All for a Story (6 page)

“Imagine that.” Max sliced his corned beef and stabbed it along with a forkful of cabbage. “People who don’t even know you love you. All those readers who don’t know your name. That fellow in the car.”

Monica sat back, angling her body and tilting her chin in the way that hours of study in the mirror confirmed to be the most enticing. “What are you implying? That I might only be lovable to those who don’t know me?”

“Not at all. Just making an observation.”

She waited for something to crack —a smile, a humorous glint from behind his spectacles —anything that would belie the inscrutable seriousness of his expression, but there was nothing.

“Well, I should hope not,” Zelda said from the opposite side of the table. “You are a lovely girl. Mr. Moore was quite fond of you.”

“Really?” The news —and indeed, it was news —warmed her
as much as the food. “With him you could never tell.” She tore off a piece of her roll and wedged it in the corner of her mouth like Edward’s ever-present stump of cigar and twisted her face to match his scowl. “‘Monkey!’” she said, matching his gravelly voice to near perfection. “‘You call this writing? I can knock a kid down in the street and steal his copybook and get better stuff than this. Ever hear of a verb?’”

The table burst out in laughter, Max among them, though his chuckle seemed to stem more from curiosity than amusement.

“Oh,” Zelda said, wiping her eyes with the corner of her napkin, “you have captured him completely.”

Monica received the compliment with a small bow as she chewed and swallowed the bit of bread. Max stood beside her and lifted his water glass.

“To Edward Moore,” he said, “who apparently will live on in the hearts of us all.”

“To Edward,” they echoed, touching their glasses to one another’s. Monica’s eyes met Max’s over the clink, and there she saw the humor that had been hiding before.

Do you see? Someone we both knew loved me.

She kept the victorious truth to herself as she sipped her water and confidently imagined Max conceding the point as he did the same. It was a first, if silent, truce.

After that, the floodgates of conversation opened, and until the last crumb of cake was gone, stories of Edward Moore’s secret generosity and blatant orneriness flowed from one end of the table to the other. Max mostly listened, taking in his uncle’s most recent history while contributing very little about the man Edward had been before.

“What?” Monica said during a lull. “No childhood traumas to share?”

“We weren’t close,” Max said with a finality she dared not breach.

She shrugged. “That’s family.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” He scooted his chair back as far as the confines of the corner would allow and stood. “Thank you, everybody, once again for taking the time to share your memories with me. I can see that my uncle has left me quite a void to fill, and I’ll be taking a few days to look over his affairs before I decide what the future of the paper will be.”

“Wait a minute,” Tony said. “There’s a chance you might shut us down?”

Max held up a reassuring hand. “I haven’t made up my mind. I’ll be meeting with Mr. Harper to see how viable the business is. There are a lot of factors to consider. This was my uncle’s vision, not mine. But we will continue on the publication schedule for the next issue, at least.”

It was as if a pitcher of cold water had been dashed across the table, dousing every bit of the crackling camaraderie. In the midst of the wash, Max thanked them once again for their time and their memories before taking his leave.

They watched him, some turning in their chairs to do so, as he once again wrapped himself against the cold and walked past the windows that ran the length of the store.

“So what if he does shut us down?” Tony said at last. “Not like any of us’s gettin’ rich from writin’ for this rag.”

“You’re right,” Monica said, voicing the others’ downcast agreement. If she were indeed dependent on the pittance she earned from her column, she’d be begging for scraps in the street.

“Still,” Zelda said, “we are rather like a family, are we not?”

“Yeah,” Monica said, “and you see how much family means to him. His own uncle, and he’s got nothing to say.”

“Do not be so harsh.” Zelda turned to Harper. “You, Mr. Harper, you know better than any of us. What do the books say?”

Thomas Harper Jr. straightened his tie and cleared his throat. “That, I’m afraid, is information I’m not at liberty to share at will. Suffice it to say that to take the helm of this publication would be a matter of affection, not business acuity.”

“You’re saying Edward kept on with the paper because he loved us?” Monica asked.

Harper bristled at the thought. “Because he loved the industry, I would say.”

“Well, Mr. Maximilian Moore is inheriting both,” Monica said. “He seems like kind of a big, cold cod, but let’s hope he warms up to one of the two.”

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose.

H. G. WELLS,
THE INVISIBLE MAN

HE’D GONE STRAIGHT TO THE FUNERAL from the train station, and then, with his belly full of corned beef and cake, not to mention a head full of visions, met with a junior associate of Bolling, Bolling, and Smith —the law firm handling Uncle Edward’s estate. Nelson Bolling, at least a generation removed from the men who’d earned the name on the door, thumbed nervously through a thin portfolio of papers, clicking his tongue in time with the office clock.

“It’s a fairly . . . simple . . . affair. . . .” He spoke slowly, no doubt an attempt to stretch the billable hour. “Your uncle, Mr. Moore? Which would you prefer, that I refer to him as your uncle? Or Mr. Moore? The latter could be confusing, as you are also Mr. Moore. I suppose I could go with Mr. Moore Sr., although that isn’t entirely accurate, given that he was not your father —”

“Why don’t we go with Edward?” Max sat forward in his chair, elbows resting on his knees. The train ride had been long, the lunch delicious, and the office now overly warm, and he fought back a yawn while the young lawyer made a fastidious note on his blotter.

“Ed-ward. Got it. Now, there is a will —” he removed a single sheet of paper —“in which you are named as sole beneficiary of Mr. Moore’s —Mr.
Edward
Moore’s —estate. I will read this to you now.”

Thirty ticks later, Bolling had located a leather case from which he withdrew a pair of thin spectacles, and when they were perfectly balanced on his equally thin nose and the case replaced in the top drawer, he cleared his throat, adjusted the paper to the correct distance, and read, “‘My nephew, Maximilian Edward Moore, gets everything currently held in my name.’”

Bolling looked at Max over the rim of his glasses. “Would you like me to repeat the reading?”

“He was a newspaperman. Brevity and precision.”

Bolling blinked as he processed the idea, repeated the ceremony of the spectacles in reverse, and reached into the portfolio.

“Here is the deed to the home, and it is assumed that all of the contents therein are also now in your possession. And you are now owner of . . .” His voice trailed off as he retrieved his spectacles and scanned the current papers in his hand. “Ah,
Capitol Chatter
.” He looked up again. “It’s a weekly tabloid. I read it often. Quite salacious.”

“I am familiar with it,” Max said, though before today he’d seen very few copies. At its inception, a sense of family loyalty made him a subscriber, receiving issues via post until Sister Aimee, in an impassioned sermon during which she’d littered her stage with a thousand such publications, declared their sensation and scandal unworthy of the very soil that nurtured the trees slaughtered
to print them.
Capitol Chatter
was no doubt among the papers, and he’d spent that morning reading a lurid tale about a woman captured and bound in lascivious torture before a heroic rescue by her brother-in-law. The details of the story had been hidden from the public but ferreted out by a journalist of Tony Manarola’s ilk, if not Tony himself. Max had left the rest of the paper unread that day, and for the balance of the year lined his efficient apartment trash barrel with each new issue.

“Both his personal and business accounts are at the Capitol Bank and Loan.” A further search yielded the address of the institution, seemingly close by as the logistics of the city began to take form in Max’s head. “You will need to take a copy of the certificate of death and the will to gain access to the accounts. But you are free to take over the operations of the paper immediately, or as soon as you see fit. There is a Mr. . . .”

“Harper,” Max offered in an effort to expedite the conversation.

“That’s right. Harper. He should be able to enlighten you on the business details. And if you find yourself facing another libel suit, may I say on behalf of our firm that we have successfully defended you —your uncle, Mr. Moore, Mr.
Edward
Moore —and
Capitol Chatter
in the past.”

This last bit of conversation was delivered with a handshake, the words spoken at twice the velocity of all those previous. The portfolio that had seemed so thin at the beginning of the conversation now felt thick and burdensome as Max took it from across the desk.

“Libel?”

“I, of course, wasn’t given the case,” Bolling said, suddenly looking too small for his suit, “but I do remember the lovely basket of fruit your uncle, Edward, sent over after the verdict. Very little bloodshed —as they say —as I recall.”

“Very little,” Max repeated, feeling a slight twist of the corned beef. “Good to know.”

He gathered his hat and coat and scarf and gloves from the receptionist, cocooned himself in their warmth, and stepped out into the street to hail a taxi. Perhaps if he had the privilege of Miss Bisbaine standing beside him he’d have more instantaneous results, as she’d shown herself quite capable of attracting vehicular attention. Instead, he had his brand-new coat with the fur collar that he hoped gave him an air of affluence, and the fact that he stood outside a law office holding an impressively thick portfolio certainly added to the ruse. In the end, it took only a few minutes before a cab pulled to the curb in front of him, and he rambled off the memorized address lest the driver take him for a tourist and double the fare.

He divided his attention between the city unfolding on the other side of the window and the contents of the portfolio. Included with the paperwork was a small yellowed envelope that contained a key affixed to a card on which the address of Uncle Edward’s home was written. Its copy had been in the small box of things Thomas Harper had discreetly presented him with at the deli, and it now hung on a ring in Max’s pocket. There’d also been a worn leather wallet, a silver pocket watch, and a small pebble worried smooth. These items were nestled in the depth of his overcoat.

By the time the cab came to a stop and the driver announced his outrageous fare, everything had been neatly reassembled. He handed the driver a folded bill, instructed him to keep the change, and wrested himself from the car. It wasn’t surprising that his uncle wouldn’t have a car, and he’d have to either resign himself to walking or find access to a steady supply of cash.

As the car sputtered away, he found himself standing in front
of a neat, modest redbrick home with three shallow steps leading up to a white front door. Beside the steps, partially hidden by a hardy piece of shrubbery, he saw the corner of his suitcase, having been delivered from the train station. He took in a deep, stinging breath and mounted the stairs, stooping to pick up his bag on the way. In it was almost everything he owned, minus his few household items he’d left for his landlord in exchange for grace in the breaking of his lease. Two good suits, a dozen shirts, photographs. Ida had been charged with packing and shipping the books both at home and in his office, as he was not willing to disrupt his library until he was certain of its new home. Abandoning an assembled mass of pots and dishes was one thing, a lifetime of selectively collected tomes quite another.

He secured the portfolio beneath his arm, freeing his hand to slip the key into the door, and soon stepped across the threshold into the darkened room. Dark only because the curtains were drawn against the light, and his first order of business after dropping his bag was to grasp the surprisingly heavy material and pull them open, wincing at the sound of the metal rings against the rod.

The room flooded with light, and something in him wondered if this wasn’t a rare occasion, as the surroundings immediately looked unaccustomed to the exposure. There was a small wood-burning stove and next to it a comfortable-looking leather chair with an afghan strewn across its back. A rolltop desk —its contents covered by the louvered top —a footstool, and a freestanding lamp comprised all the rest of the furniture, unless one wanted to throw a cushion on the steamer trunk under the window. One wall of the room was dominated by a massive bookcase that stretched floor to ceiling, each shelf packed with volumes of every size and shape crammed from end to end.