I could have tried to exonerate myself but, being ridiculously new at the network, I thought it politic not to state my case at Braverman’s expense. I hadn’t even been assigned a secretary yet, and my office still contained the embarrassing scent of fresh paint.
“I have to be honest,” I said, which I thought was as good a way as any to begin a lie. “I’ve been dispatching so many memos since coming aboard that I can’t recall where I was in this particular sequence of events. If it’s any help, I’m strictly a Brylcreem guy.”
Our uniform dim-wittedness left Compton with nothing to tango or tangle with. “Honor among thieves. Fine. Then I’ll deal with you like I’m Ali Baba. Here’s our fall schedule.”
He tossed it onto his desk blotter. We hadn’t expected to see it for at least two more weeks. Reflexively, Dancer reached for it, and Compton slapped at his hand. You heard me. He slapped at his hand.
Compton transferred the memo to a lower drawer and locked it with a little key. “So here’s how it works. If you want to consult the schedule, you come in this room, you ask me for the specific information you want, I will look it up and tell you. Until then, no one sees it, holds it, or gets a copy of it. Not my secretary, and not you four.”
I got the feeling we were being listed in order of trust.
“Mighty white of you, Winslow,” Braverman mumbled in the hall as he tucked neat pinches of cherry blend tobacco into his briar pipe. The stem made little clacking noises as it rolled against his side teeth. “Not everyone in your position would have kept mum. As new man here, suspicion was likely to fall on you first.”
I said something about the time I’d sent a line drive through Mr. Overmeyer’s window and been finked on by Ricky Yatto, when it would have cost him nothing to cover for me.
Braverman offered in stumbling fashion, “This Saturday. A little shindig me and the missus throw each year. Cocktails, canapés, more cocktails, sit-down barbeque. Been meaning to invite you. You’re married, I’ve heard?”
“Fourteen years, three months, two weeks,” I joked, a stock line that I updated every now and then.
It evoked an understanding laugh from Braverman. “Ever get time off for good behavior?”
“Not a chance.” I smiled.
“Donna at Reception will be sad to hear that,” he said.
This statement instantly made Braverman one of the most interesting people I’d ever met. “What do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound casual about Donna at Reception, who bore a passing resemblance to starlet Joi Lansing in every department. This bears repeating. Every department.
“Didn’t you know?” he asked. “She’s been waving semaphore signals at you since you started here.”
I smiled. “She’ll lose her enthusiasm when she finds out I’m married.”
Braverman lowered his voice. “I already broke the news to her, buddy boy, and her reaction was ‘What else is new?’ ”
I couldn’t help looking down the hallway, where Donna at Reception was stationed behind a low-cut reception desk. She smiled my way, then arched her back and stretched her arms above her head. I expected the Sweater Police on the scene any moment to charge her with assaulting an angora.
“I just invited her to my party,” Braverman added. “You know what she said?”
“What?”
“She said she’d come stag and asked if you’d be there, too.”
“Joanie,” I said to my wife as she changed for the party early that Saturday evening, “if you’re really feeling under the weather, I’ll understand if you want to stay home.”
She was wearing a navy blue strapless cocktail dress and applying roll-on deodorant that I hoped would not glisten so much by the time we got to the party. “I didn’t say I was feeling under the weather,” she corrected. “I said I was exhausted from shopping. It’s Saturday night. I wouldn’t think of you going without me.”
Braverman was a hi-fi buff and had built himself a great rig. He was putting it through its paces with one of those stereo demonstration disks, Provocative Percussion or Persistent Percussion or something. Braverman centered me and kept pointing from the right to the left as bongos or claves would ping-pong to either speaker, while an accordion throbbed “Misirlou” straight down the middle.
He and his wife, Linda, were serving gimlets, with the color and taste of a Charms lime lollipop but one hell of a kick. Braverman revealed himself to be some kind of barbeque nut, complete with one of those aprons that proclaimed “I’m the chef!” With his straight briar pipe clenched between his teeth, the only thing he said to anyone for an hour was “Too rare for you?”
Donna from Reception was wearing a tight canary yellow dress that had undoubtedly brought a pleased smile to her lips when she first saw it in the changing-room mirror at Saks. Every time I looked her way, she was already looking at me. She made impatient little arcs with her eyes, urging me to step out onto Harv’s patio to chat with her, for pity’s sake, but Joanie intercepted one of Donna’s glances and instantly asked to be introduced to my closest associates at NBC. I was sure she didn’t consider Donna to be one of my closest associates, nor did I want her to.
Harv, Shepard Spitz, and Matty Dancer couldn’t have been more gracious to my wife, clearly going out of their way to make her feel accepted within the NBC community. Her merest quip regaled them, and she flushed with pleasure at their attention and approval.
While Braverman was otherwise doubled up with laughter at what I thought was a fairly commonplace observation on Joanie’s part, he managed to catch my eye and redirect my attention to the sight of Donna leaving the party. She had apparently phoned for Rye Taxi to take her back to Manhattan. As she left, she gave me the most eloquent shrug, causing her cleavage to speak volumes.
Round about ten thirty, Harv signaled to me from the doorway of his den. It was a room I would have treasured, centered around my idea of rustic: a wide stack of hickory logs ablaze in a natural stone fireplace with an Emmy on the mantel above it.
Braverman smoothly locked the door from the inside. Turning, I discovered that Dancer and Spitz were already seated, holding big-fisted scotches on the rocks. There was the stilled air of ceremony in the room.
“We’ve been impressed with you, Dale, virtually since the moment you started,” said Dancer.
“And we’ve agreed to extend you an offer.” Spitz used his best attorney voice. “Braverman has nominated you into the Order of the Monks of the Abbey Victoria.”
Dancer chimed in, “We think it’s a whale of an idea, and we’ve made it unanimous.”
“I have no idea what to say,” I said appropriately, since I had no idea what they were talking about. I thought it wise to add, “I’m very honored, of course.”
Harv Braverman smiled and began to fill his pipe. “You of course have never heard of our Order, and we like it that way. Membership is offered only to those who have displayed discretion and proven themselves trustworthy. One unexpected demise and another member’s retirement had brought our membership down to four. Then Thissel got the boot, and we three were all that was left. Until you showed us this week that you have what it takes.”
Dancer handed me a scotch identical to his own. “Look, we’ll explain it all to you at the initiation ceremony. Can you get free and clear of your wife this coming Monday night?”
They saw the hesitation on my face.
“Tell her we’ve asked you to join our weekly poker game,” Spitz advised. “You won’t be lying.”
“American men still possess certain inalienable rights, even as we depart the Fabulous Fifties,” asserted Dancer. “Our wives have their mah-jongg nights, bridge clubs, and canasta. In return, an unwritten law has been left on the books that married men like ourselves are allowed to play poker one night a week, excluding Friday through Sunday.”