“Who put you up to this, Kossweiller?” he asked, apparently forgetting, in his anger, to call him by the wrong name.
“I,” said Koss. “But I—”
“The doll incident,” whispered Anders, from beside him. “Don’t you know about the doll incident?”
“No dolls,” said Cinchy. “Never any dolls. Because of the incident.”
“What was the incident?” asked Koss, but Anders was already interrupting him—”You don’t ask about the incident,” Anders was saying.
“You don’t ask about the incident,” said Cinchy, who seemed to be calming down now. “You just accept it. Ten years of therapy. No dolls. Never any dolls.”
“I didn’t know,” said Koss.
“Dolls are creepy,” said Cinchy. “Horrible things. You’re fired.”
The room was silent. Kossweiller felt stunned. Nobody would meet his eye. He looked at his pad in front of him a moment, then, gathering the pad and pencil, stood up to go.
“Perhaps he really didn’t know,” said H. H.
“I know Koss,” said Anders. “He doesn’t have a malicious bone anywhere in his body. He didn’t mean anything by it, Cinchy.”
“Maybe not,” said Cinchy.
“A boss of the people might give someone a second chance,” said Anders.
Cinchy scrutinized Kossweiller carefully. “All right,” he said. “The boss of the people unfires you. Strike two. You get one more. But I swear to you, Karse, screw this one up, I’ll not only fire you, I’ll make you miserable. Ninety over ninety, I swear to God. And you,” he said, turning and pointing at Anders, “you help him. You make sure he doesn’t waste my time again. I want the two of you in my office in two days with something that nails all three b’s right through the fucking skull.”
It was Anders, knocking on his office door as he came in. “Dolls, Koss?” he was saying. “Whose idea was that?”
“I didn’t know about the doll incident,” said Kossweiller. “I swear to God.”
“That was a close one. You should thank God Cinchy’s a boss of the people.”
“It was Bubber. He recommended it to me.”
“Bubber? The agent? He hates Cinchy. Koss, you should know that.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“He and Cinchy worked together at MacMaster & Bates until Cinchy fired him. Don’t you know anything? I’m amazed you’ve managed to survive in this business as long as you have.”
“What was the doll incident?” asked Kossweiller. He opened his center desk drawer, looked in. He closed it, opened a left-hand drawer, kept opening and closing drawers.
“How do I know, Koss? Ten years of therapy, no dolls, never any dolls, that’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows. It’s some deeply Freudian, fucked-up thing.” Anders sat on the edge of Kossweiller’s desk. “It’d probably make a good book,” he said thoughtfully, “and a small-scale indie movie. Maybe Bubber knows. What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out how long it’ll take me to pack.”
Anders stood up. “Oh no, you don’t,” he said. “You can’t expect the editor of such bestsellers as The Secret Lives of Housewives and Darned but Not Forgotten to let you give up now, can you? You’re an editor, Koss, that’s your so-called métier. Go home and think of something, and we’ll hash it out tomorrow. I have faith in you. Besides, you heard Cinchy: my fate’s wrapped up in your own now. I can’t let you quit.”
“I just can’t do it, Tal. It’s not me.”
“What’s ‘me’ mean? There’s no me to be found in team. Well, actually there is a me in team if you rearrange the letters, but you get my point. Ninety over ninety, Koss. He won’t let you quit. He’ll make your life hell.”
“Ninety over ninety. What does that even mean?”
“If I were you,” said Anders. “I would do every goddamn thing I could not to find out.”
Early the next morning, a few minutes after Kossweiller was in, Anders sent an intern by with a note. Coffee in ten, keep the ideas flowing. Eight minutes later, Anders was knocking on his door, tie carefully knotted, looking impeccable.
“Ready, Koss?” he asked. “Thinking blockbuster?”
They took the elevator down to the ground floor, walked out of the building and down the street one building farther, ducked into Sal’s.
“Drinks, gentlemen?” the waiter asked.
“Water,” said Kossweiller.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Anders. “It’s almost ten, Koss,” he said. “Nothing wrong with a drink this late in the day. Gets the creative juices flowing.”
“It’s only twenty-five of nine,” said Kossweiller.
“Right,” said Anders. “Ten if you round up.”
“Coffee, then,” said Kossweiller.
“Irish coffee for him,” said Anders, pointing. “Whiskey for me.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” said Anders. “Without a few drinks, we won’t get anywhere. We’ve tried it your way and you see where that got us. Now we try it my way.”
Three Irish coffees in and Kossweiller found himself comfortably warm, loosened up enough to allow Anders to switch him over to vodka. A pure drink, as Anders had described it.
“So,” asked Anders. “What you got?”
“I got nothing,” said Kossweiller.
“Not good, Koss, not good.” He looked at Kossweiller’s glass. “The problem with you,” he said, “is that you think your glass is half-empty when it’s really half-full.”
“It looks completely full to me,” said Kossweiller. “I only had a little sip.”
“Not that glass, Koss,” said Anders. “The glass in your head.”
“What glass in my head?”
“Metaphor. Focus, Koss. Give me a ghost of an idea, just one, something to work with.”
Kossweiller leaned forward, stared into his glass. “Well,” he said, “not dolls.”
“Never any dolls.”
“Never any dolls.”
“What about something about history? Something historical.”
“History? There were a half-dozen books on Lincoln this season alone. Queer Lincoln has already been done. Communist Washington has already been done. Battles of World War II have all been done to death. Only the real buffs give a shit about anything outside of the big wars and the founding fathers. You don’t know the first thing about history and neither do I, and we wouldn’t know who to turn to. It sells, some of it, but those guys work on books for years at a time. They’re gluttons for punishment, and they’re months late for deadlines. History’s out.”
“No history, no dolls.”
Anders nodded.
Kossweiller stared into his drink, thought. He looked at his watch. “It’s only quarter after ten,” he said, “and I’m already drunk.”
“Right,” said Anders. “Let’s go with that, but spin it. How about ‘It’s already tea time in Edinburgh and I’m only just getting drunk’?”
“That’s an idea for a book?”
“Just a general attitude adjustment, Koss. Just a new way of seeing the world. Though it could be the first line for a book. Something a little Irvine Welsh-y, if you changed getting drunk to shooting up.”
“But I’m not in Edinburgh.”
Anders took a long sip, raised his glass to the light. “Ah, Edinburgh,” he said, and took another sip.
“But—”