by Warren Adler
Perhaps it was the implied challenge, but he was reaching now for her clitoris, gently playing with it until her response became obvious and he was consciously exciting her, taking his time, fondling and sucking the fantastic breasts, watching her eyelids flutter with pleasure, kissing her body with open lust. He put his finger deeply into her tight vagina, wondering if she was a virgin, hoping in his heart that she was.
He had carefully placed his condoms in the little end table beside the bed and, clumsily reaching for them, opened a package and watched her eyes as she sneaked a look at how he was rolling it over his erected member.
“Please be careful, my darling,” she whispered. The joy of knowing he would be first seemed to enlarge his soul. Certainly it increased the immensity of his penis as he gently inserted it into her and felt her tightness as she struggled to fulfill the connection, surely feeling the mystery of this, her first joining, a special gift to him, a validation of her commitment.
As his body moved deeper inside her, ignoring her brief outcry of pain, he could feel the singlemindedness in her, her determination to complete the offering, as if he were merely a participant in some ritual known only to her. It was an evening rich in wonders. Later he would contemplate this memory as a point of beginning, a joyful assertion of himself, knowing that to her it seemed always a moment of weakness, a kind of self-betrayal. And yet, between them, it represented the only sustained tangibility left in the shambles of their marriage, greater than Chums, since from that evening onward all was downhill in their relationship.
He had fallen asleep in her arms, still entwined in their connection, When the telephone stirred him to consciousness. Through the rent in the windowshade, he could tell that dawn was beginning. At first he could not recognize the voice.
“It’s Edie,” she said finally. He had not understood what she had been saying. “Charlie is very drunk. He’s sprawled on the revolving globe in the lobby of the News building. I think you better come.”
“My God.” He sprang out of bed and slipped into his clothes. “It’s Charlie,” he told Margaret, who was stretching awake. “He’s drunk on top of the world.”
“What?”
He bent over her and kissed her deeply on the mouth. “I love you. I truly love you.”
“And me you,” she said.
He ran through the streets and found Charlie, sprawled on the top of the revolving globe, his jacket caught on the axis, as if he were impaled.
With the help of the security guard, who had been unsuccessful at initial attempts at dislodgement, he detached Charlie and carried him into the street.
“He’s really a nice fellow,” Edie said. “Something seems to be eating at him.”
“That’s obvious,” Nick said. He was annoyed at the intrusion. Edie looked uncommonly pale in the early morning light.
“He kept pressing me about mercy killing. He started to get really nasty about it.”
“You mean he accused you of something?”
“I couldn’t tell.” She held out her hand and he shook it gently. “Even though it ended like this, I had a great time.”
“What made him do it?”
“He said he wanted to screw the world.” She smiled nervously. Such language was obviously not a common practice with her. He watched as she got into a cab. He never saw her again.
10
Henry Landau’s tan seemed to be fading quickly as he stood before Nick, his eyes narrowed, betraying a hint of confusion. It was difficult to think of Landau as conspiratorial, Nick thought, determined nonetheless to stay on his guard. Deceit was a wily bastard, he had learned. It could stay frozen into the landscape like a poisonous snake, camouflaged, ready to squirt deadly venom when one least expected it.
“Maybe I missed something,” Landau said, “but the Henderson thing seems blown out of proportion.”
“Frankly, I hadn’t meant it to be.” Nick forced himself into a semblance of outward calm. He reached for a cigarette, lit it, and puffed deeply, letting his gaze slide over papers on his desk. He hoped it would make him appear less tense, distracted, as if the Henderson thing had passed.
“Dover gave me Grinnel’s Henderson story.” Landau put it on Nick’s desk. He had let it drop from a higher distance than might be polite. “It seems perfectly sensible to me,” Landau said. “The health bill idea, as we all agree, is a great one. Our editorials say so, at least. And Grinnel, as you’ll see, wrote the story as if it were an opening gun of a new attempt at passage. Essentially the news value is in the timing.”
Nick looked down at the copy on his desk. “I’ll look it over.”
“It’s getting late, Nick,” Landau said. “Do I count it in or out?”
Was Landau putting pressure on him? Nick looked up at the tanned face and forced a smile.
“I don’t want us to go out on a limb. Gunderstein’s working on a story that might be quite damaging to Henderson.” Nick watched Landau’s reaction.
“I heard.”
From where? Nick wondered. From whom?
“So you see . . .”
“No, I don’t,” Landau said. “What’s one thing got to do with the other? Gunderstein’s story is one thing, and besides it’s far from being proved out. But the Henderson speech is quite real. What you’re doing is establishing a line on Henderson. Next thing you know we’ll have to hand out lists as to who we approve of and who we’re against.”
Perhaps it was the reference to lists. Nick remembered looking over Myra’s list. What was happening here? Was Landau simply being clever, playing with him, manipulating him? Was he Myra’s agent?
“Henry, let me ask you a question,” Nick said cautiously, pausing briefly. “How do you feel about Henderson?”
“Feel?”
“That’s it. Feel.”
Landau hesitated. “Feel implies an emotional response. I don’t think I’m in a position to answer the question on that basis.”
“Suppose I put it another way, Henry.” Nick knew he had bungled the trap, but he pressed on. “Do you favor Henderson’s candidacy?”
“He hasn’t even announced he would run.”
“What has that got to do with it? In this town everybody’s always running.” Landau appeared to feel foolish, fighting anger.
“What the hell’s come over you, Nick? I think you’re somehow trying to accuse me of favoring Henderson’s candidacy. You know me better than that. Such an implied accusation is patently absurd. I don’t give one shit about Henderson. He’s not even the issue here.”
He was sorry he had baited Landau. But he felt he owed it to himself to see how far the battleground had spread. Even if Myra had somehow insinuated herself with Landau it had been too brief an attempt, too restricted, to do any real damage. Myra could be marvelously subtle, even during a chance meeting in an elevator, a simple greeting in a corridor. Words and mannerisms are weighed carefully when they emanate from powerful people, Nick knew. She also had, he admitted, the ability to project the charm of personality, a fuse cap which she could add to the stick of dynamite which was her power over them all. Because of this alone, she could reach people, manipulate them by her favor and, perhaps, be manipulated by those who sensed her vulnerability, her thirsts, her needs. There was simply no way to shield her, warn her of those who had designs on her largesse. If he let down his guard for a single second . . .
He was conscious now of his own sense of tactics. The issue of Henderson was in the air now. It could never again be approached casually. Responses would be weighed, words measured, intonations calculated. It would spread like an infection through the other editors, downward to the assignment editors, the desk men, the reporters. He had sent his message. And, judging from Landau’s reaction, it had been received.
As Nick read the story, he was conscious of Landau standing over him, fidgeting. He was not really reading the story. The contents, the thrust, were obvious, the reportage competent. Grinnel was a pro. Landau’s irritation had pointed the way. He
would let them run the story, give them their Pyrrhic victory, but he would keep it off the front page. His power over the front page was too precious to squander.
“You’re right, Henry,” Nick said, “it’s got good value.”
“Then we can run it?”
“Yes. But I really don’t think it’s front-page stuff.”
“Well,” Landau softened, “you’re the boss.”
“If you really feel strongly about it, Henry, lay it on me.”
Nick could afford to be magnanimous now. He knew that Landau would back off, which he did.
When he had left, Nick swiveled back in his chair and rested his head against the cradle of his hands. He looked out into the city room feeling its rhythm, like a surging, foaming, high tide, as the first deadline approached. At this hour—it was nearing six—the tension seemed to build. People moved swiftly through the room as in a revved-up movie projection. Under normal conditions, as if normality could be defined, he might have stolen a moment to depressurize. He felt tired, strung out. Perhaps age was taunting him after all, despite the morning episode with Jennie. He had always secretly snickered at references to the male menopause with its implications of psychological changes and subtle chemical imbalances, the slowing down of the blood. At least with women the evidence was conclusive. The period stopped. Estrogen ebbed. He speculated on how deeply the changes were affecting Myra. From where he stood, he could see a profound difference in her, this sudden greed for more power. Was it a compensation for the final curtain on youth? They were both about the same age. He wondered if she still had a sex life. Odd, that he had never thought about it for years, having decided that after Charlie’s death there had been a renunciation. Surely it had actually happened years before, as if Myra thought of it as trivia, a petty self-indulgence that sapped energy. Earlier he had wondered if Henderson had somehow rekindled her desire, but he had rejected the thought. Too out of character, from what he had known of Myra in the last few years. Hadn’t she herself admitted her passage into neuterdom?
“I’ve had enough of this man-woman nonsense,” she had said on the day after Charlie’s funeral. “I’ve been cured of that frippery. We’ve got other fish to fry.”
It had been said with such passionate finality that he had assumed its truth. But Jennie had taught him that love, or whatever it was, could still lurk in middle age, a hidden force ready to recharge the blood.
He punched his intercom and asked Miss Baumgartner to bring him some black coffee. The effects of caffeine, at least, were predictable. When she brought the steaming container, he asked her to summon Gunderstein, whom he could still see hunched over his typewriter, picking his pimples.
“I’ve been thinking over this Henderson business,” Nick said when Gunderstein had come in and slumped in a chair, his unshined shoes splotchy and stained, like those of a house painter. His lensed eyes betrayed his surprise. “I’d like to explore it further.”
“Well, frankly, I’ve been doing that all day. I seem to hit nothing but dead ends.”
“Has it destroyed your confidence in the allegations of your informer?”
“Not at all. The man’s story is quite credible. It’s the other sources that are tough to come by.”
Nick watched Gunderstein’s face, scrofulous, pasty, the unhealthy pallor a clue to the obsessed man within.
“Could you set up a meeting?” Nick asked. He wondered if he was sounding casual enough. “I’d like to see for myself. Get a feel of it.” The very idea of feel had the ring of hypocrisy in the light of his previous discussion with Landau.
“I don’t know,” Gunderstein said. “The man is awfully cagey.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps he might come to my place.”
“See what you can work out.”
Gunderstein shrugged and edged his rumpled body upward out of the chair. “I’ll try,” he said. Before he reached the door, he turned and faced Nick. “Does this mean that if the man passes muster we might run the story?”
“I’m not sure, Harold,” Nick said.
“Will tonight be okay?”
“I’ll be available,” Nick said. Gunderstein, Nick knew, had a similar fetish about procrastination, an affliction of the news business which demanded immediacy in all things.
As Gunderstein left, Nick glanced into the city room, catching Ben Madison in mid-turn as he moved back into the familiar hunched position. What had Madison assumed from this second visit with Gunderstein?
A news aide came in with a pile of page proofs. Nick took comfort in the new chemical odor that reeked from the sheets as he pored over them. He picked up the phone and called Nichols, the photo editor. “That page-four shot has a bad crop.”
“I saw that, Nick,” Nichols answered. “It’s already fixed.”
Details, Nick sighed, proud of his ubiquitous eye which could snare the slightest imperfection whether it be misnumbered dates or wrong fonts. Often he would catch these imperfections after they had passed through an army of double-checking. For years he had kept a file of pornographic misprints, like “shit” for “shot” and “cunt” for “can’t,” and was forever on the alert for a disgruntled typesetter who might be seeking some uncanny word-vengeance to blow off steam. Like the famous recipe for apple pie that began with the lead-off head on the food section “The Prick to a Fart Apple Pie,” instead of “Trick” and “Tart,” which had slipped through the street edition to become a collector’s item. He was proud of his ability to absorb himself in minutiae of proofing, to be able to spot a break in the rhythm of the presented information, as if the cells and tissues of the Chronicle had merged within him. He had learned to trust his judgment. Was it possible he was always right on the money or was he merely being victimized by the power in his hands? He had never dared breathe even a hint of this feeling to anyone, lest they accuse him of egotism or self-possession. Instead he had honed for himself a role of modesty, where manipulation and even despotism could be carried out under the guise of fairness and persuasion. To have discovered this knowledge in himself, he reasoned, was a sign of maturity, of having succeeded in coming to grips with his power over others. Being brutally honest with himself, he saw Myra’s muscle flexing as a challenge to that power, a challenge that needed to be bottled without mercy. He dreaded to contemplate what the Chronicle might become in the hands of someone less aware, more obsessed, for example, with ideology than credibility, with forcing ideas, instead of insinuating them, in seeking power merely for the sake of exercising it. The day the Chronicle lost its suppleness and subtlety was the day of its demise, he knew. He must, at all costs, protect it from that fate.
The phone intruded on his proofing. It was Gunderstein.
“He’ll be at my apartment at Four thousand Mass, six D, at eleven.”
“I’ll be there.” Nick made a note of the place and time. It would hardly be an inconvenience since he lived at Foxhall, less than a quarter of a mile away. He remembered to call Jennie. They had an “arrangement.” She lived across the street from him in the Berkshire Apartments, but as their relationship had evolved, her one-bedroom apartment had become simply a dumping ground for dirty laundry and an occasional refuge when she needed to be alone, a condition he respected and sometimes welcomed.
They had often joked of how her apartment had become simply a front for respectability and, as he had learned earlier that day, a rather flimsy one at that.
“I’ll be late,” he said into the phone.
“What’s up?”
“I’m going out on an interview with Gunderstein.”
“Who is he after now?”
Her questions were always sharp, incisive. He could never understand why she could not translate the apparent insight into her writing.
“A Senator—Henderson.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I thought it might be God.”
“He’ll get to that some day.”
She was always probing. It was a relief to have someone with whom he could unburden himself
, and she listened to him with keen alertness.
“I thought he was the fair-haired boy,” she questioned.
“That’s the problem.”
“I’ll be covering a story tonight, too. Judy Barton is sick and Margaret asked me to cover an embassy thing. The British are having a small to do. Veddy posh and exclusive.”
“Ought to be fun!”
“Anybody who is anybody will be there. Lots of big politicos and media heroes. I think I’ll do a real bitchy piece.”
“Wonderful.”
“I think I’ll deliberately show up tacky. It’s so much fun to be tacky and still have everyone kiss your ass.”
“We sending a photographer?” Nick asked. It was a professional reflex.
“But, of course. We’ve got a heavy list. Margaret’s got a bunch of kinky requests. All opposites. A big Jew with a big Arab. A Russian with a Chinese. A Republican with a Democrat, contenders, that is. They’ll all be there. Ambrose, Carter”—she was reading from a list—“and Henderson.”
His antenna went up. “Any specific shots?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment. “Never could understand your ex’s scrawl. It looks like Rockefeller and Henderson.”
“When did she give you that assignment?” Nick asked.
“She gave it to Judy yesterday. I just pulled it out of the files.”
“I see.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly. But it had been too late. He knew her curiosity had been aroused.
“Anything I should know about, Nick?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Nothing you say is ever nothing.”
“You overrate me.”
“Is that possible?”
“Not really,” he said laughing, hoping he had placated her innate curiosity. He pecked a kiss lightly into the phone, feeling silly. “See you later, alligator.”
“Oh, Christ. You are an anachronism.”
“Be careful. I’m sensitive about my age.”
“You’d never know by me.” She hung up, leaving him vaguely suspicious. Surely not Margaret. He shrugged it off. He was reading things into things, overreacting. He continued with his review of the major news pages, losing himself again in the minutiae. He made further angry corrections in Bonville’s editorial with heavy penciled strokes. His thoughts returned to his conversation with Jennie; not Margaret, he assured himself—or was he getting paranoid?