Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42

by A Likely Story (v1. 1)

  Upon arrival, I crossed the kitchen to where mother and daughter sat at the table, and went down on one knee beside Jennifer’s chair, resting my hand on her upper arm, saying, “How are you, tiger?”

  She tried a smile, but her voice was shaky when she said, “I’m okay now.”

  “There was a knife,” Mary said.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said, and clasped her arm harder. “You weren’t cut, were you? You weren’t—”

  “No, they just. ...” She shook her head, frowned at her mother as though bewildered by some stray thought, then said, “He just had it in his hand. He didn’t even say anything, he just held the knife up and showed it to me and grinned real mean, and the other one said gimme your money. ”

  “Two of them? Older boys?”

  “Grown-up, kind of,” she said. “Like you see playing basketball.”

  “Twenty year olds,” Mary translated.

  I could feel Jennifers skinny arm trembling, like when you hold a frightened cat. She said, “I just thought, oh, wow, what if I don’t have enough for them? Enough money. I mean, I only had, I. . . .” Her face scrinched up. “Ohh,” she said, on a rising note.

  Then at last she dissolved, and I held her very close, and Mary came over to pat us both on the shoulder. I sat on the floor, pulling Jennifer down onto my lap, curling her in against me there, rocking back and forth and holding her while she cried herself out. I said stupid things like, “There, there,” and “It’s all right now,” and, “Okay, okay.” Mary made coffee for herself and me and Earl Grey tea for Jennifer, who doesn’t like coffee, and after a while we got off the floor and sat around the kitchen table instead and drank our stimulants and Jennifer went about reconstructing her public persona as the hip existential city kid. “It was all such a complete drag,” she said. “I had to tell the cops they were black guys, it was like I was making it up, you know? An agent provocatater. And one of the cops was black, so it was really embarrassing.”

  I love both my kids, with a mad helpless mute mortifying love that gets more bumblefooted the stronger I feel it or the harder I try to express it. Realizing Jennifer already had too much to bend her mind around at the moment, I mostly kept quiet, so she wouldn’t also have to deal with her father’s inadequacies. “The black cops know,” was all I said at that juncture.

  She managed a little grin, a condensed version of her usual mode. “He looked real tough,” she said. “I bet if he caught those guys, he’d beat them up a lot worse than a white cop, wouldn’t he?”

  “Maybe so,” I said, smiling back.

  Mary said, “Jennifer’s staying home from school today, I phoned the school and they know about it. Tom, why don’t you stay and have lunch with us?”

  “Let me take you both out to lunch.”

  Mary had to drape herself in cameras before we left, which used to annoy me toward the end of our marriage but which I now am becoming indulgent about again, as I had been when first we’d met. Mary, out of East St. Louis, had come to New York originally to be a photographer, having won some awards and sold some pictures at the local or regional level. When I first met her, at a magazine’s Christmas party, she was making a precarious living doing freelance research for everybody and anybody: museums, book illustrators, ad agencies. She would root around in libraries and morgues and find you just the right daguerreotype to go with your pantyhose ad, or the eleven specific paintings ripping off (or “homaging”) such-and-such a Rembrandt, or clear photos of every kind of European tram at the turn of the century, or whatever you want. Meantime, she was taking millions of pictures of her own, submitting them everywhere, looking for an agent, and hoping for the best.

  Which never came. We married, we had the kids, she continued the research work to supplement my income, and she went on taking pictures, but very few have been published.

  The problem is, she doesn’t have a unique eye. Although she’s always surrounded herself with hung copies of Diane Arbus photos, for instance, she herself has a much softer, more sympathetic view of the world, and could never look through her lens as dispassionately as Arbus. On the other hand, she has too much sophistication and selfawareness to go for “pretty” pictures, calendar art, so her work is stuck somewhere in the middle: too knowing to be sentimental, too gentle to be striking.

  It used to bother me that she couldn’t go anywhere without the cameras, because I knew she was just kidding herself and wasting her time, but now that we’re apart she’s no longer my problem, and I can see photography as merely Mary’s hobby. (If Mary herself ever heard me use the word “hobby” in that context, she would take a gun and shoot me. No fooling.)

  So, with pauses for Mary to take pictures of interesting gutter-rubbish and amusing company names on truck sides, we walked down into the Village and had cheeseburgers in a joint where we could watch the trucks thunder down Seventh Avenue and I could have a bloody Mary. My Mary had coffee, and Jennifer had iced tea. The waitress stared at her, stared at January outside the window, and said, “Iced tea?”

  “The cheeseburger’s hot,” Jennifer pointed out. “And my father’s bloody Mary is cold.”

  By the time lunch was over and we’d walked back up to 17th Street Jennifer had sufficiently rewritten history in her own mind as to believe she’d never actually lost her cool through the whole experience. That belief was by now the most important part of it for her, much more important than the lost dollar-eighty or the capturing of the punks that did it. When, as we turned off Seventh Avenue, she said, “I figured, just so they didn’t panic, I was probably okay,” I knew the healing process was well under way. What a terrific kid; tough and hip, like her old man.

  Mary invited me upstairs, but I said I had things to do. Jennifer said, “Thanks for coming down.”

  “Hey,” I said, “what’s a father for? Don’t answer that.” We kissed, and she said, “You're okay.”

  “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  Mary kissed my cheek and looked deeply in my eyes and I came back uptown where Jack Rosenfarb’s voice greeted me on the answering machine, saying, “Tom, please call me. Got your letter, thought I had an exclusive on this. Give me a ring as soon as you can.” The unsettled sound in his voice was music to my ears.

  So I gave him a ring and he said, “Tom, you’re not putting me in a bid situation, are you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. There is nothing I would love more than to have two heavyweight publishers bidding for my idea, but since I can’t figure out how to arrange such a scenario I might as well claim the high moral principle: “I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “Well, what’s with this ‘preliminary discussion’?” He sounded actually aggrieved. “At lunch, you said I was the only one you were talking to.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “It was true last week, but you really didn’t sound that enthusiastic, Jack, not at lunch and not on the phone Monday. You know, talking about my track record and all that. And the time factor is—”

  “Tom, I was enthusiastic! But I had to be sure the company would back me up. Tom, you don’t know what an editor has to go through, they second-guess my judgment all the time, I could wind up with egg on my face, trouble with— Well. You don’t want to know my problems,” he said accurately.

  “Jack,” I said, “I’m sorry if you feel I’ve behaved in an underhanded way or anything like that. The instant I spoke to another—”

  “You told me about it, I know that, I know that. Just between you and me, who are you talking to?”

  If I were to answer Hubert Van Driin, Jack might merely laugh and hang up, so I said, “I probably shouldn’t say, Jack. I haven’t told him your name either, but I’ve been just as upfront with—”

  “I know you, Tom,” he said hurriedly, “you don’t have to tell me all that, you’re an honorable fellow, I know that. All right. You want this thing to move fast, I don’t blame you for that, so the instant I got your letter I took it to Wilson, and he took it to Bourke, and assuming we c
an work out the money, we’re interested.”

  “Interested?”

  “We want to do the book!”

  That was so terrific I just blurted out the first thing that came into my mind: ‘’That’s terrific!”

  “Yeah,” he said, a bit sourly. They hate to be rushed, editors, they’re cowlike in several ways, including being my source of milk. Anyway, he said, “All we have to do is come to a meeting of minds about the money.”

  “I’ll call Annie,” I said, “and have her call you.”

  “Good. But one thing, about this other house you were talking to. Tom, I have to tell you, we won’t get into a bidding war, and that’s flat.”

  Oh, yes, you would, I thought, if I only knew how to set one up. “Don’t worry, Jack,” I told him. “As of this minute, they’re out.”

  We exchanged one or two ritual coins of mutual esteem, and then I phoned Annie, who was in the office and taking calls. “Did you phone me?” she demanded, her ancient voice querulous and short-tempered.

  “I’m phoning you now,” I said.

  “In the last day or two. And not leave any message.” “Me, Annie? I know how you feel about that.”

  “Somebody’s been— Well, never mind. What can I do for you, Tom?”

  I was glad it was one of her good days; on the bad days she calls me Tim. Succinctly I described my book idea, my negotiations with Jack, and the current situation. She listened, with occasional grunts, then said, “I don’t get it. What kinda book is this?”

  I told her again. She said, ‘’Everybody’s idle thoughts about Christmas.”

  “Every famous body’s idle thoughts about Christmas.”

  “If you give me one of those books next Yuletide,” she said, “I’ll fling it in your face.”

  “Annie, you inspire me.”

  “As I understand the situation,” she said, “you have now placed me in the position of agenting for the entire western literary world, all at once.”

  “Don’t forget the artists.”

  “And the artists. I’ll call Jack Rosenfarb and find out if he’s really fallen for this one.”

  “Thank you, Annie.”

  “You’ll hear from me,” she said vaguely, and hung up.

  So the only question left is, what idea am I going to peddle to Hubert Van Driin?

  Friday, January 14th

  SO here’s their opening offer, and even as an opening offer it stinks. Five thousand dollars on signature, twenty thousand when I have commitments from five “individuals mutually agreed to be prominent,” and another twenty-five thousand on August first. If I don’t have those five prominent noses by June first the deal is off.

  Out of this lavish fifty thou, I’m supposed to pay all the contributors! (There’s an additional five thousand they’ve agreed to pay for “research and secretarial” expenses, upon receipt of receipts.) And, as Jack himself pointed out, I’m not running a charity here, I do want a little something for myself.

  One good thing about Annie; she’s involved. When she saw Craigs insulting offer, she smiled thinly and decided to get serious. Annie, who began in publishing as somebody’s secretary during the Adams administration—the elder Adams—and who apparently in her youth screwed most of the literate men on the Eastern Seaboard, has aged into a scrawny bad-tempered old buzzard who knows everybody, loves to fight and has been known to get blood from a stone simply by squeezing hard enough. What can be done, Annie will do.

  On the home front, Ginger is very up and positive about The Christmas Book and is saying maybe we can take a winter vacation after all. (Last year we did a week at a condominium on St. Croix, splitting the cost, but this year money has been tighter for both of us.) Ginger’s eight-year- old daughter, Gretchen, is also excited and is doing me watercolors of Christmas scenes “for the book.” She’s a nice kid, Gretchen, and if it’s possible to say that an eight-year- old is talented, Gretchen is probably talented along graphic arts lines—maybe someday she’ll go to the High School of Art and Design—but I’m getting a little tired of primitive Nativity scenes and Santa Claus getting out of taxis and all this stuff. I hope and expect that boredom will set in soon— on her part, I’m already bored—and save me.

  Ginger is also being active on the project, but in a more useful way. She’s copy editor at Trans-American Books, a paperback house, and is a very good line editor; she’s rewritten my solicitation letter—the one to be sent to prominent noses—and I have to admit she was right with most of the changes she suggested.

  For instance, she pointed out that it wasn’t until the third paragraph that I got to the point of the letter, asking for original material. “Until then,” she said, “it sounds like you’re trying to sell them a copy of the book.” So now, with some necessary adaptation, the third paragraph is the second and the second is the third.

  Also, with Ginger’s help, I did a variant letter aimed at photographers, illustrators and graphic artists. (Other than Gretchen.) I’m hoping they’ll be cheaper than the writers.

  The question is, when do I actually get to send out these letters?

  Wednesday, January 19th

  A full week of negotiation, and I am not entirely happy at the result, but Annie says it’s the best we can do, and too late to try any other house this year, so this morning we said yes and Jack Rosenfarb messengered to Annie’s office a letter of intent outlining the agreement; that was so I could get started without waiting for contracts to be drawn.

  Anyway, the deal. I get twenty-five thousand on signature, another twenty-five June first (dependent on yesses from those five celebs), and the rest August first. The full advance is on a sliding scale between seventy-five and one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, with sixty percent going to the contributors and forty percent to me.

  And, if the deal falls through, five thousand of the first advance is mine anyway, to pay for my time and effort. So no matter what happens, this idea has at least earned me five grand.

  Annie, whose office is a janitor’s closet on a low floor of the Empire State Building, took me to lunch in her neighborhood and gave me a copy of Jack Rosenfarb’s letter, and I actually saw her smile a bit. She had a Jack Daniels and two glasses of white wine and became vague toward the end of the meal, calling me “Tim” and saying sentences that almost seemed coherent until you looked back at them. For instance, she allowed as how she’d been warming to the idea of The Christmas Book over the last week or so, from her initial negative reaction, and by now was quite fond of the notion. “The best books, like the best women, are all whores,” she went on. “Never trust an amateur at anything.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I walked her back to her office, happy she wouldn’t be doing anything on my career’s behalf this afternoon, and then came home to start work. Yesterday Ginger ran off on the Xerox machine at work a hundred copies of my two solicitation letters, with a blank for me to type in the victim’s name, so I have just sent the writer’s letter to these forty people:

  Edward Albee, Woody Allen, Isaac Asimov, Russell Baker, Ann Beattie, Helen Gurley Brown, William F. Buckley, Jr., Leo Buscaglia, Truman Capote, Jimmy Carter, Francis Ford Coppola, Annie Dillard, E. L. Doctorow, Gerald Ford, William Goldman, John Irving, Stephen King, Jerzy Kosinski, Judith Krantz, Robert Ludlum, Norman Mailer, James A. Michener, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard Nixon, Joyce Carol Oates, Mario Puzo, Joan Rivers, Andy Rooney, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, Isaac Bashevis Singer (what the hell), Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, Diana Trilling, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Wambaugh, Tom Wolfe and Herman Wouk.

  The illustrator’s letter went to these ten people:

  Charles Addams, Richard Avedon, Jim Davis, Jules

  Feiffer, Edward Gorey, Robert Kliban, Jill Krementz, LeRoy Nieman, Charles Schulz and Andy Warhol.

  I was just typing Carl Sagan when Hubert Van Driin called to say he thought we’d had a nice and productive chat on Monday, but on reflection he was deciding to say no to The Wit
and Wisdom of Clint Eastwood. It’s probably just as well.

  Monday, February 7th

  BACK to a blizzard. It took three hours to get home from Kennedy Airport last night, during which Ginger and I finally had the big fight that had been brewing all week in Puerto Rico, and the cabdriver took her side The son of a bitch. With the two of them ganging up on me, I gathered my dignity like the tattered cloak it is, stepped out into the storm, and swore to walk home.

  Well, I stomped through the snow and the wind and the stalled traffic and the slush on the Van Wyck Expressway for about two minutes before realizing I could die out there, which was carrying hurt pride too far, so I went back to the cab—which, of course, hadn’t moved an inch while I was away—to find Ginger arguing with the driver. W.2\-hah I sat in my corner, silent, arms folded, a superior smile on my triumphant face while they squabbled, and my feet, in wet socks, slowly turned to marble and fell off.

  Eventually the three of us made up, Ginger explaining to the driver that it was just that I was worried about money. I know her well enough by now to understand that statement as her form of apology. In changing the subject of the argument to something less volatile and dangerous, she was in effect saying she didn’t want to argue any more.

  While it is true that I’m worried about money—we are spending Craig, Harry & Bourke’s advance before receiving it and without regard for the fact that I’m going to have to pay other people for contributions to the book—in truth that wasn’t what the fight was about. The fight was about children, hers and mine, but because that problem is too delicate and insoluble to deal with directly we tend just to gnaw at its fringes.

  None of these kids are going to go away, and all of them are going to live with their mothers till they grow up, and this means that more and more men are going to be surrounded by children they aren’t to blame for. Meanwhile, their own kids are eating popcorn with other males. It all creates tension.