"No, you're right to be angry. I'm pretty annoyed myself."
"Could we run my piece at full length today?" He knows the answer.
"We can't report her death twice," she says.
"What stuns me is that I specifically brought up your name when Clint and I discussed this."
"Seriously?"
"I was crystal clear."
"You know what," she says, anger mounting, "I don't want your stuff under Clint anymore. This is ridiculous."
"But politically? I mean, I have to be under Clint. I'm. Which is his."
"Nothing is his."
"What about my fixtures: the puzzles and all that?"
"You shouldn't have to do that crap anyway. An intern could do that."
"Clint will give you a hard time about this."
"I'm not worried."
"I don't want to get ahead of myself here," he says, picking at the Scotch tape holding one of Pickle's old magazine clippings to the wall. "But I've been meaning to talk to you about something."
When Arthur is named the new culture editor, he moves into Clint's former office. It is deemed too blatant to make Clint sit in Arthur's old cubicle, so they find him one at the edge of the sports department, facing a pillar.
At home, the atmosphere between Arthur and Visantha is strained. She is openly hunting for a job back in the United States, and there is no talk of his returning with her. Indeed, he will be relieved when she leaves-the old Visantha is long gone anyway, just as the previous Arthur has perished.
These days, he prefers to stay late at work. After-hours, he admires his new office. True, it is smaller than those of the other section chiefs. And he is farther from the cupboard of pens. Then again, the watercooler is a good deal nearer. And this is a consolation.
1954. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME
The paper was established on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a broad east-west thoroughfare lined with dirty-white travertine churches and blood-orange Renaissance palazzi. Many of the buildings in central Rome were colored as if from a crayon box: dagger red, trumpet yellow, rain-cloud blue. But the paper's dour seventeenth-century building seemed to have been colored with a lead penciclass="underline" it was scribble gray, set off by a towering oak door large enough to swallow a schooner, though human beings entered through a tiny portal hinged within.
A doorman sized up new arrivals from his glass booth, pointing down the long hallway, its brilliant burgundy runner halting just short of the elevator cage, the metal door ajar, its operator sitting on a velvet stool. "Che piano, signore? What floor, sir?"
For Cyrus Ott, it was the third, formerly the headquarters of a Fascist movie magazine that went bankrupt after the fall of Mussolini. Ott rid the place of its dusty furniture and had all the interior walls knocked down, creating a wide-open newsroom, rimmed with tidy offices that looked inward, like box seats directed toward the stage. He bought wooden swivel chairs, varnished desks, brass banker's lamps, a custom-built horseshoe table for the copy editors, shiny black phones for the reporters, thirty-eight Underwood typewriters imported from New York City, thick crystal ashtrays, and thick white carpeting, with a discreet cocktail bar in the east wall.
Six months later, any visitor stepping out of the elevator at the third floor landed directly in a vibrating newsroom, the secretary's desk ahead, a handful of typing reporters left and right, a half-dozen copy editors defacing proofs at the horseshoe table. In the offices along the walls, salesmen hocked ad space, a stenographer copied down classifieds, the accountant inked ledgers. In the northwest corner was Ott's office, with PUBLISHER etched on the frosted door; in the northeast corner were Leopold T. Marsh, editor-in-chief, and Betty Lieb, news editor. Ranged nearby were senior staffers specializing in business, sports, wire copy, photos, layout. Copyboys buzzed back and forth like pollinating bees.
Printing took place in the subbasement, but it could have been another land. Unionized Italian laborers ran the deafening press down there, yet few of them ever met anyone who wrote the paper just floors above. In the late afternoon, a truck arrived with a vast roll of newsprint, which the workers slid down the incline at the back, slamming it into the loading bay shuddering the building up to the third floor. Any journalists lazing around up there-joshing with one another, legs kicked up on desks, brimmed hats dangling on shoe tips, cigarettes smoldering in ashtrays-jerked upright in immediate panic. "Fuck, is it that time already?"
Miraculously, by the 10 P.M. deadline the paper had filled every line down every column, no matter the last-minute heart palpitations and blaspheming. Editors rose from their desks for the first time in hours, shrugging tortured shoulder muscles, attempting to exhale.
Most of the journalists were men, Americans chiefly, but with a few Britons, Canadians, and Australians, too. All had been based in Italy when hired, and all could speak the local language. But the paper's newsroom was strictly Anglophone. Someone hung a sign on the elevator door that read, LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA, VOI CH'USCITE-OUTSIDE IS ITALY.
And when staffers went downstairs for sandwiches they'd say, "I'm headed to Italy -anyone need anything?"
The first full year of operations, 1954, was packed with news: the McCarthy hearings, the Soviets testing a nuclear weapon, the Dow Jones closing at a record high of 382 points. Initially, the paper suffered under the suspicion that it was an international mouthpiece for Ott's business empire, but this was unfounded. The greatest influence over content was necessity-they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.
Betty and Leo ran the editorial operations jointly. He liked to say, "I handle the big picture." But it was Betty who wrote-or rewrote-most of the copy; she had an effortless way with prose. As for Ott, he handled the money side and offered advice when solicited, which was often. Betty and Leo speedwalked across the newsroom to his office, each trying to get in the door first. Solemnly, Ott listened, staring at the carpet. Then he looked up, pale blue eyes flitting between Betty and Leo, and issued his ruling.
The three of them got along splendidly. Indeed, the only awkward moments arose when Ott stepped away, at which point Betty and Leo spoke to each other as if newly introduced and watched the door for their publisher to return.
Normally, Ott was ruthless about profit. But the paper was an anomaly: financially, it stank. Back in the United States, his business rivals observed this Italian venture with suspicion. It must be a scheme of sorts, they figured.
If so, the aim was far from clear.
He never explained his business plans to Betty and Leo, and was even more opaque on personal matters. He had a wife, Jeanne, and a young son, Boyd, but had never explained why they remained in Atlanta. Leo sought to tease out details but failed-Ott had the ability to insert full stops in conversations, when and where he wished them.
"EUROPEANS ARE LAZY, STUDY SAYS"
BUSINESS REPORTER-HARDY BENJAMIN
HARDY SPENDS HER MORNING ON THE PHONE TO LONDON, PARIS, and Frankfurt, wheedling quotes from grumpy financial analysts. "Is an interest-rate hike imminent?" she asks. "Is Brussels extending the shoe tariffs? What about the trade imbalance?"
She is unfailingly courteous even when her sources are not.