Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42

by A Likely Story (v1. 1)

  She shook her head. “That isn’t important, Tom,” she said. “Thank you for saying it, but that isn’t what matters. People are sorry about things all the time, that’s as easy as breathing. Right now, I can hear myself, I sound stuffy and bloodless and I wish I wasn’t like that, so I’m sorry about it, but it doesn’t help, I’m still that way.”

  “No, you’re not. My God, just because you aren’t screaming all the time—”

  “But I am.” She glanced at me, then stepped back to consider the flower arrangement in the vase. “You just can’t hear me, that’s all,” she said.

  I had to put my arms around her then, and stop talking, and I’m not sure which of us was trembling more. I kissed her mouth and her cheeks, tasting salt, and finally I said, “I am sorry.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s the wrong word.”

  Arms still around her, I leaned back to see her expression. “It is?”

  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.

  Friday, October 7th

  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.

  Tuesday, October 11th

  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.

  Friday, October 14th

  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.

  Friday, November 25th

  I am still recuperating from yesterday, Thanksgiving Day. A true harvest festival, the closest thing in Puritan America to real hedonism, the one day a year when gluttony is not only acceptable but required. (Another of the seven deadly sins memorialized.)

  While it is true that the first Thanksgiving Day was celebrated as a sit-down harvest gala among the early Pilgrims and some tame neighborhood Indians, the feast did not become a national holiday until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation on the subject. Proclamations kept the holiday alive year by year until 1941, when Congress made it a permanent addition to the American calendar.

  Lincoln’s proclamation—Thanksgiving, not emancipation—was done at the urging of one Sarah Josepha Hale, then editor of Godey's Lady's Book, who was also the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” among other works, and who, an ardent feminist, persuaded Vassar Female College, founded in 1861, to delete the word “Female” from its name in 1867. If she’d stopped to think how many American women down through the decades would be struggling to cook (without drying them out) twenty-two pound turkeys on the fourth Thursday of every November, she might well have told Lincoln to forget it.

  It’s been six weeks since I added anything to this history; not since labor and management got together out there in Pennsylvania to kill my baby. I understand the strike is still going on, is likely to last a lot longer, and has begun to spread to some of the company’s southern plants as well. It looks as though both sides are going to suffer a lot. Good.

  There is no Christmas Book, but good things did come of it. The money, for instance; the lack of a book wasn’t my fault, nor the contributors’ fault, so we all got to keep our payments. And then there’s Highest Previous Score, which is our working title for the history of video games. Since my track record now includes the money I was paid for The Christmas Book, Annie got me a ttiuch higher advance for Highest Previous Score than would have happened last year. (Beat my highest previous score, in fact.) Also, Dewey continues to combine contriteness for past misdeeds with a wonderful galumphing enthusiasm for this new book, so it may even get good support from the company when it comes out next September. (It’ll be next year’s Craig, Harry & Bourke Christmas book, of course.)

  And video games are really interesting when you get to know about them, in a way. Sort of. Well, bearable, anyway. (There’s something I wouldn’t tell anybody but Mary, which is the truth: Video games are even more boring to read about and write about than to play. But what I am is a professional, and what Highest Previous Score is is what they’ll pay me to write. Listen, it could be Erik Estrada’s autobiography.)

  But what made me think about The Christmas Book again is something that came in the mail today, from Pompano Beach, Florida: a birth announcement. “Mr. and Mrs. Harold J. Goldbaum are pleased to announce the birth of their daughter, Tiffany Rachel Goldbaum,” etcetera. At first I couldn’t figure out why Mr. and Mrs. Harold J. Goldbaum, of whom I have never before heard, wanted to share this glad news with me, but then all at once the penny dropped and I said out loud, “Vickie!”

  Has to be. I counted backward, and from what she told me she should be almost due now, so she dropped the kid a couple weeks early, which would be very much in character, she being sort of jumpy and neurotic and impatient. I cannot begin to picture Harold, but whoever he is he clearly didn’t stand a chance.

  So; the publishing world’s loss is Florida’s gain. I hope she’ll be— Well, not happy, let’s stay within the range of the possible. I hope she’ll be reasonably content part of the time.

  Speaking of happiness, Hubert Van Driin of Federalist Press has agreed to take Happy Happy Happy, for a shitty amount of money. It’s on the back burner right now, because of Highest Previous Score, but if the deal with Coca-Cola works out this book too might become a winner. Indirectly, this is also a result of The Christmas Book.

  It all began with the Andy Warhol contribution, the Coca-Cola tray with Santa Claus on it. I cut out that middleman by dealing directly with a Coca-Cola PR lady in Atlanta. Naturally, she’s one of the people I informed when the book was murdered, and just last week she phoned to say she was in town for a few days on Coca-Cola business, and could we talk.

  So we talked. Her name is Lynn Mulligan, she’s tall and quite attractive, early thirties, and in truth she was in New York because she’d talked the company into relocating her to their advertising liaison office in New York. Seems her marriage recently came to an end, so she wants to pick up the kids and move out of Atlanta. She’ll make the move after Christmas, so what she initially wanted to talk about was apartments and schools and all the rest of it.

  But then the subject of Happy Happy Happy came up, and when I described our failure to get Hallmark to sponsor and subsidize the project, she suddenly said, “We might.�
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  “You might what?”

  “Be interested in the book. Will it be published by next fall?”

  “It could be,” I said.

  “If Coca-Cola could get some placement in the book,” she said, “maybe something on the jacket and title page—”

  “Lovely,” I said. “But why?”

  “Well, we might take a printing,” she said, “make it the corporate Christmas present next year. Say twenty, twenty-five thousand copies.”

  Hubert Van Driin has been known to do hardcover printings of specialized nostalgia books of twenty-five hundred copies. If I go into his office with one customer’s order for twenty-five thousand, his gaiters will absolutely snap. His bow tie will spin like an airplane propeller. He’ll have to go home and change his trousers.

  Lynn is back in Atlanta now, laying the groundwork for the idea, and I won’t know until after the first of the year, but I am very hopeful. On the other hand, I am for the moment leaving Happy on the back burner, to concentrate on Highest Previous Score; I have seen great expectations sag before.

  Whether this Coca-Cola deal works out or not, my having met Lynn at least proved one thing to me; I’m home for good. If I were on the alert for another Ginger, by golly, here she is. And she made it clear she wouldn’t hate it if I made overtures.

  But I did not, and I won’t. I remember now why Mary and I got together in the first place, and it was because we belonged together. I’d allowed myself to forget that over the years. With Mary the only steadfastness in this constantly shifting and ridiculous life, it became easier and easier not to notice her.

  Or, that is, not to notice any but the bad parts, the little annoyances and irritations that every one of us distributes like a squid’s surrounding cloud of ink. Mary’s dogged determination to become a first-class photographer, for instance, when she just simply was not graced with that gift. She doesn’t do anything about being a first-class photographer, just gets up every morning as the same old bush-league picture-taker and takes some more bush-league pictures, in the calm hope (not expectation, merely hope) that some magic transformation would have taken place in her eye and mind since yesterday.