Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (20 page)

           
I’VE been talking to this typewriter
less because I’ve been talking to Mary more. (She’s out at the library, and I’m
waiting for Annie to call back re Hallmark and the greeting card book.)

           
At first, I was extremely cautious
about talking to Mary, not wanting to sit through any more verbal sex scenes,
but they seem suddenly to have stopped. There hasn’t been one in the five weeks
since I moved my office back here, a change I try not to look at too closely.
There has certainly been nothing sexual between Mary and
me
in these
five weeks, and yet the other stuff has stopped. All right, it has stopped; I
avoid asking why. I merely accept with gratitude the opportunity to talk with
Mary again.

           
In the old days, she and I would
discuss the projects I was working on, the editors I was dealing with, all the
nuts and bolts of this endless extrusion of words, and her manner back then was
unfailingly calm and encouraging and receptive. It was
so
unfailingly
all those things, in fact, that I gradually came to the conclusion I was boring
her. Ginger takes a much more emotional part in my day-to-day business affairs,
being angry or excited or fearful or expectant on my account, so there’s never
any question as to whether she really means it. Up till now, I’ve much
preferred Ginger’s style to Mary’s.

           
The problem now is
,
Ginger’s emotionalism is precisely the wrong reaction to this lawsuit mess. If
I mention it at all to her, she just gets mad (as I did at first), accuses the
Muddnyfes of being frauds and conmen, and demands variously that I countersue,
that I have nothing to do with the matter, that I write a strongly-worded
letter to PEN insisting they take my side in the case, that I sue Craig for
letting the situation develop, that I phone Harold Muddnyfe direct and give him
a piece of my mind, that I write strongly-worded letters to all the
contributors of
The Christmas Book
demanding their moral, emotional
and
financial
support, and other similarly helpful suggestions. If I seem less
than totally enthusiastic about any of these windmill-chargings, Ginger gets
mad at
me,
accuses me of knuckling under, assures me I have a secret
urge to fail which is very common among white males of my age and background,
informs me I have no backbone, lets me know that I’m afraid of publishers in
general and Craig, Harry & Bourke in particular, says I might as well get a
job somewhere because I’ll clearly never make a living as a freelance, and in other
such ways improves the shining hour. So I tend not to bring the subject up.

           
Mary’s calm, on the other hand, has
never been more useful. Her assumption (which I now agree with) is that the
Muddnyfes are sincere but naive, and that they have merely misunderstood the
situation. What good that does me, and whether they will ever smarten up, I do
not know, but at least it’s comforting to believe that I’m not the object of a
conspiracy nor in the grip of a gang ot knowing clever confidence men.

           
Its
also
comforting to be able to turn to Mary after I’ve had a conversation with either
Dewey (my sole remaining contact at Craig), or with my attorney, Morris, who
assures me this case will take
"years
to resolve, Tom,
years.
A fascinating case.”
You do not want to hear your
attorney tell you you have a fascinating case.

           
No matter what happens, even if I am
totally vindicated (as I damn well ought to be), this thing is going to cost
me, starting with Morris’s fee and the loss of my own time. Craig’s attorney’s
went to court last week to try for a summary dismissal on the basis of the
Muddnyfes’ action being “frivolous and without merit,” but the judge denied the
motion, saying a trial would best determine whether the suit had no merit.
(Apparently he too thinks it’s a fascinating case.)

           
Now Craig’s attorneys are initiating
a countersuit, declaring the Muddnyfes’ action to be a deliberate “nuisance
suit,” of a kind fairly common in publishing (apparently, there are a lot of
creeps out there who figure it doesn’t cost that much to sue, and maybe a big
publisher will give them a few thousand bucks to go away and not cause too much
trouble), but Morris thinks the Muddnyfes’ obvious sincerity and unimpeachable
background doom that effort. After all, how much crime or moral turpitude is
possible to a woman confined to an iron lung? Nevertheless, Craig and I are
contractually lashed together in this enterprise, so I am listed as a party in
the countersuit, which I think a jury in the main suit (if it ever comes to
trial) is likely to hold against me.

           
Then there are the Muddnyfe
attorneys. They have one in Iowa, whose competence, according to Morris,
doesn’t extend much beyond the drawing up of farmers’ wills, but they have a
New York attorney as well, since this suit will be tried under the laws of New
York State, and their New York attorney is in
Elm/ral
What do they know
of big-city life, out there in Iowa, of the difference between New York, New
York and Elmira, New York, which are just as close together as anything on the
Rand McNally map? And what do they know of the publishing world in
Elmira
?
Nothing.
(Apparently, the
Elmira
attorney and the
Iowa
attorney went to college or camp or the Army or the daycare center
together, way back when, which is the normal, rational way things happen in
this world.)

           
For one happy millisecond I believed
the incompetence and ignorance of my opponents’ attorneys might be
good
for me, but Morris burst that bubble at once: “If they had a New York guy,” he
explained on the phone, “somebody who knew the publishing business, he’d know
right away what the story was and what his chances are, and we could maybe
resolve this thing. As it is, I’m on the phone to
Elmira
, he’s on the phone to
Iowa
, none of those people know what they’re
talking about, it’s gonna take
years
for them to gain the expertise to
be able to have a negotiation and know what the fuck the
terms
are.”

           
“Tell me less,” I said.

           
But he told me more: “To begin
with,” he said, “their dollar expectations are through the roof. They see
Norman Mailer, they see Mario Puzo, they see Arthur C. Clarke, they say,
‘Each
of those guys gets millions, so a book with all of them must be in the
zillions.’ So they want a discovery proceeding on the publisher’s financial
records, and you’ve already got three of your contributors going to court to
block any release of records pertaining to
them
because they aren’t part
of the suit, so that makes Iowa and Elmira doubly suspicious, so even if they
do get to see the records, by then they won’t believe them. So they’ll still
want zillions.”

           
“Tell me less, Morris,” I said.

           
“In addition,” he said, ignoring my
whimpers, “because they don’t know anything they find it very hard to agree to
anything. Initially, they were determined to hold up publication of the book until
the suit was settled—”

           
“Oh, Jesus.”

           
“—because they
didn’t want the book published without the plaintiff’s name on it.
Maureen Muddnyfe could breathe her last at any minute—”

           
“From your lips to God’s ear,” I
said.

           
“Wouldn’t help,” he said. “The estate
could, and certainly would, continue the suit. And if you think it’s tough to
go into court and beat the bedridden, that’s
nothing
to trying to win a
judgment over the dead.”

           
“Hell.”

           
“Anyway, they actually went into a
courtroom here in
New York
County
—Pudney took the stage all the way down from
Elmira
—and they demanded the book not be published
before resolution of the action. We finally had to show them a couple of the
contracts with contributors with the time limit
on it—“

           
“That was Annie’s idea,” I said.
What Annie had done, in arranging the terms by which I would be buying the
original material for the book, was put a time limit on our ownership of first
publication rights, and the time limit is this calendar year. It helped us get
a lot of people who were otherwise reluctant to contribute, because it meant
that if for some reason the book never got published, they wouldn’t have to
buy
their pieces back to publish them elsewhere.

           
“Well, thank Annie next time you see
her,” Morris said, “because once Pudney understood the reversion clause— which
took, I may say, considerable time—and once he had managed to communicate that
understanding to the folks in Iowa, they no longer insisted on a halt in the
publishing schedule.”

           
“I should think not.”

           
“What they want now,” Morris said,
“is for you and Maureen Muddnyfe to be listed as co-editors, which at least
gets—”

           
“What?”

           
“—her name on the book, so she can
see it before she expires. His argument—”

           
“Morris! I am biting the telephone!”

           
“—is that while this issue is still
suh
judice
and not resolved, you and Mrs. Muddnyfe have equal claim to
authorship and—”

           
“Morris Morris Morris!”

           
“Well,
its
absurd, of course,” Morris said.

           
“Thank you, Morris.”

           
“But Pudney doesn’t know it yet. See
the problem? You know and I know, and I certainly hope the judge knows, that
putting Maureen Muddnyfes name on the book is
itself
a resolution of the
suit, in her favor, but all Pudney can see is that it will make a dying woman
happy, so why are we New Yorkers all being so stony-hearted, when eventually
the court will decide the issue anyway, no matter what it says on the book.”

           
“Oh, God,” I said.

           
“We are going to spend the next
several years,” Morris told me, “educating our friend Pudney in legal matters
that will be of absolutely no use to him in
Elmira
,
New York
.”

           
“And I’m paying the tuition,” I
said.

           
“You’re helping,” he agreed.

           
I have just received the most
astonishing phone call. I was sitting here revising the Mayan piece for
Geo
—I
am having to fudge the fact that we really don’t
know
much about their
interior decorating—when the phone rang and a heavy, loud, authoritative male
voice barked, “Thomas J. Diskant?” My first assumption, of course, was that
this was something horrible to do with the lawsuit, and I came very close to
denying my identity; but then I thought,
They'll get me anyway
, so I
said, “Speaking.”

           
“This is F. Ringwald Heffernan,” the
voice commanded. He sounded like a cross between a Marine drill sergeant and an
oldtime factory owner.

           
I didn’t quite catch the
significance of the name at first, still having lawsuits on the brain, so I
merely said, “Yes?”

          
“My son told me all about that book
of yours,” he ordered.

           
“Son?”

           
“Dewey!”

           
“Dewey; Dewey
Heffernan?"

           
“Certainly!”

           
“Wait a minute. You’re . . . I’m
sorry, I didn’t catch the name.”

           
“F. Ringwald Heffernan. I’m calling
to tell you there won’t be any more trouble from Dewey.”

           
I stared at the phone. Who did I
know who would play such a bizarre practical joke? I couldn’t think of a word
to say.

           
F. Ringwald hollered on, without my
help: “He told me about that piece of trash he had that fellow draw, told me
the trouble you made—”

           
“Oh, now—”

           
“—I told him, ‘Goddamit, Dewey,
what’s the matter with you, boy? You had no business acting like that. It’s
that man’s book, Dewey, it isn’t yours,
you’re
the
midwife
,
boy. Wouldn’t put up with such balderdash in
my
business, and don’t you
forget it.’ Sat him down in the library after dinner, gave it to him straight
from the shoulder.”

           
“Oh,” I said.

           
“Told him, ‘Crawl
before you fly, boy.’
Told him, ‘When you come to work
for
me
, you’d better have all this nonsense out of your system.’
Told him, ‘I sent you out into the world to make your mistakes and get them over
with, and they’re turning out to be beauts.’ Told him, ‘
Any
more of this and I take the car keys.’
Straightened him right
up.”

           
“I guess you did,” I said.

           
“Got a pencil?”

           
I lunged for one.
“Yes,
sir!”

           
“Write this down. Area code two oh
three.
Four six five, nine nine five oh.
Dewey gives
you any more trouble, you phone
me
.”

           
“Thank you,” I said.

           
“But there won’t
be
any more
trouble. I straightened him right up.”

           
“Thank you,” I said.

           
“Nice talking with you,” he
demanded.
“Looking forward to the book.”

           
“Thank you,” I said.

           
“Very fond of Christmas,” he
decreed, and shot the phone. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

           
I can’t think about the Mayans now,
not after F. Ringwald Heffernan. Could that call possibly have been on the
level? I didn’t recognize the voice, and it’s too
weird
to be a joke.
Anyway, it’s time to go turn the oven on to three- twenty-five.

           
Done.
In
lieu of the Mayans, for the next half hour until Mary gets home, I’ll think
about my own imperiled and changing lifestyle. I don’t quite know what’s
happening any more, except that I seem to be spending more time downtown than
uptown. This is partly caused by the continuing saga of the drifting Lance, and
partly by Ginger’s sudden urge toward self-improvement.

           
Lance first. The apartment sharing
with his co-worker Bradford lasted just seventeen days. On the thirteenth of
this month, two weeks ago today, he moved out, and I mean
out.
He’s
gotten himself transferred to some other wholly-owned CBS subsidiary, doing
some other arcane sociological research, but the point is that the new job is
in
Washington
.
Our nation’s capital.
We had a drink before he left and he said, “There’s more women down there, the
male-female ratio is very very good from my point of view. But better than
that, I understand they’ve still got some women that are interested in men.
Just think; never again will I be in a discussion about Givenchy.” He also said
they don’t have herpes down there, but that sounds like fantasy.

           
Anyway, now that he’s living in
Washington
he’ll be performing his daddy obligations a
bit differently
Every
other weekend he’ll take the
shuttle up to
New York
Friday afternoon and back down to DC Sunday evening. And guess where
he’ll spend Friday and Saturday nights?

           
Well, as he himself said (while Ginger
stood thinlipped and narrow-eyed in the background), “You’re not really using
the office any more, Tom, and it saves me a lot of hotel money.”

           
As for Ginger, for reasons best
known to herself she is suddenly taking two evening courses at the New School—
Japanese political history on Tuesday and Thursday, European silent film on
Wednesday—which has altered our lives in other ways. Three evenings a week,
Gretchen and Joshua dine with their babysitter while I meet Ginger at
seven
thirty-five
, when
her courses get out, and we eat in some Village restaurant before going uptown.

           
Changes make more changes. Since I’m
working on
17th Street
and the
New
School
is on
12th Street
, it makes no sense for me to go way uptown
on those days, so I hang around here when the day’s work is done. I’ve been
helping
Bryan
with his English homework, and Jennifer and
I have a massive Scrabble tournament under way. I usually sit down at table
with them and Mary, because what else would I do while they’re eating dinner? I
eat lightly, but nevertheless this means I’m downing two dinners three nights a
week, and I’m beginning to put those pounds back on that Vickie took off.

           
I wonder what the Mayans did when
things got too confusing.