I didn’t attend any of them, so I can’t give you the details.
Lots of the booksellers don’t attend them, either, or, if they do, they let their minds wander. The formal business isn’t the important part of the convention, I suppose; just as so many of my classmates at college used to think the lectures weren’t the important part of their education. It’s not what you know, it’s whom you get drunk with.
If I sound bitter, it’s because I don’t drink. I have no moral objections, you understand, but it is by my keen, incisive brain—or whatever adjectives you prefer—that I make my living; and I have never quite seen that banging it with a hammer called alcohol (or dope) can improve its functioning.
So I sat in the bar, feeling out of place, killing time before the party was to start, and lacking any desire to attend even if Prism Press was to pick up the tab. There’d be more drinking there, and no Giles. If Giles were there, what would that be but an invitation to humiliation. There was no way in which I could bring myself to attempt to plead effectively; or to succeed if I made the attempt.
I had the impulse to leave and go home despite my useless promise to Teresa, and if I had all would have been well; at least the world would have been short one murder and long one life. In fact, I think I would have done so if I had not found myself listening to the talk at the next table.
It was not, at first, for any reason; not even out of idle curiosity. It was just that the sounds were there and my ears were in the neighborhood and that it was too much trouble to tune out.
But then the conversation grew to have a grisly fascination for me. From internal evidence, the people at the next table were minor editors—second lieutenants in the world of publishing—and they were talking about their jobs.
The situation was not good. Books sold as well as ever, or better, and the number of books published continued to rise; the inflation that had followed the oil embargo of 1973, however, had raised the prices of everything so that expenses outpaced profits.
And how does one make up for lagging profit? The easiest way is to cut down on staff, either by outright firing or by not replacing those who, for one reason or another, leave.
I was sorry for them, and yet the rottenness of their situation illuminated my own immunity to their lot.
Odd! When I began writing and trying to sell, editors were like demigods to me. They walked in power, and bestrode the world. Their heads were cloud-high and their voice was thunder-loud and their glance lightning-sharp. Actually, I don’t know about the last. I couldn’t meet the eyes of editors; I was afraid to.
They had the power of life and death, and at their lightest breath, success (or failure) wafted your way. If their lordly whims were offended by anything in the manuscript, a negligent checkoff on a form meant that a secretary would return your material with a rejection slip. Could a god do more?
But an editor can be fired, I eventually learned. And when he is fired, he is no longer an editor, merely an item in the statistics of the unemployed.
Not so a writer. He cannot be fired. He might be rejected, he might fail, he might starve, he might be forced to keep body and soul together by taking some menial (i.e., non-writing) employment, he might be ignored by the critics and denounced by the public—but he was a writer, a failed writer, an unsuccessful writer, a starving writer, a writer. No editor could change that fact.
Listening, and musing, pinned me to the spot long enough to keep me from being aware of the presence of Roseann Bronstein until it was entirely too late. In fact, it was not until she had taken the place vacated by Teresa Valier and had said, «Hi there, little fella,» that I knew what had come to pass.
A friend of mine, who had been brought up totally immersed in the Yiddish language, and who was fond of lacing his speech with Yiddish idioms literally translated into English, would often say, «It became dark before my eyes,» when he wanted to express a dramatic extremity of anguish.
The only times when it seemed to me that this might be more than a mere metaphoric turn of phrases was whenever Roseann saw me before I saw her. She would, on those occasions, invariably greet me in those precise words, «Hi there, little fella.»
How do I describe Roseann? She is not exactly ugly or grotesque, but I think they invented the word «unattractive» for her. She does not attract! I have never met anyone who was willing to talk about Roseann who did not acknowledge a desire to retreat when she approached.
She was short and round, had a wide face and a loud, cheerful voice. Her skin was rough and when her arms were bare they gave the impression of being slightly, but permanently, goosefleshed. Her face was always innocent of makeup and there was a perpetual smell of old clothes about her. There was something utterly sexless about her appearance, as though she dated back from a time before the two sexes were invented and differentiated.
And yet hidden beneath all this was a woman. Her breasts were prominent enough, though probably flabby (I wouldn’t know), and, if half the stories were correct, she was fascinated by men.
«What can I do for you, Roseann?» I asked tonelessly.
«I met Teresa Valier in the lobby and she said you were in here.»
«I must remember to do Teresa a favor sometime in return. Trip her at the top of the down escalator, maybe.»
Roseann laughed heartily enough to attract attention from nearby tables. I have never known her to register anything but amusement at remarks concerning herself.
It’s the reason why, however repelled I am by her, I never find myself actually disliking her. Laugh at yourself and the world laughs with you.
Roseann said with a fine, and futile, attitude of carelessness, «Teresa said you’re going to the party.»
I looked at my watch. «I have twenty-five minutes to make a decision.»
«She said you’ll be talking to Giles Devore.»
«If I see him,» I said, pronouncing my words precisely. «I don’t intend to look for him.»
«I hope you see him. I know you’ve got influence with him.»
My God, I thought pettishly, an instant replay. I have become a pipeline to Giles—with everyone in the world at one end of the pipe, but no Giles at the other.
«I don’t,» I said. «None at all.»
«Oh, come on.» She grinned broadly, revealing large teeth with one of the upper incisors clearly capped, hitched her chair closer to the table, and leaned over to knead my arm. I suspect that she was merely performing what she considered an erotic rite designed to rouse my libido and urge me into greater cooperation. Or perhaps she just enjoyed the feel of a masculine arm.
Whatever her intent, my skin crawled at her touch, and I was embarrassed by that. I’ve lost count of the number of girls against parts of whose bodies I’ve allowed my hand to rest, and always with a cool, slow stroking motion that I liked and that I always assumed they liked, too, even when nothing further came of it or was intended to come of it. It is only when I react to Roseann that I wonder how many girls have skins that crawl at my touch, and I am embarrassed retroactively for having annoyed every one of them.
«Talk him into coming to my place for an autograph session for his new book,» she said, with a voice that gave me the impression of a crow trying to coo.
«Why me?» I said. «Ask him yourself.»
A vague embarrassment passed over her face and her arm dropped back to her own side of the table. «I can’t, little fella.» Then she said in her own natural voice, held low and controlled, «You know, I made him, Darius. His book went nowhere in hard cover and would have gone nowhere in soft cover, if I hadn’t pushed it.»
We all made him, I thought sardonically. I made him. The Valiers and Prism Press made him. Roseann Bronstein made him. Yet somehow he was standing there on his own now, and could spit at us all.