Acceptable Losses

by Irwin Shaw

  “Miss Otis Regrets.” Popular song. She cannot come to tea. Did he dare shake any man’s hand again? Could he demand that all slots be abolished, all dimes taken out of circulation? Could he walk the streets blindfolded so that he would not recognize in the flesh men who had long since turned into bare bones? Could he command himself to censor his dreams? Was he not only an agent for books, plays, stories, mild and harmless fictions, in which when one mourned as characters died all that was necessary was to turn the page, or was he a secret and dreadful agent of some unknown client, a go-between who dealt in death and whose touch, either real or imaginary, made him the prophet and unconscious recorder of dissolution, past and in the future?

  He had become a psychic sonar, plumbing the depths of dreams for deadly prowlers, finding the shapes of old ship-wrecks, listening to derisive and delusive echoes that might be whales, schools of minnows, the songs of dolphins, the voices of mermaids, speaking in an unlearned language, but all saying, “Beware.”

  He was not Hamlet; the ghost of his father did not rebuke him or spur him on to revenge from the gray battlements of sleep, but stood silent in that midsummer noon sunlight, a childhood toy in his hand, beckoning him. He was not an antique Greek, he had not sailed with Ulysses; the shades of comrades-in-arms and parents who had been deprived of their proper funeral games had no claims on him from their last home in the underworld.

  He was a man of today, rational, convinced he was, like his contemporaries who had probed the utmost limits of the universe, a descendent of lizards and apes, a man not favored or disfavored by primitive gods or goddesses, a scientific explainer of phenomena, a man who believed in what he could touch, see, smell or deduce from known quantities, and he felt himself drifting into an Arctic, fog-shrouded sea of necromancy.

  He remembered the conversation in Gregor’s studio. “Do you believe in precognition?”

  “I believe in anything that cannot be proven.”

  Was he merely a signpost on the road to some supernatural Auschwitz where a final solution was being carried out for people whom he had loved or who had loved him or whose lives had barely touched his in their separate passages or was he being punished or the instrument of punishment? And if he was either or both, for what reason? Breach of trust, a few hours of casual fornication, the begetting of bastards? Self-satisfaction, the egoistic neglect of the suffering of humanity across every continent on the planet? As the twentieth century after the death of Christ drew to its close, who made the rules and what were they?

  What was the message for him in all this? Who could tell him, what wife or comrade or priest or rabbi or gypsy could reveal it to him? Was there a detective in homicide who could decode it for him into rough, everyday English to tell him what it was? Did he really want to know? Did he, like the dead Jewish diamond merchants, carry on his back the sign, Come and get me?

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  THE BARTENDER PUT ANOTHER glass down on the bar in front of him. He did not remember ordering it, but was pleased with the man’s solicitude. He sipped at the drink, thinking, I must have a list of some kind for Lieutenant Schulter. Where to begin? It was necessary to be orderly. He took out his notebook, wrote on the left page Possible enemies—professional, then on the facing right page, Possible enemies—personal. Now, he thought with satisfaction, I am advancing, organization is all, I have made categories, as Gregor would put it.

  He took another sip at his drink. Who had ever overtly threatened him? Step number one. He congratulated himself on the clarity and logic of his thinking. Candidate number one. Damon closed his eyes, remembering a courtroom. He had been summoned to testify as a witness in a libel case. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. God, Himself had been libeled for millennia. The name of the man was Machendorf. He had been a client, a moody, gaunt dark youngish man, his face set against the world.

  Damon had handled Machendorf’s first two novels and they had been published. They had been crude and full of violence, but the writing had a certain rough honesty that was not to be ignored, and Damon felt that Machendorf’s report on the hateful underside of American life had the right to be heard. The man had acted correctly, although without gratitude, and Damon could not bring himself to like him. But if he represented only people he liked, he would have had to close the office in six months.

  Now the manuscript of Machendorf’s third novel, which Damon had finished reading the night before, was on his desk like a barrier between him and his client, with Machendorf staring at it gloomily.

  While Machendorf had still been working on his book he told Damon, “Now the bastards are going to have to sit up and take notice. If the critics have the sense they were born with, they’ll recognize that they have an American Celine on their hands.”

  But Damon knew as he came to the last lines of the book that nobody in his right mind would hail Machendorf as the American Celine or the American anything.

  Damon had given the man good advice. He told him not to try to have it published.

  Fiction or not, the protagonist was in the public eye, his habits were well known. Machendorf had caught him perfectly. The character would be recognized from the first page by almost anybody who read the New York City newspapers. The man’s name was John Berkely and Machendorf had recklessly dubbed him James Berkin. Berkely was a daring real estate operator and had put up three or four of the most prestigious office buildings in midtown Manhattan. He owned a stable of thoroughbreds and was married to a beautiful woman who had been a movie star. He dabbled as an angel backing plays and was often photographed with his wife on his arm at the more spectacular openings and in the winner’s circle at various racetracks, smiling widely and gingerly patting the neck of victors in highly publicized stake races.

  Machendorf, senselessly, as though driven to his own destruction by some malevolent demon, had given the character in the book his profession, his stable, his movie star wife and his penchant for in vesting in the theatre. In the book Machendorf had made him a figure of evil, unsavory and hateful. Berkin and the other characters, also drawn from life and moving in the same circles as Berkely-Berkin, were described in lurid prose, scatological and profane, of the kind found in graffiti in public lavatories.

  Before the publication of his first book Machendorf had worked for Berkely as a clerk in his office and had been fired and his animus pulsed in every line. Perhaps the man was evil, perhaps not. Damon had met him several times at opening night parties, but they had barely said hello to each other and Damon didn’t know the man well enough to judge. But while the description of the character and his various interests was close to reality, some of the acts Machendorf had the man perform were clearly inventions and savagely presented and there was no doubt in Damon’s mind that any jury would find against the writer.

  Machendorf had listened in smouldering silence while Damon explained to him as gently as possible that he would be in for trouble, big trouble, if he published the book or even showed it around to editors.

  “So,” Machendorf said, “what you’re trying to say is that you won’t send it out with the name of the agency on it.”

  “I won’t send it out, period.”

  “You’ve made a lot of money out of me.”

  “Not a lot. Some.” The two books Machendorf had written before this had both been moderately successful.

  “So,” Machendorf said, “you refuse to represent me.”

  “Yes,” Damon said. “Not on this book. I’m not partial to being sued for millions of dollars.”

  “You’re a piss-poor yellow bastard,” Machendorf said bitterly. “You’ll never get a look at anything else I write, contract or no contract. Why don’t you just handle children’s books—Bobby and Joan at Summer Camp Playing Doctor, crap like that. That’s about your speed. And the same goes for that albino fag you got working for you and licking your ass, too.”

  “If I were a younger man,” Damon said, “I’d knock you down for
that. Now I’m going to show you what I think of your contract.”

  The man glowered silently at Damon while he got up and went to a filing cabinet, opened it, riffled through the folders and took out some legal-looking papers, clipped together. “This is your contract, Mr. Machendorf,” he said, then began tearing up the pages. Machendorf watched him, smiling sardonically. Damon’s hands were trembling and he had trouble tearing more than one page at a time of the stiff paper. “The hell with it,” he said. “You get the idea, I hope.” Then he threw the sheaf of papers to the floor at Machendorf’s feet. “Now, get out of the office,” he said.

  “I want my manuscript,” Machendorf said.

  “Here it is.” Damon pushed the thick, neatly bound pile of paper to the edge of his desk. “It pollutes the room.”

  Machendorf picked up his manuscript, ran his hand caressingly over its cover. “Fucking flesh peddler,” he said. “Ten percent. That’s a good number for you. Ten percent of nothing. I’ll be laughing at you when this book comes out and I’m sitting on my yacht reading the reviews.”

  “If I were your friend,” Damon said, “and wished you well I would hope that no one else in the whole world ever even read it, much less publish it. But I’m not your friend and I hope that the first house you show it to takes it and gives it the greatest publicity possible, because it’ll be the end of you. Now, if you’ll pardon me I have to go to the men’s room. I believe I have to vomit.”

  He left the man in the office, but pushed the door as he went out so that it remained open and both Miss Walton and Oliver Gabrielsen could see if Machendorf took it into his head to vandalize the desk or the shelves lined with books as his final revenge.

  Oliver looked at him questioningly. It was the first time Damon had ever asked him to leave the room while he talked to a client. “What’s hap … ?” Gabrielsen started to ask.

  Damon waved away the beginning of the question. He really did have to vomit; it had not been a figurative declaration of disgust. He hurried out of the office and down the corridor to the men’s room and reached the toilet booth just in time, the vomit mounting in his throat.

  He retched until his body was shaken with dry convulsions, washed his hands and face and rinsed out his mouth.

  When he got back to the office Machendorf had gone and Gabrielsen was at his desk. “What was that all about?” Gabrielsen asked. “Machendorf looked as though he had just swallowed a keg of nails when he came out of there.”

  “I would like to have fed them to him one by one,” Damon said. “Sing Hallelujah and cross off one client.”

  Damon’s wish had been fulfilled. The book had been published, although not by the first house to which Machendorf had submitted it. The senior editor of the firm, which had published Machendorf’s other two books, had called Damon two weeks after the scene in the office and told Damon that Machendorf’s manuscript was on his desk. “What’s the story?” the editor asked. “How come we didn’t get the manuscript through you as usual?”

  “Why don’t you ask the author?”

  “I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That you were an old fart, that you were out of touch and that he’d fired you.”

  Damon laughed. “Have you read the manuscript?”

  “Enough of it,” the editor said, “to know that we won’t touch it. Our insurance would never cover anywhere the amount Mr. Berkely could get if we went to court. Besides, it’s a crude piece of junk.”

  “Those are two of the reasons I told Machendorf I wouldn’t handle him anymore,” Damon said. “Another reason is that he’s a most unpleasant man.”

  “I figured it out by myself, Roger,” the editor said, “but I wanted to hear it from you. Thanks. Mr. Machendorf’s manuscript will be in the mail this evening.”

  The book came out six months later, published by the pornographer who had tried to lure Damon to work for him. They deserve each other, Damon thought with satisfaction when he saw the announcement of its publication. It was hardly reviewed by the regular critics, but it got widespread and malicious attention in the gossip columns. One month after publication, Mr. Berkely’s lawyers sued Machendorf and his publisher jointly for the sum of ten million dollars. Damon and Oliver Gabrielsen had a quiet celebratory lunch at the Algonquin on the day the story came out in the Times.

  Damon was not surprised when he was asked by Berkely’s lawyers to testify in their client’s behalf and he said he would be glad to do so. He was not a vindictive man but he felt that Machendorf’s behavior called for reprisal and he did not mind having to wait in the courthouse while the case dragged on, with the testimony of other witnesses who were called before him prominently displayed daily in the newspapers. The lawyers, for their own reasons, were saving him to testify last.

  When he was finally called to the witness stand and was sworn in, the trial was winding down to its close. He purposely avoided looking over to the table where Machendorf and his publisher were sitting with their lawyers. He did not want to see the writer before he testified. He wanted to speak calmly and fairly, without malice, and he was afraid that if he saw that hateful face he would be unable to keep it out of the tone of his voice as he spoke.

  After preliminary questions meant to establish his credentials before the court, Berkely’s lawyer asked, “Mr. Damon, you were Mr. Machendorf’s agent for how many years?”

  “Six,” Damon said.

  “You represented him in the sale of his other two books?”

  “I did.”

  “You no longer represent him. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask you to tell the court under what circumstances you parted company?”

  “I didn’t like the book. It was distasteful to me.”

  “Was there any other reason?”

  “I didn’t want to be in this court as one of the defendants instead of as a witness.”

  Laughter broke out in the courtroom and the judge rapped his gavel once.

  “Why would you think that there was any reason to suppose that if you continued your association with Mr. Machendorf you might be named as one of the defendants?”

  Damon thought for a moment. The last conversation he had with Mr. Gray before he died came back to him. “I would be the vessel, the means, the conduit, if you will, for the libelous work of a writer and also responsible,” he said, using Mr. Gray’s word.

  “Thank you, Sir,” the lawyer said. “Your witness,” he said to the opposing lawyer.

  Machendorf’s lawyer shook his head wearily and Damon stepped down. As he passed the table where Machendorf was sitting jotting down notes, Machendorf looked up at him, his face contorted by hatred, and whispered, “Motherfucker, you put the last nail in the coffin. I’ll get you for this.”

  “I tremble,” Damon said, smiling.

  He ordered a third drink at the bar. It had happened more than three years before and the court had awarded damages of four million dollars to Berkely, two to be paid by the author, two by the publisher. The court had attached all of Machendorf’s assets and the pornographer had declared bankruptcy and gone out of business and gotten himself a job as a space salesman of advertising on one of the more reprehensible of the girlie magazines. Machendorf had dropped out of sight, although Damon had heard some time before that he had made the rounds with a new novel, which no one would touch.

  Three years was a long time but a man who in court said to him, “Motherfucker. I’ll get you for this,” and who after that had good reason to suppose he had been driven out of his profession by a man who had testified against him was a fair candidate for being included in the list of professional enemies.

  Damon wrote Machendorf’s name on the left-hand page of the notebook.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  DAMON STARED THOUGHTFULLY ACROSS the bar. Along the wall behind the bar there was a long mirror that reflected his image. The mirror was old and cracked and dark, almost iron-colored. To Da
mon his face looked distant and insubstantial, as though it wavered in a shifting somber mist. If I must drink, he thought, I should go to a more congenial saloon. But he had barely touched his last drink. I must not waste the money, he thought, I may have need of every cent I have soon.

  The notebook was still open before him and he looked down and saw the right-hand page, blank except for the heading at the top of the page—Possible enemies—personal.

  It had never occurred to him that he had personal enemies. Machendorf was a different matter, but even so, Damon hadn’t even thought of him in over a year. Memory was a tricky thing and forgetting often was the means by which the mind defended itself against past pain and regret for lost opportunities.

  Personal enemies. Now that he was forcing himself to remember he put down two names—Frank Eisner and in parentheses Melanie Deal.

  He had met Melanie Deal about a year and a half before. She was a secretary for a theatrical producer by the name of Proctor and she had come to the office with some contracts that the producer had had drawn up by his lawyer for a play entitled An Apple for Helen, written by one of Damon’s clients. It was late in the afternoon and Oliver Gabrielsen and Miss Walton had left for the day. Damon himself was just putting on his coat to leave when the girl came in. She was young and pretty, twenty-two, -three, Damon guessed, with thick brown hair streaked blond in front, as though she spent long hours lying on a beach in the sun. Her eyes were brown, too, but with a glint of some other color that made her seem a little strange, out of the ordinary, ready to laugh inwardly at some continuing joke that only she would understand. Damon had seen her once before, when he and Oliver had gone to Proctor’s office to discuss the terms of the contract for the play. When the two men had gone out together, Oliver had said, “Whew! Did you see that girl? There’s trouble there.”