Foul Matter (40 page)

Clive felt a fresh wave of self-respect wash over him. They considered him to be one of them; they were treating him as an ally. He walked over and opened the door just enough to get his head through and told Amy to go down to the café off the lobby and bring back whatever everybody wanted. To take someone else with her so she didn’t have to make several trips. Then Clive withdrew, gave Candy and Karl the thumb’s-up, and went back to his perch by the window.

“So, Bobby, we’re agreed on the
TBR
list.”

“Goddamnit, I told you, I can’t—”

Karl shut his eyes, pained. “Haven’t you been listening, asshole? Say I walk into a bookstore looking for something to read. Now, what am I likely to pick up? A book that’s buried in the back or a book that’s in my face everywhere I turn? A book that’s
all over
the fucking place. Get real, man. You
pay
for what you want in this world, as you sure ought to know.” He pointed the gun barrel at the envelope that still lay where it had been tossed on the desk.

Bobby leaned back, stuck his hands behind his head, and put his feet back up on the desk.

Apparently, thought Clive, Bobby couldn’t see that he was not the puppeteer in this situation, wasn’t plying the strings, or that this was not an occasion for pomposity, for he said, pompously, “We don’t control the middleman—”

Whereupon, Candy was up. “I’m gonna clip the little fucker, K.”

Bobby went white and quickly returned to his victim’s position, arms and legs down.

Karl motioned to Candy, who sat down, reluctantly.

“Thing is, you know you’re lying. Lying or plain stupid and we don’t think you’re stupid.”

Clive saw Bobby actually smile. His ego was so huge he didn’t consider it to be any less of a compliment that it came from a guy with a gun in his hand.

Karl went on. “As I was trying to say before, but apparently you weren’t listening, you control whatever you pay to control. Tell the bookstores you’re putting out a mil to promote this book, they buy more copies. They sell more copies. You buy space up front, you hawk dumps. Then they put the book up front. You do this for best-selling authors; it’s nothing new. You pay the chains to do this; it’s what you might call a hostile collaboration. In the case of Ned’s book, you just pay even more. Maybe a mil and a half, even two. I’ll say it clearer: you can buy
anything
and you, of course, goddamned well know it. Bottom line is, we see Ned Isaly’s book on the
TBR
next year”—he raised the barrel slightly to point at Bobby’s forehead and added—“or we come back.”

“Yeah,” said Candy with an evil grin, his pupils glittering like sequins. “We come back.”

“There’s another thing we want to remind you. And this you better believe: Ned Isaly better not meet up with an accident. So pray he’s careful crossing streets and turning off the gas. You better pray he don’t get mugged—”

“You can’t hold me responsible for something like that. Christ, every other person in New York gets mugged.”

“Really? Then hope he only meets up with the other fifty percent.”

Candy said, “Now, Paul Giverney, how about him?”

“Yeah. Paul Giverney, the writer you’re trying to sign. What we want to know is, was hiring us done at his suggestion? Was murder his idea?”

No one said anything, letting “murder” swing slowly from a noose of air.

“Yes,” said Bobby. His eyes traveled the room, lit behind him on Clive. “Yes, it was Giverney’s idea. And Clive’s.”

“Wha—?”

“It was you Giverney talked to, not me.” Bobby tossed this over his shoulder at Clive, not bothering to look at him.

“So, it was Clive’s idea?”

“Yes.”

“Which means no,” said Candy.

Bobby got up in a sudden burst of bravado but was quickly waved back to his chair by two guns in motion.

Karl said, “We know old Clive here. In this business you get you can read character. Clive would never have thought this up.”

Candy put in, “But you would, you little dipshit.”

“So had Giverney signed a contract?”

“No.” “Yes.” Both Bobby and Clive spoke together.

Bobby stared at Clive. “What? When, for Christ’s sake? And you didn’t tell me?”

“That’s what I came in here to tell you. We got—sidetracked.”

“So you can die happy,” said Candy. “Just a figure of speech, Bobby.” He snickered.

“One last thing,” said Karl. He pulled another envelope from his pocket, tossed it on the desk.

“What’s this?” asked Bobby.

“Ticket.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“To Australia. Didn’t you always want to see Australia? Melbourne? The Outback? Sydney Opera House? Kangaroos? We’re sending you.”

“I can’t—”

“Bobby, you’re always saying that. Sure, you can. For a while, six months maybe. You get back in time to take over the marketing of Ned’s book. To convince everybody on your staff that no holds’ll be barred. You can leave ol’ Clive here in charge.”

Bobby gave Clive a lethal look.

“Look,” said Candy, “it coulda been worse.”

Bobby moved the lethal look from Clive to Karl. “How?”

“We coulda written a book.”

Candy and Karl howled.

S
ally sat at her desk reading the book about Pittsburgh she had brought back. What she supposed she meant to accomplish by doing this was to be able to talk to Ned about the city. The one she was looking at now was heavy with illustrations and old newspaper photos.

Was he interested in the actual history of the place? Or was he interested only in its symbolic history? He did not know about the Pirates’ wins and losses over the years, or who the team’s coach was, or how many people had filled Forbes Field. What he wanted to think about was the rush the spectators must have felt when Roberto Clemente slammed the ball out of the park; the way the clouds looked massed in the gray . . .

Maybe that’s not the history that draws me.
He had said that a long time ago, arguing with Jamie.
Maybe that’s not the real history.

Tom Kidd came to stand in the door of his office. He’d been closeted or barricaded behind his stacks of books for twenty-four hours. She bet he hadn’t gone home and probably hadn’t eaten since that coffee cake Amy had brought around. Bobby’s treat. Tom had been reading Saul’s manuscript for a whole day and night and part of another day. He looked goggle eyed.

“Tom?”

He turned the empty eyes on her. Who’re you?

He went back into his office.

When she looked out into the busy room—not as bad as a newspaper, perhaps, but not far behind—she saw Clive wandering in and out and around the cubicles like a bum with an empty cup. He looked slightly delirious. A few people called after him, rising to look over the cubicle walls, calling their congratulations, or perhaps they were hectoring him.

Sally hoped he’d pass her by (but here he came) because she had too much on her mind to deal with Clive.

But of course he didn’t pass; he stopped by her desk, lit a cigar (Bobby’s Cuban) and dropped into the wooden chair. “Sally.”

“What’s going on? Did you finally sign up Paul Giverney?”

For everyone was waiting for this.

“Yep.”

“That’s wonderful, Clive! I’m really happy for you.” It surprised her that she was. But he looked so happy himself that it was hard to feel her usual antipathy toward him. And then she thought, but he’s changed in the couple of weeks. He’d certainly changed since Pittsburgh. What a strange experience that had been.

Sunken cheeked, he sucked in on his cigar, turned it in his mouth, withdrew it, exhaled, and said, “That ain’t all, Sal—”

Ain’t?
Sal?

“—Bobby’s taking a holiday. Six months, maybe longer. I’m taking over for him.”

What was going on? “Clive—?”

“Cheap thrills.” Tom must have picked up on something going on for he was standing in the door again. But he said this in a sporting, kidding way.

Sally was again surprised by her reaction to Clive’s news. As though she’d been heavy with a weight that now lifted. If Bobby was leaving, if the contract was signed, then he’d have no reason to get rid of Ned.

Clive left and Tom went back inside his office, to leave Sally wondering about Paul Giverney. What was he like? Really like? From what she had gathered, he was bossy, arrogant, self-indulgent, a writer who commanded several million per book. Yet he had seemed pleasant enough when he stopped by her desk.

Sally was mooning over Giverney when Tom came to the door a third time, this time with Saul’s manuscript in his hands. “I’m dead and gone to the sweet hereafter. Go make a copy of this and don’t leave the copy machine until it’s finished. And don’t tell anybody what it is. But first, get me Jimmy McKinney on the line.”

But of course it got around like wildfire. The buzz over Saul’s book was exceeded only by the furor over Paul Giverney. To have cornered either of these writers was a coup; to get both of them was nothing short of miraculous. The parade could commence down Fifth, filled with ticker tape and confetti. All the other publishers could lay down their books; it was war’s end.

Though Mackenzie-Haack hadn’t actually signed up Saul, they would. He didn’t have a publisher or even an agent—which might have been the reason for calling Jimmy McKinney, whom Tom probably meant to recommend.

To have both Ned and Saul under this roof, and Tom Kidd as their editor, made Sally happier than she’d been at any time in the last year. She returned to the Pittsburgh book, grinning at every line, and in this frame of mind her eyes skipped over the text, barely touching.

Thus, she would have missed it had there not been a picture of an Isaly’s Ice Cream parlor, taken back in the forties, with several employees out front, smiling and squinting into the sun and holding the ever-popular ice cream scoop, like the one Ned kept on the shelf beside the picture of himself and three others, in front of the shop they worked in.

It wasn’t the caption, but something in the picture that made her draw in her breath.

Oh, no,
she thought.
Oh, dear.

The caption read:
“Outside one of Pittsburgh’s famous ice cream parlors.”

One of the people in the row, a teenage boy smiling beamishly, was holding a small sign, printed with the Isaly name, and more than the name.

“Isaly” wasn’t a family name—or at least, it looked as if it wasn’t the family name of the ice cream kingdom. Here, it was an acronym:
I.S.A.L.Y.

Ned wasn’t an ice cream Isaly. Sally leaned her head in her hands. She just couldn’t help it; she wept.

H
e was standing by his window, the one that looked down at the Luxembourg Gardens (or so Ned liked to imagine the little park), where Nathalie still sat on the green bench where he had left her. No, she was holding a letter and that meant she would have had to go back to the Ile St.-Louis to her apartment.

When had she done that?

Ned waited. He thought. He knew the source of the letter. Should she just hold it? Or should she read it?

Ned thought he saw her turn on the bench and look up at his window, at him. And she said,

Because I didn’t know it was ending, Ned thought.

No.

No, that isn’t it. Nathalie and Patric don’t belong together.

All right: you and Patric don’t belong together. You couldn’t have made a life together.

No, that’s not why. It’s because you don’t really love each other.

You’re talking about passion. That’s a strange way of describing love, if you stop to think about it. Love is much more the breathing in of everyday air. Look: you don’t have to take the blame for all of this. It’s not all down to you. There’s Patric. He’s been far more selfish than you.

He doesn’t need to be. You’ll defend him.

She started to say something, and stopped. She tried to leave the bench, and couldn’t.