Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (22 page)

           
She smiled at me, and at last I
understood it’s all right for Mary to indulge me, because when she does it
there’s no contempt in it. “Do you know why I believed you’d come back?” she
asked me.

           
“No, I don’t.”

           
“Because in all of your explanations
and all of your reasons and all of your statements of belief, there was one
word you never used when you talked about you and Ginger.”

           
“I have trouble with that word,” I
said.

           
She smiled again. “You use it
sometimes.”

           
This was to be one of the times. “I
love you,” I said.

           
IS it as though I’ve never been
away?

           
Wednesday night, I wasn’t sure if
Mary and I would or should go to bed together, so I dithered about it until she
reached up to grab my jaw and shake my head, saying, “Tom, / haven’t had a
friend on the side for the last nineteen months. That’s a
long
time. And
don’t say you’re sorry.” “I didn’t plan to say a word,” I assured her, though
some time later I did say, “Thank you,” which made her
laugh
again. And yesterday morning she was the one who said, “Thank you,” adding, “We’ll
have to do that at least three times a day for a good long while to get caught
up.”

           
“I’ll give it my full attention,” I
said. “But
you
aren’t going to be ogled and fondled and propositioned by
all those guys out there in the world any more.”

           
“Of course not.
When they look at me, they’ll see you in my eyes.”

           
“You bet they will.”

           
Which was the only
moment she showed any uncertainty at all.
About to get out of bed, she
paused to look back over her shoulder, frowning slightly. “Tom,” she said, “
you
are
home to stay, aren’t you?”

           
“You bet I am.”

           
“Why?”

           
“Because you wouldn’t put up with it
twice,” I said. “And I do love you, Mary, and I don’t want to lose you.”

           
She smiled, saying, “I wasn’t sure
you’d realize that.”

           
“I’m beginning to catch on. You probably
even know what you’d do if it happened again.”

           
“I’d leave
New York
,” she said.

           
I nodded, knowing I’d known that,
and feeling scared, because I just might have been dumb enough not to know it.
To avoid looking in the abyss, 1 said, “Do you know where you’d go?”

           
And that made her laugh, too. “
Helena
’s been writing me,” she said.

           
“
Helena
?”

           
“Lance’s old girlfriend, the one who
went to—”

           
“
Santa Fe
!” I said, remembering.
“The
one who forced Lance back into Ginger’s apartment!”
Which
started the chain of events, really.

           
“That’s right. She’s been writing me
for months, saying I should take the children out of school and move to
Santa Fe
.”

           
“What a bitch!”

           
“She says I could take wonderful
pictures there.”

           
“All those sunsets,” I said.
“Cactus.
Pick-up trucks.
Golly. ”

           
“She says it’s wonderful in
Santa Fe
. She says the men there aren’t insecure,”
she added, openly laughing at me.

           
“Oh, sure they are,” I said, but I
hunkered down under the covers for a few extra minutes.

           
If the kids were surprised to see me
that early in the morning, they were too hip to show it. (On the other hand, if
they
weren't
surprised to see me, they’re too hip to think about.) We
sat around the kitchen table together, me with my coffee and Mary with a plain
yogurt and the kids with Cap’n Crunch and peanut butter and jelly on English
muffin and orange juice and a sliced-up banana and coffee with lots of milk
(Bryan) and Earl Grey tea (Jennifer). We talked about nothing in particular,
and when the kids left for school Jennifer said, “See you tonight,” almost but
not quite making it a question. “See you tonight,” I told her.

           
In the grandness and folly of my
round-trip renunciation on Wednesday, I’d forgotten that all work and no play
makes
Tom a naked man. I’d brought my office home, but all
my clothing was still up at Ginger’s place. Therefore, early yesterday
afternoon I called her apartment, got my own voice telling me to call where I
was calling from (which meant the coast was clear), and then cabbed uptown, let
myself in with my keys, and went into the bedroom to see if Ginger had taken
the scissors to all my shirts, in traditional scorned- woman style.

           
No. Nothing of mine in either the
bedroom or bathroom had been touched, and I was surprised and somewhat touched
to realize Ginger expected me back. She thought we were still dancing the
mating dance, that we were still just doing things to keep our interest up, and
so she wouldn’t do anything irrevocable. Once she understood that she was
dancing alone, that the music had stopped, then she would be
really
mad.

           
I packed. I left my keys on the
kitchen table, and went away. I would have done something about my voice on the
answering machine, but what was there to do? “This is Tom
Diskant,
I’m not here right now, call me at . . .” and so on. Well, exactly. Everything
in the world was topsy-turvy, and my answering machine message was still
accurate.

           
THE CHRISTMAS BOOK!
At last.

           
I have held a copy in my hands. It
is beside me on the desk as I type, and it is
beautiful.
All the
hassles, all the trouble, the three editors, everything, it was all worth it.
The book is big and gorgeous and thoughtful and rich and magnificent. My
introduction isn’t as pompous as I’d feared, and the cheap color reproduction
process looks great.

           
Dewey called this morning, about
eleven-thirty, to say the books were in. This is a test run, about twenty-five
copies or so to make sure everything’s working well (and in fact there are a
couple of pages with color problems and a few last- minute corrections and
improvements), and then on Thursday they’ll actually start the print run. The
test copies were driven to the Craig offices from the printer in
Pennsylvania
this morning, and when they arrived Dewey
phoned and offered to messenger a copy down to me.

           
It was a changed Dewey. This is the
first I’ve spoken with him since that astounding phone call from his putative
father, and I guess old F. Ringwald Heffernan must have been on the level after
all, because this was a subdued and friendly and accommodating Dewey, obviously
doing his best to make amends. “
Its
a really terrific
book, Tom,” he said, and actually added, “I think you were right that the other
thing didn’t really fit in.”

           
“Thank you, Dewey,” I said, prepared
to be magnanimous.

           
We talked a bit more
,,
and then he said, “Are you working on anything in
particular at the moment, Tom?”

           
I had ordered Annie not to submit
Happy
Happy Happy
to Craig. “Oh, this and that,” I said.

           
“The reason I ask, I presented a
book idea to Mr. Wilson, and he said okay, and now I’m supposed to find a
writer.”

           
Have bygones ever more swiftly
become bygones? “Well, I’m not actually
tied up
with other work, Dewey,”
I said. “What is this book?”

           
“The history of
video games.”

           
“The history of
video games?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that video games had been around
long enough to
have
a history.

           
But apparently so.
“Sure,” he said. “From the earliest chess
computers,
and forerunners like pinball and slot machines. And don’t forget Tommy!”

           
“Tommy?”

           
“Tommy, the Pinball Wizard
,
the rock opera by The Who.
There’s
a historic moment in pop culture!”

           
“Ah,” I said. The old Dewey had not
been entirely repressed after all.

           
“I’m afraid I can’t offer you much
more than you got on
The Christmas Book
,” he said. “Your share, I mean.”

           
My mouth dry, I said, “But a
little
more, surely?” as though we were all just calmly bandying words about.

           
“Well, I guess everybody has to get
a little more every time,” he said, and laughed self-consciously. “I’m starting
to learn this business.”

           
I was dying to ask him about his
father, but I was afraid it would embarrass him; and maybe he didn’t know about
that call. I said, “I’ll have Annie phone you, work out the details.”

           
“Annie?”

           
“My agent,” I said. “Have you
learned that much about the business?”

           
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I know about
agents. They’re always trying to pull something.”

           
“Not my Annie,” I assured him.
“She’s very motherly and nice. You’ll like her.”

           
“Okay,” he said doubtfully. Then he
promised again to messenger the book, and we hung up, and he did messenger the
book, and here it is!

           
And
I’m about to get big
bucks for another book!

           
And
I’m back with Mary, back
in the bosom of my family and loving it!

           
Life is okay after all.

           
AT
eight a.m.
yesterday morning, the printers and
warehousemen and other skilled craftsmen at the Heritage Consolidated Press in
Potted Pine,
Pennsylvania
, went out on strike. Clerical workers and
other employees left at
noon
, in
sympathy. The union contract expired last June thirtieth, and the employees
have been working without a contract while negotiations have continued. The
employees decided to go out at this precise moment because Heritage
Consolidated was about to start on its single largest order of the year:
The
Christmas Book.

           
As usual, a union goes on strike to
pressure not the employer but some third party—in this case, Craig, Harry &
Bourke—in hopes the third party will apply direct pressure on the employer to
settle the dispute to the union’s satisfaction. According to Robert Wilson,
head honcho at Craig, who phoned me personally this morning to give me the
news—this is perhaps the third time I’ve spoken with him in my life—this time
the union’s strategy is unlikely to work. Not only does Craig have very little pressure
it can bring to bear on Heritage Consolidated, but Heritage Consolidated has
apparently been prepared to shut this plant down for some time—they have
others, mostly in the south—and are willing to treat an extended strike as a de
facto closing, which would be a lot cheaper than if the deed were done the
proper way, with severance pay and all the rest of it.

           
Unless the strike is settled by the
end of
next week
, there will be no copies of
The Christmas Book
at Christmas.

           
Because of Annie’s reversion clause,
if there is no
Christmas Book
this year, there is no
Christmas Book.

           
There is no Christmas Book.