Still, he was happy. Today was the day that Chuck Fadge’s new book would receive the most negative review in the recent history of The Times. Since taking over the editorship of The Monthly from Andrew, Fadge had spent two years praising the runniest dreck and writing nasty reviews of the finest novels being published. If it was pretentious, Fadge called it innovative; if it was solid and well crafted, he called it too quiet. Now Fadge had had the nerve to publish the cynically motivated Exhaustive Compendium of Literary Knowledge. Fadge had rushed his book to press, knowing that Andrew was working on a similar but more serious and considered work on the same general topic.
Now he was going to pay. Andrew had been contacted about writing the review himself, but he knew, as did the editor who’d contacted him, that it could only hurt his reputation to get into an ugly public fight with Chuck Fadge. The story the reading public would digest was that Yarborough was angry over losing his editorship of The Monthly to Fadge. People wouldn’t understand that Andrew could have kept the job if he’d thought it was still worth having. And so they might think him merely vindictive and fail to understand the validity of his criticisms of all things Fadge. Andrew knew that he was ill-tempered and hard to get along with, but his commitment to good books and to writers was life-long and genuine. He hated Fadge for the simple reason that Fadge was an enemy of literature.
What he had said to the editor who phoned had been carefully couched: “I’m afraid I could not be as impartial as a Times reviewer is expected to be. Besides, you couldn’t pay me enough to read that book.” He omitted the fact that he had already read the galley and made a few alterations to his own book after doing so. “Quarmbey’s your man,” he had said. “He’ll do the book justice, write just the kind of review I suspect you’re looking for.”
Though he had been tempted to inquire about content and progress, Andrew had studiously avoided his querulous friend since passing along his name. He didn’t want one of his characteristic anti-Fadge phrases to make its way into the review; he wanted no appearance of involvement. Now, after weeks of waiting, the day had arrived.
“Stop in the next city of any size,” he boomed at his wife.
“That’s still a dictatorial tone,” she said, “but at least you’re not as ill-humored as you were.”
“I hope that means you’ll stop trying to put hot stones on my stomach while I’m sleeping.”
“Like your stomach’s flat enough!” She turned on her shrill laugh.
Andrew was in such a fine mood that he let it go. “There,” he pointed. “Take the next exit.”
The absurd town had a single main street, and it wasn’t hard to locate the combination coffee shop and newsstand. The place smelled like sausage and eggs and yesterday’s ashtrays. Small groups of old men and a few middle-aged couples talked. Andrew assumed their conversations centered on the latest in hog-farming technology, local sports, and who was fooling around with whom. He asked the teenaged girl presiding over the counter display of cigarettes and gum whether she carried The Times.
“Sure do,” she said. “We get three copies every single week.”
When he saw the empty rack, Andrew almost lost his temper.
“We get three copies, because we can sell three copies,” the girl said. “But unless you’re one of those what needs an untouched paper, you can probably find one lying around.”
Andrew moved from table to table, grabbing papers and looking over shoulders at mastheads.
“Mister, you need to relax and just ask for what you want,” said an old man scrunched under a baseball cap. “I’m betting by that shirt you’ve got on that you’re looking for a copy of The Times.” With that and a grin, he stacked the paper’s sections and handed the mess to Andrew.
“Thank you,” was all that Andrew could muster.
“Now remember what I said, and relax. I’m sure your stocks are on the rise or will be plenty soon.”
Back in the car with the pieces of The Times and a cup of coffee, Andrew found the book section.
“I don’t suppose you brought me anything.” Janelle started the car, which reignited the godawful crap that she called music.
“Trust me on this one: they don’t sell herbal tea in this town.”
Back on the highway, Andrew read morsels of the review to his wife, laughing out loud. He wished he had a better audience, but not even Janelle’s disapproving twist of her nose could dampen his glee.
“He actually calls Fadge a nincompoop! I haven’t ever seen that word in The Times before. Never. He calls him a moron, a fool, a dullard, and — this is the best — an ingénue. Says the book has no redeeming qualities. Ha! Takes him to task for having such an East Coast bias that he includes Tama Jamowitz but not Willa Cather and that absurd Saffron boy trying to write about nine-eleven after reading Günther Grass for the first time, but not William Faulkner. Rick Moody but not Sherwood Anderson. As if Faulkner hadn’t passed the test of time. And this is in an ‘exhaustive compendium of literary knowledge’. Ha!”
“It seems a bit cruel in tone.” His wife returned to humming along with the noise coming from the dashboard speakers.
“Fadge got off light. He should thank his lucky stars.”
Andrew smiled. Janelle was right; the review was vicious.
“Darling, I know that Fadge was awful to you. I know he stole your job, but, really, other people’s failures aren’t our successes.”
“Don’t even breathe another word of that self-help crap to me. My feelings toward Fadge aren’t personal. It’s nothing less than this: he represents everything I am against, everything that is wrong with publishing. I’ve got no problem with low-brow trash, you know that. But we’re in real trouble when we start confusing middle-brow pretenders with literature just because other fools are willing to pay money for their books. Fadge is loathsome, moronic, and evil. He’s out to kill literature and culture and everything that’s good. All Quarmbey did was tell the rest of the world, and the world should thank him.”
“Oh darling, you always exaggerate so.”
After Andrew spent his laughter, he hit the eject button and popped in Warren Zevon. “Pull over. I’m driving the rest of the way home.”
Chapter five
Jackson Miller slept deeply after the long drive and awoke in time to make the coffee before Doreen got up. The small galley kitchen was the only clean room in the apartment. Neither Jackson nor Doreen owned a vacuum cleaner, so the living-room carpet wore a coat of dust and crumbs too small to pick up by hand. The room was dormitory-like, furnished with boards and concrete blocks, upside-down plastic crates, a foam sofa with stretched seams, a bean bag chair, an old portable CD player, discs stacked in random order. The bathroom had neither vent nor window. The roommates kept it from becoming a site of pest infestation with occasional wipe downs using a threadbare towel, but the room never gleamed.
The kitchen, on the other hand, smelled mineral clean and was stocked with Doreen’s good equipment: copper pots, small appliances manufactured in Germany, thick cake pans, expensive knives and whisks. Jackson was no cook, but he liked the sturdiness of well-made objects, as well as standing in a room that was both clean and cleaned by someone else.
Doreen thanked him when he poured her coffee, kissed his cheek, and welcomed him home.
“Master of the small gesture, that’s me. I’ll even make you an omelet. You must be tired of handling food after last night.”