By then the rest of the staff had come in, and I met Sueanne Hudspeth, the office manager and receptionist, a comfortable middle-aged woman with a sprayed beehive and a flat, wiregrass voice, who gave me a little peck on the cheek and told me it was about time they got another woman in there to even things up a little. The editorial secretary, Sister Clinkscales, was honey-blond and blue-eyed and wore her hair caught up in a huge powder blue ribbon bow that matched her angora sweater and mini. She looked to be about thirteen.
“Hey, Smoky,” she said, in a sunny, little-girl voice. “I bet you know one of my sorority sisters from Savannah, Kitty DuBignon? I think she married somebody that works for the newspaper down there.”
I did indeed know Kitty DuBignon, or rather, her family; the DuBignons owned controlling interest in Fournier Sugar, and I knew that one of the daughters had married Clay Gilchrist, whose forebears had established the Savannah Morning Courier in the late 1700s. All of Corkie had heard of Kitty DuBignon’s escapades at the University of Georgia, which had culminated in her being dismissed for something so outrageous that not even her father’s sweet money could mitigate it. She married young Clay Gilchrist weeks after that.
“Well, I certainly know who she is,” I said, smiling back at Sister. I could not imagine her being a great deal of help to the staff of Downtown. She did not look as though she knew how to remove the cover from a typewriter. On the other hand, there was nothing in her sweet, snub little face of malice or privilege, and her smile was as infectious as a child’s laughter.
“Ah, yes,” Hank said, giving the end of her hair ribbon a tug. “Hot times at the ole Kappa house. Sister, you ninny; Smoky was out of school and working before you and Miss Kitty were out of training bras. Where is everybody, by the way?”
“Mr. Carnes called some kind of meeting upstairs,” Sister said. “He wants all of us, too. I think we’re going to get fussed at about the coffee cup holders again. You know he thinks we’re the ones doing it. Mr. Comfort said for me to see if Smoky would answer the phones until we get back. She’s too new to be one of the usual suspects, he says. It’s just for a minute, Smoky. I’ll show you how to work the switchboard.”
“I can figure it out,” I said, smiling at her chatter. She was a lovable child. She always was. Years later I heard that she went to Emory Law School after her second child was in day care, and made Law Review and Moot Court, and turned out to be a trial lawyer of fearsome ability. After my first shock of surprise on hearing it, I realized that I was not, after all, completely startled. There was always a bright, implacable intelligence just under what Matt Comfort called Sister’s froufrou. I sensed it behind the wide blue eyes that first morning.
She and Sueanne and Hank went out of the office and I sat down at Sister’s desk and studied the telephones until I figured them out. One rang, and I picked it up and paused, then said, with a small thrill of pride, “Downtown magazine. May I help you?”
“Yeah,” an irritable masculine voice said. “This is Carithers from Dynatech. When the hell are you all getting the December issue out? My contract says the day before Thanksgiving, and it’s six days past that already. You tell Comfort I expect a refund on this ad, too. Is he there?”
“He’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said. “He’s in a meeting. May I tell him you called?”
“Sister?” he said.
“No, this is Ashley O’Donnell. I’m the new senior editor,” I said.
“Christ,” snapped Carithers from Dynatech. “He can’t get an issue out on time, but he can hire senior editors all over the place. Tell him to call me.” And he hung up before I could reply.
“Have a happy day, creep,” I said, stung.
I had meant to glance at the new issue of Downtown that lay on Sister’s desk, and perhaps to look over a few of the back ones, but the phone kept up a steady barrage. Most were for Matt or for the ad salesmen or our comptroller, Jack Greenburg, and most callers were not especially pleased. All of the calls had something to do with the lateness of the December issue. Well, I thought defensively, after all, it’s not December yet.
There was a lull then, and I reached for the December issue and was admiring its cover, a wonderfully painted caricature of Coca-Cola’s legendary, reclusive Robert Woodruff dressed as Santa, handing out stadiums and airplanes, when an astonishing aroma reached my nose. It was an indescribable confluence of smells: dank earth, woodsmoke, wet newsprint, sun-ripened garbage, raw old wine, some sort of machine oil, and a powerful underbase of long-unwashed body and clothing. It literally jerked my head up from the cover of Downtown, and when I looked up it was to see a man just wobbling carefully into the lobby on a bicycle, lips pursed in concentration. I simply stared.
He was tiny, gnarled and gnomelike, and quite old. There was white stubble on his slack, simian face, and his hair, under an old, filthy New York Yankees baseball cap, was lank and greasy and yellow-white, and brushed his shoulders. He wore grimy white flannel knickers and a vest of some sort over many layers of tattered sweaters, and old black high-top Converse basketball shoes over what looked to be three or four pairs of socks. On his hands were fingerless mitts that reminded me, crazily, of the lace mitts we had worn to dances at Saint Zita’s, and in his bicycle basket was a pile of magazines and newspapers so old that they were brittle and yellow, shedding flakes onto the carpet. Around his neck, on a filthy string, was a large round globe of the world.
He propped the bicycle lovingly against the sofa and began pulling magazines from its basket, talking busily to himself under his breath. I took a deep breath, regretted it, and said, in a silly, strangled voice, “May I help you?”
Only then did he seem to notice me. He cocked his head this way and that, like a bewildered old bird, and said, in a gruff mumble, “You ain’t her. That flibberty little one, you ain’t her.”
“No, I’m…I’m new. I’m Ashley O’Donnell,” I said, wondering if I should phone for help. But to whom? Or perhaps dash past him and into the offices down the hall? Were there any? I didn’t remember….
He smiled, a sudden, sweet smile, and held out his hand, and I took it numbly.
“Francis Brewton,” he said grandly, and swept me a low bow. “I’m in the travel and newspaper business. Everybody here are my clients. I have something for Matt, something he’s been looking for for a long time. There’s probably not another one in the country. It’s going to cost him plenty, you bet.”
“Well, ah…he’s upstairs in a meeting,” I said. “Maybe I could give it to him for you?”
“Naw. I want to see his face when he sees it,” Francis Brewton said. “I’ll go up and give it to him myself. But maybe you’d like to buy a few magazines? I have some Ladies’ Home Journals nobody’s seen before. In perfect condition, they are.”
He pulled out four Ladies’ Home Journals that I had to agree no one had seen before, at least not in living memory. They were dated 1911, 1912, and 1914. But they were, indeed, in good condition. I looked at them helplessly, and then at Francis Brewton. He beamed, revealing brown gaps where several teeth had been.
“Umm—how much were you asking?” I said.
“Ten dollars,” he said firmly. “Ordinarily I’d get fifteen, but I always give Comfort’s People a discount. Some of my best customers, they are.”
He stood there smiling happily at me, and I reached for my purse and pulled out a ten-dollar bill and gave it to him. Somehow I could not bear to argue with him. It was not fear, but a sort of hypnosis that his extraordinary self-confidence generated. It crossed my mind that he possibly lived rather well.
“Thank you,” he said, and pocketed the money, and retrieved his bicycle. “I’ll catch Matt upstairs.”
He got on the bicycle and pushed away out of the office, and then stopped and put one foot down, and looked back over his shoulder.
“Oh, and by the way,” he said, “If I should miss him, tell Matt I think we’ve got the Lutherans sewed up.”
“I certainly will,” I
said, and he rode away. It was several minutes before the aroma faded from the lobby.
I was still sitting there, looking at the yellowing Ladies’ Home Journals and trying not to remember that the ten dollars was busfare for two weeks, when I heard the elevator bell pinging around the corner, and the staff came trooping back in. At the rear was Matt Comfort with a tall, paunchy, bald man in a blue three-piece suit. He had a tight red face and a small round mouth, pursed like a woman’s. When he saw me it broadened into a smile.
“Smoky, this is Culver Carnes, director of the chamber and my boss of bosses,” Matt Comfort said. “Be nicer to him than you ever thought possible.”
“Well, Smoky, glad to have you. I’ve been hearing about you,” Culver Carnes said. He had a voice like an old-time radio announcer, someone I could barely remember from my childhood. Harry Von Sell?
“Thank you, Mr. Carnes,” I said. “I’m glad to be here.”
“She’s just as pretty as you said she was, Matt,” Culver Carnes said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Nothing wrong with your editorial eye, is there, boy?”
He winked at me and Matt Comfort, and behind him, Tom Gordon crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out. I bit my lips.
“Fastest eye in the South, Culver,” Matt said solemnly.
“You had a number of calls, Mr. Comfort,” I said in as businesslike a voice as I could muster, given the fact that behind Culver Carnes’s back Hank Cantwell and Charlie Stubbs were now making elaborate, silent punting motions at his blue-clad behind. “I’ve put them on your desk. Oh, and a Mr. Francis Brewton came by. He said he had something for you, and that he’d catch you upstairs. He just left.”
“Jesus Christ,” Matt Comfort laughed. “You really have had your baptism by fire, haven’t you? I thought I smelled Francis when we got off the elevator. What did he sell you, the 1929 Farmer’s Almanac?”
“Copies of 1911, 1912, and 1914 Ladies’ Home Journals,” I said meekly.
Matt Comfort sighed. “How much?”
“Ten dollars—”
“Shit, we’re going to have to do something about Francis’s price-gouging,” Matt muttered. “Get Sister to give you five dollars from petty cash, and remember, we never give Francis more than two bucks. He knows that. It bothers me that he’d take advantage of your being new—”
“If that’s the only thing about that lunatic that bothers you, you need your head examined,” Culver Carnes said sourly. “I’ve told you and told you, Matt, not to encourage him. We can’t have him hanging around here. Where did he say he was going?”
He turned to me.
“I think he said upstairs,” I said in a small voice.
“Christ,” Culver Carnes roared, and started for the door. “Do you know who I’ve got in my office, waiting for me? Only Todd Ingram, who’s got more money at his fingertips than you’ll see in your lifetime, Comfort, just trying to decide if he wants to invest it in an office complex here or a new stadium in Birmingham! That’s all! And what I need most in the world right now is that goddamned fucking Francis Brewton rolling by on his bicycle looking for you—”
“Sorry, Culver,” Matt said, his mouth twitching. “Send him on back down here if he shows. He knows he’s not supposed to go up there, but he forgets—”
“How the hell did he get in here, anyway? I thought I told you to tell the guard not to let him in the building.”
“Well, I told him to let him in when the temperature dropped below fifty. Jesus, Culver, he’s been sleeping under the Spring Street Viaduct since Saint John’s closed its doors. I’m not in the habit of freezing octogenarian loonies to death. What does it hurt? He doesn’t go up to your place much anymore.”
“It hurts when I’ve got the chairman of All-South sitting in my goddamned office trying to decide where to drop twenty mil and Francis Brewton rolls up on his bicycle looking for the editor of Downtown! What do you suggest I say to Todd Ingram?” Culver Carnes had moved up until he was shouting into Matt Comfort’s face. His own face and neck were suffused with red.
“You could ask him if he can ride a bike,” Matt said. His voice was mild but his eyes had gone flat and dead. Behind Culver Carnes Tom Gordon and Charlie Stubbs stifled explosive laughter and retreated into their offices.
“One of these days you’re going to push me too far, Matt,” Culver Carnes said furiously. “You’re just as good as the last issue of this two-bit local flak sheet. I hope you remember that.”
“They know us in New York, Culver,” Matt Comfort said, his voice casual. “I hope you remember that.” I did not think he felt casually about what his boss had said, though. His face was white. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his wrinkled tweed jacket and strolled back into his office.
“The day that stops, Comfort, is the day your ass is back on a train to Humble, Texas,” Culver Carnes shouted after him, and turned and strode out of the office. He slammed the door behind him. Tom and Charlie came back out of their offices and stood looking after him. I did, too. The shouting had disturbed me profoundly. I was suddenly terrified that Matt Comfort would be fired before my tenure with Downtown had even begun.
Into the silence I said, “He said tell Mr. Comfort he thought they had the Lutherans sewed up,” and Tom and Charlie exploded into laughter. Matt Comfort came out to hear what was so funny and began to laugh, too. He gave me a brief hug around my shoulders and I joined in the laughter, lightly, pretending that I had known all along it was funny. I sensed that it pleased them that I should be ironic and quick. I would remember that.
I spent the rest of the morning upstairs meeting the chamber staff—with a few exceptions a sunless lot who acknowledged me coolly—and then Hank took me to lunch. It was a small, dim French restaurant called Emile’s a couple of blocks away from the Commerce Building, and it seemed to be full of men drinking cocktails and laughing, all of whom seemed to know Hank. At one corner table on the upper level a bushy-browed bulldog of a man with thick spectacles nodded and smiled, and I whispered breathlessly, when we had passed, “Was that—?”
Hank grinned. “Ralph McGill. Yeah, Pappy comes here a good bit, especially on chicken-liver day. That’s kind of the unofficial Constitution table.”
“You really know him?”
“Well, Matt knows him, and he knows who we all are. You’re not going to ask him for his autograph, are you? He’s awfully shy.”
“Don’t be an ass. But I wish I could. He’s a real hero, Hank. Lord, though, my father would have a conniption if he knew I was even under the same roof with Rastus McGill. I wish he could see me now.”
“You better be glad he can’t,” Hank said, and we sat down to lunch in the first French restaurant I had ever been in, to order, for the first time in my life, sauteed chicken livers on toast with sherry and mushrooms. I thought they were probably an acquired taste.
Hank asked me if I wanted wine, and I simply looked at him, and he laughed.
“I forgot,” he said. “They don’t call you Holy Smoke for nothing. I’m so used to eating lunch with Matt and the rest of the gang that I forget everybody doesn’t have two martinis and wine with lunch. It’s kind of nice to give it a rest.”
“Do you all drink a lot?” I asked. I had heard of two-martini lunches, of course, but until now had assumed they were the stuff of bad novels about Madison Avenue.
He looked surprised, and then said, “I guess maybe we do. I don’t think about it all that much. We’re usually all together, talking and laughing, or there’s some visiting muckety-muck from out of town that we’re entertaining, and it just seems the natural thing to do. Almost everybody does it, at least when Matt’s buying, and he usually is. He can drink more than anybody I ever saw and not show it. He’ll go back after one of these lunches and put together an issue that will win another award, or get on the phone and set up an interview with somebody virtually nobody else could get, or sell twelve full-page four-color ads right under Jack Greenburg’s nose. It’s incredible. If the rest of us dr
ank that much we’d be passed out under our desks.”
“He must be rich,” I said, thinking what five days a week of lunches like that for the whole staff must cost.
“God, no. It’s kind of a local legend that when he got here he had exactly fourteen dollars in his pocket. He lived at the Y for six months. Tom Gordon still does; he’s going through a messy divorce and he barely has the clothes on his back left. Nobody on the staff has any money except Teddy, whose daddy owns the biggest real estate company in town, and Sister, whose daddy owns South Georgia. Alicia has a dynamite apartment, but I’m fairly sure she doesn’t pay for it. Matt lives in two rooms at the Howell House that the chamber pays for, along with paying for his car. The rest of us have roommates or live in one room. Matt likes to say that he’s going to pay us half the salary we had wherever we worked before, and work us twice as long. Didn’t he tell you that? I think he charges the lunches and everything else to the chamber.”
Matt Comfort had indeed told me that about the pay and the hours, and it had charmed me, made me want to work twice as hard for him.
“Boy, he really must rate with the chamber,” I said. “I mean, to charge stuff like that, and talk to Mr. Carnes the way he did this morning. That almost scared me, Hank. I thought Mr. Carnes was his boss.”
“Well, he is, but it’s a funny relationship,” Hank said, frowning. “It’s kind of a game with them, the insults and the yelling. Culver really resents Matt’s smart-ass, seat-of-the-pants way of doing things and the fact that all of us on the magazine get away with bloody murder, are kind of local heroes. The whole chamber staff hates and envies us, for that matter. Don’t think you’re going to find any friends up there. But Carnes knows Matt is an authentic genius, and whenever we win another award, he takes the credit—he’s the one that hired Matt out of the whole pack. And in a funny way he really loves Matt. He’s not a dummy; he knows quality. He used to have his own public relations firm. What he said this morning is true; we’re all of us okay as long as they know us in New York. And they do. Matt wasn’t boasting there.
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