The Rothman Scandal (14 page)

He smiled now and raised his glass. “Cheers,” he said. “Welcome to your new freedom. You are now emancipated from the Rothmans—the whole damn pack of them. Marry me. We'll fly off somewhere and celebrate. We'll lie in the sun and turn brown as berries, and make love in the sand.”

She sat very still, arms crossed over her bosom, her hands hugging her shoulders. “I have a contract,” she whispered.

“A
contract?
Are you out of your mind, sweetheart? Are you going to honor a contract with some little prick who tells you—in the most insulting, public way possible—that you can't do your job anymore? Who is this British bimbo, anyway?”

“I have no idea.”

“Some money-grubbing Brit bimbo who's been kissing Herb Rothman's ass, and probably sucking his dick as well. No, you're well out of it, darling.
Well
out of it. If you ask me, this is the luckiest day of your life.”

She shivered. “Somehow, I can't think of it that way—yet,” she said.

“And I only say that because I love you,” he said. “Hell, if I didn't love you, I wouldn't give a damn. But after all, you're Alexandra Rothman. You're the greatest fashion editor in the country, and everybody knows it. You took a lousy little fashion sheet that was practically brain dead in the seventies, and made a success of it, turned it completely around, made a winner out of a loser. Has anyone else in publishing ever done that?”

“Yes. Helen Gurley Brown.”

“But you're bigger than she is! Five million circulation! You're number one! So—you did it, darling. You proved it to the world. Now it's time to move on to something else. Fuck the Rothmans!”

“I could always work with Ho.”

“Yeah, and where was Ho tonight? Ho had to be behind this. Ho Rothman never lets that little shit son of his go out the door alone without knowing what his instructions are. Ho was behind this. He just let Herbie do his dirty work for him. Typical Rothman.”

“No, you don't understand, Mel. Ho is really much sicker than we thought. He's had another stroke. He can't see anybody anymore.”

“He's probably faking it, if I know the old bastard.”

“Darling, remember that Ho is ninety-four years old.”

“So now he's brain dead, too.”

“Apparently. It's hard to believe, but Lenny says it's true.”

“And so it's new-broom time at Rothmans. Some new broom they've got, I must say—worse than the old worn-out one. But what the hell difference does it make? It's still the same old ball game, but with meaner rules, and a crookeder umpire. Anyway, it's time for you to shake hands with the whole Rothman
mishpachah
, and get out of the ring. Matter of fact, it might be kind of fun for you to watch—from the sidelines—and see what happens next.” He was grinning now. “Think of that, darling! It really could be fun.

“Fun?”

“Sure. Look—everybody in town knows that Herb Rothman doesn't know sweet fuckoff about publishing. Maybe his old man was some kind of media genius—maybe. Maybe I'll grant him that. But this is his
son
, and his son ain't his old man. So it might be kind of fun to sit back and watch Herb Rothman, and his Brit bimbo, take
Mode
down the tubes.”

She gestured vaguely in the direction of the bound copies of the magazine. “About as much fun as watching your child die,” she said.

“Look,” he said earnestly, “I know how much
Mode
means to you—don't get me wrong. But, in the end, it's only a
job
, isn't it? Just as my job is only a job. My job is to work in front of a television camera, but it's only a television camera, and it's not the only television camera in the world. Putting out a magazine is putting words and pictures on paper, but
Mode
isn't the only magazine in the world—it's not your last chance to prove that you do what you do brilliantly, that you're a brilliant editor.” He put down his drink and moved toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. “But listen, I know you've been through a hell of an evening, and you're still in a state of shock. Maybe we shouldn't even be talking about things like this tonight. We're both too upset.” He kissed her lowered forehead. “I love you, Alex,” he said. “Meanwhile, I've had no dinner. I'm hungry—hungry for food, and hungry for you. Know what my Jewish grandmother used to say? ‘If it's a problem that can be solved with either a little love or a little money,
bubeleh
, it isn't a problem.' Just think—it's not every man in the world who gets to make love to a high priestess.”

She stood up. “I forgot to tell Coleman to fix us chicken sandwiches,” she said miserably. “But let's see what we can find in the refrigerator. There must be something left over from the party.”

In the kitchen, they sat side by side on stools at the long butcherblock counter.

“You really think I should resign?” she said.

“Absolutely,” he said, munching on a veal chop. “Absolutely. It's the only way you can come out of this with a shred of dignity, with a shred of pride.”

“I'd like to fight him, you know.”

“Don't. Too undignified. You're a classy dame. Fighting Herb Rothman would be about as dignified as mud wrestling.”

“Maybe I'm not so proud,” she said. “Remember, this is my entire life.”

He put down his chop. “Your entire life? Then where do I fit in, I wonder?”

“Oh, you know what I mean. My entire professional life.”

His gaze at her was even. “I'll tell you this,” he said; “if you get into a mud-wrestling match with that little
putz
, you'll lose a hell of a lot of respect from me.”

Later, in bed, she said to him, “Please, darling. Not tonight. I just can't make myself be in the mood.”

He rolled away from her, across the bed, and pretended to go to sleep, but she knew he was only pretending.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“I think you're still in love with Steven,” he said.

She said nothing, merely stared up at the dark ceiling, and the only sound in the room was the low moan of a tugboat's horn from the river below. She felt really terrible now, because she loved their lovemaking. It was so even, so smooth, so perfectly timed and cadenced. Not like that first love long ago that overpowered her with its vastness, but more sharing. When she and Mel made love, they were like one soul.

You blew it, darlin', the tugboat's horn seemed to say.

7

Alex had learned how to deal with her husband's grandfather, Herbert Oscar Rothman—or “Ho,” as he was usually called, an acronym of his first two initials—and she had learned early on. There was nothing particularly complicated about Ho, once you discovered what drove him, impelled him, stimulated him, inspired him, which could be summed up in a single word: Power. There was no particularly fine-tuned intelligence here, she had discovered. There was no “fingertip on the pulse-beat of America,” as his hired publicists boasted. There was no sophistication, no sensitivity, and not even very much in the way of education. Ho, she soon realized, understood very little about communications, or publishing, though he headed what was usually described as “a Communications/Publishing Empire.” But he understood Power, and how to use it and abuse it. Lenny was right.

He was a diminutive, almost frail-seeming man who had stood, in his prime, at no more than five-feet-five and, over the years, had seemed to shrink. When Alex met him, he could have weighed no more than 120 pounds. But Power was tangible in the huge, sprawling signature, “H. O. Rothman,” which was attached to the directives that came down from his office on the thirtieth floor of the Rothman Building at 530 Fifth Avenue. Power was apparent in the size of his office itself, which was as big as a squash court (the offices of other Rothman executives were for the most part half-walled cubicles), and in the dimensions of his oversized antique walnut partners' desk, behind which he sat in a chair on a raised platform, usually with an unlighted cigar clamped between his teeth.

In front of this desk were two low, black-leather sofas, so deep that, once a visitor had settled into one of them, he usually had difficulty rising. And the sofas seemed to have been strategically placed so that sunlight from the tall south- and east-facing windows blazed directly into the visitor's eyes, making it hard for the visitor to get a good look at the president and chief executive officer of Rothman Communications who gazed down upon him.

Covering the entire north wall of the office was an enormous map of the United States of America—Texas alone was nearly five feet wide—and this map was dotted with large gold stars, indicating the cities where Rothman owned newspapers, radio and television stations, or otherwise maintained offices. When Alex first met her new husband's grandfather, there were 119 of these gold stars. Today, there were 171. The country, the map not very subtly implied, was Ho Rothman's domain; to each of these cities and towns, his Power extended.

It was true that many people in the communications industry hated Ho Rothman. Like many men who sit in seats of absolute Power, Ho Rothman had made his share of enemies. The great Moe Markarian, the other communications czar and Ho's chief rival during the years of his rise, had written a famous will. After directing that he be cremated, Markarian had instructed his executors “to take my ashes, place them in an open box, carry them to Ho Rothman's office, and blow them in Ho Rothman's face.” Needless to say, this directive was never actually carried out.

It was Moe Markarian who had labeled Ho Rothman “the chameleon,” and while Alex would agree that Ho had many lizard-like qualities, she had decided that he was not really a bad fellow, simply because his deviousness was so obvious as to be almost reassuring, almost endearing.

She had had her first experience with the way Ho operated at a luncheon at “Rothmere,” the Tarrytown house, not long after she married Steven. The principal guest at the table was a young editor whom Ho had just hired to run a newspaper he had acquired in Taunton, Massachusetts, and the subject under discussion, for some reason, was the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Pounding on the tabletop with his fist for emphasis, and jabbing his skinny finger angrily at the young editor as though accusing him of feeling otherwise, Ho Rothman was depicting Roosevelt as a traitor, an apostate, a Judas.

“He was Communist!” Ho was saying. “He sold out million pipple to Stalin! He was Russian agent, Russian spy! He should have been hung for treason! He sold out his country!”

“He was worse than that,” the young editor agreed. “He was a bastard, a son-of-a-bitch adulterer!”

“He was liar, cheat! In his own country, he sold out to unions and Mafia. In Russia, he sold his own country to Stalin!” And he pounded the table so hard that the stemware trembled.

“He was a disgrace,” the young editor said. “The country will never recover from what Roosevelt did. I could tell you stories—”

“In nineteen thirty-five, he saved this country from revolution,” Ho continued, without missing a beat. “You don't remember nineteen thirty-five, but in this country would have been revolution if not for Roosevelt. He saved America! Thank God for Roosevelt. Without him, the whole world would be Communist. He was a saint.”

“You're right, Mr. Rothman,” the young editor said, nodding enthusiastically in agreement. “No doubt about it, he was the greatest president America ever had.”

“The greatest!” Ho said, pounding his fist on the table again.

At first, Alex had wondered whether Ho's sudden reversal in midargument might be intended as a subtle lesson to editors—that they should be able to back, with strong words, whichever side of a political discussion they happened to believe in. Then she realized that it was simply a performance designed to remind all who witnessed it—including, no doubt, herself—that Ho's power was so vast that he could completely contradict himself in front of anyone without losing one shred of his dominance, and that whichever side of an argument he chose to take was the right one, even when he took both sides at once.

This childlike faith in his power she found almost charming, and having discovered this fact about Ho Rothman, she was able to maneuver him from one position to another with relative ease.

Over the years, she and Ho had had any number of spirited arguments, which Alex had learned to relish, and even look forward to—if not actually predict. Most of their arguments had to do with the kind of advertising her magazine would accept. Selling advertising, after all, was what Ho understood best. Selling advertising had made him rich. Alex often supposed that Ho would advertise raincoats in the Gobi Desert, bikinis in Antarctica, condoms to a convent, if he could find advertisers to foot the bills. “I make a rule for you,” he used to say. “I make a lesson for you. All advertisers is
momzers
. Each is
momzer
, each is liar, each is crook. But if the
momzer
will pay your page rate, and his check clears bank, the
momzer
is a
mensch
.”

But
Mode
was a specialty magazine, with a specialty audience, and it was necessary for Alex to bring Ho around to her point of view, and persuade him that certain advertisers, despite their ability to pay her page rate, were not suited to her special breed of women readers, or to the special image her magazine was trying to project. She refused, for instance, to accept advertising for feminine hygiene products, or laxatives, and she had turned down an ad depicting an implicitly incontinent June Allyson cavorting on the deck of a cruise ship, implicitly wearing Depend adult diapers. She would not accept cigarette advertising, a lucrative category for many magazines. She would accept ads from Armani, Calvin Klein, and Bulgari, but not ads for Jacyln Smith's designs for K mart clothes. She accepted Calvin Klein's mysteriously erotic advertising for Obsession, featuring elaborately intertwined nude bodies, but when Avon Products submitted a moisturizer ad depicting a nude female, she turned it down. She scrutinized the copy for painkiller advertising carefully, and would not accept anything with the words “pain,” “inflammation,” “suffer,” “hurt,” “ache,” or “flare-up.”