Don't Forget to Write (Cont.)

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Don't Forget to Write (Cont.)

DISALVATORE: Basically, we just kept sending him whatever we had at any given point. First it was just ideas. But then we started writing actual paragraphs. Included were "Is this in the right direction?" kinds of queries. Meanwhile, Vaughn's getting this stuff, months late, from two guys he's never even heard of. Kittredge had neglected to tell Vaughn about us.

KITTREDGE: Mmm. That could be true.

VAUGHN: With the arrival of each postcard, I'm increasingly baffled, because I have absolutely no idea what the hell these guys want.

DISALVATORE: Isolation makes you crazy in some ways, one of them being your idealized version of what's been going on stateside: Vaughn screeching with delight at these dispatches, hungry for more; readers all across America clamoring for our next installment; movie offers, sex. Meanwhile, Vaughn was getting this stuff and either putting it aside or just throwing it out.

FINNEGAN: None of this was Vaughn's fault. It's all drunken embroidery.

DISALVATORE: We just kept badgering him. Where's the contract? Where's the dough? Don't send a check, for God's sake—we can't cash it in Padang!

VAUGHN: Anyhow, they're gone for a really long time...

DISALVATORE: We were gone for almost four years.

FINNEGAN: I was gone for almost four years. Bryan was with me only for the first 15 months.

VAUGHN: And then one day, I'm putzing around my house when this huge Italian guy shows up on my front porch and he's really, really pissed off. DiSalvatore explains that they were living in a tree house in Borneo, and Finnegan was dying of malaria—

DISALVATORE: The doc in Bangkok, where he came down with it, said Bill's blood was "black with malaria." He was deranged. Fearful of death. We were broke. We were delusional.

VAUGHN: So this guy goes on to explain that the two of them had made a pact that the first person to get back to the U.S. was going to track me down.

DISALVATORE: We had vowed—

FINNEGAN: We didn't vow anything. Bryan did. I remember being annoyed with Vaughn, but it's not like he gave me malaria. The guy just failed to reply to some mail we sent him.

DISALVATORE: OK, I had vowed—but for Finnegan's sake, as sort of a spur to "get well"—that when I got back to America I would find that double-dealing, duplicitous, careless, thoughtless, heartless beast Vaughn—

VAUGHN: And kill me.

FINNEGAN: Keep in mind, there was a whole group of people in America that Bryan was allegedly going to kill on my behalf.

DISALVATORE: I believe I terrified him...

VAUGHN: I told him we needed to step outside, because I didn't want to break up my wife's furniture.

DISALVATORE: But eventually we became friends.

VAUGHN: The next afternoon we were playing on the same softball team.

DISALVATORE: I don't know if it was our fever-driven imaginations or Vaughn's forgetfulness. But basically, Vaughn didn't know what the fuck was going on. For that matter, neither did we.

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