Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (15 page)

           
The coffee helped, and further calm
conversation with Mary helped, but I still got my headache. Now I shall go
fling myself into the ocean.

           
MARY left this afternoon.

           
Several times in the last two weeks
I thought the situation might explode, but it never quite did happen. Ginger
once or twice
wanted
an explosion, and I could see it, and I guess Mary
could see it, too, because she very gently and quietly disappeared from view. I
made the mistake once of pointing this out to Ginger: “You keep saying Mary’s
devious,” I said, “but if she was devious wouldn’t she let you pick a fight
with her?”

           
“What do you mean,
pick a fight?”

           
“You’ve been spoiling for a fight
all—”

           
Well. That was a mistake, which took
about a day and a half to rectify.

           
Otherwise, both women were rather
good about it. They went to the beach together—with all the kids—and they
talked together civilly enough. There was tacit agree- mcnt that Ginger was
boss of the kitchen and Mary a guest eating Gingers meals, except that the five
days Ginger had to go to work in the city Mary volunteered to make dinner and
Ginger accepted the offer. Every evening, if we weren’t all playing a boardgame
or something with the kids, Mary would retire to her guesthouse and read while
Ginger and I did whatever we did in the main house.

           
Fair
Harbor
on
Fire
Island
is a very
communications-biz community, with television people and ad agency people as
well as writers and editors and a sprinkling of showfolk. I know a few of these
people, mostly through business contacts, and one of the guys, a magazine
editor named Herm Morgenstern who by summer is a feared and ruthless volleyball
player—he finishes most summers absolutely swathed in Ace bandages—said to me
on the beach one day, grinning, “Tom, I don’t know how you do it.”

           
“Do what?”

           
“The women.”
He shook his head in admiration.
“Jeezuz.
The wife
and
the girlfriend, all in the same house.
You all bunk in together, do you?” His tongue was somewhat hanging out.

           
“Hey, no,” I said. “It’s nothing
like that at all, Herm. Mary and I are
separated
, she has her own little
guesthouse, there’s nothing going on at all.”

           
“Sure,” he said, nodding, smirking.
“Sure.”

           
I was reminded of Vickie assuming
Ginger and Lance and I had a
menage
a trots
,
and I imagine Herm wasn’t the only person in
Fair
Harbor
making the same assumption about Ginger and Mary and me. I suppose
other people’s lives always look more exciting; it’s hard to believe that
everybody’s
as disorganized and screwed-up and ordinary as
ourselves
.

           
It’s funny, but the place feels
incomplete without Mary prowling around, hung with cameras, looking for
not-quite- good-enough photo opportunities. A few empty film containers are
still to be seen here and there, little black plastic jars with gray plastic
tops, and they remind me of her; Mary’s need to be a successful photographer,
Mary’s softness that makes the goal impossible.

           
Why did all that make her somehow
belong here? I don’t know. 1 only
know
we’d
established a status quo here, the seven of us, against all odds, and now I
find myself missing it. Afraid I might make the mistake of letting Ginger see
the way I feel, I have come up to the evening- cooled bedroom to work on the
second batch of
Christmas Book
galleys. Last Friday, Vickie, in her
final official act before motherhood—if that kid is smart, it’ll leave the womb
running—messengered this second portion of the galleys over to Ginger’s office,
and Ginger brought them out with her that evening, and I’ve been working on
them ever since.

           
There wasn’t time to correct them
all before Mary’s departure today, unfortunately, or she could have taken them
with her. Somehow I’ll have to get them back to Craig this week.

           
I wonder who I’ll address them
to?

           
I knew Dewey Heffernan was trouble
when he phoned yesterday to introduce himself. “This is Dewey Heffernan,” said
a voice so young and eager my first thought was that this at last was Jennifer’s
first boyfriend, an advent we’ve all been anticipating with some suspense, and
not a little dread. But, no; Jennifer was apparently still prepubescent,
because
this
Dewey Heffernan was to be my new editor.

           
The publishing world contains more
disasters than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Huck.

           
“I’m really excited about this,
Tom,” Dewey Heffernan said, while I stood with the phone in my
Fire Island
living room in my swimsuit and Earth Day
T-shirt and slowly died. “May I call you Tom?”

           
You may not call me at all, fella.
“Sure,” I said.

           
“And I hope you’ll call me Dewey.”

           
“I will,” I promised.

           
“I just want you to know,” he said,
“when Miss Douglas told me I was going to take over
The Christmas Story
I just—”

           
“The Christmas Book," I said.

           
“I’ve loved Christmas since I was a
little kid,” he assured me. “This is the
most
exciting thing that’s
happened to me on this job.”

           
“Mmm,” I said.

           
Dewey was calling to suggest that he
and I meet and have lunch when I came to the city with the corrected galleys. So
that’s what happened; this morning, I shook the sand off, put on actual
clothing with shoes for the first time in two weeks, gathered up my galleys,
and took the 10:15 ferry to catch the 11:07 train to meet Dewey Heffernan at
the Tre Mafiosi at one o’clock.

           
The transition from
Fire Island
to
New York
is
always traumatic, even without Dewey Heffernan. On
Fire Island
there are no automobiles, no tall
buildings, very little noise. I almost never wear shoes there, and certainly
not socks. Unless there’s something somebody wants to watch on television, we
never know the exact time, and couldn’t care less. The air is clearer and less
humid, and the temperature is usually five to ten degrees cooler than in the
city. Last week, Ginger had had to make that awful transition five days in a
row (while worrying unnecessarily about me alone out here with Mary), but now
Mary was gone (I’d seen no point in describing our nonsexual encounter to
Ginger) and Ginger was in full residence, and / was the one who had to leave Eden
for Mordor.

           
And Dewey
Heffernan.
I arrived at the restaurant ten minutes early, planning to
have a drink at the bar while waiting, and he was already there. Now, I had an
excuse for being early, since I was tied to railroad and ferry schedules, but
for him the restaurant was a mere five minute walk from the office, so his
presence so early was a baffling but troubling sign.

           
So was his
presence
, if you
know what I mean. With Vickie, and earlier with Jack Rosenfarb, I had always
lunched at one of the banquettes or alcoved tables around the edges of the
room, but this time the maitre d’ led me to a tiny table in the middle of the
place, at which sat something that might have been Raskolnikov, if it had had
any gumption.

           
This was Dewey Heffernan. When he stood
up, as he did at my arrival, smiling and bobbing his head and extending his
skinny pale hand to be shaken, he proved to be a long drink of water, probably
six-four. He was very thin and bony, and the salesman who’d sold him that sport
jacket must have some sense of humor. It was a large yellow thing of giant
checks, like what Bob Hope used to wear when playing in Damon Runyon stories,
and it made Dewey Heffernan look as though he were wearing a taxicab. Somewhere
in there were a white shirt and tan tie, possibly belonging to the driver.

           
Then there’s the Dewey Heffernan
head. A very high and shiny ivory forehead was surrounded by spikes and
thistles of rough black horsehair. A scraggly beard and moustache with
intermittent white skin in it looked like the symptom of some awful
dermatological disorder. Between these two unfortunate examples of hair-growth
was a retrousse nose with nostrils that looked out at the world rather than
demurely down at his lip, a broad mouth full of big square teeth, and spaniel
eyes that blinked and stared and beheld the variety of the world with
unflagging wonder. “You must be Tom Diskant!” said this wonder, happy as a
fresh-hatched cuckoo, as the maitre d’ pulled out my chair.

           
“If I must, I must,” I said
fatalistically, accepted his overly energetic handshake, and took the seat the
maitre d’ punched into the back of my knees. “Sorry I’m early.” I put the
galleys package to one side on the table.

           
Dewey dropped into his chair. “Boy,
I know what you mean! I was too excited to hang around the office!”

           
“Would you gentlemen care for
something from the bar?”

           
“Nah,” Dewey said. “Gee, Tom, I—
Wait a minute; do you want a drink or something?”

           
“Maybe so,” I said casually.
“Bourbon and soda.”
(There’s something about meeting a new
editor that drives me to that particular drink.)

           
“I guess I’ll try one of those,
too,” Dewey said, grinning at the maitre
d’, who gave him the
old fish-eye and stalked off
.

           
Dewey’s happy face zeroed in on me
again. “Gee, Tom,” he said, “I’m really happy about this. When Miss Douglas
handed the file over, she said you were a little
worried,
maybe the new editor wouldn’t be as enthusiastic as she was, but gosh, Tom, I
want you to know I think
The Christmas Book
is just great! I mean it,
it’s fabulous!”

           
“Thank you,” I said modestly.

           
“See, I have a lot of ideas about
publishing,” he said, shoving his silverware and display plate out of the way
so he could lean his forearms on the table.
“New ideas to
shake up the whole industry!”

           
“Ah.”

           
“And this book of yours, Tom, this
book of yours fits right into what I’m thinking about.”

           
That was depressing. I looked
politely interested.

           
“Pictures,” he said.
“Color.
Youth appeal. You see what I mean?”

           
“Yes, I do,” I said.

           
“We’ve got to attract that youth
audience, Tom,” he told me.
“Those
are the readers of the
futureV'

           
“Undoubtedly
true.”

           
“They
see
things differently,
Tom! They’re used
to,
they’re used to,
video
screens. Display! Computer programs!
Rock and roll!”

           
“Ah hah.”

           
“If we want youth to be interested
in
us,
Tom,” he said, leaning close over his forearms, eyes and nostrils
staring impassionedly at me,
“ive
have to be interested in what
interests
youth.”

           
“Interesting,” I said, as our waiter
brought our drinks. Dewey lifted his.
“To a long association,
Tom!”
“Mmm,” I said.

           
We drank, he putting away close to
half his bourbon and soda at once, then grinning and nodding and gesturing with
the glass as he said, “Nice!”

           
I thought: He has never tasted
bourbon before. “Dewey,” I said, “if we’re going to get to know one another,
maybe you could tell me a little about yourself.”

           
“Oh, sure,” he said. “See, I’ve
always been interested in books, you know.”

           
But he was interrupted at that point
by the waiter, bringing us our menus and wishing to tell us today’s specials.
He did so in a sepulchral tone, as though reporting a list of towns destroyed
by the Italian earthquake, during which the happy Dewey polished off his drink.
When the funeral march of specials was done, the waiter picked Dewey’s glass
out of his fingers and said, “Would you care for another, sir?”
“Yeah, sure!
Tom?”

           
“I’ll nurse this one,” I said.

           
The waiter went away, and Dewey
said, “Let’s see. Where was I?”

           
“Interested in
books.”

           
“Right.
So
naturally I was an American Lit major.
Northwestern.
I
got my Master’s in June and came straight to
New York
!”

           
I stared at him. I couldn’t think of
a single thing to say. ‘’I have a cousin at Random House,” this Master went on,
“but there weren’t any openings there—”

           
Smart cousin.

           
'—but he has a good friend on the
board at Solenex, so he—”

           
“Solenex?”

           
“That’s the company that owns Craig,
Harry & Bourke.”

           
“Oh,” I said. I had vaguely known
that Craig, like most of the other
New York
publishing companies, was no longer an actual independent publisher but was a
subsidiary of some conglomerate somewhere, but the fact had never seemed to
matter very much. Not till now.

           
“Anyway,” Dewey said, “This fellow
at Solenex called somebody at Craig, Harry & Bourke, and the next thing I
knew, I was an editor!”

           
This is not happening, I thought.
And yet it was. The waiter brought Deweys new drink and I said, “On second
thought, I believe I will have another.”

           
The waiter gave me a dirty look and
went away, and Dewey said, “Of course, this is still a trial period for me.”

       
    
“For all of us,” I said.

           
“Eh?”

           
“Nothing.
Never mind. Tell me more.”

           
He gulped half a drink. “For right
now, of course,” he said, “I’m not generating any of my own projects, but that
will come. What Fve got on my plate so far is three books from Miss Douglas,
and some war books a man named
Scunthorpe
had.”

           
“The fellow who
died.”

           
“Oh, is that what happened to him?”
Glugg
went more bourbon into the Heffernan maw. “Anyway, what’s so exciting about
your
book is how it fits in so perfectly with what I want to do
anyway
!”

           
“That is nice.”

           
“See,” he said, gesturing widely, “I
want to do
adult
books, but with the
zing
and
zip
of
juveniles!”

           
“Oh?”

           
“Science fiction!”
He brought his unsteady hands close together over the table, palms down and
cupped slightly, as though holding down a soccer ball.
“Books
that just, just—
fly
out at you!”
And his hands flew up and out
and away, just missing the waiter with my new drink.
“Pop-ups!”
Dewey went on, all oblivious, staring madly at me. “You know what I mean? They
put ’em in
kids’
books!
Why not grown-up books?”

           
“Pop-ups in grown-up books,” I said.

           
The waiter said, “Would you care to
order?”

           
Dewey drained his drink. “Yeah!” he
said, but to me, not the waiter. “Start with science fiction, just to get the
idea across,
see
? You turn the page, and the
planet
comes up, or the
spaceship
comes up!”

           
Or the lunch, I thought.

           
The waiter said, “Are you ready to
order, gentlemen?” “But it wouldn’t,” Dewey said, “it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t
have to
stop
there!
All kinds of books.
War
books, historicals! You turn the page, and there’s the cavalry right there,
comes right up!”