Bubber was fat and pale, his hair greased back. He had a way of lasciviously squeezing his interlocutor’s arm, which made Kossweiller extremely uncomfortable. When he finally figured out that Kossweiller wasn’t after literature and that he worked for Cinchy, he looked up toward the ceiling and, grabbing Kossweiller’s arm, said:
“Picture this. The History of Raggedy Ann.”
“The doll.”
“Sure,” said Bubber. “Kind of a picture book. Dolls galore. And there’s a natural follow-up,” he said, lifting his index fingers for quotations marks. “The History of Raggedy Andy.”
“Have they changed a lot over the years?”
“Have they changed?” Bubber shrugged. “Not really. It just depends on what your perspective is.”
“And what’s the book’s perspective?”
“It can have any perspective you like,” Bubber said. “It hasn’t been written yet.”
“It’s not written?”
“Sure. But there’s any number of great, really first-rate writers I have at my fingertips who could crank the sucker out in two weeks.”
“Two weeks?”
“See,” said Bubber, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and leaning forward to take Kossweiller’s arm again with the other. “A book like that has only three or four thousand words of text anyway. What you got is all pictures. Maybe ninety pictures over ninety pages. Dolls, dolls, dolls. Dolls on crackback chairs, dolls in barns, dolls on beds, dolls on swings, dolls with plants, maybe even dolls with dogs. Yes, definitely dolls with dogs. A natural.”
“You think it will be a blockbuster?”
“Who doesn’t like dolls?” asked Bubber.
Morning found Kossweiller sitting in the conference room, staring at the wall. He was the first to have arrived. He had been more or less persuaded to try Bubber’s Raggedy Ann book — what did he have to lose? — but then late the night before he’d started to read West’s En Masse again. It seemed even better this time, and reading it made him feel very ashamed. How could he pass on it in favor of a coffee-table book?
People had begun to trickle in, editors and marketers and assistants from all over Entwinkle House. Soon everybody was there except for Cinchy.
“Did you hear about MacMaster & Bates?” Justice Turko was saying to an assistant next to her. “The author dump?”
“The author dump?” asked Kossweiller.
“Dropped over half their authors in a single afternoon,” said Ted Billner, drawing a finger across his throat. “Yesterday. Ought to be done here.”
“Orders straight from the top,” said Turko. “Maybe it will be.”
“Maybe it will be what?” asked Kossweiller.
“Done here.”
“Here’s an idea,” said Helen Harman, the pseudo-attractive unnatural-blond marketing director who went by H. H. She swept her hand in front of her face in a wipe. “HarperCollins,” she said, “and Tom Collins together at last. Free books with cocktails and vice versa.”
“Good one, H. H.,” said Turko.
“Why haven’t they thought of it yet?” asked Billner.
Kossweiller just stared.
“Finally here,” said Cinchy, striding in. “Just been on the phone with somebody big, can’t say who, couldn’t be ignored. Treat the stars like the stars they are. Got to, got to.” He sat down. “All right, then,” he said. “Go, go, go.”
They started at his right, working their way around the table. Paul Musswen had on the docket a book by a conservative and inflammatory U. S. Congressman about how his transvestite brother was dying of AIDS because he had gone against the will of God. Cinchy looked at H. H. and when she nodded, he nodded. Turko had four nearly identical memoirs of public figures whose fathers had “incested” them but who had not only “survived” but “conquered.” Again the nod passed from the marketing director to the boss of the people, like a tic. John Barnum Gotta had a photohistory of dresses belonging to J. Edgar Hoover and John Wayne (“Great!” yelled Cinchy. “Great!”). Duff McQuaid had persuaded the country’s best-known professor of African American Studies to compile a cultural dictionary called Afro-Americana! “And the best part,” said Duffy, “is his students are doing the work for college credit, so nobody has to pay them.” H. H.’s nod was long in coming, but it finally came, and Cinchy’s soon followed. Belva Adair had purchased three memoirs, one in which a female rock musician spoke out about her decision not to have children, another in which a woman poet spoke about her decision not to have children, another in which a woman novelist spoke about her decision, at age forty-five, to have a child (H. H. actually deigned to speak for this one: “Good coverage!” she said). Ted Billner just said, “Three different fetishes, three simple words, three simple titles: Rubber, Leather, Silk.
“Super!” said Cinchy. “Crackerjack!”
He turned to Kossweiller, who felt his throat go dry and tight as if he were in grade school again. Kossweiller opened his mouth.
“I’ve got a novel,” he said quickly. “One of the best I’ve ever read. Albert West. En Masse. It’s worthy of Faulkner or Joyce. I really think we should go with this one, sir.”
An expression of mild hatred was on Cinchy’s face. “Not sir, “ he said. “Cinchy.”
“Cinchy.”
Cinchy stared at him quietly. “Karsewelder,” he said. “Karsewelder, I thought we had a talk. You should be ashamed.”
Ashamed? Kossweiller wondered.
“What am I going to do with you?” Cinchy asked, half to himself.
H. H., Kossweiller noticed, was raising her hand. Eventually Cinchy noticed as well.
“Yes, H. H.?” he asked.
“Perhaps Koss has a marketing plan, Cinchy? Perhaps it isn’t as hopeless as it looks?”
Cinchy brightened just a little. “That right, Karse? Do you mind if I call you Karse?”
Koss shook his head. “It’s actually—” he started to say, but then, catching Tal Anders’s eye, stopped. “No, sir,” he said. “I mean, no, Cinchy. I don’t mind at all.”
“So let’s hear it,” said Cinchy. “What do you have up your sleeve, Karse?”
“Up my sleeve?”
“What’s your strategy for making En Masse a blockbuster?”
“Change the title for starters,” said H. H.
“So you’d change the title,” said Cinchy to him. “And what else?”
“It’s very good,” said Kossweiller. “It’s really a good book.”
“But who’s your target audience?” said Cinchy.
“My target audience?”
There was a long silence.
“Incoherent marketing strategy,” H. H. finally said. “I can’t work with it, Cinchy.” She turned to him. “I’m sorry, Koss. Don’t take it personally.”
“That’s it, then,” said Cinchy. “You heard her, Karse. It won’t work. No go. Strike one. Two more and you’re out. What else you got?”
“What else?”
“You mean you don’t have anything else?” asked Cinchy, his voice rising. “I thought we had a talk. Did we or did we not have a talk?”
Kossweiller shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well,” he said. “There was one other thing.”
Cinchy leered at him. “Something literary?” he said. “It better not be something literary, I swear to God.”
“It isn’t,” said Kossweiller. “Picture this,” he said, trying his best to imitate H. H.’s wipe. “The History of Raggedy Ann. For the coffee table.”
He was prepared to go on. He had for this one at least the rudiments of a marketing strategy. Who doesn’t like dolls? It probably wasn’t the best idea of the day, but certainly it wasn’t the worst. It could go through. Which was why he was surprised, when he looked up, to find Cinchy red-faced and shaking.