Lawrence Block

Threesome

PROLOGUE, PREFACE, OR WHAT YOU WILL…

Once upon a time, twenty-four Long Island newpapermen decided to find out if they could write a worse book than Jacqueline What’s-Her-Name. Each sat down and wrote a chapter, either all at once or one at a time, and while the result of all of this self-indulgence may not have been worse than Valley of the Whatsits, it certainly belonged in the same ballpark. The twenty-four Long Island newspapermen then took a moderately attractive Long Island housewife and put her face on the back cover. Next they took a ravishing model and put her bare behind on the front cover.

Then they published the book, and it at once began to sell like pussy at a Rotary convention. And just as sales threatened to peak, word of their great coup circulated, and the public whooped with glee and hurried to find out what a purposely bad book would be like. What it was like, of course, was all the unintentionally bad books, but by the time Constant Reader found this out, he already owned the book and couldn’t very well return it.

So what does this All-American success story have to do with us?

Everything.

It was this very literary hoax which we three sat discussing a couple of nights ago. We three are Harry and Priss and Rhoda. Harry is Harold Kapp. You’ve seen his cartoons everywhere, but you don’t know who he is because nobody remembers cartoonists, except for the one or two everybody remembers. This is one of the banes of Harry’s existence.

Priss is Priscilla Rountree Kapp. She is Harry’s wife, and another of the banes of his existence.

Rhoda is Rhoda Muir, which is me. Sitting here, at this kitchen table, typing this. Typing it far more slowly, I might add, than you are reading it, and that holds even if you’re a lip-mover. This is harder work than I expected. Anyway, this is me, Rhoda Muir, divorcee and dilettante-of-all-trades, and I suppose another bane of Harry’s etc… You could put me down as a friend of the family.

We were sitting in the cozy Kapp living room, watching a fire die in the fireplace and each of us waiting for someone else to abandon his or her drink long enough to throw a log on it-on the fire, dummy, not on the drink. And after we had discussed and condemned the Long Island newspapermen, the housewife on the back cover, the publisher, the reading public, and in fact everything connected with the aforementioned book except the demurely dimpled behind on its front cover, and after the conversation had died down rather like the fire and each of us had gone off in a huddle with private thoughts, I said, “You know, we could do something like that.”

“Like what?”

“Naked Came the Clyde. A bestseller.”