“Oh. I haven’t met him. Actually, I haven’t met many people yet. It’s the slow season, the summer.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose it’ll pick up in September.” He sounded a bit wistful.
“Yes, it probably will.”
Conversation lagged until his next drink was brought; after one slug, he grinned at me and said, “Let’s talk about the book.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s.”
“It isn’t too late to add stuff,” he said. “I asked around specifically on that, and we still have time.”
“The book’s pretty full, Dewey,” I said.
“Well, we could take some stuff out,” he said. “There’s some kinda downers in there, all that Death Row stuff and all.”
“Norman Mailer won’t give the money back,” I said.
He didn’t understand me. “What?”
“I’m pretty sure Truman Capote won’t either.”
“Money?”
“The publisher has paid for all those things, Dewey,” I explained. “I think the company would be upset if they paid for things and then we didn’t use them.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, what about the real old stuff? Old paintings and things.”
“What did you want to replace them with, Dewey?” Our endive salads arrived, but I paid no attention. I was visualizing Santa Clauses, popping-up.
But what Dewey said was, “Heavy Metal.”
“Beg pardon?”
“You know. The cartoonists that work in Heavy Metal or The National Lampoon.”
“Heavy Metal’s a magazine,” I said, remembering.
“Yeah, sure! It’s youth, Tom!”
Youth. Anatomically correct sex comic strips; science fiction comic strips in which people’s heads are blown off in careful red detail; drug comic strips. In place of all those old paintings and things.
Dewey was saying, “We could get some great stuff from those guys, Tom! Korban! Crumb! Really terrific impact, audience grabbers. Put some zing in the book!”
I filled my mouth with endive, to give me time to think. Watching me do so, Dewey did the same. And what I thought was this: This creature cannot actually hurt me, because his ideas are utterly impractical and absurd. We are to have copies of this book in the stores late in October, which means that now, late in July, there isn’t time to commission a Heavy Metal cartoonist to give us a drawing of Santa Claus fucking a space monkey. So he is merely babbling, and cannot actually hurt me at all.
And what I further thought was this: On the other hand, Dewey Heffernan cannot help me in any way. His eagerness for the book adds up to the same thing as some other caretaker editor’s indifference, because nobody over at Craig will give this buffoon the time of day. Even if he knew how to talk to publicity or sales or production, even if he could find his way to their offices, they would pay him not the slightest bit of attention. What I have been given for an editor this time is a vacuum.
And what I finally thought was this: Since he can neither hurt nor help me, since he is merely a child learning how to use a push-button phone and what you do in a midtown restaurant at lunchtime, since he is merely a trainee learning at my expense — who, if he remembers this lunch at all ten years from now, will look back on it in wincing embarrassment — there’s no point getting mad at him, or insulting him, or getting on my high horse. So I swallowed my endive, and took a deep breath, and smiled, and said, “Good salad, huh?”
“Yeah!” he said.
He ordered another bourbon when the sole Veronique came. No one mentioned wine, and I chose not to have a third drink. Dewey was very amused about the grapes on his fish. He told me about college days, and about his plans for knocking the publishing world on its ear, and in the course of lunch he became quite drunk. The waiter and I both had to help him figure out the tip and how to sign the credit card slip and all that, and then he would have left the galleys package behind if I hadn’t remembered it. He didn’t seem to realize he was drunk, but just thought he was having a good time.
I walked him as far as his building, which I felt was good Samaritan enough; when last seen, Dewey was staggering toward the wrong bank of elevators, the galleys package clutched to his chest the way schoolgirls carry their books.
I then took a train, and the 3:50 ferry, and walked to this house where I have removed most of my clothes, and now it’s my turn to get drunk.
Sunday, July 31st
Home again. In more ways than one, since I finally have my office back. Though that may not be permanent.
At the moment, Lance has taken Gretchen and Joshua to California for a two-week stay with relatives of his — of theirs, too, come to think of it — in Marin County, north of San Francisco. He’ll be back in two weeks, and is supposed to have some sort of alternate living quarters worked out by then, but I must say I’ve begun to lose faith in Lance’s ability to get his life in order.
After its shaky beginning, with Mary and the blessedly-departed Vickie, the month’s vacation worked out very well. The kids took care of themselves to an extent that just isn’t possible here in the city, and Ginger and I had time to get sort of reacquainted and remember why we’d come together in the first place. I did a lot of work — magazine pieces, and a start on a presentation for a book about the history of greeting cards that Annie thinks maybe she can get Hallmark or somebody to subsidize — and we both got healthier and healthier, and hardly fought at all.
Friday was Ginger’s thirty-fourth birthday; the annual trauma. Nobody ever wants to be the age they are, and this was no exception. We went to the local restaurant, Le Dock, just the two of us, and splurged on champagne, and Ginger got wistful and misty-eyed toward the end of the evening, saying, “Where are we headed, Tom? Where are we going? What are we doing? Where are we all headed?”
“Ginger,” I said, my hand on hers on the table, “why don’t we get married?”
She looked at me with such alarm and shock that I thought she might leap to her feet in another instant and flee the table, the restaurant, the island and possibly the country. However, she didn’t; instead, she stared wide-eyed at me while I had plenty of time to realize what an insane thing that had been to suggest: What if she’d said yes?
Well, she wasn’t going to say yes, that much was clear from the beginning. What she did say, at last, on a rising inflection, was, “Whaa-aatt?”
Did I have to repeat myself? Did I now have to justify my moment’s madness? “It just seemed an idea,” I said.
She withdrew her hand from mine, closed it around the champagne glass, and shakily drank. Then she frowned at me for a few seconds, frowned at the table, shook her head and said, in a tone of quiet awe, “That was really very nice,” as though things that were nice came her way so seldom she hardly recognized them. “It was,” she said, agreeing with herself, and looked at me again as a pair of large tears grew in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, glistening in the candlelight. “That was so sweet, Tom,” she said, putting her hand back on mine. “I’ll never forget that.”
I probably never will, either.
It did all end well, however, my gesture accepted for the noble act it was, without my having to stand by it. We weaved our way homeward from the restaurant by the pale light of the just-past-full moon and sat on the rear deck in the silver darkness for nearly an hour, silent, holding hands. I fell asleep for a while, and I think Ginger did, too.