Tell me.”
“That one is almost too painful, isn’t it?” He pressed down again.
Aaron bit his lip while perspiration sprang all across his forehead.
“I must begin with myself, when I was your age, Aaron. I wrote a novel and suddenly I found myself famous. It was a book about people like us, Aaron, and with the money I made I determined to take a trip around the world. You see, what I didn’t know then was that people like us, we form a special club. We more or less take care of our own. And when I got to Europe, oh, Aaron, I was feted, believe me. I did such things as only a young man dreams. I met the mighty men of Europe, Aaron; I saw sights, kissed kings—oh God, it was a journey to remember. And the most memorable sight pertains to you.”
Aaron lay still, panting.
“I don’t remember quite the country. I’m terrible at geography, flunked it in the seventh grade, would you believe it?”
Aaron said nothing.
Stagpole pressed down with a finger. “That was a question, Aaron.”
Aaron bit his lip, then muttered that he wouldn’t have believed it.
“In the East it was,” Stagpole said. “In the East, a village square, at dawn. Dust rising. White buildings all around. People scurrying back and forth across the square. And then, at a signal—are you listening, Aaron?—the children appeared! Ten years old, some of them less, eight or nine, some of them perhaps thirteen. They appeared with their parents, and their parents pushed them into the middle of the village square, with the dust rising and the white buildings all around. The children stood huddled together. Panicked. Not a sound. And then, Aaron, then came the foreign legionnaires. Because that is what I was witnessing—a flesh sale. A flesh sale at dawn, human flesh. The legionnaires walked in among the children, they began to examine them. They checked their teeth and their calf muscles and they tested their arms and they carefully scrutinized their genitals, and all the while, Aaron, there was not a sound. The legion officers, you see, needed houseboys. Boys to cook and clean and dust and, on steamy nights, Aaron, other things. The head officers, they each had a boy all to themselves, while the lower ones had to share. And here before me at dawn, Aaron, the officers of the foreign legion tested these children and made their choices and paid the asking price to the parents and then led their prizes off into the day. That movement brought back the dust. The sun became blinding. Soon the square looked like a village square somewhere in the East. White buildings, dust, hot sun.” Stagpole stood.
Aaron struggled to his knees.
“And now, Aaron, we come to the pertinent part, the part that tells your future. Because I’m certain you’ve noted the parallel, so I assume you’re more than a little interested in what happens to the boys.”
Aaron licked his lips. “Tell me.”
“They disappear! They get used and used and used until they are all used up. Then they simply disappear.”
“And that’s gonna happen to me?”
Stagpole lifted him roughly. “By the time that I am done with you, there will be nothing left. I ... will ... use ... you ... up, believe me, trust me, trust my skill. I am a master. Do you believe that?”
“I ... I believe ...”
Stagpole smiled, then, gently, he patted Aaron’s face. “Prepare to live in splendor,” he said, leading Aaron to the cashmere-covered bed. “For a while. Now go anoint your body. I must make ready.”
“What do you mean, ‘make ready’?”
Stagpole shrugged. “Nothing, really. You’ll get used to it. Costumes, apparatus, various bits of paraphernalia. Here, a final gift for you,” and he opened a suitcase, removed a monogrammed silk robe. “Now go. Beautify yourself.” He escorted Aaron to the bathroom door. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
As the door closed behind him, Aaron felt a momentary urge to scream for help, so he ran to the tiny porthole, fought it open, peered out. But the robe was purest silk and soft to the touch. Aaron closed the porthole and slowly undressed.
The great ship began to move.
Aaron opened the medicine chest. Stagpole had filled it with oils, and Aaron almost enjoyed bathing as he covered his gaunt body with first one sweet-smelling liquid, then another. He took a long time, but still there was no word from Stagpole, and as he waited Aaron felt the screaming urge again, and he ran back to the tiny porthole, throwing it open, staring out as the borough of Manhattan glided by. A young girl stood staring at the giant buildings as they glistened in the noonday sun.
“You—” Aaron said. “You—listen.”
She said, “Je ne parle pas.”
“Of course you don’t,” Aaron said, and he thought, son of a bitch, I’m gonna disappear, it’s enough to make you believe in God.
The girl pointed to the glistening city. “Belle, oui?”
“Oui,” Aaron agreed. “And the streets, les boulevardes, they are paved with shit.”
“Oui?” the girl said.
Aaron nodded. “Oui.”
The girl smiled and was gone.
“If you ask me you’re a lousy place to visit!” Aaron shouted.
“I’m ready, Aaron,” Stagpole said from beyond, his voice different and strange.
Aaron closed his eyes.
“Aaron. I’m ready.”
Aaron entered into agony.
A Biography of William Goldman
William Goldman (b. 1931) is an acclaimed American novelist, nonfiction author, playwright, and two-time Academy Award–winning screenwriter whose works include the novels The Princess Bride and Marathon Man, both of which he also adapted for film.
Goldman was born on August 12, 1931, in Highland Park, Illinois, to Marion Goldman (née Weil) and Maurice Clarence Goldman, a businessman. Goldman’s older brother, James, also went on to become a successful author, playwright, and scriptwriter; his works include The Lion in Winter (1966) and Follies (1971). At eighteen, Goldman moved to Ohio to attend Oberlin College. His interest in writing was born at Oberlin, where he decided to take a creative-writing course, though his grades were poor initially. Goldman’s primary
interests were poetry, short stories, and novels. He eventually became an editor of Oberlin’s literary magazine where, he later admitted, he would anonymously submit short stories that his peers unknowingly rejected. He attained his bachelor of arts in English in 1952 and went on to earn a master of arts degree in 1956 from Columbia University, where he completed his thesis on the comedy of manners in America.
Goldman began his career as a novelist with The Temple of Gold (1957), an account of a young man’s rite of passage, which he wrote in less than three weeks. By that point, Goldman had also found success on Broadway, having numerous plays produced. In 1960, Goldman married Ilene Jones, and the couple went on to have two daughters, Jenny (b. 1962) and Susanna (b. 1965).
In 1962, Goldman wrote his first screenplay, Masquerade, followed by a series of acclaimed screenplays including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which sold for a record-breaking $400,000. Other notable scripts include The Stepford Wives (1975), All the President's Men (1976), and the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Misery. In 1985, Goldman won a lifetime achievement Laurel Award for screenwriting from the Writers Guild of America.
Despite his success in Hollywood, Goldman continued to write novels, many of which he would use as the foundations for his screenplays. The Princess Bride (1973), which he wrote under the pseudonym Simon Morgenstern, remains a classic both as a book and a film. Goldman’s first thriller, Marathon Man (1974), was also made into a film of the same name in 1976, starring Dustin Hoffman.
In addition to his novels, plays, and screenplays, Goldman also wrote a series of memoirs, including Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), about his experiences as an author and screenwriter in Hollywood and on Broadway, and Hype and Glory (1990), which documents his stints judging the Cannes Film Festival and the Miss America Pageant following the dissolution of his twenty-seven-year marriage.
Goldman has received numerous awards and accolades in addition to his two Academy Awards (Best Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President’s Men). Three of his scripts are in the Writers Guild of America hall of fame, and Harper (1967) and Magic (1979) garnered Edgar Awards in the screenplay category from the Mystery Writers of America.
Goldman works and resides in New York City.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1964 by William Goldman
Copyright renewed 1992 by William Goldman
Foreword copyright © 2001 by William Goldman
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4532-9201-3
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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Boys & Girls Together Page 93
