Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

It is easy to say, at this remove, that Sammy ought to have seen this coming. In fact, he was shocked. He had trusted Anapol, respected him. Anapol was the first successful man Sammy had ever known personally. He was as dedicated to his work, as tireless a wanderer, as imperious, as remote from his family as Sammy's father, and to be betrayed by him, too, came as a terrible blow. Day after day, Sammy had listened to Anapol's lectures about taking the initiative, and the Science of Opportunity, and as these jibed with his own notions of how the world functioned, Sammy had believed. He didn't think it would be possible to show more initiative, or seize an opportunity more scientifically, than he had in the last three days. Sammy wanted to argue, but once deprived of their central pillar of Enterprise Rewarded, the arguments in favor of making him editor, and not the unquestionably qualified and proven George Deasey, struck him, abruptly, as ludicrous. So he sat back down. His cigar had gone out.

A moment later, wearing a corn-colored jacket over green velour pants and an orange-and-green-plaid tie, Jack Ashkenazy came in, followed by George Deasey, who, as ever, appeared to be in a testy mood. He was, as Anapol had mentioned, a graduate of Columbia, class of 1912. Over the course of his career, George Debevoise Deasey had published symbolist poetry in the Seven Arts, covered Latin America and the Philippines as a correspondent for the American and the Los Angeles Examiner, and written over a hundred and fifty pulpwood novels under his and a dozen other names, including, before he was made editor in chief of all their titles, more than sixty adventures of Racy's biggest seller, the Shadow-like Gray Goblin, star of Racy Police Stories. Yet he took no pride or true satisfaction in these or any of his other experiences and achievements, because when he was nineteen, his brother Malcolm, whom he idolized, had married Oneida Shaw, the love of Deasey's life, and taken her down to a rubber farm in Brazil, where they both died of amoebic dysentery. The bitter memory of this tragic episode, while long since corrupted by time and crumbled to an ashy gray powder in his breast, had outwardly hardened into a well-known if not exactly beloved set of mannerisms and behaviors, among them heavy drinking, prodigious work habits, an all-encompassing cynicism, and an editorial style based firmly on ruthless adherence to deadlines and on the surprise administration, irregular and devastating as the impact of meteors from space, of the scabrous and literate tongue-lashings with which he regularly flensed his quavering staff. A tall, corpulent man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and a drooping ginger mustache, he still dressed in the stiff-collared shirts and high-button waistcoats of his generation of literary men. He professed to despise the pulps and never lost an opportunity to ridicule himself for earning his living by them, but all the same he took the work seriously, and his novels, each of them composed in two or three weeks, were written with verve and an erudite touch.

"So it's to be comic books, now, is it?" he said to Anapol as they shook hands. "The devolution of American culture takes another great step forward." He took his pipe from his hip pocket.

"Sammy Klayman and his cousin Joe Kavalier," Anapol said. He put a hand on Sammy's shoulder. "Sammy, here, is pretty much responsible for this whole thing. Aren't you, Sammy?"

Sammy had the shakes. His teeth were chattering. He wanted to pick up something heavy and spray Anapol's brains across his blotter. He wanted to run weeping from the room. He just stood there, staring at Anapol until the big man looked away.

"You boys sure you want to work for me?" said Deasey. Before they could answer, he gave a nasty little chuckle and shook his head. He held a match to the bowl of his pipe and took six small sips of cherry smoke. "Well, let's have a look."

"Sit down, George, please," said Anapol, his normal saturnine hauteur giving way, as usual, in the proximity of a gentile with a diploma to arrant toadyism. "I think the boys here did a very nice job." Deasey sat down and dragged the pile of pages toward his right side. Ashkenazy pressed in close behind to peer over Deasey's shoulder. As Deasey lifted the protective sheet of tracing paper on the cover art, Sammy glanced over at Joe. His cousin was sitting stiffly in his chair, hands in his lap, watching the editor's face. Deasey's air of ruined integrity and confidence in his own judgments had made an impression on Joe.

"Who did this cover?" Deasey looked at the signature, then over the tops of his round glasses at Joe. "Kavalier, is that you?"

Joe got to his feet, literally holding his hat in his hand, and extended the other to Deasey.

"Josef Kavalier," Joe said. "How do you do."

"I'm fine, Mr. Kavalier." They shook. "And you're hired."

"Thank you," Joe said. He sat back down and smiled. He was just happy to get the job. He had no idea what Sammy was going through, the humiliation he was undergoing. All of his boasting to his mother! His strutting around Julie and the others! How in God's name would he ever be able to face Frank Pantaleone again?

Deasey set the cover art to his left, reached for the first page, and started to read. When he finished, he put it under Joe's cover and took the next page. He didn't look up again until the entire pile was on his left side and he had read through to the end.

"You put this together, son?" He smiled at Sammy. "You know, don't you, that this is pure trash. Superman is pure trash, too, of course. Batman, the Blue Beetle. The whole menagerie."

"You're right," said Sammy through his teeth. "Trash sells."

"By God, it does," said Deasey. "I can testify to that personally."

"Is it all trash, George?" said Ashkenazy. "I like that guy that comes out of the radio." He turned to Sammy. "How'd you come up with that?"

"Trash I don't mind," said Anapol. "Is it the same kind of trash as Superman, that's what I want to know."

"Might I confer with you gentlemen in private?" said Deasey.

"Excuse us, boys," Anapol said.

Sammy and Joe went and sat in the chairs outside Anapol's office.

Sammy tried to listen through the glass. Deasey could be heard murmuring gravely but indecipherably. Sometimes Anapol interrupted him with a question. After a few minutes, Ashkenazy came out, winked at Sammy and Joe, and left the Empire offices. When he came back a few minutes later, he was carrying a thin rattling sheaf of paper. It looked like a legal contract. Sammy's left leg started to twitch. Ashkenazy stopped in front of the door to Anapol's office and gestured grandly for them to enter.

"Gentlemen?" he said.

Sammy and Joe followed him in.

"We want to buy the Escapist," said Anapol. "We'll pay you a hundred and fifty dollars for the rights."

Joe looked at Sammy, eyebrows raised. Big money.

"What else?" said Sammy, though he had been hoping for a hundred at most.

"The other characters, the backups, we'll pay eighty-five dollars for the lot of them," Anapol continued. Seeing Sammy's face fall a little, he added, "It would have been twenty dollars apiece, but Jack felt that Mr. Radio was worth a little extra."

"That's just for the rights, kid," said Ashkenazy. "We'll also take you both on, Sammy for seventy-five dollars a week and Joe at six dollars a page. George wants you for an assistant, Sam. Says he sees real potential in you."

"You certainly know your trash," Deasey said.

"Plus we'll pay Joe, here, twenty dollars for every cover he does. And for all your pals and associates, five dollars a page."

"Though of course I'll have to meet them first," said Deasey.

"That's not enough," said Sammy. "I told them the page rate would be eight dollars."