Vanity Fire

by John M. Daniel

  “Hell if I know,” I said. “I’ve never done anything like that.”

  “But you’re a publisher, right?”

  “Tiddlywinks.”

  “You’re a businessman, for Christ’s sake. Come on. Let’s have some numbers.”

  “Twenty thousand?” I guessed. “Twenty-five?”

  Fritz Marburger grinned and nodded. He pulled a checkbook out of his jacket pocket.

  ***

  “What the hell is this?” Carol asked, staring at the rectangle in her hand.

  “A check for thirty thousand dollars. Your hair looks nice,” I told her. “I like it that length.” Actually I liked Carol’s strawberry blond hair any length, because I like hair and because it’s Carol’s.

  “I can see it’s a check, Guy,” she said. “I can see it’s made out to Guy Mallon Books. What I don’t know is who the hell’s Fritz Marburger, and what the hell this is all about, and it’s not about my hair. What’s the deal?”

  “Well, we don’t have to cash it if we don’t want to,” I said. “That’s the deal.”

  “What’s this money for, Guy? Please don’t make me beg.”

  I smiled. “It’s in case we want to publish a novel,” I said.

  “We have to spend thirty thousand dollars publishing a novel? Is this man crazy? Are you crazy?”

  “No. We publish the novel, and we get to do whatever we want with whatever money’s left over. Publish more God damned little poetry books, as Fritz puts it—”

  “I see we’re already on a first-name basis,” Carol remarked.

  “—or, if we decide we like real publishing for a change, we can publish a couple more commercial novels. Anything we want. Our choice.”

  “Do we get to choose the first novel?” Carol asked.

  “Well, that’s the string section you were worried about.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I pulled the small, square package out of my coat pocket and handed it to Carol. “Open it,” I said.

  Carol pulled the ribbon and tore away the gift wrap. “I’ll Be Seeing You,” she read. “‘Sweet Lorraine Evans Celebrates the Standards.’”

  “Lorraine Evans?” I said. “She’s my favorite singer. I didn’t know she could write.”

  “You still don’t,” Carol pointed out.

  “Come on, Carol. It might be a good book. Could be. We might like it. If we don’t, we tear up the check.”

  “I’m not sure I like this idea, Guy,” Carol said. “I love you to death, and whatever you say, we do. But damn it, we’re not vanity publishers.”

  “Only if we like the book, Carol. Only if we love it.”

  “But even if we do,” she reasoned, “even if it’s the best book we ever read—”

  “Yes?”

  “We’d have to print ten, fifteen thousand copies to break even.”

  “Well? Now we can afford that.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “What?”

  “Where would we store all those books?”

  “Think big,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said, kissing my forehead. “That’s why I love you.”

  Chapter Two

  We spent Fourth of July weekend out in the tiny backyard of our East Side bungalow. Carol did some gardening while I sat on the deck under a bougainvillea reading the Lorraine Evans manuscript. The first sentence caught my interest. The first paragraph had me hooked. The first page had me in love, and by the end of the first chapter I was out of my chair over and over, following Carol around the flower beds, reading aloud to her as she buried her hands in the soil.

  Finally she put down her trowel and begged me, “Don’t read me any more. Let me garden. Then let me read for myself. You’re spoiling all the surprises, and besides, I’m getting a little bit jealous here.”

  That was on Saturday. That evening, during cocktails, I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut and a harder time trying to talk about anything other than the novel I had just finished reading.

  Carol gave me the smiling Irish eyes over her gin glass and said, “Okay, okay, tell me all about it.”

  “Nope,” I said. “You’ll read it for yourself. Soon, I hope.”

  “Tomorrow. Otherwise we’ll have nothing to talk about. And I don’t want you hovering over me while I turn the pages. Tomorrow you’re doing the laundry, the shopping, and the vacuuming, while I get to put my feet up and read.”

  “I vacuumed last weekend,” I reminded her.

  “I just want you to stay out of my hair while I read Miss Glamorpuss.”

  “Why do you call her that?”

  “Because she flounces,” Carol answered. “And because of the title of her so-called novel.”

  I grinned at her. She was in for a surprise.

  So maybe Lorraine Evans wore hoop earrings and too much makeup when she delivered the manuscript to our office, including pancake on her cleavage. So maybe the novel was titled Naming Names. Carol was in for a surprise, and our publishing company was in for a new set of wings.

  ***

  “God damn it, this is a fine book!” Carol admitted the next evening at cocktails. “I was ready to give it the once-over and hand it back to you. But shit, I like this book. I figured it was going to be a tell-all thing, with thinly disguised celebrities misbehaving in each others’ beds. It’s not that at all.”

  In fact, Lorraine’s novel was a sensitive story about a penniless, schizophrenic old woman living in a Santa Cruz charity hotel, who, when she went off her meds, would undress in public and rant about how she had been sexually molested by both Allen and John Foster Dulles when she was a child.

  I grinned. “Too bad we publish only poetry.”

  “Oh shut up, Guy. You know you want to publish this book, and I know we can afford to do it now. Call the lady and tell her to come in and sign a contract.”

  “You’re not jealous anymore?” I asked. Just to make sure.

  “Huh? You mean jealous of Miz Flounce? Don’t be silly. Oh, you mean what I said yesterday? I was just jealous because you got to read a book in the shade while I had to strain my back and break all my fingernails in the dirt.”

  “I vacuumed today,” I reminded her. “And folded laundry.”

  “Lorraine’s number’s on the manuscript. Call her up.”

  ***

  Lorraine Evans came into the office Tuesday afternoon, and she didn’t come alone. She brought with her, or vice versa, her boyfriend, her sugar-daddy. Wearing a big, proud grin she said, “Carol, Guy, I’d like you to meet my agent. This is Fritz Marburger.”

  Fritz gave us his rubber-faced grin and extended his left hand; Lorraine was holding onto the right.

  I said, “We’ve actually—,” but a slight shake of the head and a wink from Fritz told me to can it. “We’ve actually heard of Mister Marburger,” I said.

  “Call me Fritz,” he said in his jovial bass rumble. He turned to Carol and said, “I understand you’re the brains of this organization. That’s what Lorrie tells me.”

  “I control the purse strings,” Carol said. “Strings are my specialty.”

  “Good girl.” Fritz extricated his right hand from Lorraine’s grasp and started moving around the office, looking at the bookshelves on the walls. “You published all these books?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Those are my collection. I collect postwar western American poets. First editions.”

  He looked at all four walls of the office, as if mentally calculating how many books I owned. “Lot of poets,” he observed. “How much is this collection worth?”

  “It’s priceless,” I said.

  “Right, but if you were to sell it,” he persisted.

  “Not for sale.”

  “Okay, okay. Not like I want to buy it, you understand. I don’t read poetry. I read the Wall Street Journal and that’s about it. But this collection, how much is it insured for?”

  Lorraine s
tepped in and said, “Don’t answer that. Don’t mind Fritz. He’s got a one-track mind. Let’s do business!”

  So we sat at the round conference table and I passed around copies of a two-page contract I had drawn up that morning. Carol plopped down a yellow pad so she could take notes on the negotiations. Lorraine put on a pair of red-rimmed reading glasses and got to work. Fritz sprawled forward with his elbows on the table, humming and grunting as he went through the document. He nodded, he shook his head, he tapped the table, he ran fingers through his thicket of gray hair.

  Lorraine looked up and smiled, then folded her hands on top of the contract.

  Fritz looked up and said, “That’s it? That’s the contract?”

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s the contract.”

  Fritz shook his head. “You can do better than this. This is fine as far as it goes, but I mean give me a break. Doesn’t say anything about foreign rights, paperback rights, movie rights, greeting card rights, tee shirt rights, blah blah blah. Doesn’t say how many copies of the book you’re going to publish. Doesn’t even name the God damned territory, for Christ’s sake. And ten percent royalty? You gotta be kidding me. I think you could also throw in a few promotion guarantees, tour, advertising, we want a review in Publishers Weekly, yada yada. I want you to get Lorraine on ‘Oprah.’ And what’s this horseshit about holding back royalties as a reserve against returns? There aren’t going to be any returns. And another thing. Sales reports twice a year? Forget it. We get a sales report every month, and we get paid every month for that month’s sales. The check’s to be made out to Marburger Enterprises. I’ll keep my agent’s fee and pass the rest along to Lorraine. I want that written into the contract: an agency clause. Let me see what else—”

  “Hold on,” Carol said, her facial expression friendly. I know that expression. “It sounds as if you know quite a bit about the publishing business. Have you worked in publishing?”

  Fritz raised his eyebrows. “I know a lot about business, and I know a lot about contracts. And as Lorrie’s agent—”

  Lorraine said, “Fritzy, be nice.”

  “You’re the nice one. But somebody’s got to play hardball. That’s where business gets fun, right? Without back-and-forth, no give-and-take, there’s no sex, pardon my French. Okay, let’s roll up our sleeves.” He moistened his thumb and forefinger, laid the pages of the contract side by side on the table before him, and said, “Paragraph one…”

  It took us all afternoon, but the four of us hammered out a contract that suited us all. Fritz insisted that the territory be defined as the entire universe, which was fine with me and made Lorraine squeal with pleasure. The contract named Marburger Enterprises as the agent, but Carol inserted a clause stating that Fritz Marburger have no decision-making power with respect to Naming Names or any other part of our publishing business.

  That one was a little sticky. “Look, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want me to give you some advice from time to time, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “I mean I’m retired and I don’t have all that much to do these days, so—”

  “So play golf,” Carol said.

  Fritz brought a laugh out of his lungs that sounded like fifty years of unfiltered Chesterfields. “God,” he said. “Missus Mallon, I like your style!”

  “My name’s Murphy. The clause stays.”

  Fritz gave us all a splendid slow-motion shrug, a grin, a nod.

  We shook hands all around, Carol promised to have the revised contract ready to sign the next day, Lorraine kissed Fritz, and I went to the storage closet and came out with a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and four glasses.

  ***

  The next day Fritz called me and said, “Listen, Guy, I know we have a contract and all that, but you and I have to have a separate agreement that I get something more out of this than my fifteen percent of Lorraine’s ten percent. I mean since I’m invested so heavily in this project, how about you put me on the payroll as an advisor or something?”

  “Why didn’t you bring this up yesterday?” I asked.

  “I didn’t want Lorrie to know I’d paid for this book to be published. I mean she’s pretty sensitive, and frankly I don’t want her to cut me off or kill me.”

  “Well,” I answered, “I don’t want Carol to kill me either, and we don’t have a payroll.”

  “Then how about you give me some stock in your company. Not a controlling amount, just some equity. After all—”

  “We’re not a corporation,” I told him. “Look, Fritz, if you don’t like the agreement we agreed on, it’s not too late to back out. Nobody’s signed anything yet.”

  His sigh was like a resigned growl. “Forget it, he said. “We’ll sign.”

  ***

  Pre-press production took six months. In late January, we sent the book off to the printer in Michigan and called Lorraine and Fritz in for a conference on marketing.

  “We’ve sent out the bound galleys,” Carol told them. “Guy’s writing the press release. Here’s a list of places we plan to send review copies, everything from People to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. We’ve got a publication party scheduled at the Earthling Bookstore for Friday, April fifteenth. If you give us your mailing list—do you have a mailing list?”

  Lorraine said, “Natch.”

  “And I want this girl on ‘Oprah,’” Fritz interjected.

  “Uh—we’ll try,” Carol said. “Remember, we don’t have a lot of clout.”

  “I do,” Lorraine reminded us. “Don’t worry about ‘Oprah,’ my publicist will take care of her.”

  “If you get on ‘Oprah,’ we’re going to have to be ready to reorder books. A lot more books,” Carol said.

  “That reminds me,” I said. “We still don’t have a place to store the books we’re getting. I’ve got to look into warehouse space.”

  “Where are you storing your books now?” Fritz asked.

  “We have a couple of units at Budget U-Stor, other side of the freeway,” Carol told him.

  “Shit. You guys really are amateurs, aren’t you. No offense.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, my voice getting high and loud. “You can’t get away with that, say ‘no offense’ after you do your best to offend us.”

  Fritz grinned at Carol, then at me. “Look,” he said. “I’m here to help you grow. Work with me, okay? I’m going to put you on the map.”

  “We’re already on the map,” Carol muttered.

  “Map of Santa Barbara, maybe. That’s not enough for me, and it shouldn’t be enough for you.”

  I thought about that. Yes, I had to admit having my name on a bigger map sounded good. “Go on,” I said.

  Fritz said, “I’ve had my eye on a piece of commercial real estate. I’ll buy it as an investment and we’ll move the books in there. You can pay rent to me, which is the least you could do, come to think of it.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Lorraine asked.

  “Nothing, sweetheart.”

  “You paid them to publish my book,” she said. I watched those big whole-note eyes of hers narrow to murderous slits.

  “At least it’s getting published,” he fumbled. “Nobody else would touch it.”

  “You’re really in trouble now, Fritzo.”

  “Baby, listen—”

  “I’m not talking to you,” she told him. Then she turned to Carol and me. “It’s not true, you know. A lot of publishers would have been glad to have this book, I know that. But Fritz wanted to work with you, and I’m glad he did. I love you guys.” She turned back to her agent and repeated, “Love you to death.”

  ***

  In mid-March, a week before ten thousand copies of Naming Names was scheduled for delivery, Fritz Marburger walked Carol and me through the DiClemente Avocado warehouse, which he had just purchased. It was run-down and dusty, a dimly lit cavern next to the railroad tracks on the ocean side of the freeway. And it was big. It was huge. It was made of wood that looked
stained by the weather, but Fritz assured me that the cement floor was dry and the roof was new. It had a loud mechanized rolling door big enough to drive a truck into.

  “You’ll be paying rent to Marburger Enterprises,” Fritz said. “Fifteen hundred a month.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Carol said.

  “What can I say?” Fritz countered. “Rents are outrageous in this town. Get over it. How much would it cost you to store ten thousand hardback books at Budget Fucking U-Stor?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Since it’s too late for us to shop around.”

  “Oh, and you’ll have a roommate,” Fritz added. “I’m renting the back third of this place to somebody else. Otherwise I’d have to charge you more.”

  “You have anybody in mind?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we signed a lease yesterday. He’ll be moving in next week. Another publisher, as a matter of fact. You guys should get along just fine. Name’s Herndon. Roger Herndon. Great guy. Knows a lot about publishing. He’s going to have his offices in the back, along with his printing equipment.”

  “Roger Herndon,” I said. “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s new in town. You’ll like him.”

  “What does he publish?”

  “Books.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “How do I know? Good books. Books that sell. No poetry. You’ll like him. You’ll get along just fine.”

  “Is he paying fifteen hundred a month too?” Carol asked.

  “That’s between him and me,” Fritz said. “But I’ll tell you this much. I’m going to get my thirty thousand dollars back one way or another. Now that Sweet Lorraine Evans has shown me the gate, I’m going to be a lot more businesslike.”