I said, «Here it is.» I held the badge out to show it to him and then I pinned it carefully to my jacket.
«Darius Just,» he said thoughtfully. «Aren’t you a writer?»
I owned the soft impeachment. «Yes, I’m a writer.»
«I know you,» he said. «I know you.» He snapped his fingers two or three times rapidly. «Wasn’t Giles Devore your protege?» He pronounced the last word with an English soft «g» and with a long «e» at the end.
«I helped him get started some years ago,» I admitted.
«He’s a great writer. You must be proud of him. I loved his books.»
«He’ll be glad to know that,» I said, without enthusiasm of my own. It was clear that to this honest but stupid employee my claim to fame lay in the fact that Giles was my protege and that was not exactly the way in which I hoped to go down in literary history.
I raised my arm partway to signify a fond farewell and said, «Well, take care.»
But he said, «Hold on just a bit.» He was scrabbling about in his pockets, then gave that up and snatched a sheet of paper from a nearby desk that was loaded with throwaways.
«Could I have your autograph?»
I paused in resignation. I have not yet reached the point where I receive so many requests that I have any unbearable desire to refuse to sign. I said, «Sure.»
I took the paper and was about to reach for my pen but he beat me to it. He pulled open the left side of his jacket and chose carefully among no less than three pens, taking out, I presumed, the most honorable. As he handed it to me, he said eagerly, «My name is Michael Strong. Middle initial P. Would you say, ‘To Michael P. Strong’? Just ‘Mike’ would be all right, too.»
I wrote «To Mike» since that would take less effort, and refrained from asking if the P stood for Patrick, but I bet myself ten to three that it did.
I said, trying not to be too damned sarcastic, «Shall I sign it, ‘Sponsor of Giles Devore’?»
«No, just your name,» he said innocently. «I’ll get Mr. Devore’s signature later on one of his books.»
No scrap of paper for Giles; there are hierarchies to these things. «Will it be all right if I go in now?»
«Sure! Thanks a lot, Mr. Just,» and he waved me in cheerfully.
Guards are essential at exhibitions of this sort to prevent theft. Even with their presence at each door, books and other items are stolen in surprising numbers. Who knows how many undesirables, criminally unbadged, passed by unchallenged by Michael Strong, for instance, while he was busy making the best of the fact that I wasn’t Giles Devore.
But it wasn’t my place to worry about rip-offs, and the efficiency, or lack of it, of security. Or it didn’t seem to be. I walked in. And what the guard had managed to do, with his bumbling, was to turn my smoldering undirected anger just a little in the direction of my old friend Giles Devore.
4 THOMAS VALIER 4:40 P.M.
I could have looked up the location of Prism Press in in the thickish exhibitors’ guide I had picked up in the interview room, but I was in no mood to do that. Grimly, I set about tracking it down by guess, making bets with myself as to how poor a position the Valiers had managed to find—and therefore how poor a position there would be for the display of my books.
What I didn’t realize at the time—and couldn’t—was that a life was hanging in the balance and it all depended on the level of my irritation. Let anything happen that would lighten the load of peevishness and all might be well. Let Prism Press be in an advantageous position—let there be a good display of my new book, Tomorrow Is for the Birds—and the scythe might not swing.
Let there be even something milder, more general—such as just what was happening—the walk I was taking between rows and rows of placards and letterings in blocks and banks of color—and I would cool. Hard sell, blatancy, commercialism, or whatever—no matter how I disapproved of it all in principle—it was books they were selling, and I love books. I love the jackets and the titles and the samples and everything about them.
And as the tension slowly began to leak away, I got stepped on!
It could have been my fault; I wasn’t exactly watching my steps. Besides, it was crowded, and bumping was a way of life.
It’s what being stepped on means to me, though. It’s that disbelieving look downward. It’s that oh-there-you-are sort of bemusement.
I’ve been stepped on all my life and there are two ways in which you can react. One is to learn to slither and fade into the woodwork. You can cultivate unnoticeability and a trick of sliding your foot out from the downfall of another.
But that’s not my way. It takes too long and it requires a spirit resilient enough to be crushed for long periods of time without losing shape. I don’t have that. I have to choose the other way of fighting back, on the spot and at once.
Which means that I spent a good portion of my early years being beaten up, sometimes in anger, and often in amusement, which is worse. It doesn’t happen so often now. I have had to invest precious time at the gym in order to learn how to counter superior brawn in a variety of ways. What it amounts to is that I had to learn to unstep the steppers by force.
And since word gets around, I am rarely stepped on, except by accident.
As in this case. And because the press conference fiasco still rankled, I welcomed a chance for physical action. I elbowed the stepper in the side with considerable force and said, «On your own feet, buster.»
Whoever it was staggered to one side, managed to regain his balance, focused on me after some confusion, and said, «Sorry, kid,» and moved on.
Kid!
I’m forty-two. Granted I look younger than that, but no one would guess me at anything younger than thirty-two. Kid!
He was playing his automatic tribute to my height and the soothing effect of my surroundings was suddenly gone. I was frowning once more and annoyed at the world.
I eventually came across Prism Press. It was between a dictionary display and a booth belonging to a publishing house that put out devotional literature. Thomas Valier was there himself, nattily dressed, just above average height, with not a speck of gray in his black hair, which had its every wave neatly in place. He was the very picture of the talented and stalwart young executive. No charge for pictures.
At that, he was an honest-to-God executive. Prism Press is privately owned and Tom Valier and his wife are the private owners. That has its advantage. Prism Press is small enough so that you can speak to the head man—Tom in this case—and know that he is the head man and that he knows every corner of the house business. With Prism Press you never find yourself dealing with helpless editors bound by the faceless decisions of a board meeting or of a decision from distant Olympus.
And that’s not all good either. In the large firms, when you do attract the beneficent attention of Olympus, there is money and power to play with. Tom of Prism Press could give you all the personal attention you need, and from his favorable decisions there was no chance of adverse appeal—but the financial push behind his personal attention was sharply limited.
Still he was amiable enough and I liked him—but not now.
In fact, at this moment, I disliked him intensely, for there were no advance copies of Tomorrow Is for the Birds on display, only a small placard announcing it was forthcoming.
Not so Giles’s new book, Evergone. There it was, a nice pile of about twenty—Evergone by Giles Devore. No doubt they would be handed out to strategically placed booksellers.