“According to the terms of the contract,” I told him, “the contributors receive sixty per cent of the advance, and I receive forty per cent. Everybody has been paid and that part of the deal is done and finished with, but if Craig is now going to pay an additional fifteen hundred dollars to a contributor, then they must pay an additional thousand to me.”
“But they won’t pay him, that’s the problem!”
“Dewey, I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that you gave an unauthorized assignment to an artist. Did you make the proposal in a letter? On Craig letterhead?”
“Why?”
“Because if Craig refuses to pay,” I said, “and I imagine they will refuse to pay, your artist probably has a good lawsuit on his hands.”
“A lawsuit?” He did sound more and more like a mountain climber who’s just seen the end of the rope fall past.
But I was pitiless. “Against Craig,” I said. “But then Craig would naturally recover the money by suing you. Whether I’d sue for my thousand or not I’m not sure at this point.”
“Tom, you don’t mean that!”
“I don’t mean I’m not sure?”
“Tom, listen. If we use the strip in the book, they have to pay.”
“We will not use the strip in the book.”
“I already sent the original to the printer,” he said. “I already told him to pull the Dürer.”
“Oh, you bastard,” I said. “Oh, you baby asshole.”
“Tom, we talked about this at lunch! We did!”
“You call that printer right now, tell him—”
“Tom Tom Tom! Please, Tom, you have to be on my side!”
“The hell I do.”
“You have to see this strip!”
“Not in the book, I don’t.”
“We have to use it or they won’t pay!”
“You have to clear it first before you offer money!”
“I talked about it with you!”
“I don’t disburse Craig’s money! I imburse Craig’s money!” I yelled, inventing new languages in my aggravation.
“Tom, it’s only one page!”
“In MY BOOK, schmuck!”
There was a little silence, in which we both breathed heavily, and then he said, in a small voice, “Tom, I need your help. You’re the only one I can turn to.”
Jesus. Now I’m supposed to feel guilty because he’s a buffoon. I’m supposed to feel guilty because the people nominally in charge left him running the candystore and he’s been giving away the candy. I said, “Dewey, let me give you some advice. How well do you know this Koben?”
“Korban,” said the small voice. “Not very well.”
“All right. The first thing you do, you phone the printer and countermand your first instruction. The Dürer goes in, the—”
“Tom, please! Please!”
“The other goddam thing goes out. Now, the second thing you do, there must have been somebody in that organization who talked to you when you were hired. Find that person. If he’s away on vacation, get somebody to give you the phone number, and call him. Tell him what you’ve done, say you’re sorry, say it was a mistake, throw yourself on his mercy.”
“Tom—”
“Third,” I insisted, “call the artist, tell him exactly what happened—”
“I’m not sure I know what happened.”
“You exceeded your authority,” I told him. “Is that clear enough?”
“I didn’t know I–I didn’t realize—”
“I’ve got that. Anyway, ask the artist if he can sell the work somewhere else; maybe for the Heavy Metal Christmas issue. If he wants, you know, he can still stick you for the fifteen hundred. If you’re lucky, maybe you can talk him out of it.”
“Tom, if we use it we won’t have to—”
“We will not use it.”
“You haven’t even seen it! You’re just throwing your weight around because you can!”
“Weight? What weight? I can’t even keep you from fucking around with my book.”
“I thought— I thought we liked each other!”
“Dewey, Dewey, Dewey,” I said, and broke the connection because there really was absolutely nothing more to say, and called Annie. I described the situation to her, and she sighed and said she’d see what she could do, and I said, “The Dürer goes back in the book, Annie.”
“Oh, I agree,” she said. “It’s just how much trouble there is along the way.”
Oh, how much trouble there is along the way, after all. I am sitting here in my air-conditioned office, away from the August heat and humidity, putting the finishing touches on the presentation for the history of greeting cards, and that total jerk over at Craig is turning The Christmas Book into Zap Comics!
I do feel sorry for him, in a way. He knows so little about anything that he doesn’t even know how much he doesn’t know. His employers turned him loose without a thought, figuring the only people he could hurt were the writers, and now he’s hurt himself and possibly them. Will they fire him? Am I about to have my fourth editor?
It’s like one of the plagues of Egypt; a plague of editors. No, that’s worse than the plagues of Egypt.
Monday, August 15th
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.
It feels strange to be back in this room again, working at this table. Strange and a little scary; I’m not sure I know what it means.
All I know is what happened. Yesterday, Lance brought the kids back from Marin County, happy and bouncing and full of stories about redwood trees and the Pacific Ocean and the strange-looking males of San Francisco. Unfortunately, Lance also brought himself back, and in the middle of the afternoon it became obvious he intended to stay. I said, “Lance, what about the other arrangements you were making?”
“They didn’t pan out,” he said. “But I’ve still got some possibilities.”
So as soon as I could I cornered Ginger in the bedroom and said, “Ginger, this has got to stop.”
“Well, I didn’t invite him back,” she said. She seemed irritated with both of us.
“He can’t take over my office again,” I said. “That’s all there is to it.”
“Well, then, tell him so. You tell him.”
“I’ll be delighted,” I said, but when I turned toward the door she cried, “Tom!”
I looked back at her: “What?”
“We can’t do that! It is his place, too, he still pays rent, he—”
“So do I pay rent! In fact, I live here. Does Lance live here?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, are we just putting Lance up until he finds a new apartment, or has he moved back in?”
“He has not moved back in!” This was the most appalling idea she’d heard since my proposal of marriage.
“It sure looks like he has,” I said. “And the worst of it is, he’s moved into my office.”
“It can’t be much longer, Tom,” she said, switching gears, deciding to try to placate me.
“It’s already been too long. You know, I could always go work downtown.”
“You mean, at Craig? At Annie’s?”
“No. The room I used to use as an office is—”
“You mean at Mary’s?”