The killer is a heavy drinker. His hip new friends share the popular belief that smoking pot is a cure for alcoholism, but he is wary of drugs. One day they get him to eat a brownie without revealing that it contains hash. After this he takes greedily to cannabis but without giving up alcohol, becoming instead a chronic user of both. As his conduct grows increasingly disturbing, the actress begins to regret having ever befriended him—especially after he seduces her best friend, who falls madly in love with him only to find herself abused and abandoned. But it’s the killer’s addictions that are his undoing. Worsening paranoia and lack of self-control lead to erratic behavior that in turn leads to a vague suspicion that he knew the woman found strangled in the park. After she is raped by the killer, the actress takes her suspicions to the police. Later, she calls on all her acting skills to set the killer up, manipulating him into a confession that is recorded on equipment that police have installed in her apartment. At the same time she narrowly escapes being murdered herself.

During his trial, the killer, aware of all the attention his case has drawn, imagines that a book about him will be written—a best-selling book that will then be made into a major motion picture. It occurs to him that whoever plays him in the movie will have to be not just a good actor but also a great dancer. That, of course, would be John Travolta. And that is how we leave him: sentenced to life in prison, and fantasizing himself on-screen, in the person of John Travolta.

The book goes on for about another fifty pages, but I’m not sure I’ll read them now that the fate of the killer has been decided. I suppose probably there is some kind of twist ahead, but I’m not so fond of twists in mystery novels.

—

There was a bookstore in the shopping mall. When we dropped in to browse, my friend noticed before I did: Look who’s coming to town.

To be precise, it was the next town, at one of the state university’s campuses. “How Bad Can It Get.” A conference on global crises.

A week from that day, according to the poster.

The wonder of certain coincidences.

Any interest in going? she asked.

I reminded her that I’d already heard that talk. Not to mention having read the article it was based on.

Right, she said. I forgot.

I hope you won’t mind my saying I always thought he was a jerk, she added.

One of those aggressive, arrogant, entitled male journalists, she called him, reeling off the names of several other conformers to the type.