Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (16 page)

           
“And there’s always pornography,” I
suggested.

           
Dewey blinked owlishly at me,
stymied.

           
The waiter said,
“Would
you
like to order now?”

           
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I’ll have the
sole
Veronique
.”

           
“And to begin?”

           
“The endive
salad.”

           
“Thank you.” He turned to Dewey.
“Sir?”

           
Dewey frowned massively, looking
utterly helpless. “I don’t know, I—” He stared at the closed menu beside him,
then
looked at me. “What was that you said?”

           
“Sole
Veronique."

           
“Okay.” Dewey nodded to the waiter
as he pointed at me. "That’s what I’ll have.”

           
“And to begin?”

           
“Begin?” said Dewey.

           
“The other gentleman is having the
endive salad.”

           
“Oh. Okay. I’ll have that, too. Oh,
and another one of these drink things.”

           
“Yes, sir.”

           
The waiter left. Dewey rubbed a
knuckly hand over his mouth, frowning at his place. A busboy removed the
display plates, which startled Dewey; he jumped slightly,
then
stared after the busboy. I said, “What does
Wilson
have to say about
The Christmas Book
,
do you know?”

           
He considered that.
“Who?”

           
“Robert Wilson. The managing
editor,
or whatever his title is.
The man
in charge.”

           
“Oh. I haven’t met him. Actually, I
haven’t met many people yet. It’s the slow season, the summer.”

           
“Yes.”

           
“I suppose it’ll pick up in
September.” He sounded a bit wistful.

           
“Yes, it probably will.”

           
Conversation lagged until his next
drink was brought; after one slug, he grinned at me and said, “Let’s talk about
the book.”

           
“Good,” I said.
“Let’s.”

           
“It isn’t too late to add stuff,” he
said. “I asked around specifically on that, and we still have time.”

           
“The book’s pretty full, Dewey,” I
said.

           
“Well, we could take some stuff
out,” he said. “
There’s
some kinda downers in there,
all that Death Row stuff and all.”

           
“Norman Mailer won’t give the money
back,” I said. He didn’t understand me. “What?”

           
“I’m pretty sure Truman Capote won’t
either.”
“Money?”

           
“The publisher has
paid
for
all those things, Dewey,” I explained. “I think the company would be upset if
they paid for things and then we didn’t use them.”

           
“Oh,” he said. “Well, what about the
real old stuff?
Old paintings and things.”

           
“What did you want to replace them
with, Dewey?” Our endive salads arrived, but I paid no attention. I was
visualizing Santa Clauses, popping-up.

           
But what Dewey said was,
‘'Heavy
Metal''

           
“Beg pardon?”

           
“You know. The cartoonists that work
in
Heavy Metal
or
The
National
Lampoon."

           
"Heavy Metal’s
a
magazine,” I said, remembering.

           
“Yeah, sure!
It’s
youth
, Tom!”

           
Youth.
Anatomically correct sex comic strips; science fiction comic strips in which
people’s heads are blown off in careful red detail; drug comic strips.
In place of all those old paintings and things.

           
Dewey was saying, “We could get some
great
stuff from those guys, Tom! Korban! Crumb!
Really
terrific impact, audience grabbers.
Put some
zing
in the book!”

           
I filled my mouth with endive, to
give me time to think. Watching me do so, Dewey did the same. And what I
thought was this: This creature cannot actually hurt me, because his ideas are
utterly impractical and absurd. We are to have copies of this book in the
stores late in October, which means that now, late in
July,
there isn’t time to commission a
Heavy Metal
cartoonist to give us a
drawing of Santa Claus fucking a space monkey. So he is merely babbling, and
cannot actually
hurt
me at all.

           
And what I further thought was this:
On the other hand, Dewey Heffernan cannot help me in any way. His eagerness for
the book adds up to the same thing as some other caretaker editor’s
indifference, because nobody over at Craig will give this buffoon the time of
day. Even if he knew
how
to talk to publicity or sales or production,
even if he could find his way to their offices, they would pay him not the
slightest bit of attention. What I have been given for an editor this time is a
vacuum.

           
And what I finally thought was this:
Since he can neither hurt nor help me, since he is merely a child learning how
to use a push-button phone and what you do in a midtown restaurant at
lunchtime, since he is merely a trainee learning at my expense—who, if he
remembers this lunch at all ten years from now, will look back on it in wincing
embarrassment—there’s no point getting mad at him, or insulting him, or getting
on my high horse. So I swallowed my endive, and took a deep breath, and smiled,
and said, “Good salad, huh?”

           
“Yeah!” he said.

           
He ordered another bourbon when the
sole
Veronique
came. No one mentioned wine, and I chose not to have a
third drink. Dewey was very amused about the grapes on his fish. He told me
about college days, and about his plans for knocking the publishing world on
its ear, and in the course of lunch he became quite drunk. The waiter and I
both had to help him figure out the tip and how to sign the credit card slip
and all that, and then he would have left the galleys package behind if I
hadn’t remembered it. He didn’t seem to realize he was drunk, but just thought
he was having a good time.

           
I walked him as far as his building,
which I felt was good Samaritan enough; when last seen, Dewey was staggering
toward the wrong bank of elevators, the galleys package clutched to his chest
the way schoolgirls carry their books.

           
I then took a train, and the
3:50
ferry, and walked to this house where I
have removed most of my clothes, and now it’s
my
turn to get drunk.

           
HOME again. In more ways than one,
since I finally have my office back.
Though that may not be
permanent.

           
At the moment, Lance has taken
Gretchen and Joshua to
California
for a two-week stay with relatives of
his—of theirs, too, come to think of it—in
Marin
County
, north of
San
Francisco
. He’ll be
back in two weeks, and is supposed to have some sort of alternate living
quarters worked out by then, but I must say I’ve begun to lose faith in Lance’s
ability to get his life in order.

           
After its shaky
beginning, with Mary and the blessedly- departed Vickie, the month’s vacation
worked out very well.
The kids took care of themselves to an extent that
just isn’t possible here in the city, and Ginger and I had time to get sort of
reacquainted and remember why we’d come together in the first place. I did a
lot of work—magazine pieces, and a start on a presentation for a book about the
history of greeting cards that Annie thinks maybe she can get Hallmark or
somebody to subsidize—and we both got healthier and healthier, and hardly
fought at all.

           
Friday was Ginger’s thirty-fourth
birthday; the annual trauma. Nobody ever wants to be the age they are, and this
was no exception. We went to the local restaurant, Le Dock, just the two of us,
and splurged on champagne, and Ginger got wistful and misty-eyed toward the end
of the evening, saying, “Where are we headed, Tom? Where are we going? What are
we doing? Where are we all headed?”

           
“Ginger,” I said, my hand on hers on
the table, “why don’t we get married?”

           
She looked at me with such alarm and
shock that I thought she might leap to her feet in another instant and flee the
table, the restaurant, the island and possibly the country. However, she
didn’t; instead, she stared wide-eyed at me while I had plenty of time to
realize what an insane thing that had been to suggest: What if she’d said yes?

           
Well, she wasn’t going to say yes,
that much was clear from the beginning. What she did say, at last, on a rising
inflection, was, “Whaa-^//?”

           
Did I have to repeat myself? Did I
now have to justify my moment’s madness? “It just seemed an idea,” I said.

           
She withdrew her hand from mine,
closed it around the champagne glass, and shakily drank. Then she frowned at me
for a few seconds, frowned at the table, shook her head and said, in a tone of
quiet awe, “That was really very
nice,"
as though things that were
nice came her way so seldom she hardly recognized them. “It was,” she said,
agreeing with herself, and looked at me again as a pair of large tears grew in
her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, glistening in the candlelight. “That was
so sweet, Tom,” she said, putting her hand back on mine. “I’ll never forget that.”

           
I probably never will, either.

           
It did all end well, however, my
gesture accepted for the noble act it was, without my having to stand by it. We
weaved our way homeward from the restaurant by the pale light of the
just-past-full moon and sat on the rear deck in the silver darkness for nearly
an hour, silent, holding hands. I fell asleep for a while, and I think Ginger
did, too.

           
The next day, yesterday, Lance came
out in the morning to hamper his childrens packing. Kids travel with ridiculous
things, and they never seem to mind how many different suitcases and cartons
and duffle bags they fill: “You can’t
carry
that much,” is being said,
at any instant in time, by probably several thousand exasperated parents to
several thousand uncomprehending children all over
America
. In this instance, of course, I was all in
favor of Gretchen and Joshua taking with them to Marin County every comic book,
every soccer ball, every shiny stone and broken scallop shell, every LP record
and tattered magazine and half-deck of playing cards and single sneaker and
cuddly doll and Incredible Hulk poster they
wanted
to take to Marin
County, because otherwise
I
would have to transport all that crap here
to New York; which eventually, of course, I did have to do, today.

           
At the last possible minute
yesterday, Gretchen realized there were several thousand other Gretchens (all
these kids look the same and most of them have the same half-dozen names, its
like a science-fiction movie) that she
must
say goodbye to, so off she
went, so of course they missed that ferry and Lance had a conniption, and
pretty soon everybody was yelling at everybody else, except that Ginger and I
didn’t have any reason to yell at one another and therefore didn’t, which even
further increased our sense of solidarity.

           
Lance, in his rage, kept
establishing the point that this delay would mean they’d have to take a taxi
from Bay Shore directly to Kennedy Airport in order not to miss their plane,
rather than take the Long Island Railroad to Jamaica and
then
a cab
which he had previously worked out and which would be much less expensive, but
it’s useless to talk to children about how expensive or cheap things are. They
knew Lance was angry, that’s as far as their comprehension could go. Gretchen
blubbered until the next boat, and was still blubbering as it left to cross the
Great South Bay
, and for all I know she’s still blubbering
now, in
Marin
County
.

           
Profiting by Lance’s example, I
ordered Bryan and Jennifer to say
their
goodbyes before lunch today and
refused to let them out of my sight for the two hours between the end of lunch
and the departure of our ferry, when we would be doing our packing anyway.
Nevertheless, various troubles and traumas did arise, and this time Ginger and
I did have reasons to yell at one another and therefore did, but nobody’s bad
temper lasted very long because in truth we’d liked that month in that house
and were all sorry to be leaving.

           
The simple life.
Why not?