Back in my room, I thought about my phone conversation with Mort Mandelbaum. I was reminded once again, as I have been so often in my years as a publisher, how precarious the business is. The bankers are right to be skeptical about our financial health. No matter how I diddle with the figures, it always works out that at least thirty percent of the books I publish lose money, forty percent of them break even, and another thirty make money—if I’m lucky. And the margin of profit is seldom more than ten percent, often as low as five. Who would go into a business with those odds? A gambler. A hopeless optimist. Someone who loves making books more than making money—but would be deliriously happy making both.
The phone interrupted my reverie, which, as is true so often when I think about finances, was without resolution.
“Nick? It’s Harry.”
“Harry, you’re here. Good.”
“I’m downstairs, Nick.”
“I’ll be right down.”
Party-giving at the ABA has changed over the years. The wide-open hospitality of long ago has gone by the board, along with the freeloading. Most of the parties worth attending are by invitation only, and the invitations are given out sparingly, especially in hard economic times. Some of the publishers have even gone so far as to set up cash bars and eliminate food. The New Yorker party, however, is always popular, because it is usually held in an exotic location, and is well catered. Not for Si Newhouse your routine hotel suite. This year’s party was to be a moonlight cruise on a boat, The Queen of the Potomac, and invitations were much in demand. Barlow & Company had been rationed two.
I picked up Harry Bunter in the lobby. If Harry were selling real estate instead of intellectual property rights, he’d be a member of the Five Million Dollar Club, and they’d put his name and picture in an ad: “Harry Bunter, Salesman of the Month,” that sort of thing. What he does, he does incomparably well.
Not that you’d know it to look at him. Today, as usual, Harry was wearing a light gray suit that looked as though it hadn’t felt the kiss of an iron in months. His collar was open, necktie hanging loosely down over his substantial gut. Harry has what is commonly called a “corporation.” The heat of the day had not treated him kindly, either: sweat glistened on his neck and face, and his thinning auburn hair was plastered across his forehead. As usual, he was enveloped in a blue haze of tobacco smoke, his cigarette in a plastic holder, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, he firmly believed would protect him from lung cancer. And also as usual, the shoulders of his suit were sprinkled with ashes. Joe Camel himself.
The odd part of it is that Harry is married to one of the most beautiful women I know. Claire Lindsay Bunter is one of Parker Foxcroft’s distinguished authors, and as soignée as Harry is rumpled. Perhaps opposites do attract, after all.
“Jesus, Nick,” Bunter said. “You look dressed for… for a reception at Buckingham Palace, for chrissake.”
To my outfit at the hospitality suite, I had added a broad-brimmed panama hat and a malacca cane. Just before leaving the suite, I had pinched a carnation from the flower arrangement on the coffee table; it was now planted in my buttonhole. Even so, I hardly felt overdressed—except alongside Harry.
We took a cab through Rock Creek Park, its trees prodigal with green leaves shimmering in the setting sun, to the Harry T. Thompson Boat Center, the designated point of departure in the New Yorker invitation. Quite a crowd had already gathered at the dock, although we were at least half an hour early. Once the barrier was lifted and the ramp was clear, we went on board.
The Queen of the Potomac reminded me of the Circle Line boats that ply the waters of the Hudson and East rivers around Manhattan, only tonier by any standard. A full-size cutout of Eustace Tilley greeted us at the first two bars; a rock group with a strong calypso beat was playing in the bow; I recognized Arrow’s “Hot Hot Hot”—as appropriate for Washington, D.C., as it was for the Caribbean.
“Upper or lower deck?” I said to Harry.
“Lower’s fine,” he replied. “Let’s hope I don’t get seasick.”
I ordered a Stolichnaya martini; Harry settled for a bottle of Amstel Light. As we sipped, we looked around to see who we might fraternize with.
“Nick,” Harry said, coming up for air and wiping foam from his lips, “I’ve got news that will improve your appetite. As well as your disposition.’’
“Nothing wrong with my appetite, alas,” I said. “Shoot.”
“Well,” he began, “a certain best-selling author… excuse me, Nick…” At this he pulled a cigarette from a rumpled pack, lit it, and stuffed it into his holder. All this took a deal of time, as Mark Twain might say, and I felt fidgety, wondering if the cigarette shtick was merely Harry’s way of heightening the suspense.
“Come on, Harry,” I said. “What best-selling author?”
He ignored my remark, and after a puff or two, continued. “As I was saying… you’ve heard of Herbert Poole, Nick.” It was not a question.
“Everybody on this tub has heard of him,” I said. “The author of the number one best-seller on the Times Book Review list?”
Pan at Twilight. A novel at once erotic and elegantly crafted, but accessible even to the great unread. A masterpiece, some reviewers had called it—but that word is so grossly overworked, I distrust its use. Herbert Poole had, however, been favorably compared to D. H. Lawrence, among other poets of the carnal. I hadn’t read the book myself. It probably wouldn’t surprise anybody to learn that we publishers read few books—only those we have to read, usually. And we buy even fewer. Instead, we scrounge them from fellow publishers.
I recall once asking Charles Scribner the elder for one of his books, promising in return to send him any one of mine he might covet. I forget what book it was I wanted: probably a Hemingway volume, one of the many published since his death. In fact, more Hemingway books have turned up since his suicide than were published in his lifetime. Posthumous Hemingway has been a growth industry for the Scribners and Hemingway’s widow, Mary.
“I don’t approve of the practice,” Charlie sniffed, “but in your case, I’ll make an exception.”
“So,” I said to Bunter, “what about Herbert Poole?”
“Well,” said Harry, “I’ve heard via the grapevine—actually a friend of mine at Random House told me, well… that Poole might… just might be interested in writing a mystery for his next book.”
“Ahhh.”
“And who better to publish him than the great Nicholas Barlow, master of mystery, high-muck-a-muck of the thriller?”
I haven’t blushed in years. And didn’t blush then, either.
“No doubt he’s heard of your triumph last year in the murder of Jordan Walker.”
“It was really my brother, Tim, who solved that one.” Nor could I forget that the book we finally got out of it didn’t exactly burn up the charts. If you don’t have a live celebrity to tour, a Graham Farrar… well, forget publishing a celebrity tell-all.
Almost imperceptibly, The Queen of the Potomac slipped away from the dock and headed upriver.
I turned again to Harry, who by now had another bottle of beer in his hand.
“How do you suggest we proceed, Harry? What modus operandi? Directly to Poole? Or through his agent? Who is his agent, by the way?”
He mulled that over a moment. Bypassing the glass on the bar in front of him, Harry took a deep swig of his beer straight from the bottle, sighed, and said: “Poole will be here tomorrow signing autographs, which you would know if you read your convention program or the Show Daily.”
“I can barely manage to keep up with my Times.”
“And his agent, the lovely Kay McIntire, will also be here.”
By now the line at the bar was two or three deep. I edged away from it toward the rail, beckoning Harry to follow me.
“You really have made me the happiest of men, Harry.”
“It would be a coup, wouldn’t it? Every major publisher in town is probably after Poole—including all those who turned down Pan at Twilight.”
“I’m sure.”
“But—”
“But what?”
“It’s probably gonna cost you, Nick.”
“We’ll have to discuss that with Mort Mandelbaum when we get back to the city. Can you hold up your end?”
“I’d expect a bidding situation with the book clubs, and a paperback floor of, say, a quarter,” said Harry. Like the Richard Condon/Prizzi’s Honor/jack Nicholson gimmick, Harry liked saying “five” when he meant “five thousand,” “fifty” for “fifty thousand,” and so on. “A quarter” was a quarter of a million. Or maybe “250 big ones.” The habit is contagious.
We glided up the Potomac past the Tidal Basin, built from land reclaimed from the river—so that the symmetry that inspired L’Enfant in his master plan for Washington could be maintained. As we moved along, the moon rose, swollen and phosphorescent in its brilliance, lending its glow to the floodlights shining on the Jefferson Memorial, that columned rotunda modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, which Jefferson so admired that he designed the University of Virginia in its style as well.
“A lovely evening,” I said. Harry nodded.
“Not half-bad,” he said, “as evenings go.”
Just then I heard that familiar bray of laughter. Parker Foxcroft had somehow wangled an invitation, or had crashed the party, and was fast approaching.
“Parker!” I called out. “Over here, Parker!”
He was not alone. On his arm was one of those rare beauties that every once in a long while turn up in book publishing—when, if they knew better, they would go into fashion modeling or acting. Blonde, slender, and, I could see when she drew near, with a figure that was at once full-bodied and elegant. She was wearing light blue cotton jeans and a white button-down man’s shirt—from the Gap, I supposed, or was it Banana Republic? I whistled silently. Parker Foxcroft does it again, I thought. As Parker came near, Harry Bunter moved off, rather abruptly, it seemed to me.
“Nick,” said Foxcroft, “I’d like you to meet Susan Markham. Assistant editor at Little, Brown. Susan, this is my boss, the well-known eponymous head of Barlow and Company.”
I extended my hand. She took and pressed it gently, but firmly enough to generate the smallest amount of electricity.
“You’re with an excellent house,” I said.
“You’re quite a house yourself.” My God, I thought, is it that bad? I must consider a diet.
“Susan almost worked for us,” said Parker.
“Oh?”
“But you turned her down when she applied for a job,” he said.
I turned to Susan Markham. “And just why did I do that?”
“Because all I could do at that time was type, file, and answer the phone,” she said. “And apparently you didn’t need a typist, a file clerk, or a receptionist. I, on the other hand, aspired to be an editorial assistant—and I guess you didn’t need one of those, either.”
When young, newly graduated college students arrive at our office looking for a job every fall, any job, at entry level, we put them through an inevitable rite of passage. They must submit to being underpaid, given menial tasks to perform, and forced to wait months or even a year or two for advancement. And why? Because everyone else entering publishing had to go through the same kind of initiation. Which, of course, is no reason at all. Still, the only people who are allowed to skip “boot camp” are those who inherit a place in the industry, like me.
“Obviously, Little, Brown saw something in you I did not,” I said. “Color me obtuse. Anyway, you’ve clearly moved well along past the typing, filing, and telephoning stage.”
“Still,” she said, “I was disappointed you didn’t hire me. I would have done practically anything to get a job at Barlow and Company.”
I smiled, for I was fresh out of anything else to say. Not for me to fall into the false-modesty trap.
“Shall we sample the food?” said Parker to Susan Markham. And without waiting for an answer, he drew her away. And just when I was beginning to enjoy the conversation! It was to weep. Clearly the only consolation was food. I followed Parker and his companion to the stern, where the buffet tables had been set up. There were oysters on the half shell with a pungent sauce, succulent fat shrimp, a decent pâté de campagne, pigs in blankets, and tiny, extremely hot pizzas smoking away in chafing dishes. There were even crudités and a dip, which I ignored, in favor of white and yellow cubes of cheese speared with toothpicks. Consolation was quick, and highly satisfying. When I had a plateful heaped high and a glass of white wine, I looked around for a friendly tablemate. Parker and Susan Markham had seated themselves on the port side of the boat; spotting Harry Bunter starboard, I joined him.
“Ah, I see you’re stoking up, Nick,” he said. There was a sour note in his voice, as though he were reprimanding me somehow, the way a small boy might be scolded for stuffing himself with too much cake and ice cream.
“So what’s it with you, Harry?”
“Oh shit,” he said softly. “That goddamn son of a bitch.”
“Which one?”
“Parker Foxcroft,” he said, putting a spin of contempt in every syllable of the great editor’s name.
“What about Parker?”
“That poor girl,” Harry said. “I feel sorry for her, mixed up with that lousy bastard.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She looks as though she can take care of herself. And she certainly is of age. What’s the problem?”
“He spoils every woman he touches,” said Bunter. I’m not often shocked these days; book publishers, like movie and television producers, are exposed to every kind of depravity—secondhand. But Harry’s vehemence did startle me. Then I remembered there had been rumors around the office that Parker had been having an affair with Harry’s wife, Claire. Usually I ignore the local quidnuncs, but if the report was true…
“I don’t know how he gets away with it,” Bunter said, “but someday, someday—somebody is going to fix that prick for good.”
Time to change the subject. I asked Harry how things were going on the rights front. He brightened. “A good season,” he said. “You really brought us some lovely properties.”
And he began to rattle off his recent string of sales, large and small, to this reprint house and that book club or magazine. I listened happily to his soothing litany while looking over the rail at the flickering lights of Georgetown. For by now we had reversed course and were heading downriver. I leaned back in my chair, content to enjoy the night air and the moonlight and the largesse of The New Yorker. It wasn’t such a bad kickoff for the ABA, after all.