As soon as we had unpacked, Sidney and I headed for the Convention Center, this time in an unair-conditioned cab.
We found our booth quickly enough, and in it Mary Sunday, our sales manager, wearing the most woeful expression I had seen on her face since our star sales rep defected to Simon & Schuster.
“Oh, Nick,” she wailed, “the books haven’t come. That buggerall exhibitor’s service has fucked us up for fair.” Not for Mary the ladylike euphemisms.
I made an effort to cheer her up. “Well, at least the posters are here.”
Some of the exhibitors at the ABA still make it a practice to show off actual books; others display only oversize posters or the jackets of their forthcoming titles. Barlow & Company does both, though the books somehow seem superfluous, since almost no one takes the time to browse through them. I once calculated that if a person were to visit every booth at the ABA at least once in the three and a half days of the convention, each booth would receive exactly forty-five seconds of one’s attention. No, the best we could hope for is that passersby would be attracted by the posters and stop in so we could talk up our forthcoming list. The whole point of the exercise is to show our new stuff—best foot forward, and all that.
“But the catalogs haven’t shown up, either,” said Mary Sunday. “And our location is terrible. Terrible. It sucks.”
“I duh-don’t know,” said Sidney. “We’re not too fuh-far from the cuh-concession stands. Could be worse.” I knew that Sidney, once again, was thinking ice cream.
But Mary was inconsolable. “I wish they’d let us pick our own space the way they used to, instead of assigning booths by lottery,” she said. “Here we are with a greeting-card company on one side of us and a university press on the other.”
Two of our sales reps were with us in the booth (actually we had splurged and taken three booths, and at considerable expense. Though small, we’re a proud company, in my humble opinion the best publisher of mysteries and thrillers in the business, among our other achievements). The reps were stacking up order forms in the hope that when the booksellers did come around tomorrow, they would really want to place orders. One of the reps, Chezna Newman, a comely young woman with a distinctive New York accent, chimed in with: “What’s wrong”—the word came out “wrong-uh”—“with a univoisity press?” Chezna also had a distressing habit of chewing gum with her mouth open. Those two imperfections aside, she was damned good at pushing books out into the marketplace.
“I don’t know, the proximity of all that high-toned scholarship might give us even more class than we already have.”
This came from the other sales rep in the booth, Toby Finn, a veteran of more than twenty years in the business. Small, shrewd, and glib, Toby had been flown into D.C. from Chicago as a reward for an especially good year.
“Outside of no books and no catalogs, are we ready to go?” I put the question to Mary, who sighed and nodded. Chezna grinned, and Toby Finn gave me the thumbs-up sign.
Things were heating up on the exhibition floor by now. Forklifts moving down the aisles with huge cartons, crates, and skids of books. Carpets were being laid and nailed into place; banners were being strung; electric wires and spotlights put up. It was bedlam, din, and confusion throughout the hall, and quite incredible to think that by tomorrow morning it would all be ready.
“In that case,” I said, “I think I’ll hit the pool. Coming, Sidney?”
“Shuh-shuh-sure. “
“I’ll see you all later in the hospitality suite.” The suite was another extravagance, but useful for entertaining booksellers, foreign publishers, and sundry media people. It boasted a bar, always open, and the bedroom was shared by Mary Sunday and Chezna Newman, which made the extra expense bearable.
“The suite is ready, I take it?”
“Fully stocked,” said Sunday. “Plenty of booze, beer, soda, nibbles, and ice.”
“Good show.” And with that, Sidney and I headed for the Shoreham, leaving Mary and company to finish the work.
When I got back to the hotel, I found a message in my box: “Call M. Mandelbaum ASAP.” Up in my room, I dialed the office and asked for my controller.
“Mort? It’s Nick.”
“Oh, Nick, good, thanks for calling back. How’s the weather in Washington?”
I knew Mort Mandelbaum hadn’t called me long-distance just for a weather report, so I cut him short. “What’s up?”
“Bad news, Nick. The bank is threatening to reduce our line of credit. Just when we’re facing heavy print bills for the fall list.”
“Serious cuts?”
“Serious enough. Any reduction right now will hurt.”
“Do you think I ought to go to the bank and remind them of auld lang syne?” We had been banking with Federal Trust ever since my parents had started Barlow & Company. It had been an altogether satisfactory union, if a relationship based entirely on money can be compared to a marriage. Why, then, were they giving us a problem now?
“That might be a good idea, Nick,” said Mandelbaum. “As soon as you can? Please?”
“Or we might ask the printers to extend us more credit.”
“What? Surely you joke.”
“That’s right. Joke.”
“And maybe you could arrange to come back from the ABA with a best-seller under your arm. To pay for all those money-losers Parker Foxcroft brings in? Please?”
“Parker’s books give us prestige, Mort. They give us great visibility in the trade.”
A sigh. “Who can pay the printers with prestige? Not Mortimer Mandelbaum.”
“I’ll be back in the office on Tuesday morning. We’ll deal with the bank then.”
“Okay, Nick.” He still sounded miserable, so I added:
“Cheer up, Morty. Remember my motto.”
“How could I forget? It’s in a frame on your desk. ‘Something will turn up.’ The picture of the guy with the noose around his neck? Right?”
“Right. Dr. Samuel Johnson. Also Mr. Micawber.” And we rang off.
I spent the balance of the afternoon floundering in the hotel pool and basking in the shade, a cold vodka and tonic in hand, while admiring the bathing beauties reclining around the pool. Not for me the drudgery of setting up an exhibit. Rank, after all, does have its privileges.
When the cocktail hour rolled around, I showered, changed into what I thought was the right outfit for the occasion: dove-gray cotton slacks, lightweight navy-blue blazer, white shirt, and my favorite club tie—a number from The Players on Gramercy Park: silver masks of comedy and tragedy on a maroon field—and Gucci loafers. Summer is as summer does.
At the hospitality suite, I found Mary Sunday and Toby Finn tending bar, and Chezna Newman chatting with a bookseller. Sidney Leopold was sipping a soda in a corner of the room, looking intently into the eyes of one of his authors.
“Nick,” Mary sang out. “Good news!”
“Let me guess. The books came.”
“Yeah, finally! Also the catalogs.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. All was now well at the Barlow & Company booth. I had learned at ABAs past that nothing can demoralize an exhibitor more than missing the crucial elements of the exhibit. I remember one year coming on a friend of mine sitting in a folding chair in the midst of… nothing, absolutely nothing—except a hand-lettered sign giving the name of his company and the number of his booth. When he saw me, he smiled wanly, and when I put the question to him, he raised his hands in mute supplication. “Shoulda stayed home, Nick,” he said with a sigh. I was tempted to offer him part of our booth—we had too many books out, anyway—but thought he might feel I was making fun of him. The poor devil’s booth never did show up, so after waiting a day he returned home, a loser however you look at it.
Just then Parker Foxcroft entered the suite. He proceeded to the bar, where he accepted a drink from Mary. Leaning over, he whispered something in her ear. She giggled, and Parker joined in with his distinctive whoop of laughter. Parker’s laugh is more a bray, which I have always thought he affects. When he is really amused, it comes out as a snort: huah… huah… HUAH!
Spotting me, he approached, all six feet three of him. Parker is the only member of my staff who can look me straight in the eye. Lanky frame; you’d call him slim if you fancied the look, skinny if you did not. (No, I am not at all envious.) His hair is rather thin, too, long strands combed from the side of his head across his pate to cover the bald spot—the kind of coiffure I think would be perilous in a high wind. I was reminded of something my father told me years ago, when I had commented on an actor whose toupee I thought was rather improbable. “Just remember,” said my father, “that not everyone in this world is as well feathered as we are.” That was long before my father’s golden fleece, too, became only a distant memory.
When Parker laughs, his ordinarily pale complexion reddens as though exposed too long in the sun. By the time he reached me, his guffaws had subsided to a stray chuckle or two, though his cheeks remained a bright red. I could not understand why so many women apparently found him irresistible; yet he was seldom seen without one beauty or another on his arm, and his social life was spoken of in the office with genuine awe. But then, there is no mystery so insoluble as human sexuality. Perhaps it is better to leave it unsolved. As Mae West said of the Kinsey report: it takes all the fun out of sex.
“Nick,” said Parker in a near shout. “I love the booth.” The look on his face was infuriatingly complacent, however—a smirk, in fact.
I braced myself.
“But where is the poster for A Wind from the South?”
This was Parker’s lead title on the fall list. He had refused to concede, after any amount of opposition from the reps at our sales conference, that there might not be great enthusiasm for a historical novel set in Philadelphia in 1790 during a yellow fever epidemic—except perhaps in Philadelphia. “It has Pulitzer Prize written all over it,” he protested. I could imagine that award, literally written in Parker’s own hand on the jacket. And when Parker said, as he often did, that one of his books would “get a good press,” I visualized the book clamped tightly in a vise, oozing printer’s ink.
“Mary is in charge of the exhibit,” I said. “Did you ask her?”
“She said you had the final say.”
“Only if there is a deadlock of some kind.”
“Nevertheless,” he said, pointing his index finger in the general direction of my chest, and staring at me with those pinkish eyes of his, “the buck stops here.”
I shrugged. “We can’t feature every book on the list.” A lame excuse, but the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.
“You seem to have gone all out for that private-dick novel,” said Parker, putting a good deal of weight on the word “dick.” I do not allow anyone to make light of Barlow & Company mysteries; they’re not only my bread and butter, they’re also my champagne and caviar.
“Say It with Bullets,” I said, “will probably pay both your salary and mine this year.” Set in Buffalo, my lead fall mystery starred P.I. Homer Blank, plodding through the snowdrifts in search of a computer hack who had broken the entry codes of a local bank and was robbing it silly. To kick off the promotion for the book, we had brought not only a poster to the ABA but also a special convention edition in paperback, with a personal message on the back cover from yours truly—a gesture I make only once a year, so as not to water my own stock.
“Perhaps I ought to think of acquiring a mystery,” said Foxcroft.
“Stick to your last, Parker,” I said.
If it seems odd that I put up with such impertinence from one of my own employees, which I suppose no one in the cloak-and-suit or tool-and-dye business would do, look at it this way: Parker Foxcroft has the touch. Authors come to him eagerly, hoping to be anointed. Critics for the New Statesman, The Times Literary Supplement, and other high-toned journals turn cartwheels to praise the books he edits, season after season. I am frequently tempted to fire him, but how can I, as long as he has the touch?
Still, I found it inexplicably irritating that in addition to his other abrasive qualities, the man bore the names of two private schools.
Parker drifted off, and I sidled over to Sidney, who was standing alone by the window.
“Has Harry arrived yet, do you know?”
“Bunter?” said Sidney. “I don’t know.”
“I hope so,” I said. “We’re due at the New Yorker party this evening. How about you?”
Harry Bunter is my subsidiary rights director, a job well worth a vice-presidency and a handsome salary. As the saying goes, it’s the pigs closest to the trough who get the most to eat, and those who bring in revenue who enjoy the highest salaries. When the fiscal year is over, a rights director like Harry Bunter is often solely responsible for the difference between red ink and black.
“You don’t mind if I skip the party scene tonight, do you, Nick?” said Sidney. “I’d rather curl up with a good manuscript.”
“Absolutely not,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. He looked startled. “That is, I absolutely do not mind. Whatever you like, Sidney. You may have more fun than any of us.”
There being no other guests in sight, it seemed time to close up the hospitality suite and get ready for the parties. Mary and Chezna offered to tidy up, as well they might, since it was their living room.
“Until later,” I said. “We’ll reopen for business after dinner,” and took off for the hotel.