The shower was good; the vodka and Sprite was better. Binx bopped around the party, cheery and eager, too cheery and overeager, sweating again already but not even caring anymore, greeting old friends and new, dismayed at how many of these goddamn friends were new and just how horribly new they were, not letting it get him down, managing to touch this female rump, that female waist, the curve of some other female breast, most of them younger than they used to be. You know, your young firm female flesh is very nice, but this is ridiculous. Here are these girls, six feet tall, weighing less than a hundred pounds, encased in leather and rubber, and perched on top of each is the face of a twelve-year-old. Granted, a twelve-year-old on uppers, but still.
Jack Ingersoll, over there, across the room. There’s an old friend, goddamn his eyes. Jack Ingersoll, compact, clean, self-contained, like a lumberjack on his day off, moving through the party like a census taker.
We used to work together, Binx reminded himself, squinting across the crowded room at this recent arrival, this guy clutching a bottle of beer and moving slowly, inexorably through the room, dropping a word here, a word there, counting the house, clearly counting the house.
He’s doing what I’ve been trying to do, Binx thought. He paused in gnashing his teeth to knock back a little more vodka and Sprite. He’s doing what I’ve been trying to do, and he’s so much better at it.
There was a complicated hate-hate relationship between Binx Radwell and Jack Ingersoll, at least from Binx to Jack, dating from when Jack was also a Weekly Galaxy editor. In fact, once Binx had clawed his way back up to his own second posting as editor, he’d inherited Jack’s team — the Down Under Trio and Mary Kate Scudder and Chauncey Chapperrel and the rest. All except the ones who’d left — Sara Joslyn and Jack himself, gone off to a happy life of non-marital sex and legitimate journalism up in New York; and, of course, Ida Gavin.
Jack Ingersoll was everything Binx wanted to be; Binx admired Jack with a hopeless, helpless infatuation. Jack was self-assured, straightforward, stoic, and single, everything Binx was not. What could Binx do, poor man, but clothe that envy and admiration in the thickest, heaviest cloak of hatred and then overcoat the whole package with a fawning smile of false camaraderie? Nothing; so that’s what he did.
But not just yet. First, another vodka and Sprite. Standing on line at the handiest bar, Binx brooded on the meaning of Jack’s presence here. Trend had sent Sara down to cover the Ray Jones trial. Trend was not topical in the way the Galaxy was and would not actually cover the trial until it was all over. So why would Sara’s editor follow her? And why, knowing the Galaxy as well as Jack Ingersoll did, would Sara’s editor, having for no comprehensible reason followed her to Branson, Missouri, then come here?
I must be clever, Binx told himself hopelessly, as he ordered his fresh drink. I must be cleverer than Jack and find out what he’s up to. Because, damn his eyes, he’s up to something. And Binx, with the instinct of the field mouse when the shadow of the hawk passes by, knew without question that whatever Jack was up to, it bode no good for Binx Radwell. No good at all.
Slinking forward like a minor footpad in Dickens, Binx actually washed his hands together as he at last stood in front of Jack Ingersoll, amid the milling throng; or, that is, the free hand washed the hand holding the vodka and Sprite. “Jack! Long time no see!”
“Well, Binx,” Jack said, saluting with his beer bottle, “you look like shit. Sara tells me you’re an editor again.”
“You can’t keep a bad man down,” Binx suggested.
“Very true.” Looking around. Jack said, “Do I see some of my former unindicted co-conspirators here?”
“It’s mostly your team,” Binx said, feeling proud and humble and furious at the humility and embarrassed by the pride and defensive over all. “The Aussies and Don Grove and everybody.”
“Gee, Binx, it sure brings it all back,” Jack told him. “And I don’t miss it for a second.”
“Oh sure you do. The fun, the camaraderie, the thrill of the chase.”
“The terror, the pressure, the Valium, the heart attacks, the failures. And now I understand you have an even more vicious management than before.”
“Oh shoot,” Binx said, “if you want to talk reality.” Then he cleared his throat. He liked it so much, he did it twice more. Then he said, “Uhhhhhhhhh, how come, uh, how come, uh, how, uh, come, you’re here? Here.”
Grinning, Jack took a folded sheet of fax paper from an inner pocket and extended it, saying, “Don’t tell Sara I showed you this.”
Binx had no idea what this paper was going to be. He hated unexpected things, and so many things in life came under that category. With vague memories of nightclub hypnotists who put people under merely by handing them a card to read, Binx opened the slimy curly fax paper and, with increasing astonishment, read Sara’s projected lead. “Good golly. Miss Molly,” he said.
“That,” Jack said, “was after Sara experienced the Ray Jones show at the Ray Jones Theater once, in person.”
“There must be something in the water,” Binx suggested.
“I’ll be finding out,” Jack said. “I promised to go there tonight myself. They’re saving me the Elvis seat.”
Assuming that to be some sort of joke he wasn’t catching — so much of life, it seemed to Binx, was a joke he wasn’t catching — Binx said a neutral “Uh-huh” and returned the fax to Jack, who returned it to his pocket. “So that’s why you skyed M-O-ward.”
“Well, also,” Jack said, “Sara is my girlfriend. I like to see her from time to time.”
So would I, Binx thought, and many images crossed the mildew-stained movie screen of his mind. His wife, Marcie, appeared in one of the images, and he dispatched her with a bazooka. “You know. Jack,” he said, musingly, thoughtfully, maturely, “I’ve been thinking for some time about making some changes in my life. Get out of Florida, maybe move on to—”
“Full up,” Jack said.
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about Trend in particular,” Binx lied, “just any opening you might know of up in the Apple that—”
“Nobody there calls it the Apple,” Jack said.
“Big Apple?”
“No.”
“New York, New York?”
“Only when drunk.”
“Well, what do you call it?”
“The city.”
Binx said, “How do you know which one you’re talking about?”
“What other one is there?”
“You used to be more down-to-earth, Jack,” Binx reproached him, and was interrupted by Bob Sangster, the most working-class looking of the Down Under Trio, whose manner was so laconic that passing doctors sometimes took his pulse just to be sure. “Say,” he said. Actually, being Australian, he said, “Sigh.”
“Hel-lo, Bob,” Binx said, as though heartily.
“Right,” Bob said obscurely. “Ever heard of a shadow jury?”
“It has dogged my footsteps,” Binx said, “my entire life. You remember Jack Ingersoll, your former lord and master.”
“Oh, right,” Bob said, giving Jack the double O. “You went away to America or somewhere, didn’t you?”
“No, the city,” Jack said.
“Ah, New York, New York,” said Bob, who in fact was drunk. Turning back to Binx, he said, “About this shadow jury, the way it seems, what they do—”