Final Edit

by Robert A Carter

  “Ah, I see you’re stoking up, Nick,” he said. There was a sour note in his voice, as though he were reprimanding me somehow, the way a small boy might be scolded for stuffing himself with too much cake and ice cream.

  “So what’s it with you, Harry?”

  “Oh shit,” he said softly. “That goddamn son of a bitch.”

  “Which one?”

  “Parker Foxcroft,” he said, putting a spin of contempt in every syllable of the great editor’s name.

  “What about Parker?”

  “That poor girl,” Harry said. “I feel sorry for her, mixed up with that lousy bastard.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She looks as though she can take care of herself. And she certainly is of age. What’s the problem?”

  “He spoils every woman he touches,” said Bunter. I’m not often shocked these days; book publishers, like movie and television producers, are exposed to every kind of depravity—secondhand. But Harry’s vehemence did startle me. Then I remembered there had been rumors around the office that Parker had been having an affair with Harry’s wife, Claire. Usually I ignore the local quidnuncs, but if the report was true…

  “I don’t know how he gets away with it,” Bunter said, “but someday, someday—somebody is going to fix that prick for good.”

  Time to change the subject. I asked Harry how things were going on the rights front. He brightened. “A good season,” he said. “You really brought us some lovely properties.”

  And he began to rattle off his recent string of sales, large and small, to this reprint house and that book club or magazine. I listened happily to his soothing litany while looking over the rail at the flickering lights of Georgetown. For by now we had reversed course and were heading downriver. I leaned back in my chair, content to enjoy the night air and the moonlight and the largesse of The New Yorker. It wasn’t such a bad kickoff for the ABA, after all.

  Chapter 4

  Saturday morning, the first day the trade fair opens to convention-goers. I had breakfast in my room: eggs Benedict, by no means up to the standards set by my treasured cook, Pepita, but satisfactory; coffee, piping hot, a welcome improvement on most hotel room service; and both the Times and the Washington Post. Neither paper had any coverage of the ABA.

  At the Convention Center, I headed straight for the Barlow & Company booth. It was a few minutes before nine. All hands were there, including Harry Bunter. Harry had a pair of dark half-moons under his eyes; I wondered if it was a hangover, or just a sleepless night.

  “All set, folks?” I said. Mary Sunday and Chezna Newman smiled and nodded; Toby Finn gave me the thumbs-up sign. Harry shrugged and said: “As ready as I’ll ever be.” The cigarette holder in his hand shook slightly as he raised it to his lips, for the last few puffs before the crowd arrived. The ABA is strictly a nonsmoking affair.

  For rights directors like Harry, the ABA has become a must. Though the ostensible purpose of the convention is to sell books to the trade, and to launch one’s new list, there are agents there as well as booksellers, and foreign publishers by the score; which means that there are deals being made, both on the floor and in hotel suites, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Harry was there to see what he could sell, primarily, but also what we might buy.

  Herbert Poole’s next book, for example. I had to do something about that.

  Now the doors opened, and the booksellers rushed into the exhibit hall. It was rather like the running of the bulls at Pamplona. Here they came, people of all sizes, shapes, and colors. I have never been able to find a common denominator for the breed of person who opens a bookstore, no genus librurium, so to speak—though I have often reflected that only wine or flower merchants could claim to trade in stuff as precious as do the booksellers.

  And what a motley assortment of costumes I saw among them: Hawaiian sport shirts, tee-shirts in every color of the rainbow and bearing every conceivable brand name or slogan; elderly gents in shorts and white socks with black shoes; baseball caps and straw hats; women pushing strollers or bearing infants on their backs like papooses. And there were shopping carts and wheeled luggage carriers, the better for those pushing or pulling them to collect all the loot the publishers were giving away in their booths.

  What were we handing out so liberally? Shopping bags in paper and in cloth; calendars; posters; buttons with our company name or the title of a book on them; free reading copies; candy; coffee; balloons; catalogs; flyers; occasionally even food. Chotchkes of all kinds. The trade show had all the panache and calculated frenzy of a carnival.

  As I watched the parade go past, I was struck by how much like the ABAs of years past this all was. Only the booths were more elaborate and much costlier; this convention was different in scale but not in kind from all the others. Some of the “booths” manned by major publishers were the size of New York City studio apartments, complete with couches, chairs, and elaborate bookcases. There were also huge illuminated signs, and TV sets endlessly showing the same videos of book jackets and grimly smiling authors. Bigger and better displays to draw in the booksellers, who, as always, were outnumbered by the publishers.

  “Good morning, Nick Barlow.” I turned, startled by a silvery voice, coming from right behind me. It was Parker Foxcroft’s companion from the party last evening—what was her name? Susan—

  “Susan Markham, right?” I said.

  “You have a good memory, Mr. Barlow.”

  “Only when somebody—or something—is memorable,” I said. “And call me Nick, by all means.”

  She smiled. A lovely smile, quick and bright and altogether winning—and stunning aquamarine eyes. Today she was wearing black spandex pants and a matching top. I looked at her again, this time without benefit of a vodka martini. She was even more beautiful than I had remembered.

  “You’re not in your booth?” I said.

  “I’m not officially on duty,” she replied. “I was sent here more to learn what happens at ABA, and possibly as a reward for good conduct.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “Most of us would be happy if we could treat this as a holiday.”

  “But surely you can keep whatever schedule you like, Nick.”

  “Sure. But I still have to show the flag from time to time. Is this your first visit to Washington?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you ought to go sight-seeing.”

  “It would be more fun,” she said, looking at me directly, and speaking in measured tones, “if I had a knowledgeable guide to show me around.”

  For a moment I stood perfectly still, without a word to say. I realized that I was being offered an invitation by this beautiful young woman; I was both touched and flattered. But—

  “I only wish I could oblige you,” I said, shrugging. “Unfortunately—”

  “You’re tied up.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to resort to a guidebook.” And she strolled off down the aisle.

  I knew I had rejected an overture that would not be made to me again. Why? I wondered. Because I no longer believed in casual encounters? Because I did not wish to be involved, even in a fleeting liaison, a flirtation? It wasn’t that I felt too old for Susan Markham, not at all. Then what was it that held me back?

  The passage of time, I suppose. ABAs past and ABAs present.

  At ABAs past, I somehow felt that a successful seduction was almost obligatory, whether it was a conquest or simply a matter of serendipity.

  Elaine, for one… she hadn’t been sent to Washington by her publisher, but had come on her own, and had no room at the hotel, so she spent the night in mine… Though she was determined to be chaste, her resolve weakened before the night was over and she cast off the slip she was wearing, cried out: “This isn’t fair to you!” and mounted me, taking me into her willing young body…

  Vicki, for another… she had worked at Barlow & Companyfor a time, hut then moved to another firm. We happened to he alone in an elev
ator at the Shoreham… she having come from the pool, still in her bathing suit with a towel over her shoulders… When she dropped her room key on the floor of the elevator, I picked it up, and when we got to her floor, I left the elevator with her, the key still in my hand, and when we reached the door of her room, I unlocked it and went in with her… Bless you, dear Vicki…

  Then there was Martha… I invited her to my room for drinks before going out to the Jockey Club for dinner… We had the drinks but forgot about the dinner and ordered from room service… later she said: “I didn’t plan to go to bed with you, Nick… yes, I did; I wore my prettiest underwear.” We had planned to make love in the bathtub, but forgot about that, too, left the water running and flooded the bathroom floor…

  There were others, of course, all of them fondly remembered; and some who found me resistible, or found other men more attractive, or just weren’t there for me. Failure can often be as poignant in recollection as success, and far more instructive.

  During the lunch break I called Margo Richmond, hoping her voice would relieve the somewhat sour taste of the self-restraint I had experienced in refusing Susan Markham’s invitation to show her Washington.

  Though I half expected an answering machine when I called her apartment—we talk to more machines on the phone these days than people—Margo was there.

  “Nick,” she said, “it’s good to hear from you.”

  Margo and I have discussed, off and on, the possibility of living together—just the possibility—and not marriage, certainly. “We tried that, and it didn’t work for either of us,” said she, and I couldn’t disagree. Marriage, as someone once remarked, is a romance in which the hero dies in the first act.

  “Are you having fun?”

  “No,” I said, “but I won’t bore you with the details.”

  “No little fling?”

  “I am saving myself for you, my love.”

  “Is that irony I detect in your voice, Nicky?”

  “There is no one in New York I miss but you, darling, and that’s the truth.”

  She was silent for a moment. “You mustn’t depend on me too much, my dear. I’m not cut out to be a support system for the male ego.”

  “But you have been a pal,” I said, “and more.”

  “And also less,” she said softly.

  Before ringing off, we agreed to have dinner one evening soon after I got back from Washington. It is never easy living in the world of the liberated woman, but it is certainly always exciting.

  That afternoon Parker Foxcroft showed up in our booth. Only Mary Sunday, Harry Bunter, and I were there at the time. Parker walked over to Bunter, who was replenishing our supply of catalogs. He had his empty cigarette holder clamped between his teeth, suffering, I suspected, from nicotine withdrawal. At any rate, he seemed in no mood for small talk when Foxcroft confronted him by saying, in stentorian tones: “I called the office yesterday, Bunter.”

  Harry looked up, took the cigarette holder out of his mouth, and said mildly, “So?”

  “I spoke to your secretary.”

  At this Harry visibly bristled. “What the hell for?” he demanded.

  “I wanted to know if you’d sent the galleys of Rainbow Territory to the book clubs.” Rainbow Territory was one of Parker’s strongest contenders for—what else?—next year’s National Book Award for fiction. “She told me you had not, although you promised to do so last week.”

  “Listen, Foxcroft,” said Harry, “you let me run my office my own way, and I’ll let you run yours.”

  “Well, I took the liberty of telling her myself to send the galleys out.”

  At this, Harry blew, nor could I blame him. “You meddling son of a bitch,” he said. “I decide when the galleys go out, and when they don’t.”

  Parker stepped back a pace. “No need to get abusive,” he said.

  “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again, or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” said Parker, Mr. Cool himself.

  “Oh, go to hell,” said Harry. I stepped in, thinking it was about time somebody broke up the combatants, but Harry would have none of the peacemaking process. He shoved the catalogs he was holding into their carton and stalked off, all the way back to New York, as it later turned out, probably to change the locks on his office. It occurred to me while watching this little scene unfold that it was probably quite true that his wife had been having an affair with Parker Foxcroft. Nothing else, not even Parker’s interference in Harry’s office, would account for his anger and his bitterness.

  Chapter 5

  Sunday morning. “Complacencies of the peignoir, and late coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,” wrote Wallace Stevens in his magnificent poem. Not for me those pleasures. For Sunday is the same as any other day at the ABA. The publishers are in their booths; the booksellers roam the halls again in search of enlightenment, or at least in search of freebies, most of which are gone by the second day of the convention. In other words, business as usual. I doubt anyone here much thinks of worship or even of playing golf—well, worship anyway. I’m sure things are different at the Christian Booksellers Association Convention, which is usually held somewhere in the Bible Belt, but I’ve never attended one of those. Barlow & Company, thank God, has no religious list. I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state—and literature. While I respect those publishers who deal in denominational titles, I am convinced that religious differences, along with nationalism, have been responsible for most of the world’s worst calamities and much of its human misery.

  I put in some time at the booth again, listening to a few complaints from booksellers who had received books with defective jackets, or whose credit had been suspended for one reason or another, chatting up visitors on the merits of my fall list, and patrolling the corridors myself, to see what the competition was up to.

  Then I headed for the autographing tables in the rear of the hall, looking for Herbert Poole.

  I found him busy signing copies of his book fed to him one after another by a young woman from his publishing house and by his agent, Kay McIntire. A long line of booksellers had formed in front of the Poole table.

  When I caught Kay Mclntire’s eye, I waved at her. She waved back, and motioned me to move to the side of the room, where she joined me shortly afterward.

  “Good morning, Nick,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’re looking for an autograph, are you?”

  I smiled—coyly, I hope. “Only on a contract,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve heard that Poole might want to write a mystery. If that is true, I’d like to talk deal with you, Kay.”

  Kay McIntire is one of the most honest and straightforward agents I know, and surely the most attractive. We’ve known each other for years, and but for the presence of Margo in my life, I would certainly have thought of her in romantic terms. Once, when the three of us were having dinner at The Players, Hartley Reed, the advertising genius and one of my authors, approached our table, took Kay’s hand in his, and said: “You’re the most beautiful woman in this room, and I’m dying to know your name.”

  Later, down in the Grill Room of the Club, when I was ordering after-dinner drinks, Reed came up to me and asked—nay, demanded—to meet her again. “Arrange a lunch for the three of us. Pick any restaurant you like,” he said. “How about La Grenouille?”

  I knew that Hartley was much married—thirty years or more, I figured. “You’re thinking of leaving the reservation, are you?” I said.

  “My friend,” he replied in a deep, solemn voice, “I have never been on the reservation.”

  The lunch, however, did not take place because—but that’s another story. At the moment, I was thinking of Kay only as an agent.

  “How about it, Kay? Is Mr. Poole ready to jump ship?”

  “You know I wouldn’t encourage an author to leave his publisher for somebody else,” she said, “unless his publisher was somehow wrong for him.”

  “But if he
wants to write a mystery—”

  “I’m not recommending that, either,” said Kay, considering her words with great care. “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea for him to break step quite so sharply. Readers will expect him to follow Pan at Twilight with—well, Pan at Twilight Two, I suppose.”

  “I’m mistaken in my assumption, then?”

  “Mmm,” she said, “not entirely. But it’s certainly premature to think about a contract, Nick. Much too soon.”

  I looked again at the autographing table. Poole was still signing, smiling frequently, leaning forward to pick up a signee’s name, murmuring an occasional comment. He looked younger than I had expected: full head of curly blond hair, a tanned, lean face, the kind of author who would photograph or televise well, and who could expect to be regarded as a sex object in his own right, leaving aside the kind of books he wrote.

  As I watched, he continued to work the line of autograph seekers, most of whom were women—looking as though there was no place in all the world he would rather be than right here, scribbling away, risking writer’s cramp to satisfy his loyal fans. One young woman in shorts and a tee-shirt was carrying a small baby. Poole leaned over the table, and I thought—My God, do you suppose he’s going to kiss it?—but he only tickled the child under the chin.

  “I understand,” I said. “Any chance of the three of us dining tonight?”

  She shook her head. “We have movie interest, and the interested party is here in Washington”—she named a well-known Hollywood producer—“but I’ll let you know if or when we’re ready to talk to you. You know I admire Barlow and Company, Nick.”

  “I appreciate that.”