Foul Matter (2 page)

Hannah lay her hand across her brow, thought for a moment, and said, “Okay, I’ve got it. He ‘gave the dragon a good thrashing back and forth.’ ” Pleased with this, she turned and left.

She vanished from the doorway.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, he told himself, not everything has to be a life-or-death matter. He sighed and with one finger coaxed a book forward. It was the new book, the one that, along with its cover blowup, crowded Barnes & Noble’s window. Another best-seller, another two plus mil.
Don’t Go There,
the book was called. Despite the fact that its protagonist was not the mild-mannered, brilliant detective Paul had used before, and despite there being no murder, no gunplay, the book would still be stashed with the mysteries or thrillers. He studied the jacket. It was the jacket he had insisted upon in spite of the art department’s hemorrhaging all sorts of objections, the main one being that its moody jacket—shades of gray edging into black, one retreating gray figure—couldn’t be seen across a room. The chains didn’t much like it, either. Barnes & Noble tried to shoot it down and would have done if his sales weren’t stratospheric.

Paul’s present and soon-to-be-past publisher, Queeg and Hyde, wasn’t on the list because there were no writers there who would do in the situation Paul had dreamed up. He looked at the two lists on which he’d matched up four publishers with five writers. The publisher he really was dying to choose was Mackenzie-Haack because of its snob appeal (unwarranted) and its venal, underhanded president, Bobby Mackenzie. What Paul was looking for in a publisher was one who would stop at nothing and if there was anyone who’d do whatever it took to get whatever he wanted, it was Bobby Mackenzie.

Two of the writers on the shortlist were published by Mackenzie-Haack: Barbara Breedlove and Ned Isaly. He crossed out one of the listed writers—Saul Prouil, who was no longer under contract to Colan Meilly, so the plan wouldn’t work. Also, Saul Prouil was rich; family money, certainly not from royalties. He was just a superb writer who’d won the National Book Award, the Pen/ Faulkner, the Critics’ Circle, and several smaller ones.

Back to his other two writers: Breedlove and Isaly. Paul had met both at a Mackenzie-Haack cocktail party to launch a first book—“debut novel” (a phrase that made Paul want to retch)—by a twenty-year-old writer named Mory or Murray-somebody. Paul did not go to publication parties, but he did to this one, following the inception of his little plan. Barbara Breedlove was a good writer, though not as good as she thought she was. She was also too full of herself, too much a networking writer, too much a summer conference person, turning up at Bread Loaf or one of the others, too much a scene player and much too much a snob about genre fiction. A conversation with her had been like sitting on the down side of a child’s slide. She was the one up in the air.

He needed a writer of a certain kind, one who didn’t really think about the arena of publishing. Not that this writer didn’t want to be published, but that he didn’t
think
about it. Ned Isaly had been short-listed for the Pen/Faulkner for his last book and therefore had a certain amount of cachet. Power. But not nearly the power of Paul Giverney. Paul knew that Isaly was a much better writer than he himself, but the quality of writing had little to do with the plan.

What Paul needed was hard to find: a pure writer.

“How long have you been with Mackenzie-Haack?”

This conversation had taken place at the Mackenzie-Haack cocktail party for Mory or Murray. Both he and Ned Isaly had stranded themselves like a couple of frogs on a lily pad (Ned’s metaphor) while the social scene swam around them.

Ned frowned slightly at the question, as if he really had to dredge up the answer. “Two books ago, so I guess seven, eight years.” He was carrying a brown leather case, which he shifted from one arm to another as he looked for a place to put his empty glass.

“A book every three or four years?”

“That’s about right. I’m pretty slow.”

“Slow? Flaubert was slow—if that’s even a meaningful word.”

“By comparison—”

“You don’t want to make that comparison,” said Paul. Ned smiled. Paul went on: “So, what do you think of Mackenzie-Haack?”

“Oh. I guess they’re all right.”

“Do you think they publish your books well?”

Ned frowned again, mining for answers. “To tell the truth, I don’t pay much attention to that end of things.”

“Your agent takes care of that?”

Ned shook his head. “I don’t have one, actually. I don’t much care for agents.”

“I couldn’t agree more. But you must have someone to intercede, somebody who yells when they want to print your book backward or make it a pop-up. Things like that.”

Ned laughed. “Well there’s my editor.”

Paul feigned astonishment. “You mean you’ve got an editor who actually looks out for you?”

“Tom Kidd.”

Paul felt a stirring of envy that he hadn’t felt since fifteen years ago when a friend had landed a publisher while Paul’s own first book was still hanging out in the slush of unsolicited manuscripts. Christ, he thought, just try that today. “The fabled Tom Kidd.” One of a few—a very few—who actually edited and would turn a script over to a copy editor only after he and the writer had decided it was all right. “The bane of all copy editors. I’ve heard he even does line editing.”

“He does.”

A waiter passed with more flutes of champagne. They exchanged their empty glasses for fresh ones.

“Do you think Mackenzie-Haack is better than, say, oh, I don’t know, Delacroix?” This was a small house known for literature of the highest standard. But it was in the process of being taken over by a Dutch conglomerate.

“I don’t know,” said Ned. “I haven’t really had much experience with different publishers. My first book was with Downtown. Then I went to Mackenzie.”

Downtown had tried too damned hard to be elitist and had folded barely a year after it had opened. They’d hardly had time to get Ned Isaly’s book through production. But it had gotten a lot of good critical attention and that, in turn, had brought several publishers to his doorstep.

“Twelve years ago, that was published.” Ned moved the leather case again, from one side to another, where he clamped it under his arm.

“You know, even twelve years ago it was possible to send in an unsolicited manuscript. Try that today and you might as well try to fly a pig over the transom. What’s in that case you’re guarding?”

“Oh, this? Part of a manuscript.”

“You’ve brought it here to shop around? You’ve sure got enough book people here to make it worth your while.”

Ned smiled. “No. Not likely.” He didn’t explain. He said, “The only time I think about publishing is in wondering what it must have been like fifty, sixty years ago. But, then”—he shrugged—“I like to imagine what
everything
was like sixty years ago.”
⁵¹

“You don’t really—”

“Don’t what?”

Paul hesitated.
Care,
he’d been going to say, but that was the wrong word. “I was going to say—if you were to find yourself minus a publisher, how would that affect your writing?”

Ned frowned. “Should it?”

Should it?
Jesus Christ,
here
was a writer to give one pause. “If that book”—Paul tipped his glass toward the leather case—“wasn’t to be published, how would you feel about it?”

“This book?” Ned looked down at the case.

“Yes. Would you keep on with it?”

Ned appeared genuinely puzzled. It made Paul smile inwardly, the way Ned was regarding him, as if he, Paul, were a man of stunted intellectual power and limited imagination. “Of course. Wouldn’t you? Anyway, publishers come and go.”

Paul thought Ned Isaly didn’t give a damn. It was as if he were turning up occasionally in life—as he’d turned up at this party—just to be polite.

Paul sat in his office now looking down at the shortlists and remembering that conversation. He crossed the other publishers and the other two writers off the lists. He was left with
Ned Isaly. Mackenzie-Haack.

Over the sushi, Molly asked, “Did you ever decide on a publisher?”

“Yep. Mackenzie-Haack.”

“That’s the best one?”

“No. It’s the worst.” Paul grinned and went on eating his sushi.

T
here was a small park not far from Saul’s house, nearly always empty of people except for a tramp and his dog, a soulful-looking pair to whom Saul always gave something (a surprisingly large something), which probably accounted for their not going farther afield. The dog (an old golden retriever that looked purebred) always sat up and pounded his tail against the grass when he saw Saul coming.

Saul liked this park, the sheer emptiness of it, as if he and his friends (and the tramp and dog) were the only ones who knew it was here. It was unaccountable, for in Manhattan, any green space was immediately overrun by people. Yet the only others he saw here were Ned and Sally. Ned’s apartment building and Ned’s apartment faced it, and occasionally, Saul could look up from his bench and see Ned waving. The three of them—if he counted the tramp, the four of them—sometimes used this park as a meeting place.

The tramp had little to say, but what he did say he said cogently: “I’m a tramp, not one of your ‘homeless.’ ” He seemed almost proud of this calling a spade a spade. He also seemed proud to be one of a dying breed and not this yuppie-invented one. But, ordinarily, the tramp said not a word, just nodded his thanks to Saul. The dog did more talking with his tail than his owner did with his mouth.

When the three of them were here—that is, Saul, Ned, and Sally—the tramp would move closer, listening but never speaking, never interrupting. He was keeping what seemed to be a “respectful distance,” with his head down and his hands working a section of rope, taking in the conversation. The dog would listen, too. He’d lie down and put his head on his paws and watch them carefully in case they might say something about him. At least, Saul liked to think of the dog that way.

He stopped on one of the gravel paths that crisscrossed the park and put his hand against the bark of an oak. Every so often, he felt compelled to carve tiny initials in the trees. He did not understand this. There were tiny
SP
s all over Chelsea. He walked around this tree trunk, looking it over for other initials, not wanting the oak to take too heavy a hit.

Every year, he sent the park service an anonymous contribution of two or three thousand to make restitution for the trees. He hoped the trees could take it. If they had the constitution of writers, they could.

It wasn’t as if Saul were giving them bad reviews.

C
live Esterhaus drew the back of his tie through the knot, pulled it down, pushed the knot up, and straightened it. He looked at himself, still with chin lifted and turned slightly to the right to check on the tautness of the neck. He gave the flesh under the chin a few quick pats. He considered himself in the mirror: gray-on-gray silk tie, subtly striped gray worsted suit that had cost him fifteen hundred, white shirt (always the best choice). Everything muted and bespeaking a senior editor who pulls the strings quietly behind the scenes.

He was sure he was on his way to being associate publisher or vice president. Bobby Mackenzie had said as much. Bobby had been on his third whiskey when he’d said it, of course, but Bobby didn’t forget. Bobby
never
forgot; his memory for conversations, incidents, names, places, all of these details was legendary. What Clive had to worry about was whether Bobby would keep his word. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. He’d just look at the person confronting him with past promises and say, levelly,
I changed my mind, didn’t I?
or he’d simply give the person one of his cold looks, freeze him where he stood.

In this case, though, Clive thought it was a promise Bobby would keep because there was no reason not to. The titles meant little but looked good, and the hike in salary made up for the impotence of the new title. Not that Clive was plagued by feelings of impotence, not today, certainly. Especially not today. He had invited two people to lunch, two counterparts from other houses. He had told them Mackenzie-Haack (modestly deferring to the house itself, though he was the one responsible) was celebrating signing up a new author. He had not told them who; they would have at least some reason to believe it was Paul Giverney, since he was the author all of them were trying to snare. Clive’s fantasy delighted in their insincere smiles dissolving and hardening into something quite different.