Aaron Elkins: Uneasy Relations

His cell phone, lying on the table, tinkled out the melancholy opening bars of the overture to La Traviata just as he chomped down on bagel and egg, and Julie answered it for him.

“Why, hello, Lester!” she said brightly. “We were just talking about you. Yes, we did see the article. Yes, it certainly is that.”

“I’m not here!” Gideon cried around a mouthful of food. “You don’t know where I am. You haven’t seen me since last Friday. You don’t know when I’ll be back, if ever.”

“Why, yes, of course he’s here,” Julie said pleasantly. “Gideon, guess what?” she burbled, batting her eyes. “It’s Lester Rizzo. Your publisher.” She held out the phone.

Scowling, Gideon took it. Lester was already babbling away. “You read it, Gid? Is that good copy, or what? You did great, buddy. Fender tells me it’s been picked up by over a hundred papers.”

“Oh, wonderful, Lester. But the fact is – as you damn well know – I don’t have any sensational exposes to pull out of my hat. I don’t have any exposes to pull out of my hat. And my public lecture in Gibraltar is about the evolutionary concomitants of erect posture, not-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but who cares about that stuff? With all due respect, nobody. Look, by the time Bones comes out, this’ll all be ancient history. You think Fender or anybody else is gonna go to Gibraltar to check up on you? Don’t worry, they won’t. Trust me. But your name’s gonna be a little more familiar to people, you see? They won’t know why they know it, they’ll just know they know it when they see it at the bookstore. And they’ll be more likely to reach for it. ‘Oh, yeah, here’s one by that guy, Gideon Oliver. I think I’ve heard of him.’ And if they reach for it, maybe with a little luck they’ll buy it.”

“Maybe, but-”

“ Definitely. Market research proves it, pal.” His voice deepened with veneration at the magical words. “That’s what it’s all about: Market research.”

“Fine, but what about the people who buy it expecting something fabulous? What about them? And what about me, how does that make me look?”

“Ah, yeah, that’s the beauty part, see? Eight months is perfect. Any more than that and they forget they ever heard of you. Any less than that, and they still remember what you said. Market research, buddy.”

With a sigh, Gideon dropped whatever it was he was going to retort. He and Lester went back a few years now, and Gideon knew there wasn’t much point in arguing. Lester Rizzo, the associate publisher of Javelin Press and the improbable executive editor of their Frontiers of Science imprint, had approached Gideon after an open lecture he’d given on scientific fraud at the university and asked if he’d be interested in expanding it into a book-length manuscript for the Frontiers series.

Gideon had accepted, partly because the manuscript wouldn’t be due for almost a year and anything that far away was always doable, and partly because he was flattered at the thought of joining the august roster of contributors to the series. The $15,000 advance, a delightfully unusual prospect to anyone accustomed to dealing with the academic presses, hadn’t hurt either. Besides, as opposed to the necessarily arcane monographs he turned out for the scientific journals (his contribution to the current American Journal of Physical Anthropology was “Sexual Dimorphism in Tibial Diaphysis Robusticity among Eastern European Upper Paleolithic Populations”), the idea of writing something for popular consumption seemed like fun.

And it had been. To Gideon’s surprise – but not, apparently, to Lester’s – the book had done well, and Gideon was now finishing up an expanded section on mythology and science (thus, his interest in Atlantis) for a new edition. But from the very beginning, there had been differences, and a long string of compromises, between his editor and himself. The title had been one such. When Gideon had proposed Error, Gullibility, and Self-Deception in the Social Sciences, Lester had looked at him as if he were crazy. “You’re writing for the masses here,” he’d pointed out. “What do you say we dumb down the title a little?” But Lester’s idea (Bungles, Blunders, and Bloopers) had left Gideon equally dismayed. They had settled, each with his own reservations, on Bones to Pick: Wrong Turns, Dead Ends, and Popular Misconceptions in the Study of Humankind.

More often than not, however, he had been outfoxed by Lester one way or another, and obviously it had just happened again. Well, Lester was probably right; it might sell a few more copies. But it wasn’t going to be easy to live with.

“Okay, Lester,” he said, “what’s done is done.”

“Hey, don’t say it like that, buddy; it hurts my feelings,” he said cheerfully. So, you going to be down here in L.A. any time soon?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Okay, then, see you in Gibraltar.”

“Right, see you – what? You’re coming to Gibraltar?”

“You better believe it. We’re going to do a book launch at that conference you’re going to that’ll knock ’em dead. Drinks on the house, speeches-”

“Lester,” Gideon said, appalled, “give me a break. Why do we want to do a book launch there? These are my colleagues, they’ll-”

“Hey, get off your high horse. This’s got nothing to do with you. You’re not my only author, you know. You know a guy named Rowley Boyd?”

“Uh-huh, I’ve met him a few times.” Rowley, Gideon remembered, was the pleasant, unpretentious, somewhat bookish director of the archaeological museum in Gibraltar.

“Well, he’s been piddling around with a book about Gibraltar Boy for almost three years, and we finally squeezed it out of him – pub date early October. You have any objections to my giving a book party for him?”

“None whatever. If it’s okay with him, it’s okay with me.”

“It’s more than okay with him. He’s overjoyed. He’s thrilled. Some people appreciate the efforts made on their behalf.”

“Well, I’m glad for him, Lester, and for you. I hope the book’s a big success.”

He said good-bye and hung up with another sigh. “According to Lester, a hundred newspapers have picked the article up. It’s going to be all over the place. LeMoyne and the others are going to have a ball with this, Julie. So are my students. Life is going to be hell for me for a while.” All the same, he couldn’t help chuckling. “Still, I guess it’s pretty funny, in a way.”

“It is, really. ’It’ll leave Piltdown in the dust,’” she said, shaking her head. “Quite a statement.”

He grimaced. “I really wish you wouldn’t keep repeating that.”

She glanced at her watch. “Gotta go. Well, you know what I think? I think you should think about what Abe might have said at a time like this.”

“That’s a good idea.” Abe was Abraham Goldstein, the impoverished, persecuted, Jewish immigrant from Russia who had made an improbable place for himself in America as an eminent professor of anthropology. At an advanced age, as Gideon’s major professor at the University of Wisconsin, he had been Gideon’s mentor in life as in anthropology, and his presence was still very much missed.

Gideon smiled. “So what would Abe have said?”

“ ‘Oy,’ ” said Julie, draining her coffee as she stood up.

He responded with a full-throated laugh and lifted his cup. “I’ll drink to that.”

It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Inasmuch as he didn’t have a teaching load during the summer session, there were few students to contend with, and the faculty that he ran into on his visits to campus tended to be sparse. Oh, Rupert Armstrong LeMoyne couldn’t resist his little jab (“Don’t tell me… please don’t tell me… that you’re going to… gasp… tell us that there is no… gasp. .. Bigfoot!”) and one of his better graduate students, depressingly, swallowed the article hook, line, and sinker, and asked if he could possibly be let in on the secret. He would tell no one, he promised.