And Morgan herself was changing. The yellow streaks in her lustrous silver hair seemed more and more prominent when he saw her, which was every six months or so. Paul didn’t like to admit it, but ageless Morgan was aging. He wondered how long she could keep it up.
“I’d like to ask your Mr. Rufus if he understands what they’re up to at Medusa,” she’d say to him, in a tone only partially intended to mask her indignation. “I mean, I’m sure he’s a good lay and hallelujah for that. But does he know what he and his posse are doing to the Fabric of Our Culture?” Paul could almost see those capital letters in neon gold, dripping blood as they burned up the airwaves between them.
But phrases like “the Fabric of Our Culture” meant very little to Rufus. He was an intelligent, educated, well-adjusted guy with a toned body, wonderful manners, and a marvelous braising technique. But at thirty-three, he was way too young to have experienced or cared about the Paperback Revolution, the travails of returns, the rise and demise of the Borders chain, or the roller-coaster vagaries of Oprah’s Book Club. Trying to get him to appreciate the arcana of the Life of the Book was like suggesting he follow Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the kitchen. He’d just nod, roll his eyes, and quote his über-boss, the nefarious George Boutis, who was fond of saying about those old-fashioned objects known as physical books (p-books to the initiated), “I like camels, too, but I don’t ride one to work.”
Over time Paul found that his disputes with Rufus about the book business had grown erotically charged. They never seemed to be able to agree on anything professionally, but they had a fantastic time fighting about it, and making up. To argue better, Paul felt he needed to be as well-versed as possible in what his antagonist was saying and thinking, so he haunted the office of the P & S Internet marketing team, and as he listened to them discussing freemiums, like-gating, webisodes, and tag clouds, Paul wondered what they’d say if they knew that the quality of his love life depended on their know-how.
Eventually, Paul met Rufus’s boss, Spike Edelman, who ran Medusa’s book operations. A few weeks later, he found himself having dinner with Spike, Rufus, and George Boutis himself. George, who was short, pugnacious, and curious about everything, had founded Medusa soon after graduating from Williams, where he’d shared an off-campus apartment with Rick Nielsen. George, who had more than a dollop of Master of the Universe arrogance, was formidably well-read, and Paul couldn’t deny that in spite of their differences he found himself fascinated, if not charmed, by his conversational adversary.
It took him months to admit this to Morgan. When he did fess up, she screamed, “Well, I’ll be a rat’s ass! You two-timing bastard! Now I’ve seen everything.” After which she laughed uproariously, all instantly forgiven.
George and Paul ended up seeing each other every so often on Paul’s trips west to wrestle with Rufus. Sometimes Spike came along, but more often it was just the four of them: Paul, Rufus, George, and his sharp-tongued, hilarious wife, Martha, whose first novel, about the frustrated wife of a Silicon Valley magnate who wants to be a painter, was soon to be published by Impetus Editions, of all things. Their no-holds-barred dinner conversation was sometimes heated but always stimulating, and Paul had come to feel as time passed that, unlike Rufus, George understood his old-fashioned author-centered vision of publishing, much as it differed from George’s own.
One evening in Rufus’s loft, after he’d served them unforgettable linguine with sea urchin, George suddenly said, over a glass of super-smooth Nonino grappa:
“How about coming to work here at Medusa, Paul? You can spearhead our publishing program for us. We’ve got everything you need — including Rufus. Hell, I’ll even buy P & S. We’ll make it the flagship of Medusa Publishing.”
Paul felt the room tilt. How was he going to tell Morgan this? But he recovered enough to answer equably, “I’ll have to think this over, George. Thank you for your expression of confidence in me.”
Rufus was uncharacteristically quiet while they did the dishes after the Boutises left. Paul didn’t quite know how to take this; was Rufus offended that Paul hadn’t jumped at the chance to be in San Francisco with him? Had he known all along that George’s proposal was in the offing?
“Well. That was quite a shock,” Paul finally said.
“George is serious,” Rufus replied, with more than a trace of exasperation, as he emptied the dishwasher of glassware and put in the pots and pans. “He doesn’t make offers lightly, especially ones as meaningful as this.”
“I have no doubt of that,” Paul answered evenly. “But it’s a lot to take in, you have to admit. The idea is exciting in so many ways — especially being here with you. But wouldn’t it mean leaving behind everything I’ve spent my life working to accomplish?”
“Medusa is the future, Paul,” Rufus said carefully. “It’s here to stay. P & S can be part of it. And I’m here. We could have a wonderful life together.”
“It’s incredibly tempting, Rufus. I just need to think it over in tranquillity.”
“Fine. But don’t keep us waiting too long. George isn’t known for his patience.”
Us? And you; how patient are you? Paul wanted to ask. Somehow his boyfriend was sounding like a member of the opposing team.
Later, as he lay in Rufus’s sculpted arms listening to the dryer revolve in the pantry, Paul couldn’t sleep. He felt he was on the edge of a precipice and in danger of falling so far he couldn’t see the ground beneath him. And he wasn’t at all sure that the slapping of the place mats and napkins as they tossed in the dryer’s drum in the silent San Francisco night wasn’t the sound of Homer, Sterling, Ida, Arnold, Elspeth, Pepita, Dmitry — all of them — whirling like dervishes in their horrified graves.
XV. Eastport
Medusa did acquire P & S a few years down the road, along with Owl House and Harper Schuster Norton, pawns in its life-or-death struggle with Gigabyte to monopolize the retail (and e-tail) reading market. For the time being, at least, New Directions, Impetus, Boatwright, and the rest of the smaller publishing fry managed to avoid their larger competitors’ fate and remain independent.
Paul, though, was no longer with P & S. Rufus and he had broken up not long after he turned George Boutis down. So, finding himself unattached yet again in his mid-forties, and having scaled the summit of editorial achievement, by his lights anyway, with the publication of Ida’s Complete Poems, not to mention Rick Nielsen’s blockbuster, The End of Everything—coupled with the devastating news that the Soft-shell Crab would soon be shutting its doors — he decided after much soul-searching to take a break and try his luck as, you guessed it: a writer.
“It’s the most retrograde, counterintuitive thing I can imagine doing,” he told Morgan. “It’s got to be right.”
“Don’t forget bookselling!” she remonstrated. “Remem ber, you can always come home and take over Pages. I’m getting way too old for this fandango.”
Paul had a heart-to-heart with Plato and Aristotle and recommended that they hire his friend Lucy Morello, who had been doing wonders as Larry Friedman’s number two at Howland, Wolff. As usual, they were exceptionally gracious, and he’d left with enough of a nest egg to get him through a frugal year or two or three of writing. So he rented a little gray-shingled house in Eastport, Rhode Island, from Morgan’s sister in Providence, and all that long, brutal winter, the coldest in two decades, he sat at his kitchen table staring at the islands that littered the water off Pawcatuck Point, trying to work on a book about Ida, a personal reading that would try to make sense of his enduring passion for her and her work.