Like People in History (17 page)

"Sorry to bother you on your lunchtime," Kovacs said, not sounding in the least bit sorry. Naturally, he didn't notice that behind him Maria and Debbie were rubbing their hands suggestively up the short lengths of their miniskirts then simultaneously giving him the finger in perfect slow four-time to the music. "Ah, but it'll be over soon, won't it?"

Kovacs said, managing even to find enjoyment in the anticipation of fun ended. I found myself thinking how much I detested the man. "So, to save time a little," he went on, "why don't you just come to my office as soon as you return to the office after lunch, which should be in a few minutes, anyway," he added and waited for me to respond.

Huh? What's he asking? Those phrases had piled up one after the other, like tiles raked off a roof, with none emphasized more than any other by sense or accentuation. Could I be that stoned on such a little hit?

Behind Kovacs, Debbie was now dry-humping Maria while Dusty Springfield moaned out some ballad I wasn't all that familiar with. I smiled at their antics and immediately Kovacs's suspicions were roused. He spun around to catch the two of them suddenly turning in perfect synch and doing an A1 Jolson—all palms and mouths. Suddenly I understood what he'd asked. It wasn't something double-edged and fearful at all, just a simple question.

"Sure!" I said. "I'll come to your office. When?"

Kovacs was embarrassed by his own paranoia as he turned back to me, his top lip stretched across his teeth in what I took to be a facsimile of a smile. "When you return," he said, and added with rare graciousness, "Whenever you have a chance." Then he was gone. Debbie immediately began to mimic the strangulation of Maria—whose entire body jerked repeatedly—until the song was over and Carl signaled "That's All, Folks!"—and shut off the portable radio, signaling doom—or was it merely the end of lunch?

"What did Scrotum-Face want?" Debbie asked with her usual tact and inventiveness once we were in the elevator going up.

"Rog's body," Maria said. "Naked, spread out on toast points."

"No, no!" I moaned. "Death before dishonor."

Everyone on the elevator laughed. Our floor finally arrived, and the four of us—Maria, Carl, Debbie, and I—trooped off, as in a chain gang or conga line, winding through the cubicles of the twenty-sixth floor and breaking off one by one. I was last, and collapsed into my chair.

Immediately I telephoned Carl. "What am I doing with my life?" I asked him. "Why am I here?"

"You are repaying the karmic debt of a great criminal of the thirteenth century," he said in a perfect parody of a high-pitched, lilting Central Indian voice, "Burt-an the Yurt-man, a mass murderer and chicken-farm burner. You have no existence but to suffer, suffer, suffer!"

"You're no help," I said, hanging up.

Why
was
I here, anyway? To begin with, I was in this office because five months earlier a college friend who'd originally had this job had left for the Peace Corps and somehow managed to talk both the company and me into my taking his place. "You're immensely overqualified," he'd said to me. "It'll be a cinch."

He'd pretty much been correct. So far my job had consisted of

1) endless editorial meetings which concerned other people's projects,

2) writing captions for two hundred photos, illustrations, and maps for a newly revised edition of a much used high school history book, and

3) reading the manuscript of a new book on American history and evaluating it against three other books on the subject already available—one of them put out by this very publisher.

I once calculated that I actually labored for the company less than three hours per diem! I passed the rest of the office day at the coffee machine or on the phone with Carl, Maria, and Debbie, or in the men's room reading and doing endless crossword puzzles. When he'd recommended the job to me, my friend had warned me that I'd have lots of time to myself. "Whatever you do," he added, "don't be quick, don't be nimble, above all don't be efficient! They're all such dunderheads they'll think you're merely being superficial."

As a result of his warning, I'd recently spent a full three weeks reading and evaluating the new manuscript and comparing it to its closest competition—it should have taken no more than a week. What was I doing wasting my time like this? What was I doing wasting my time in Kovacs's office, which was where I found myself a half hour later.

"I've been going over your report on the Rainey/Schachter manuscript," Kovacs said, carefully sharpening the twelfth of twelve brand-new pencils he'd just taken from an opened package on his desk. He was referring to my most recent evaluation. "In fact..." Kovacs stopped his sharpening to line up the other eleven pencils and check their length. "Chas and I were discussing your report," he continued with a hint of something in his voice that I suspected was supposed to represent awe or importance, since "Chas" was Charles Knoxworth, Kovacs's own boss, the head of this entire department, a man I'd met once and naturally enough despised on sight.

"Oh?" I said. I'd never before seen anyone measure his pencils after they'd been sharpened, and I was indulging myself in this rare treat.

"Chas thinks you're a good writer," Kovacs said. "Chas doesn't think you'll be content to remain an editor. Chas thinks you'll be a writer yourself."

"Oh?" I asked, wondering if using the term "Chas thinks" as often as Kovacs did could be considered verbal masturbation.

"In fact, Chas thinks you're repressing your creative spirit, and that might explain why Chas thinks you've rushed this evaluation on the Rainey/Schachter manuscript."

"Rushed it?" I asked, amazed. I'd taken three weeks!

One of Kovacs's pencils was evidently a sixteenth of an inch too long: in need of immediate correction.

"There are factors to consider," Kovacs said, chugging away at the sharpener. "Once in use, these textbooks have to stand the Test of Time," he added, using his favorite cliché, one of little value these days since everyone in the universe was changing their textbooks, which explained why I'd done the evaluation and in fact why I had this job.

"So I should have taken longer?" I asked. I could have told him he'd never get all twelve pencils the same length. Why even bother, since once they were used they'd all be different lengths anyway?

"It's not the time element," Kovacs said, "so much as the amount of consideration, of pondering, of sheer mulling over that should go into a decision of this nature."

He was looking at the uneven pencils—trying not to be too obviously upset over them.

Now, it was true that I'd ended the report by saying that while the manuscript was fine, it struck me that there was no particular need for it: the market was already fall of books on the subject, including a better one of our own. Could this have been a major tactical error on my part? If my report were being declined, did that mean that for some reason, Chas—or someone else higher up in the company—wanted the manuscript published? I needed some data.

"Tell me something, Frank." I tried the "friendly act" on him. "Has the company already paid for the Rainey/Schachter book?"

"There was an advance," he said offhandedly. "Not a large one. And an agreement. But not an unbreakable one."

We both knew that unlike with so-called trade books, the real money in textbooks was not in large, up-front advances but in endless years of eventually accruing royalties. I decided to try another tack: I'd inherited the manuscript from my friend, but perhaps he'd not been the first to see it.

"This wouldn't have been one of Chas's pet projects when he was in your spot?" I tried.

Kovacs had given up on the pencils and slipped them back into the box. Wrong move—their unevenness was now far more apparent. He slid them out again.

"No, I don't believe so."

"Tell you what, Frank, since you and Chas agree on this, why not let me see that manuscript again," I said, reaching for my report. "Perhaps I have been a bit hasty."

As I thought, Kovacs seemed relieved. Evidently he didn't know what the problem was either. Or he did know and couldn't bring himself to tell me.

"I knew you'd understand," he said, standing up and casually brushing the unevenly sharpened pencils into a drawer.

Debbie told me what I should do next:

"Nothing. Or rather nothing right away," she explained, as we walked out of the building toward the subway stop we shared. "And definitely nothing new. Don't reread any of it. Don't bother rewriting any of it. Wait about a month, then retype this same report on different paper. You should maybe use different-size margins or change the length of line so they'll think it's brand-new."

"You're kidding."

"Don't underestimate their intelligence. And if they aren't committed to the manuscript, all they want is a good excuse not to do it. Two negative reports, say, over a longish period of time... They're scot-free."

"What do I do at the office in the meantime?"

"Don't ask me," Debbie said, "I'm reading all of Proust. In the original. Hell, I'm learning French to read it."

Debbie saw her uptown train and decided to make a run for it. I dawdled down the other side of the platform for the downtown local. I had to admit I wasn't all that eager to get home.

When I'd phoned Carl and asked what was wrong with my life, I'd meant more than just the job. I'd meant—everything! Here I was, twenty-four years old with no direction, no goal, except a vague one to someday be a writer, although of what and how I hadn't a clue. Not only was I goalless, but looked at straight on, I had nothing of my own. I'd inherited the job, which wasn't much, from one college friend. I'd inherited my apartment from another friend, who believed that rent-controlled apartments should fall into the hands of one's sworn enemy before a stranger ever moved in. In fact, I'd even sort of inherited the young woman I was living with from a friend.

Not a college friend, however: Little Jimmy. I'd first met Little Jimmy at some party or other six months before and had pretty consistently run into him thereafter. Possibly because he'd also taken to hanging out with the loose group of pals I knew who centered roughly around an urban commune in the West Village. Jimmy came from North Carolina, and while small and lean physically, he was something of a big man when it came to women. In fact, he always had one or another terrific-looking woman whenever I saw him, most of them blond, and usually very cool. The most recent one, Jennifer, was a Minnesota girl so blond she faded into invisibility in bright light, yet so down-home I was astonished when she began confiding in me her plans for a new "act," which somehow or other involved a giant spider's web, painted black chains, and eight-inch high heels. It took me a while to figure out that quiet little Jennifer was not a Smith coed but—of all things—a carnival stripper.

Anyway, Jimmy had phoned me a few weeks earlier out of nowhere and asked if I could do him a favor. Money, I figured. I figured wrong.

"I've got too many blondes on my hands," Jimmy said, clearly delighted to be saying it. "I just got rid of one. I'm living with Jennifer and her sister. Now my old girlfriend Michelle's back in town. You remember Michelle?"

I didn't. But I figured once you met one of Jimmy's women...

"Michelle's great!" Little Jimmy enthused. "She's unique! Know what I mean? At any rate she needs a place to stay for a short while. And I can't keep her here. You've still got that extra room and extra bed, don't you? She won't stay long. She's not sure what she's doing really, whether she's staying or going."

All of which turned out to be true, once Michelle arrived later that day, with her two large, leather saddle bags.

Seeing Michelle, I did remember her—vaguely—from the first time I'd met Little Jimmy. But Michelle was different from his others, altogether more "hip," with her homespun yet glamorous outfits, her long, lemon-chiffon-colored hair, her sweet little face—sincere big blue eyes, perfect nose and mouth—not to mention her ample, her dynamite, body.

"I'll try not to get in your space too much," Michelle said, once we'd settled her bags in. "I'll do my sewing and my art while you're at work, and I'll be out of here when you get home."

"Well, gee," I wanted to say, "you can get in my space a
little!"

Michelle took over the small room off the kitchen which had been my own first bedroom in the apartment when I'd shared it and would in future be either a dining room or study. That first night, she went to Little Jimmy's place for dinner, and having scoped out his situation for herself—i.e., that he was drenched in women—she never went back. Nor, to my surprise, did he come visit her at my place. But as Michelle remained out late every night, until long after I was asleep—just as she'd predicted in those first days—I hardly knew she was there.

The major indications of her presence were half-smoked joints left in the living room ashtrays and a copy of the
I Ching
left open on the bathroom hamper, turned to Hexagram #56, The Traveler. Once I peeked into her bedroom, and saw a quite substantial sewing kit within its own separate and rather complex-looking leather bag; and alongside it, a large pad and a forty-color set of
Caran d'Ache
crayons.

I remember thinking how odd it was that this room—so recently
not
thought of, or when thought of considered merely a part of the apartment—had suddenly become alien to me, its contents mysterious, its very premises suddenly untouchable except for some particular and good reason.

The second weekend Michelle lived with me, a weasely guy named Leighton came by to take her out. He possessed all the appurtenances and accoutrements of a hip guy of the time—clothing, language, you name it—but I don't know why, I read him as a phony.

None of my damn business who Michelle went out with as long as she paid her rent and kept her part of the place clean. That's what I told myself time and again. That's what I told her when, at the end of the month, Michelle and I sat down over tea and grass one summer morning to discuss her future.

"It's great that you feel that way," she said, responding to my statement in her low-keyed, restrained voice, seemingly incapable of enthusiasm. "Because I'd like to stay here a little while longer."