I'll Take Manhattan

by Judith Krantz

  WISER! The word echoed in her mind and brought her out of bed in panic. Wiser? Who was wiser? What time was it? She had to get to work immediately. The staff at Buttons and Bows must have heard all about yesterday’s meeting, undoubtedly they were sitting around in doubt and tears waiting for the official ax to fall. She had to get there, wherever it was, and reassure them and take over and do … and do … whatever was necessary. Yes, do, take action, make decisions, take stock, take over, do something, do anything. She scampered around trying to draw the curtains open so that she could find a clock or a watch, but she was disoriented, not sure how the heavy draperies worked or where the light switches were.

  Maxi had not slept in her new apartment before she had left for Europe two months earlier. At that time, like many of the apartments in Trump Tower, it hadn’t yet been finished although Maxi had bought it from floor plans several years earlier from her pal, Donald Trump, when the apartment was no more than his vision of what to do with an all-but-priceless piece of New York airspace. Finally she located the right cords and opened the heavy, interlined, apricot silk draperies.

  Maxi stood in front of the windows immobilized by surprise. Was this Manhattan, the familiar, loved and hated city or, while she slept, had her new apartment been dropped gently onto another planet? The sun, which was just rising in the East, behind her, cast its rays across Central Park, which was still in partial darkness, and lit the peaks and spires and towers of the city for as far as her eye could see; north to Harlem; west, across the Hudson River to New Jersey; south, down beyond the Trade Center, to the open Atlantic. Lord have mercy, she thought, it is Manhattan and I’ve bought the whole damn town! She was filled with glee, the kind known as unholy. Manhattan belonged to her! She must be the only person awake this early, the only person with this view, that had been carved out of sky. Perhaps there were taxis and buses and fire engines down there but Maxi couldn’t hear them on the sixty-third floor. She was floating, but not adrift, anchored in a nest that had cost her more than four million dollars, a nest that was almost as high as the wispy white Fragonard-like clouds that were turning pink over the park. As she watched the sun rise higher in the sky, flashing on windows which, one by one, sent messages directly to her, messages of a new day, tidings of a new morning, Maxi realized how lucky she was to possess a view that altered the spirit.

  “ ‘I’ll take Manhattan,’ ” she sang, “ ‘the Bronx and Staten Island too.’ ” And she danced and danced by herself to the song her father had taught her.

  “Angelica, I have nothing of a publisher-nature to wear,” Maxi realized at breakfast.

  “I thought you were the new Editor-in-chief, Ma. Have you been promoted already?”

  “In the middle of the night I woke up and suddenly realized that Buttons and Bows must already have an Editor-in-chief, and it would be an unpopular way to start by waltzing in and taking over somebody’s job, so I made myself publisher. Since Grandpa died the publications haven’t had a publisher.”

  “How should a publisher dress?” Angelica asked, eating four fried eggs heavily basted with butter, directly out of the pan, the way she liked them best.

  “Like an authority figure, a leader, someone who inspires the troops, someone with unquestionable, impeccable, irrefutable judgment.”

  “So that lets you out.” Angelica sprinkled the eggs with a judiciously thick layer of Tabasco.

  “Right. But they don’t know that, and if I dress in a dynamic way they’ll respond to the image, or so I’ve been led to believe. However, my wardrobe seems not to start till lunch, a competitively chic Le Cirque lunch, a Côte Basque lunch, not a serious, businesslike publisher’s morning. Then I have—too many clothes—for cocktails, dinners, balls, yachts, chalets and beaches. Plus the boots and pants I travel in.”

  “It sounds like some sort of character test. If you look in my closet you can tell me who I really am,” her daughter observed.

  “I wish you weren’t so honest, Angelica. Couldn’t you be a little more tactful?”

  “You brought it up. Anyway, what about that double-breasted black Saint Laurent pantsuit you bought last year and never wore because it looked so awful on you?”

  “It hasn’t changed,” Maxi said glumly. “It made me look like a short, dumpy man in drag. You can’t tell that I have a waist and it eliminates my legs. I do, you have to admit, have the best legs in New York.”

  “We all know that, Ma. In the Saint Laurent, with spike heels you’d look like a medium-sized man in drag. And the shoulders are really intimidating.”

  “Maybe with a sensational blouse?” Maxi said, brightening.

  “A severe blouse and a macho scarf flung carelessly over one shoulder. Viva Zapata.”

  “I loathe that look, and the scarf always falls off.”

  “You have no choice,” Angelica said broodingly. “Listen, Ma, have you ever been seriously in love?”

  “I don’t answer questions like that this early in the morning.”

  “If I ever met him, do you think Woody Allen would be too old for me?”

  “Not really. But I don’t think he’d want to get involved.”

  “Nobody does,” Angelica said sadly.

  “It’s the malaise of the age. Whatever that means,” Maxi explained.

  “Whatever,” Angelica agreed. She almost knew what it meant. “So you really are going to the office this morning? Awesome. Well, good luck, Maxi.”

  “Thank you, darling. What are you doing today, shopping?”

  “Yup, back to school. First I’ll check out Armani, Krizia, Rykiel, Versace, Kamali, and end up buying Guess?”

  “I wish I were as tall as you,” sighed Maxi.

  “I think you’re cute just the way you are. I like a medium-sized mother. It makes me feel grown up.”

  “I didn’t know you didn’t,” Maxi grumbled.

  9

  The offices of Trimming Trades Monthly were still located on Forty-sixth Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, where Zachary Amberville had rented space for his first office. When the magazine had been founded the building was slightly run-down but no more so than the rest of the neighborhood, and within walking distance of the trimming trade industry. Nothing had changed except that run-down had slid into disrepair. Maxi noticed nothing of this as she located the offices and announced herself to the receptionist.

  “I’m Miss Amberville. Could you please tell the Editor-in-chief that I’m here?”

  “Does he expect you?”

  “Just tell him. Maxime Amberville.”

  Seconds later Robert Frederick Fink arrived in the small reception area. He was round and rosy, some sturdy age between sixty-five and seventy, a natty dresser and absolutely delighted with her visit.

  “Maxi!” he cried. “Give your Uncle Bob a kiss! I’ll bet you’ve never forgotten the time we won twelve thousand bucks on the Exacta? Come on into my office and tell me about yourself … it’s been years and years.”

  “About twenty,” Maxi guessed, smothered by his embrace. She didn’t remember Uncle Bob, but she still remembered that race.

  “Seems like yesterday. Watch that door, it doesn’t open very far.”

  Maxi squeezed into the editor’s office and stopped abruptly. The medium-sized room held eight desks and on top of each desk were towering stacks of paper of all kinds, arranged carefully so that the piles somehow held together with no possible means of support. There was just enough space between the high walls of paper to walk, in single file, to Bob Fink’s ninth desk on which the papers had only reached a height of some eight inches. He carefully eased her into the only visitor’s chair in the room and then edged himself around his desk and sat down comfortably.

  “I don’t believe in filing cabinets, Maxi, never did. You put something in a file and you forget it’s there and you never see it again. Might just as well burn it. Ask me for a document, any document.”

  “Huh?” Maxi clutched her serapelike plaid scarf around her with both ha
nds and crossed her arms across her breasts. If she sneezed, she thought, it would take a week to dig her out.

  “Ask me to find something for you … like a bill or a voucher or an expense account or anything at all.”

  “A copy of Buttons and Bows from, let’s see, 1954.”

  “Nah. Too easy.”

  “A record of payment for … paper … from June of 1961.”

  Bob Fink got up, surveyed his domain severely for two minutes, threaded his way to one of the desks and, with the utmost delicacy, extracted several papers out of one of the minarets. “Here you go. Just look at that! Paper was a hell of a lot cheaper in sixty-one.”

  “Incredible,” Maxi said, beaming at him. “Do you suppose I could see an issue of Buttons and Bows, the last one?”

  Bob Fink’s face fell. “It’s right here, but I’m not proud of it. Nothing’s been the same since ‘Blouson Noir’ was let loose.”

  “Who?”

  “John Fairchild. The French designers called him ‘Blouson Noir’ meaning a motorcycle gang hood in a black leather jacket … because he was so tough on them. But what he did for the circulation of Women’s Wear! A rocket, sweetheart. And when our advertisers saw that, naturally they decided to put all their ad money into WWD and if that weren’t bad enough, Fairchild publishes Footwear News every week, which wiped up our buckle and strap advertisers. So between one thing and another … well, we have some subscriptions that still have a few years left to go, some small advertisers who get a kick out of seeing their photographs on the cover; but Maxi, let’s face it, Buttons and Bows is … well, to say it was in trouble would be very kind. If you’re in trouble you’re still alive, Buttons and Bows is in intensive care but the hospital just closed.”

  “Could I see it anyway?” Maxi asked, not at all discouraged.

  He gave her the thin magazine with a brave red cover. There was a photograph of John Robinson of the Robinson Braid Company on the cover and most of the text covered the career of Mr. Robinson. There were a few pages of news of the world of braid and trim and there was an article on the use of buttons on Adolfo suits, illustrated with a line drawing of a cuff with three buttons on it; and there were a few small ads. The two largest of these were from the Robinson Braid Company and the company that sold Adolfo his buttons.

  “Uncle Bob, have you heard anything about the meeting yesterday?” Maxi asked, folding the copy of the pathetic scrap of a magazine in half and slipping it possessively into her handbag.

  “A rumor, naturally. Well, maybe a dozen phone calls. All right, two dozen. I think it’s damn nice of you to come here yourself and tell me the news. Your dad, may he rest in peace, would have done the same thing. I knew it was bound to happen.”

  “But it is not going to happen, Bob! I’ve been made the new publisher of Buttons and Bows and together we’re going to make this magazine into a winner again, the way my father would have done!” Maxi almost brought a ton of paper down on her head as she rose in excitement.

  “If that’s the second prize, sweetheart, I wouldn’t like to win the contest. Sit down, for God’s sake!”

  “I’m not kidding. I’m serious! Damn it, Bob, the sky’s the limit, we can do anything that Fairchild can do. We’ll turn this place upside down and inside out … not your office, of course, but …”

  “Maxi,” Bob Fink interrupted gently, “the garment industry doesn’t need more than one major publication and what they need is a newspaper, WWD, not a monthly. You aren’t planning to publish another daily, are you?”

  “Well, no, actually not. But what about W? We could do something like W only better.”

  “The trouble is that W uses stuff that’s already been photographed and written for WWD … sometimes they run the copy a little longer and they use color, but it doesn’t cost them anything to lay their hands on it … money in the bank for Fairchild and only ten thousand subscribers. Most of W is ads, all those great big pretty pictures,” he sighed. “I must be getting old … I’m not ready for those gorgeous girls wearing boy’s underwear. Whatever happened to panties?”

  Maxi squirmed in her Calvin Klein jockstrap. They’d added a new dimension to her sex life. Was she a pervert, did she only know perverts, or was Bob Fink old-fashioned?

  “How can W only have ten thousand subscribers? Everybody I know reads it,” she protested.

  “That’s the point … every issue is read by dozens of people and most of them have high incomes, which I guess explains the ads. Maxi, you can’t go into competition with Fairchild. They founded that company in 1881 and they’ve specialized in trade papers before your dad was born, almost before my dad was born. And why the hell would you want to? You’re an Amberville.”

  “Bob, I hear what you’re saying but I’m convinced that I can turn Buttons and Bows around. With your help, of course.” How, she wondered, could she get rid of such a dear old man? If only he weren’t so pessimistic.

  “My help? Maxi, I’ve been aching to retire for a long time. I just hung around here because I owed it to your dad’s memory, but fortunately I invested in real estate at the right time. Most of the ex-presidents of the United States have built their houses on land I sold them in Palm Springs. Only big piece out there that I wanted but I never could get hold of is Annenberg’s, golf course and all. Missed that one, but you can’t win ’em all.”

  “Retire? You want to retire?”

  “And move west. And watch my palms grow. Maybe learn to ride a horse.”

  “But … all your desks?” Maxi gestured carefully.

  “Burn them. It’ll cost a fortune to get the stuff out of here, but I’d definitely do that and burn it, if I were you.”

  “What about the rest of the staff?” Maxi asked wildly. “All those people my father didn’t want to fire?”

  “Let’s see … there’s Joe who thinks up the ideas and writes the articles, and Linda who buys all the artwork and does the layouts and handles production; and I’ve been my own ad manager. No circulation department, of course. The receptionist also handles the switchboard and the typing. I put Joe and Linda into real estate with me—and the receptionist could get a job anywhere. Very skillful young lady, hates it here. Have to overpay her to keep her.”

  “Three people? Only three? How can that be possible?” Her head felt light but she must not faint.

  “Well, there’s also a guy we hire from the building to empty the wastebaskets and dust off once in a while, there’s a Xerox place downstairs for anything we want copied and the printer sends someone around once in a while to sell us paper; but otherwise, let’s see, yup, three people. And we’re still losing money. Rent, salaries, supplies, they all cost money. Of course there’s lunch; everybody has to have lunch.”

  “The company pays for lunch?” Maxi squeaked incredulously.

  “Your dad started it, back in the good old days. He insisted. Of course Lindy’s was open then. Lunch hasn’t been the same since they closed.”

  “When,” asked Maxi faintly, “were you thinking of leaving? I don’t want anyone to think I’m in a rush but …”

  “Today’s what? Thursday. We could all be out by Friday. Hate to leave you with this mess though. I’ll arrange for the garbage guy to come and get it, don’t worry, and Hank, from the building, doesn’t mind working overtime so the place will be clean, more or less, by Monday, maybe Tuesday.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want to stay?” Politeness was all she had left, Maxi thought.

  “Sweetheart, I’m on that plane already. And listen, if you don’t mind an old admirer putting his two cents in, that outfit you’ve got on isn’t … maybe something more … ah … less threatening? I’d be afraid to meet you in a dark alley, Maxi. Look, if you want, I’ll take you wholesale … Beene maybe, or Ralph Lauren. There’s nothing wrong with you that a change of image couldn’t fix.”

  “You have the nerve to call that lump of mealy mush a Golden Delicious?” Toby roared. “Bite into it, you bastard, and tell me how many month
s ago it was picked and put in a cold room.” With one hand, he grabbed the wholesaler by the back of his shirt and with the other he presented him with the apple. “Go on, bite!”

  “I was robbed, mister,” the man protested. “I just bought twenty cases from upstate and they swore they were picked this week, fresh off the trees.”

  Toby let the man go in disgust. “Sure you did. Well, it serves me right for trying a new supplier. Don’t you realize I can tell everything about this fruit? All I had to do was touch its skin and I knew it was from last season, it doesn’t smell the way a fresh apple smells and if I made myself taste it I’d puke. Go try to sell it to D’Agostino.”

  He turned away and spoke to Maxi. “Most of the guys here know me and they don’t try to pull that sort of stuff; I’ve never bought from him, thought I’d give him a try.”

  “That’s the last time he tries to rob a blind man,” said Maxi. “At least one of us hasn’t been robbed this week.”

  “Will you get your tail out from between your legs and stop complaining?” Tobias commanded, as he turned down the aisle of fruit wholesalers. As he always did in the dangerously cluttered Hunt’s Point Market, Toby used his laser cane. Its three beams of invisible infared light made a pin vibrate that contacted his index finger, telling him if there were objects straight ahead of him, above his head or drop-offs below his feet. He swung it easily, in an arc, using the cane skills he had developed years before. Systematically Toby started choosing samples of apples from various cases, feeling, smelling, turning them over expertly in his long fingers as if each one were being considered for a still life, yet working with an astonishing speed.

  “I’m not complaining,” Maxi said bitterly. “I’m just so fucking mad at myself. Joan of Arc saving the skin of the man who owns Rancho Mirage … to say nothing of thirty years of free lunch. If only I thought Cutter were capable of laughing himself to death.”

  “Look, you’ve still got a magazine, an office, and a year to do anything you like. Only your pride is wounded, Goldilocks.”