Дональд Уэстлейк - A Likely Story

It used to bother me that she couldn’t go anywhere without the cameras, because I knew she was just kidding herself and wasting her time, but now that we’re apart she’s no longer my problem, and I can see photography as merely Mary’s hobby. (If Mary herself ever heard me use the word “hobby” in that context, she would take a gun and shoot me. No fooling.)

So, with pauses for Mary to take pictures of interesting gutter-rubbish and amusing company names on truck sides, we walked down into the Village and had cheeseburgers in a joint where we could watch the trucks thunder down Seventh Avenue and I could have a bloody Mary. My Mary had coffee, and Jennifer had iced tea. The waitress stared at her, stared at January outside the window, and said, “Iced tea?”

“The cheeseburger’s hot,” Jennifer pointed out. “And my father’s bloody Mary is cold.”

By the time lunch was over and we’d walked back up to 17th Street Jennifer had sufficiently rewritten history in her own mind as to believe she’d never actually lost her cool through the whole experience. That belief was by now the most important part of it for her, much more important than the lost dollar-eighty or the capturing of the punks that did it. When, as we turned off Seventh Avenue, she said, “I figured, just so they didn’t panic, I was probably okay,” I knew the healing process was well under way. What a terrific kid; tough and hip, like her old man.

Mary invited me upstairs, but I said I had things to do. Jennifer said, “Thanks for coming down.”

“Hey,” I said, “what’s a father for? Don’t answer that.” We kissed, and she said, “ You’re okay.”

“Here’s looking at you , kid.”

Mary kissed my cheek and looked deeply in my eyes and I came back uptown where Jack Rosenfarb’s voice greeted me on the answering machine, saying, “Tom, please call me. Got your letter, thought I had an exclusive on this. Give me a ring as soon as you can.” The unsettled sound in his voice was music to my ears.

So I gave him a ring and he said, “Tom, you’re not putting me in a bid situation, are you?”

“Of course not,” I said. There is nothing I would love more than to have two heavyweight publishers bidding for my idea, but since I can’t figure out how to arrange such a scenario I might as well claim the high moral principle: “I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“Well, what’s with this ‘preliminary discussion’?” He sounded actually aggrieved. “At lunch, you said I was the only one you were talking to.”

“That’s true,” I said. “It was true last week, but you really didn’t sound that enthusiastic, Jack, not at lunch and not on the phone Monday. You know, talking about my track record and all that. And the time factor is—”

“Tom, I was enthusiastic! But I had to be sure the company would back me up. Tom, you don’t know what an editor has to go through, they second-guess my judgment all the time, I could wind up with egg on my face, trouble with— Well. You don’t want to know my problems,” he said accurately.

“Jack,” I said, “I’m sorry if you feel I’ve behaved in an underhanded way or anything like that. The instant I spoke to another—”

“You told me about it, I know that, I know that. Just between you and me, who are you talking to?”

If I were to answer Hubert Van Driin , Jack might merely laugh and hang up, so I said, “I probably shouldn’t say, Jack. I haven’t told him your name either, but I’ve been just as upfront with—”

“I know you, Tom,” he said hurriedly, “you don’t have to tell me all that, you’re an honorable fellow, I know that. All right. You want this thing to move fast, I don’t blame you for that, so the instant I got your letter I took it to Wilson, and he took it to Bourke, and assuming we can work out the money, we’re interested.”

“Interested?”

“We want to do the book!”

That was so terrific I just blurted out the first thing that came into my mind: “That’s terrific!”

“Yeah,” he said, a bit sourly. They hate to be rushed, editors, they’re cowlike in several ways, including being my source of milk. Anyway, he said, “All we have to do is come to a meeting of minds about the money.”

“I’ll call Annie,” I said, “and have her call you.”

“Good. But one thing, about this other house you were talking to. Tom, I have to tell you, we won’t get into a bidding war, and that’s flat.”

Oh, yes, you would, I thought, if I only knew how to set one up. “Don’t worry, Jack,” I told him. “As of this minute, they’re out.”

We exchanged one or two ritual coins of mutual esteem, and then I phoned Annie, who was in the office and taking calls. “Did you phone me?” she demanded, her ancient voice querulous and short-tempered.

“I’m phoning you now ,” I said.

“In the last day or two. And not leave any message.”

“Me, Annie? I know how you feel about that.”

“Somebody’s been— Well, never mind. What can I do for you, Tom?”

I was glad it was one of her good days; on the bad days she calls me Tim. Succinctly I described my book idea, my negotiations with Jack, and the current situation. She listened, with occasional grunts, then said, “I don’t get it. What kinda book is this?”

I told her again. She said, “Everybody’s idle thoughts about Christmas.”

“Every famous body’s idle thoughts about Christmas.”

“If you give me one of those books next Yuletide,” she said, “I’ll fling it in your face.”

“Annie, you inspire me.”

“As I understand the situation,” she said, “you have now placed me in the position of agenting for the entire western literary world, all at once.”

“Don’t forget the artists.”

“And the artists. I’ll call Jack Rosenfarb and find out if he’s really fallen for this one.”

“Thank you, Annie.”

“You’ll hear from me,” she said vaguely, and hung up.

So the only question left is, what idea am I going to peddle to Hubert Van Driin?

So here’s their opening offer, and even as an opening offer it stinks. Five thousand dollars on signature, twenty thousand when I have commitments from five “individuals mutually agreed to be prominent,” and another twenty-five thousand on August first. If I don’t have those five prominent noses by June first the deal is off.

Out of this lavish fifty thou, I’m supposed to pay all the contributors! (There’s an additional five thousand they’ve agreed to pay for “research and secretarial” expenses, upon receipt of receipts.) And, as Jack himself pointed out, I’m not running a charity here, I do want a little something for myself.

One good thing about Annie; she’s involved. When she saw Craig’s insulting offer, she smiled thinly and decided to get serious. Annie, who began in publishing as somebody’s secretary during the Adams administration — the elder Adams — and who apparently in her youth screwed most of the literate men on the Eastern Seaboard, has aged into a scrawny bad-tempered old buzzard who knows everybody, loves to fight and has been known to get blood from a stone simply by squeezing hard enough. What can be done, Annie will do.

On the home front, Ginger is very up and positive about The Christmas Book and is saying maybe we can take a winter vacation after all. (Last year we did a week at a condominium on St. Croix, splitting the cost, but this year money has been tighter for both of us.) Ginger’s eight-year-old daughter, Gretchen, is also excited and is doing me watercolors of Christmas scenes “for the book.” She’s a nice kid, Gretchen, and if it’s possible to say that an eight-year-old is talented, Gretchen is probably talented along graphic arts lines — maybe someday she’ll go to the High School of Art and Design — but I’m getting a little tired of primitive Nativity scenes and Santa Claus getting out of taxis and all this stuff. I hope and expect that boredom will set in soon — on her part, I’m already bored — and save me.