Soon after Zachary Amberville died so suddenly, so horribly, Justin had taken off without a word to any member of his family. He had a record of disappearing for months at a time since he was fifteen, and the Ambervilles had become accustomed to his comings and goings. He never wrote or telephoned while he was away but, from time to time, photographs would crop up in a variety of publications with the photo credit “Justin”: photographs from tiny islands so distant that no travel agent knew them, from mountaintops so unexplored that they had no names, from jungles that were only empty space on most maps; photographs of surfers in Australia, of Brazilian transvestites in the Bois de Boulogne, of the inside of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot; photographs that had nothing to connect them to each other except the unexpected viewpoint of the brain beyond the lens of the camera that captured images that couldn’t be skipped over, even in an era when it seemed that the most extraordinary photographs must all have been taken.
His last “trip,” as the family called Justin’s mysterious wanderings, had been longer than any other he had made, and his photographs had been infrequent, but still no one worried, for by now it was accepted as a fact that Justin was invulnerable.
In his early teens, he had seemed utterly ill at ease in his own skin, jumpy, awkward, and seeking every opportunity to avoid attention. Then, when he was twelve, he had started to study the martial arts and self-defense, embracing a schedule of relentless training that had reminded Lily of the single-mindedness of the ballet. Slowly Justin’s bearing, even when he stood still, began to convey an unstated menace. Everything that had earlier seemed vague and alienated in him had been collected into the strength and speed with which he knew he could move. Today he was a presence to reckon with, all dexterity, all sinewy grace; a man of twenty-four, of medium height, whose lean body nevertheless had more density than that of other young men.
Justin looked both lionhearted and unpredictable although he disdained any outward trappings of toughness. His familiar leathers were not studded body armor, just relaxed, well-worn, shabby garments in which he could travel anywhere. When he could be coaxed into a game of croquet in Southampton he exuded the same potential for dauntlessness, wearing white linen trousers and a pastel crew sweater; the quality was built into his hard muscles, into his lack of relaxation, as if he were ready to do battle at any minute.
Maxi had never seen Justin touch another person except with tenderness, yet she often realized that she knew remarkably little about her younger brother although they loved each other unreservedly. He was the most highly defended man she had ever met and whatever went on behind his high rounded forehead, whatever unspoken need made him drift away from home so often was a bafflement to her. Even Toby, with the acuity of his senses, with his way of reading unspoken thoughts, had no clues to the perplexing conundrum of Justin’s motivations. It seemed to both of them that he stalked some invisible goal that eluded them, a goal he never had explained, never had described, yet a goal that inexorably lured him on and on.
“What,” Justin demanded, grinning, “are the two of you doing? I want an explanation. Toby said I’d find you here but he didn’t say in what condition. He said you’d tell me all about it.”
“Ma’s looking for a new magazine concept,” Angelica answered with a shrug of her shoulders, “and I’m trying to make sure she doesn’t starve to death in the process. The new cook quit yesterday.”
“Maxi, why?” Justin said, astonished. “Who needs another magazine?”
“I’m not sure yet, that’s the problem. But the rock-bottom reason has to do with Cutter, and a matter of not letting him make an ass out of me.”
“In that case, you can count on my full cooperation,” Justin said with as much overt ferocity in his voice as he ever displayed.
While Maxi and Toby could have explained in detail what they distrusted and disliked in their uncle, only Justin had always hated Cutter and yet could not have said why. It was an instinctive loathing that went too deep for words, a question of absolute mutual antipathy. Justin had been curious, as they all were, about his father’s brother who never seemed to leave San Francisco. When Justin was almost eleven, Cutter and Candice Amberville finally came through New York, stopping for a few days on their way to Europe. The first time Justin met Cutter his curiosity had been transformed into a visceral disgust, a disgust he didn’t try to understand. It existed as solidly as a boulder, it was not something to question or ponder, it just was, as powerful as his love for Zachary, as obvious as his caring for Toby and Maxi.
“I accept your offer,” Maxi said delightedly. For the last three days Angelica had been her only sounding board. Julie was busy at the office winding up the business of putting Buttons and Bows into the limbo where all dead magazines still float, items of rare, plaintive nostalgia and trivia quizzes. Maxi had not called on any of the professionals at Amberville Publications who would have been glad to lend her a hand. Pride had prevented her, pride and an irresistible need to do this thing by herself, to see it through to the absolute end and then, if she ran dry after giving it her unreserved best, to admit defeat if necessary. But she didn’t want to lean on the obviously available expertise of Pavka or Nina or Linda Lafferty, or any of many others who were among the editorial board members. She was twenty-nine and she’d never accomplished much alone in her life except bringing up Angelica. However, Justin’s help was different. He was family.
“Where do we start?” Justin asked, shedding several layers of soft leather and making a place for himself on the floor with Maxi and Angelica.
“Don’t you want to know why I’m looking for a concept?” Maxi demanded.
“Not necessarily, as long as it has to do with screwing Cutter. How far have you come? Do you have a glimmer of a glimmer?”
“I know what I can’t do. I have eliminated all the glossy magazines: the Vogues and Architectural Digests and House & Gardens. Not only are they too expensive to publish, but Amberville already has Style and Indoors and I don’t want to compete with the company. Also they make me so angry!”
“Since when? I thought you loved them.”
“I used to, I was addicted to my monthly fix of slippery paper, but the more I looked at them, the more I read them, the more furious I got. Justin, do you realize that the glossy books just make you feel like a piece of junk? Almost nobody can look like that; wear those damn clothes; use that crazy new makeup; have houses like that or gardens like that … you can aspire, you can spend the rest of your life trying to be someone photographed in that one perfect minute, which is the only thing they ever show, but you’ll never make it for real. They’re not selling dreams, they’re selling putdowns. They’re selling heartache, dissatisfaction with what you have, above all they’re selling envy.”
“Hey, Maxi, take it easy. They’re selling clothes and furniture and cosmetics … the editorial pages are just the vehicle for the ads. They make the wheels of American business turn. You know that as well as I do.”
“That doesn’t make me like them,” Maxi said obdurately.
“But you are their reader, you of all people. You know perfectly well that you can buy just about anything that you see in those magazines. Look at this apartment … four million dollars, or was it five? Look in your overstuffed closets, look in your jewel box, and then take a good look in the mirror. Just what don’t you have? Except for a fourth husband?”
“I’m thinking about my readers,” Maxi said impatiently.
“Oh, so you have readers do you? I knew there was something different about this place but I thought it was the view.”
“I intend to have them, Justin, and I’m not going to give them another overdose of how rich people live.”
“Bravo! What other kinds of magazines have you decided not to publish?” Justin asked, his curiosity piqued by her vehemence.
“All those damn service books: Good House, Family Circle, Woman’s Day, Redbook, McCall’s, and anything else that digs, digs and digs some more at every w
oman’s guilt. Just look at this Ladies’ Home Journal ad … they surveyed 86,000 women and eighty-seven percent of them said that ‘women can do anything.’ ”
“Well, can’t they? You’ve always acted as if you thought you could.”
“Look what else it says—‘We’re here as she presses herself for physical excellence. Offering her sensible diet, exercise and beauty plans … and we’re there as she presses to be better in other ways too. At home. On the job. In her community … pressing just as hard for excellence as the seventeen and a half million women who read us every month.’ It’s a big, lousy, fucking conspiracy, a tyranny, Justin, no poor bitch is allowed to be anything but bloody excellent at all times, in all situations. Press on, press on, and if you drop dead from sheer pressing for excellence, at least you won’t have let your subscription lapse!”
“Angelica, go get your mother a Miltown.”
“It’s all right, Justin, I just gave her one. It doesn’t help. Can it kill you to foam at the mouth?”
“I doubt it, sweetheart, your mother’s just suffering from stress.”
“Justin,” Angelica shrieked in alarm, “please don’t use that word.”
“Oh, balls,” Maxi muttered, throwing down a copy of Family Circle. “It’s only September, and they’ve got ‘101 Christmas Gifts to Make’ and ‘All-Time Favorite Cookie Recipes’ on the cover and Doctor Art Ulene’s book on How to Stop Family Problems Before They Start.… What if you don’t bake, what if you buy your presents and don’t want to know more about your family problems at Christmastime than you do already? How guilty will this cover make you feel? And it’s the world’s largest-selling women’s magazine according to the masthead. And look at this magazine, just look. It’s called Lady’s Circle and it’s really a joyful book: a piece on stomach-stapling that didn’t work, an article about a teenager with a rare, fatal liver disease, another stress article that contains a test on how you rate as a heart-attack victim; and then, for fun, how to crochet a holiday tablecloth. Is crochet a stress antidote? Or a stress add-on?”
“Maxi, why are you even bothering with service books?” Justin asked. “That’s not exactly your line of country. I’ve never seen you making anything more complicated than a vodka gimlet and I remember your being furious that limes had seeds.”
“I have to know what people are buying, what women are reading, or I won’t know what to give them that they don’t already have,” Maxi explained, looking as if she had suddenly turned into a toadstool. “It’s obvious.”
“But you can’t be planning to compete with a Good House.… Where are your test kitchens, Maxi, where’s your money-back guarantee, where’s your well-earned readers’ confidence? Where’s your reputation for excellence and your position as a trusted friend, not a magazine?”
“Justin, how come you know so much?” Maxi inquired suspiciously.
“I had lunch with someone from Hearst once,” he said evasively.
“I like to bake cookies,” Angelica announced. “Could I have that copy of Woman’s Day, Ma?”
“With my blessings,” Maxi said, smiling for the first time that morning. She turned to Justin and raised astonished eyebrows. Baking cookies?
“What’s in that pile?” he asked, pointing to the heap of magazines closest to her.
“I call them the ‘so what else is wrong with you?’ books. Their premise is simply that things are going so badly that you’re desperate for help. Here we have Woman and Complete Woman, with typical cover lines: ‘Why Do You Let Him Walk All Over You?’; ‘Beat Those Menstrual Blahs’; ‘Conquering Your Shyness’; ‘If Sex Leaves You Wondering “What’s Wrong with Me?” ’; ‘So You Are Not Interested in Sex …’; ‘Banish Boredom, Overcome Hurts, Fight Insecurity, Beat Loneliness’; ‘How to Save Yourself from Yourself.’ I could go on …”
“Don’t! Please don’t. Or I’ll scream,” Justin said, unable to repress a guffaw.
“Ma’s overreacting,” Angelica whispered to him.
“The hell I am,” Maxi snapped. “I’m just seeing what’s being sold on the newsstands and having normal reactions.”
“Like grinding your teeth in your sleep?” Angelica asked.
“Precisely! How about this piece on ‘The Number-One Stress Stopper’ by Michael Korda. Guess what it is.”
“Relaxation?” asked Justin.
“Deep breathing and chocolate cake?” Angelica hazarded.
“No, no, my children … ‘Do More … or How to Be a Confirmed, Happy, Unapologetic Overachiever.’ That SUCKS!” Maxi flopped on the floor and groaned aloud. “ ‘Do More,’ the man says. More.”
“Let me rub your back, Maxi, it’s probably killing you,” Justin said, rolling up his sleeves and flexing his strong fingers.
“How about a brownie, Ma? They say chocolate makes you happy, releases some kind of hormone or something,” Angelica suggested anxiously.
“No, don’t try to make me feel better.” Maxi jumped up from the carpet and picked up the magazines around her and pitched them violently at the magazines that were piled against the walls. “Enough guilt! Enough of your guilt trips about everything from your extra pounds to how you’ve changed your lover into a tyrant; enough guilt trips about how pathetically little you know about how to handle money, about how you can’t accessorize your clothes, keep a neat closet, don’t take enough calcium, haven’t been promoted at work, can’t manage a job and a family too, and need your marriage saved; enough about your nutrition mistakes and how to handle failure; enough about how boring your sex life is and it’s probably your fault; enough guilt about your whole life being depressing and why men are unwilling to commit; enough about why you fuck up job interviews.… No more guilt trips!”
“We agree, don’t we, Justin?” Angelica said hurriedly as Maxi whirled around faster and faster but Maxi didn’t hear her and kept on talking louder and louder, her bare feet thudding on the thick carpet like enraged hooves.
“All they do is undermine your self-confidence while trying to tell you how to be, seem, and feel more self-confident; they make you feel that it’s impossible for your body to ever be attractive enough, that you can and should be doing better, better, better, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the boardroom—what, you mean you haven’t been promoted yet? How come you’re not an executive and if so what horrible things does your office furniture reveal about your character and when will you learn how to manipulate your boss and make office politics pay? And if you don’t work, how come you aren’t at home making a new kind of stuffing for the turkey, how come you’re such a poor pathetic creature that without this magazine you’d never make it through the night? Oh, thank them—thank the good editors for making you feel better about that heel you married, the dozen men who’ve left you, the seventeen different things you do wrong in bed, the only man—naturally a shit—whom you can’t forget; all of which are your fault, bad girl. BAD GIRL! Guilt, guilt, guilt! WOULD ANY MAN BUY A MAGAZINE THAT TOLD HIM EVERY MONTH WHAT A SCHMUCK HE WAS? No, my children, he would not. If I read one more article about bulimia I’ll throw up. God damn it to hell, isn’t there a single magazine a woman can buy that loves her just the way she is? What did I just say?”
“You’d throw up if …” Angelica cried hysterically.
“No, after.”
“Doesn’t any magazine like women?” Justin ventured.
Maxi jumped up and down. “THAT’S IT! That is fucking it! The reader-friendly magazine, the magazine that loves you and doesn’t try to change you, the magazine that wants to amuse you, that exists for your pleasure and only your pleasure. FUN. The magazine that doesn’t give a shit if you eat too much or can’t find a guy, or should have known better or need help. Fun, I say! There’s already more help out on the newsstands than anybody could possibly use. FUN! Did you hear me? FUN!” She opened her arms wide and jumped up and down, flinging the last of the magazines away, kicking as high as any Texas cheerleader, strutting her stuff.
“We heard you, Ma. Everybody
in Trump Tower heard you.”
“What is this fun book going to be called?” Justin said with a flashing look of pleasure at the sight of his adored sister back to normal form again.
“It’s already got a name, Justin. I picked Buttons and Bows when I had my chance. But times have changed,” Maxi said gleefully, “and so has the name. I’m shortening it to B and B.”
“B and B? What kind of name is that?” Angelica asked.
“Do I know? Does it matter? Bread and Butter, Bosoms and Bottoms, Benedictine and Brandy, Balls and Bums, whatever suits your fancy. It’s called B and B and that means F-U-N!”
16
“Zap-proof. Fucking zap-proof!” Rocco said, angrily throwing down the issue of Adweek he’d been reading. He looked out of the window of his office on the forty-third floor of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and noted with annoyance the red neon sign of the Pepsi bottling plant on the other side of the East River. Coca-Cola was his client and Pepsi was the loathed enemy, until the almost certain day when Pepsi would become the client and Coke the enemy. “Anyway,” he added, “this story is totally sick. Imagine having to go for zap-proof by shooting eight and a half hours of film and editing it down to a thirty-second television spot. No matter how good it might turn out to be, I say it’s a sign of something fundamentally wrong.”
“We have nothing to do with that spot, Rocco,” Rap Kelly said soothingly. “It’s for somebody’s deodorant soap. You should stop reading the trades.”
“Don’t turn into a philosopher, Rocco,” added Man Ray Lefkowitz, the third partner of the firm of Cipriani, Lefkowitz and Kelly, the hottest advertising agency in New York. “When you give the public remote-control units for their TV sets, it stands to reason that they’re going to zap the commercials.”
I'll Take Manhattan Page 27
