The Man on the Third Floor

by Anne Bernays

  The man sitting next to me at the counter asked me to pass him the ketchup. He pulled up a corner of the bread of his sandwich, peered under it as if he didn’t know what lay there, and poured ketchup over it until it was entirely lost under a running red sea. “You ought to try one of their Westerns,” the man said. I told him I thought I would stick to tuna fish. He was wearing jeans and an Eisenhower jacket. I asked him what line of work he was in. “Carpets,” he said. “It’s a decent living.”

  “I know,” I said. Just like Barry. Did Barry have something to do with this? Not just implausible, but impossible. I felt myself growing paranoid. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. I paid my check and left. Midtown New York was awash with people hurrying, swarming. To what end?

  I instructed myself to quit this adolescent cud-chewing. Maybe I did need a shrink after all. I stopped to look at the display in one of those cramped tourist shops, miniature Statues of Liberty, cheap cameras, Frank Sinatra posters, snow globes, coffee mugs with a picture of the Empire State Building, and much more assorted dreck jammed together, garishly lighted, a flame for the tourist moths who went home and put their gimcrack on the mantel to show they had visited the greatest city in the world. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Well, maybe Costa Rica with Barry. But that was a dream too.

  I had a calm-before-the-storm feeling.

  WHEN I got back to the office after my solitary lunch, Miss Garter was waiting by the elevator; god only knows how long she had been there.

  “Walter”—she had agreed to call me by my first name after almost a decade of working for me—“Walter,” she repeated, “Mr. Fleming has called five times. He must speak to you right away, says it’s extremely urgent. He sounds very upset. He forgot my name.”

  “Hold on there,” I said. “How bad can it be?”

  Even as I tried to tamp down her agitation, I was mentally scrambling through various scenarios. Fleming was leaving the country. Fleming’s wife had been killed (god forbid), Fleming had killed someone (god forbid), he wanted more money (god forbid and anyway he had plenty of money; that’s not what he wanted). It was rumored that Fleming was in line for a Pulitzer. But then why would he be so upset? I hurried to my desk and dialed his number at home, a number only a few of the privileged possessed.

  He answered his phone on the first ring. “It’s you,” he said. “Where were you? It’s nearly three o’clock.”

  “Having lunch,” I said. “Alone. What’s this all about? Miss Garter says you’ve called several times.”

  “She’s right,” he said. “I’m extremely upset.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I hear you. What’s this all about?”

  “It’s your editor, Charles McCann. He has to go.”

  “What do you mean he has to go? What are you talking about?” It occurred to me that either Fleming was drunk or had lost his senses.

  “I mean the man’s a Communist. Griffin House can’t afford to have a man with his past on its staff. This is a serious moment in history, my friend, and you cannot ignore the facts.”

  I asked him to slow down a little; I was having a hard time following him. “First of all,” I said, “he’s not a member of anything. And second he’s the best editor in the house. He’s a fine man, an old friend.”

  “Harvard! There you go. Call it Pinko U. Harvard doesn’t cut any ice with me.”

  “What do you expect me to do?” I said.

  “Fire him.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Over the years I fielded scores of complaints, bouts of crying, threats, curses, and pleas from my authors. They would start out starry-eyed and giddy, believing that the world would wobble or the sun rise and set twice on the same day, the very day their book was published. Gradually, as the truth sank in, the voice dropped, the eyes brimmed. “You mean you’re going to buy only one ad?” “You mean you’re not going to send me to San Francisco?” Then came the calls asking how many copies of their books had sold. I had one author who called five times a week to check on his sales. Finally I just pulled a number out of the ether and told him that. But I had never heard anything like the complaint lodged by Edgar Fleming.

  Maybe, I told myself, Fleming was joking, having a little fun at my expense. I tested my theory. He assured me that he was not joking and accused me of making light of an extremely serious situation. Did I sense a veiled threat that if I didn’t get rid of Charlie, Fleming would no longer publish his books with Griffin? There was an unsavory edge to his voice, something I’d heard only once or twice before. “There are a lot of dandy publishers out there,” he said.

  I suggested he come into the office so we could talk about it. He said, “I’d rather not show up at your office. Why don’t you stop by my place after work? No, that’s no good, Mary’s here and I’d rather there were no distractions. She’d want to put her two cents in.”

  I asked Fleming if his wife agreed with him about this matter.

  “I haven’t told her about it.” An all-American marriage.

  I suggested we meet at the Oak Bar. “Too public,” he said. “Everybody knows me there—it’s distracting.”

  “Then you say where,” I said.

  I was anxious to get off the phone so I could talk to Charlie before I saw Fleming. I wanted to ask him straight-out what the story was. The chill felt by everyone in the entertainment and publishing worlds had driven some people crazy—and I mean literally. You don’t fire someone for what they once were but no longer are. And, in any case, you don’t fire them unless they’ve done something to deserve it—like cooking the books or screwing the boss’ secretary in the mail room (although this did happen and the man was given another chance). Or lying to The New York Times about sales figures. Or any number of other derelictions that make you an undesirable member of your community. But because you might have once, long ago, in your callow youth briefly joined the Communist Party? That was bullshit pure and simple.

  After agreeing to meet Fleming in a bar on Sixth Avenue, I went down the hall, knocked on Charlie’s door, and went in. Charlie was sitting on his couch with a young woman. He looked surprised to see me—although this was hardly the first time I’d done this—and introduced me to the woman. “This is Amanda Benton.”

  “I think she’s going to turn in a terrific book,” Charlie said. “Short stories.”

  He looked at her the way you look at an especially pretty child who might just turn into Shirley Temple.

  I apologized for interrupting. Charlie said they were just about finished anyway, but the girl looked surprised. He patted her hand and said, “You go home, honey, and write one or two more stories like the others and you’ll have a contract very soon.”

  After the girl had gathered up her things, Charlie told me he thought she was going to be the next Carson McCullers. “Lots of emotional disorder in her stories, lots of blood. Sex. I don’t know where she gets it from. She comes from Scarsdale. She went to Vassar for chrissake! What can I do for you?”

  I sat down on the place vacated by Miss Benton. It was still warm from her bottom. Charlie raised his eyebrows, probably in lieu of asking “what’s up?”

  I didn’t answer since I was still deciding how best to put it to him, until I realized there was no virtue in beating around the bush, when he said again, “What’s up?”

  “I just got a call from Ed Fleming,” I said. “It had to do with you.”

  Charlie nodded, as if he knew what this was about.

  “He says you used to be a member of the Party. He suggested I let you go.” I swallowed, hard. This was a lousy beginning; I was rushing, skipping the small talk, skipping workplace gossip; just trying to get over the hard part. Not sure exactly what words to use, I tried instead to put myself in Charlie’s place. It wasn’t the best place to be. Sweat formed under my arms and began to trickle down my sides.

  “ ‘Let me go’? What kind of pussy language is that? You mean fire me.”

  “That’s correct,” I said.
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  “And you told him?”

  “I told him nothing. We’re meeting later.”

  “You told him nothing?” Charlie got up and went over to the window where he pressed his hands against the frame, arching his back. “You didn’t tell him you had no intention of canning me? Why didn’t you? Walter, if you don’t mind my saying so—and even if you do mind—doesn’t that make you some kind of big-time prick?”

  Quick, get a hold of this! “I told you, I’m going to meet Fleming this afternoon. He’s threatening to leave the house. I’m going to try to talk him out of it. Of course I’m not going to fire you. You don’t actually believe I’d do that, do you?”

  He looked at me the way my father used to when I had done something terrible, like not saying good morning to my mother when I came down to breakfast. Not a nice look.

  I asked him—“just for the record”—if he had been a member of the Party. He told me he had never actually signed on. But he had attended a couple of meetings in 1938. “I thought maybe they’d be a good place to run across someone ravishing, but the girls were hairy,” he said.

  “Right,” I said.

  “You know me, Walt, I want to be left alone. That’s pretty much it. Can’t tolerate too many rules.”

  Pity entered my soul. Putting myself in his place was difficult enough, mostly because I lacked the imagination to feel what it must be like to be accused of something, with nasty consequences in the offing, that had no bearing on my work, my life today, my domestic relationships—in Charlie’s case, two children, a wife, a dog, and a cat. I could think, Poor Charlie, I’m glad not to be in your shoes, which makes me sound heartless. But did he know what it was like for me, to have to decide between him and the hottest author in the land?

  Probably not.

  “Charlie,” I said. “I told you about this to let you in on what’s going on. Not to scare you or get you to resign. You’re by far the best editor here. You’re more valuable to me and the house than Fleming.”

  “Okay,” he said. The phone on his desk rang. He went over to answer it, then put his palm over the receiver and said, “I’ve got to take this call. We’ll talk later.”

  AFTER MEETING with Fleming at the Blue Clover Bar and Grill, I filled Barry in.

  “So you couldn’t get him to change his mind,” Barry said. We were in my study. Since it was a Friday—no school the next day—Kate and Phyllis had gone to see Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday at the local theater, the place where they served you coffee in demitasse cups in the lobby. They were tight these days, mother and daughter, often together after dinner in a kind of conspiratorial diving bell. This made me understandably nervous but also freed up my time.

  “He was adamant. You know what that means.”

  Of course, he did. He had a perfectly adequate vocabulary and I knew he hated it when I patronized him. Why was I saying the wrong things? I was rattled. I had lost my equilibrium. I would keep my mouth shut.

  “So what are you going to do?” Barry sat in a chair upholstered in leather with gracefully curved arms. His dark skin and eyes melted into my fantasy of loving him far into the future.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “He’s giving me till Monday to report back.” I sighed, a big one. “If I let Charlie go I keep Fleming. If I keep Fleming I lose Charlie.”

  “We’ve been over that. You’re spinning your wheels,” Barry said. “You’re not getting anywhere.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m going to sleep on it.”

  He leaned forward in the chair and asked me if I could seriously consider firing Charlie. If we lost Fleming we’d be in bad trouble financially. We might lose other authors. Agents would shun us. I might lose my job.

  Barry made a noise that expressed his disgust. It was easy for him to take this position, I told him. He wasn’t involved. Bystanders know all the answers. Barry argued that one author wasn’t going to make that much difference.

  “What the fuck do you know about publishing?” I said. “You only know what I tell you.”

  He got up, turned away, and left the room in a hurry, leaving me drained and furious with myself for losing my temper. For the briefest moment I saw myself as being led by baleful forces I couldn’t hear or see, but they were there—bacteria of the soul. The moment passed, leaving me horrified at what I had just done.

  I got up and went after Barry, but he had already hightailed it to his room. The door was closed and I couldn’t risk knocking or even calling his name. I went back downstairs to my study where I tried to read a manuscript, until I heard Phyllis and Kate as they came into the house. I waited for almost an hour before I went upstairs to my bedroom, where Phyllis was already asleep, not pretending, as she sometimes did; she was snoring.

  I tried to sleep but the decision I had to make refused to let me. I looked at the radium dial on the bedside clock. It was after two. Maybe I slept a little and then woke. I counted the arcs of headlights crossing the ceiling again and again. I heard a man somewhere nearby shout and a woman shout back but I couldn’t hear any words, just the sound of their angry voices. Maybe, if we had no words, like dogs and cats, we’d be much better off.

  THE WEEKEND was a trial. I decided to create one of those schematic, practical lists, so that I could see my dilemma in black and white. I wrote on the top of a legal pad: Keep Charlie, lose Fleming and way over on the other side Fire Charlie, keep Fleming. Under the first entry I wrote best editor ever. He was just that. He could go out and beat the bushes for new authors, he had patience, he was a terrific line editor, he was willing to put up with recalcitrant production people and semi-literate publicity girls just out of college. Pal since college. This was something I could not overlook. Especially since the college was Harvard, an institution whose graduates considered themselves chosen people, a brotherhood of the elect. Solidarity with colleague. I had worked with Charlie for years, I knew his habits of mind, I trusted and relied on him. He was an especially good egg, undertaking tasks like the Baroney book without too much complaining. Loyalty accompanied the previous entry. Statement of principle against witch hunt. This was the most abstract and had the most urgent strings attached. One of my cousins had lost his job as a director of children’s television shows because he had, at the age of twenty-two, flirted briefly with Communism. One day at work, the next out the door; he wasn’t even allowed to gather his things and pack them inside a cardboard box. He was currently slicing bread and making sandwiches at an Upper West Side deli. I didn’t want to contribute in any way to this sort of lunacy. One might as well punish a man for having big ears. It made that much sense to me. Under the second I wrote: My discovery, my baby. This one carried a great deal of weight. My pride was involved. It wasn’t quite like having to give one of your children up for adoption but some of the same emotion was involved. How could someone else take over editing Edgar Fleming? Cash cow for Griffin. Nicely circumscribed: solely about money. Loyalty. I couldn’t pretend that my long-time friendship with Fleming and, in one sense, our mutual dependence had fostered a sense of loyalty—at least in me. I was beginning to realize that there wasn’t much in him towards me. Longtime friend. This notation was similar to Charlie’s. Although I had known Charlie longer, I couldn’t deny that I was attached to Fleming, which made us perfect drinking pals. And our common experience during the war bled into my memory of that time with now bittersweet consequences.

  When I got to the office the following Monday, there was a note on my desk from Miss Garter saying that Fleming had called and would like me to call him back as soon as I came in.

  This message kept me from procrastinating. I took out a cigarette and lit it before I dialed Fleming’s number. For a moment I persuaded myself that Fleming would have reconsidered his threat to leave Griffin House.

  “Hi Ed,” I said. “You called?”

  “Yes I did, Walter. I was wondering if you’ve come to a decision about McCann.”

  Before I spoke to him I had every inten
tion of trying to talk him out of his position. But when I heard his voice, sharp like a knife that wouldn’t hesitate to penetrate to my heart, my sense of righteous revolt took over. Who was he to tell me to throw my oldest friend overboard? What made him think that simply because he wrote books that millions of people wanted to read, he could destroy another man because of a crazy notion? I hate your politics so I’m going to destroy you. The hell with that. I could feel adrenaline warm the back of my neck. Given the opportunity, Charlie wouldn’t have picked up a handy gun and killed Hitler with it. He just wasn’t that sort of person.

  “Ed,” I said. “You know how long we’ve worked together. You know how much I admire you . . .” I had gotten up and gone to the window where something in the building across the street had caught my eye. It was a young woman sitting alone in a room somewhat smaller than mine, running a brush through the most amazing head of dark brown hair. Over and over again she ran the brush, starting at the top of her head, down the length of her hair. I couldn’t make out her expression but her body said, This is the only thing I want to be doing. The phone on her desk must have rung because she picked up the receiver with one hand and opened her desk drawer and put the brush away with the other, as if the caller could see what she had been doing. “Walter?”

  “You know that Griffin House wouldn’t be Griffin House if it weren’t for you.”

  “What you’re saying is not bullshit,” Fleming said. “But it’s irrelevant. I no longer care to publish with a house that harbors communist sympathizers. It’s as simple as that. What’s your decision, friend?”

  “I’m keeping Charlie,” I said. “I’m not going to fire him.”

  “Then you’re as bad as he is,” Fleming said.