Oliver asks the housekeepers to make involtini di vitello for dinner. He isn't crazy about the dish, but his wagging companion is an avid consumer. Schopenhauer eats almost all of it-too much, it turns out, for he suffers an upset stomach. Oliver plays nursemaid for the next twenty-four hours, cleaning up puddles of dog vomit.
Once the worst is over, he reads aloud from The Hound of the Baskervilles as the Hound of the Aventine dozes at his hip. Oliver knows this book so well that "reading" is hardly the word-he wanders about in it, renews old acquaintances, allows Dr. Watson's lank thread to reel him gently forward. This evening, however, the pages remain dry and yellow. He raises Schopenhauer's chin.
"You must get well!" he says. "You must be better soon!" He pulls Schopenhauer nearer. "I've spent too much time as a nursemaid already." He strokes the dog. "And I'm awful at it. When I nursed Boyd, I was constantly bothering him. I tried not to, but I couldn't help it. He used to tell me, 'You must be thrilled that I'm sick-you can use me as an excuse to drop out of Yale. You'll never have to graduate now.' But I thought he'd wanted me home to look after him. I mean, I thought so. I sometimes wonder if he called me back home to test me-to see if I'd comply. And, being such a softie, I did, of course, and he hated that. He used to say, Women comply, men defy.' Ah, well," Oliver says. "And, I mean, was I really going to end up as an academic? Me, lecturing? Can't see it. I hope I was useful to him. He certainly adored you, my little friend! Do you remember my father? He liked to throw that squeaky rubber rat of yours. Do you remember him throwing it down the lawn for you in Atlanta? And you'd just sit there, doing nothing, staring at the thing with such disdain." Oliver smiles. "Oh, come on-you know exactly the look I'm talking about. And my father-hardly a man to fetch objects-going down the garden with his cane, picking up your silly rat, throwing it again. And you sitting there, yawning!"
The phone rings, and Kathleen leaves another message: she has set a date for the staff meeting and Oliver must address the employees about the Ott Group's plans.
"What plans?" Oliver asks Schopenhauer.
Vaughn calls that evening, and Oliver picks up this time-if there are plans, perhaps he should be apprised.
"So," Vaughn asks, "are we going to sell that house?"
"Which house?"
"The house you're living in."
"Grandpa's? What for?"
"Well, you are coming back, I assume."
"What are you talking about, Vaughn?"
"Ollie, you do know we're putting the paper out of its misery, right? Abbey recommended that we shut it. How can you not know this, Ollie? What are you doing out there?"
"But why close it?"
"Money, basically. Maybe if we'd got more layoffs a few months back we could've dragged it out. But they fought us on everything-all they agreed to in the end was one job cut from editorial. And they're expecting capital infusions after that? It's crazy. We kept Kathleen going for a while, dangling the possibility of fresh investment. But what's the point? You guys don't even have a website. How can you expect revenue without a Web presence? We could have ditched Kathleen, I guess. But let's be honest: the paper is a lemon. Time to move on."
"Don't we have enough money to keep it going?"
"Sure we do," Vaughn responds. "We have enough money because we make a habit of not keeping shit going that's a lemon."
"Oh."
"I want you at that staff meeting. Kathleen is adamant about it. And we need to keep her happy for now-we don't want bad publicity, okay?"
"What do they want me there for?"
"We need an Ott rep on-site. No way out of this one, Ollie."
The morning of the meeting, Oliver asks Schopenhauer, "If they come at me as a mob, will you bite them?" He tickles the dog. "You wouldn't, would you-you'd be useless. Come on."
They walk all the way there, up Via del Teatro di Marcello, through Piazza Campitelli, along Corso Vittorio, Oliver muttering to Schopenhauer as they go: "I mean, we all know that I don't understand this sort of thing. The rest of the family does. But I seem to be missing it somehow. Missing the chromosome for it. The cleverness gene. I'm faulty. So here's my question, Schop: can I be blamed for my defects? I mean, are my faults my fault?" The dog glances up at him. "Don't give me that condescending look," Oliver says. "What have you ever done with your life that's so spectacular?"
They arrive at the scribble-gray building that has housed the paper for a half century. Employees smoke industriously before the towering oak door. Oliver hurries past them all, through the hinged portal, down the frayed burgundy runner to the elevator cage. Upstairs, he learns that Kathleen and Abbey have gone out. Thankfully, most of the editorial staffers are occupied piecing together copy on a shooting at Virginia Tech. But a few employees attempt to buttonhole Oliver about "the big announcement" they have been promised. Is it good news? Sinkingly, he realizes that they don't know yet. He touches his cold hands to Schopenhauer's coat for warmth. The dog licks them.
Kathleen returns, escorts him to her office, and says he will have to run the meeting alone. Abbey joins them and seconds Kathleen's position: he will get no help.
"But I don't know anyone here," he says.
"I'll introduce you," Kathleen replies.
"And I don't know anything about the media industry."
"Maybe you should have learned something," she says. "You've been here two years."
They check the clock: a few minutes until the meeting.
"I'm really sorry," he says, "about this."
Kathleen scoffs. "Sorry? Come on-you could have averted this. You've been totally indifferent."
"No, no, I'm not."
"Oh, come on-you've made no effort here. The paper has been going all these years, and it's ending with you in charge. Your grandfather started this place. Doesn't that bother you? He wanted to build a newspaper for the world. Now you're closing it."