Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 Read online

  Profiting by Lance’s example, I ordered Bryan and Jennifer to say their goodbyes before lunch today and refused to let them out of my sight for the two hours between the end of lunch and the departure of our ferry, when we would be doing our packing anyway. Nevertheless, various troubles and traumas did arise, and this time Ginger and I did have reasons to yell at one another and therefore did, but nobody’s bad temper lasted very long because in truth we’d liked that month in that house and were all sorry to be leaving.

  The simple life. Why not?

  Wednesday, August 10th

  DEWEY Heffernan is a menace. Fortunately, so far, he’s mostly a menace to himself.

  He phoned me yesterday, and at first I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. He said, “Tom, we’ve got a problem here with the bosses.”

  “We do? What problem?” But what I was thinking was, What bosses? Tell me who you’re having trouble with, and I’ll tell you if it’s serious or not.

  But Dewey answered the question I’d asked, rather than the one left unspoken. He said, “Well, they’re dragging their feet on this idea we talked about at lunch. Now, I have an artist that has to be paid, and Accounting just kicked the voucher back to me, says it isn’t authorized. Can you imagine?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “What artist?”

  “You know,” he said. “The one to replace the Diirer.”

  Diirer. There was in the book—page 173, as I recalled—an Albrecht Diirer woodcut called “The Adoration of the Magi,” which I had chosen partially because in it St. Joseph looks like John Ehrlichman, but also because Diirer didn’t have to be paid. You don’t pay an artist who’s been dead since 1328.

  But wait a minute; replace the Diirer? I said, “What do you mean, replace?”

  “Well, I knew you felt strongly about the color stuff,” he said, “and Korban-agreed he could give me a good page in black-and-white, so the Diirer just seemed the obvious thing to come out. I didn’t see any point bothering you with a detail like that, I mean we have so much old stuff.”

  “Korban,” I said, reaching out at random for something that might be forced to make sense. “What is a Korban?”

  “He’s fantastic!” Dewey told me. “He did the most fantastic freaked-out space trip with Santa Claus and the reindeer and this wild nun with an Afro and—”

  “Dewey,” I said.

  “—the sled’s like a low-rider, and —”

  “Dewey!”

  “—they go— What?”

  “Heavy Metal," I said, remembering our lunchtime conversation.

  “Sure!”

  “You want to commission a Heavy Metal artist to do a drugged Santa Claus and—”

  “It’s done, Tom! You ought to come into the office, look at it, it’s fantastic!”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said.

  “But now I got to get this poor guy paid,” Dewey said. “And Accounting’s making all this trouble.”

  I said, “Dewey, are you telling me you went out all on your own and commissioned an illustration for The Christmas Book?"

  “The one we talked about at—”

  “Not me,” 1 said.

  “What?” The sound was so baffled, so lost and hopeless, that I knew this was merely another example of Dewey’s ignorance and that he hadn’t been trying to pull a fast one at all. I don’t think Dewey would know a fast one if he fell over it, which he most likely would. “What, Tom?” this innocent asked.

  I said, “Dewey, at that lunch I did not agree that we should add the work of a Heavy Metal cartoonist to The Christmas Book."

  “Tom, you did!”

  “I did not, I would not, and I will not.”

  “Tom, I distinctly remember—”

  “You do not,” I said. “You do not distinctly remember anything from that lunch. / distinctly remember the lunch, and I remember you talked about pop-up books for adults, and I remember you talked about the Heavy Metal artists, and I remember the conversation remained theoretical.”

  “Tom, you thought it was a good idea!”

  “I thought it was a rotten idea. I also thought it was something you couldn’t possibly do in July for a book to be published in October, so there was no reason to argue.”

  “But we talked about it!”

  “Who else did you talk to?”

  “Korban! The artist!”

  “Who did you talk to at Craig?”

  “Nobody,” he said, and for the first time a trace of doubt—or perhaps fear—entered his voice.

  I said, “So you just went out, without my approval or any permission from anybody at Craig, and offered some clown— How much did you offer him?”

  “Fifteen hundred dollars,” he said. Now he was definitely scared.

  “Where did you come up with the number?”

  “I looked to see what we paid the other artists,” he said. “So I offered him the same. Tom, it’s a really wonderful—”

  “And then you put in two vouchers to Accounting,” I said, being deliberately mean, “and they bounced them back at you.”

  “Two vouchers? No, just one.”

  “What about my thousand dollars?” I asked him.

  “Tom? What are you talking about?”

  “Dewey,” I said, “you’re the editor on this book. Haven’t you read the contract? Haven’t you read the correspondence? Haven’t you talked with anybody about this book?”

  “There’s nobody here to talk to,” he said miserably. “Everybody’s gone away for August.”

  “According to the terms of the contract,” I told him, “the contributors receive sixty per cent of the advance, and I receive forty per cent. Everybody has been paid and that part of the deal is done and finished with, but if Craig is now going to pay an additonal fifteen hundred dollars to a contributor, then they must pay an additional thousand to me.”

  “But they won’t pay him, that’s the problem!”

  “Dewey, I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that you gave an unauthorized assignment to an artist. Did you make the proposal in a letter? On Craig letterhead?”

  “Why?”

  “Because if Craig refuses to pay,” I said, “and I imagine they will refuse to pay, your artist probably has a good lawsuit on his hands.”

  “A lawsuit?” He did sound more and more like a mountain climber who’s just seen the end of the rope fall past.

  But I was pitiless. “Against Craig,” I said. “But then Craig would naturally recover the money by suing you. Whether I’d sue for my thousand or not I’m not sure at this point.”

  “Tom, you don’t mean that!”

  “I don’t mean I’m not sure?”

  “Tom, listen. If we use the strip in the book, they have to pay.”

  “We will not use the strip in the book.”

  “I already sent the original to the printer,” he said. “I already told him to pull the Diirer.”

  “Oh, you bastard,” I said. “Oh, you baby asshole.”

  “Tom, we talked about this at lunch! We did!"

  “You call that printer right now, tell him—”

  “Tom Tom Tom! Please, Tom, you have to be on my side!”

  “The hell I do.”

  “You have to see this strip!”

  “Not in the book, I don’t.”

  “We have to use it or they won’t pay!”

  “You have to clear it first before you offer money!”

  “I talked about it with you!”

  “I don’t disburse Craig’s money! I imburse Craig’s money!” I yelled, inventing new languages in my aggravation.

  “Tom, it’s only one page!"

  “In MY BOOK, schmuck!"

  There was a little silence, in which we both breathed heavily, and then he said, in a small voice, “Tom, I need your help. You’re the only one I can turn to.”

  Jesus. Now I’m supposed to feel guilty because he's a buffoon. I’m supposed to feel guilty because the
people nominally in charge left him running the candystore and he’s been giving away the candy. I said, “Dewey, let me give you some advice. How well do you know this Koben?”

  “Korban,” said the small voice. “Not very well.”

  “All right. The first thing you do, you phone the printer and countermand your first instruction. The Durer goes in, the—”

  “Tom, please! Please!”

  “The other goddam thing goes out. Now, the second thing you do, there must have been somebody in that organization who talked to you when you were hired. Find that person. If he’s away on vacation, get somebody to give you the phone number, and call him. Tell him what you’ve done, say you’re sorry, say it was a mistake, throw yourself on his mercy. ”

  “Tom—”

  “Third,” I insisted, “call the artist, tell him exactly what happened—”

  “I’m not sure I know what happened.”

  “You exceeded your authority,” I told him. “Is that clear enough?”

  “I didn’t know I— I didn’t realize—”

  “I’ve got that. Anyway, ask the artist if he can sell the work somewhere else; maybe for the Heavy Metal Christmas issue. If he wants, you know, he can still stick you for the fifteen hundred. If you’re lucky, maybe you can talk him out of it.”

  “Tom, if we use it we won’t have to—”

  “We will not use it.“

  “You haven’t even seen it! You’re just throwing your weight around because you can!"

  “Weight? What weight? I can’t even keep you from fucking around with my book.”

  “I thought— I thought we liked each other!”

  “Dewey, Dewey, Dewey,” I said, and broke the connection because there really was absolutely nothing more to say, and called Annie. I described the situation to her, and she sighed and said she’d see what she could do, and I said, “The Durer goes back in the book, Annie.”

  “Oh, I agree,” she said. “It’s just how much trouble there is along the way.”

  Oh, how much trouble there is along the way, after all. I am sitting here in my air-conditioned office, away from the August heat and humidity, putting the finishing touches on the presentation for the history of greeting cards, and that total jerk over at Craig is turning The Christmas Book into Zap Comics!

  I do feel sorry for him, in a way. He knows so little about anything that he doesn’t even know how much he doesn’t know. His employers turned him loose without a thought, figuring the only people he could hurt were the writers, and now he’s hurt himself and possibly them. Will they fire him? Am I about to have my fourth editor?

  It’s like one of the plagues of Egypt; a plague of editors. No, that’s worse than the plagues of Egypt.

  Monday, August 15th

  THE quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.

  It feels strange to be back in this room again, working at this table. Strange and a little scary; I’m not sure I know what it means.

  All I know is what happened. Yesterday, Lance brought the kids back from Marin County, happy and bouncing and full of stories about redwood trees and the Pacific Ocean and the strange-looking males of San Francisco. Unfortunately, Lance also brought himself back, and in the middle of the afternoon it became obviou's he intended to stay. I said, “Lance, what about the other arrangements you were making?”

  “They didn’t pan out,” he said. “But I’ve still got some possibilities.”

  So as soon as I could I cornered Ginger in the bedroom and said, “Ginger, this has got to stop.”

  “Well, I didn’t invite him back,” she said. She seemed irritated with both of us.

  “He can’t take over my office again,” I said. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “Well, then, tell him so. You tell him.”

  “I’ll be delighted,” I said, but when I turned toward the door she cried, “Tom!”

  I looked back at her: “What?”

  “We can’t do that! It is his place, too, he still pays rent, he—”

  “So do I pay rent! In fact, I live here. Does Lance live here?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, are we just putting Lance up until he finds a new apartment, or has he moved back in?”

  “He has not moved back in!” This was the most appalling idea she’d heard since my proposal of marriage.

  “It sure looks like he has,” I said. “And the worst of it is, he’s moved into my office.”

  “It can’t be much longer, Tom,” she said, switching gears, deciding to try to placate me.

  “It’s already been too long. You know, I could always go work downtown.”

  “You mean, at Craig? At Annie’s?”

  “No. The room I used to use as an office is—”

  “You mean at Mary's?”

  “She told me a while ago, if I ever needed an office, the one I used to have is—”

  “That bitch!”

  “Mary isn’t pushing me out of places to work, Ginger,” I said. “If Lance moves into that office tonight, I’ll start using my old office tomorrow.”

  “Go right ahead, then,” she said. “I think it’s ridiculous to make such a fuss, but if that’s what you want to do . . .”

  “That’s what I want to do,” I said, although of course it wasn’t at all what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was force Ginger to kick Lance out, figuring she would certainly do so if the alternative was that I’d be spending every day with Mary.

  But somehow it didn’t work out. I moved firmly forward, ostentatiously packing up my typewriter and a carton of notes and reference books, and Ginger didn’t say a word on the subject. I phoned Mary to ask if the offer was still good, and she said yes, and I said I’d be down this morning, and Ginger stood firm. Lance moved into my office last night, and my office moved out this morning. I left a different message on the answering machine up there, directing callers to reach me down here, and brought everything I needed down in a cab.

  Like the room uptown, this one is simply the smallest bedroom in the apartment, similarly with a view of an airshaft. The few times I’d looked in the doorway here over the last year or so my old table and chair and wastebasket were still in place, but the room had become increasingly filled with stored cartons or mounds of off-season or outgrown clothing. Mary has always had a small portable inconvenient darkroom in our bathroom (how nice it has been to start the days without those acrid smells or that cumbersome boxy machinery in the way), and would hang her prints to dry on a cord stretched over the tub, but a few months ago a clothesline appeared in my ex-office, extending from a nail over the door to a nail over the window, and from it has dangled a gallery of her game attempts at art or commerce or at least legibility: winos asleep in doorways, close-ups of snowy fire escapes, a tiny girl studying a mosquito bite.

  But this morning the clothesline was gone, and so were the cartons and the clothing. The room was bare and clean, exactly as I’d left it eighteen months ago. Mary had gone out to the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan Library on a research job, and had left a note: “Wont be back till late. Help yourself in the kitchen.”

  I have helped myself in the kitchen. I have wandered around the apartment, looking into the kids’ rooms and into Mary’s room while memories have stirred, and I have felt increasingly uneasy. For some reason, the troubles we had, the bad times, the abrasions 'when we were throwing each other off like heavy colds after taking an antibiotic, all those moments and feelings have faded away like invisible ink. Even the chemical sti-nk bleeding into the bedroom through the closed bathroom door no longer irritates. All I can find here now, out of the past, is our sporadic happiness.

  I’m beginning to believe Thomas Wolfe had it wrong: it isn’t that you can’t go home again, it’s that you shouldn’t.

  Wednesday, August 17th

  WHAT really pisses me off is that even Annie thinks I’m wrong. She won’t say so, but I can tell from the tone of her voice.

  I
am talking about Dewey Heffernan and Craig and the Heavy Metal artist named Korban. It turns out that Korban, despite the juvenile content of his material, is not a Dewey- style eager amateur but a professional illustrator with an agent and an attorney and probably an accountant and a broker and a personal hitman as well. They are referred to by Annie generically—and admiringly—as “Korbans people,” and their attitude is simple and straightforward. Their man was commissioned to do a certain piece of work for a certain agreed-on sum; he did the piece of work, and he is now to be paid the agreed-on sum. There are no alternatives, there is no other way to look at the thing.

  As for the thing, the comic strip, there’s no way to look at that at all. At Annies insistence, I agreed last Friday at least to gaze upon the result of Mister Korban’s inspiration and labors, with as open a mind—and eyes—as possible, so Friday afternoon somebody from Craig messengered a Xerox of the thing to my office—uptown, before I came down here to Mary’s—and I taped it to the wall over the desk and spent some time brooding at it.

  At first I almost thought, what the hell, why not. The thing is, I’ve been getting into high gear with this greeting card history—I’ve got cards and photos of cards and doggerel verses from cards all over this room now, taped to the walls and the back of the door, stacked on the radiator cover, spreading out over the floor like pink and gold ivy—and Korban’s irreverence was initially an almost pleasant respite from the saccharine overdose I’ve been taking. Also, his draftsmanship is excellent, and he pays careful attention to detail; the elbows are as meticulously rendered as the pudendae.

  However. I spent last weekend with my kids, and then with the trauma of Lance’s return, and then with the move downtown, by the end of which I had come to the conclusion that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all, but when I saw it again on Monday—while taping it up, along with everything else, in this new/old office—I realized it was impossible, so I phoned Annie and said so. “Whatever you want,” she said, dubiously.

  What’s wrong with Korban’s work—apart from the thuggish crudity of the mind behind it—is what tends to be wrong with a lot of things directed at young people; it’s nihilistic for fun. In a nervous effort to be knowing before they know anything, not to be taken in, a lot of kids throw out the sentiment with the sentimentality and are left with nothing but surface. Then they try to replace what they’ve lost by being sentimental about themselves. (None of this is new, of course; remember “Teen Angel?”)