Corman didn’t answer. Instead, he decided to go on to another subject. “I was wondering if you’d heard anything about Groton.”
“Yeah, I did,” Pike answered gruffly. “He’s a dead man.” He stomped back to his desk and collapsed behind it. “He came in first thing, told me the whole story, just like he said he would.” He glanced out the window beside his desk, stared down toward the swarming ants below, then returned his eyes to Corman. “I knew his father, you know.”
“Groton’s?” Corman asked, surprised to hear it.
Pike’s lips jerked downward. “Rudy’s,” he said. “From way back, I knew his father.” He shook his head. “Tommy Fenster. He was a rewrite man for forty years, as good as there ever was.” He thought about it for a moment longer, then returned to Groton, his voice a bit shaky, despite the control. “Harry didn’t let out a whimper,” he said. “The old guy has balls, I’ll say that for him.”
“How long’s he got?”
“Six months, on the outside.”
“Six months,” Corman repeated softly.
“You want his job?”
Corman thought about it, remembering the conversation of the day before. “I’m not sure,” he said.
Pike leaned forward and turned off the light box. “Groton’s willing to take the new guy on a few shoots,” he said. “One of them’s scheduled for later this afternoon.”
“Where?”
“Some wingding at the Waldorf. Big wedding reception in the Grand Ballroom. Three-thirty. You interested?”
“Maybe,” Corman said tentatively.
“A little enthusiasm wouldn’t kill you.”
“It’s just that I’m working on something else right now,” Corman explained.
Pike’s eyes closed wearily. “What something else?”
“The woman who jumped out of the window on …”
“That’s dead meat,” Pike said, his eyes still closed. He waved one hand dismissively, rubbed his eyes with the other. “Forget it.”
“She had a college degree,” Corman said quickly. “She had to come from somewhere or done something, you know, unusual.”
Pike opened his eyes and lowered his hands to his desk. “Sounds like you’re working a reporter angle more than anything else.”
“I need a story to make the pictures worth something,” Corman said. He saw Simpson’s door closing again. “But, I’m just hitting a lot of dead ends.”
Pike’s eyes returned to the stacks of envelopes which covered one side of his desk. “It’s burying me,” he moaned, then glanced up at Corman. “So tell me, you interested in Groton’s job or not?” He lifted one of the envelopes and spilled the negatives onto the top of the light box. “Lilies and lace, that’s his beat.”
Corman could see Groton in his mind, slumped in a velvet chair, his camera bags gathered at his feet like sleeping dogs, his head nodding forward from time to time, heavy-lidded, ponderous, waiting for the bride, the groom, the first blast from the towering pipe organ. “Society shoots,” he said, almost to himself, “that’s all I’d be doing, too?”
“From morning till night, my friend,” Pike said. “You too good for it?”
Corman leaned against the door jamb and said nothing.
After a moment, Pike glanced up at him. “That’s the way it is, Corman,” he said. “You don’t get cakes and ale.” His eyes narrowed. “You want it or not?”
“How long can you hold it open?”
“Like they say, five business days.”
“That’s all?”
“You got till Monday morning,” Pike said firmly. “After that, you’ll have to take a number.”
Corman drew in a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll let you know one way or the other.”
“What about this shoot with Groton? The Waldorf?”
“I’ll be there,” Corman told him. He stood up, started out the door.
“Oh, by the way,” Pike said, stopping him. “Even if you come on staff, I don’t want to be your social secretary.” He picked up a small pink phone message and thrust it toward Corman. “Somebody left this for you about an hour ago.”
Corman took the message and read it. “It’s from my—what would you call it—the guy who married my wife.”
“Before or after you did?”
“After.”
Pike seemed to relax a bit. He grinned his old grin. “Just call him Sloppy Seconds,” he said.
Fenster was leaning against the wall in the lobby, fumbling through his camera bag, when Corman walked out of the elevator.
Fenster glanced up quickly. “You sell anything?”
Corman shook his head.
“Bastards,” Fenster hissed. He eased himself from the wall, pulled the camera bag onto his shoulder and headed for the door.
They walked out of the building together then turned west down 42nd Street. It was a sea of weaving umbrellas. Fenster added his to the jumble and drew Corman under it.
“I hate the city when it rains,” he said. He slowed his pace and glanced about aimlessly. “I don’t know where I’m going. That stuff about playing Hugo against the Times, that was bullshit.”
The rain suddenly stopped west of Fifth Avenue. Fenster folded his umbrella and stuck it into his bag. “By the way,” he asked, “where you headed?”
“Midtown North.”
“What for?”
Corman shrugged, hating the sound of Lang’s name in his mind. “Something I’m working on.”
Fenster stopped, looked at Corman closely. “Anything big?”
Corman shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
They walked on silently until they reached Times Square. There was a long bank of public telephones just in front of the old Times Building. Corman left Fenster at the corner while he made the call.
A woman answered immediately. “Candleman and Mills.”
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Mills,” Corman said. “I’m returning his call.”
“May I have your name, please?”
“David Corman.”
“Thank you, Mr. Corman. Just a moment, please.”
Something from the Brandenburg Concertos came over the phone suddenly, high, metallic, utterly unmusical. Corman drew the receiver from his ear to avoid it.
Jeffrey came on a few seconds later, cutting off the concerto in the middle of a flourish.
“Hello, David,” he said in a soft but decidedly serious voice. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry about tracking you down this morning, but I needed to talk to you, and I didn’t want Lucy to know.”
“What’s up, Jeffrey?” Corman asked dryly.
“Well, I was hoping that you and I could meet for dinner.”
“I have to be home with Lucy.”
“Would a drink be possible? Just a short one?”
“I guess.”
“We really do need to have a talk, you know,” Jeffrey said, adding a gentle emphasis.
Corman remained silent.
“Would seven be all right?”
“Maybe a little earlier,” Corman said.
“Six?”
“Okay.”
“How about the Bull and Bear, then,” Jeffrey said. “It’s a favorite of Lexie’s and mine.”
Corman’s fingers tightened around the phone. It was still hard for him to imagine that Lexie was married to another man, choosing favorite bars, restaurants, songs with him. It seemed strangely doomed in its repetitiveness, as if you could only change your seat on the train, never the direction in which it was moving. “Yeah, okay, the Bull and Bear,” he said, then hung up.
“Everything okay?” Fenster asked when Corman joined him again.
“Good enough,” Corman said.
The two of them headed west again, down that stretch of 42nd Street the cops called “the Deuce,” a wide expanse of cheap souvenir shops, porno theaters and adult bookstores where pimps, burned-out hookers and dope peddlers lounged together in bleak doorways while they watched the other, more prosperous portion of humanity stream by. Corman had spent a lot of time photographing them, trying to capture the way they seemed to envy the ordinary people who rushed past on their way to the bus terminal or the towering offices of midtown, but despised them, too, felt a vehement contempt for their wormy little lives.