Prague (58 page)

"Scared me? No, no. gave me pause is all, Mr. Melchior," said the younger man, with the semi-human intonations of browbeaten, hopeless executive assistants the world over, aging at twice the speed of their employers. He smiled at the three Americans, on Melchior's behalf as well as his own, offering extra eye contact with the compliments of the corporation.

Melchior was felinicaHy fastidious. He scraped at a tiny, bulbous starfish of candle wax that had beached on the table. His left thumbnail scratched six or seven times in quick succession, then he brushed the wax crumbs away with speedy sweeps of his right pinkie. He alternated—scraping thumbnail, sweeping pinkie, scraping thumbnail, sweeping pinkie—long after anyone else could see any wax dripping at all, long after his eyes and attention were elsewhere, and still his hands polished of their own accord.

"Mistah G'bore," he murmured, unfolding his napkin and smoothing its individual creases with care. "Saw your face everywhere one week. Journo in the pocket here and there doesn't hurt a young fellow. Know your way around that game nicely, I must say."

Charles laughed politely at the autistic speech emitted in the same voice of barely repressed boredom.

'And with you and your chief there, this Mr. Horvath bloke, in the papers every time he turned around, poor Kyle's nappies were always wet. He just kept saying, 'Not the right time, not the right time, Mr. Melchior.' Didn't you there. Kyle boy? 'Not the right time—' "

"Mr. Horvath. though senior, has—1 hope I've made it clear that Karoly here is here as the fully entitled representative of—"

"—'not the right time, not the right time,' just because of some nonsense about—" Melchior had heard Harvey's interruption, but he hadn't looked up

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from the invisible patterns he was drawing on the table with a stiff index finger, didn't waste time seolding Harvey, simply kept talking, and no utterable noise on earth could have made him stop. "Couple of news articles and Kyle here is crying like a girl that it's 'inopportune' for us to bid on Hungarian privatization deals. 'Inopportune,' after everything I've built." Melchior's toneless but candid admission that his multibillion-dollar media empire had been temporarily stymied by Charles and John, of all people, triggered in John a rush of pride. "King Jesus—had to listen to tripe about how we shouldn't tamper with the privatization process, should let the Hungos deal with their own government first. Utter nonsense. And now there you sit, and you're just a little boy, and no more Hungo than I am." He gestured at but did not look up at Charles. "Look here. Truth be told, we were a little late to realize the media needs in this neck of the woods. But now no fooling. I'm in town for three days, and I got six papers, six publishers, two TV stations, and a cable start-up to talk to, so let's not spend a lot of time courtin' the sheep, right? Either she bleats for us or we move on." Even this colorful Austral-corporate vulgarity emerged in the same vaguely bored, mildly sociopathic voice, and Melchior took a bite of his salad, found something distasteful in it, pushed it aside. "Your little house is nice and I want it, but I don't have forever to do this. There are another dozen and a half I want if Hungo and Czecho and the Polacks are going to mean anything for Median. Let's get on with it. Harvey here tells us we don't need your chief for this talk. How's that, then?"

"He's, unfortunately—" Harvey began. "Yeah. Sorry to hear it," Melchior said.

"I think a key point, a possible sticking point, which is what I see myself being able to help here with, what I'm on the lookout for, preventative, prevcntatively, to be discussed would be. Does it become the Median Press?" Harvey asked, brokering as fast as he could, before events brokered themselves.

At last Melchior looked at someone: Charles, who had hardly said a word since the Australians' landing. "It certainly becomes a proud new member of the Median family, and is given proper brand support as a result, much more support than you're going to be able to muster with what's left of your little private fund there, Mistah G'bore." Vast personal knowledge implied, he returned to the work of realigning his unused silverware. "You any relation to those sisters, by the way? The actresses? So you tell me: Does the name of the house matter to anyone in this country?"

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It had happened so quickly, John hardly realized what was going on: As the last salad plate left the table on disembodied hands. John finally understood the Horvath Press was not only for sale but that the fates had already proceeded to the details of what it would be called when it was swallowed, still breathing, into the snaky belly of the Multinational Median Corporation, where it would quickly be broken down into its irreducible components.

Charles slowly puffed out his cheeks and swayed his head from side to side. "Only very distantly." he confessed. "Through my great-great-grandfather, I've been told, cousins of some sort. I've never met them, of course. It's a relatively common name in Hungary."

"I think Karoly's in a, a, a kind of a spot, or like a spot," Harvey offered. "We should be sensitive to the needs, that is, to the needs of both sides, or not sides but interests, the natural needs of those interests."

"Charles." Charles corrected him sharply.

"Right." Harvey looked at him blankly. "What?"

Charles ignored Melchior's general question and offered instead a buffet of specifics. He began listing individual Horvath Holdings publications and prospective projects, descriptions of the firm's published catalogs and backlist. He juggled titles, authors, and publications like a Las Vegas card trickster fanning a deck through the air. "Our Forint," he was saying, "—and T pause here only as a possible example of some issues we might face—Our Formt is branded content with generations of tradition and consumer feeling behind—"

"That's your business sheet." Melchior's voice registered slight interest, but it was not a question, and he did not look away from the engraving over Charles's shoulder, and John saw how the Australian simulated his look of keen intensity during TV interviews: over-thc-shoulder focus points filmed from the side. "Our Forint. huh?" He reached out his hand and caught with an echoing slap the entire deck as it arched through the air. "No. Maybe for a while it stays under that name, but you know what we have. You're no fool, Mistah G'bore. You picked that title for a reason, and I appreciate your openness to a deal. You know we've put enormous resources into the launch of Mmmmmoney. We want Mmmmmoney to be a worldwide publication, uniform globally, but with localized insert sections, seamlessly tailored to each market. Those inserts could, presumably, have localized names. Me and Kyle see no reason not to call the Hungo one Our Forint, if you can convince me you care."

"I think that's probably a reasonable starting point." Harvey looked back and forth between the table's two interesting people.

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Melchior looked Charles in the eye and smiled, almost humanly. He had offered Charles the public impression of a concession, had addressed one small element of the whole, and expected his response to be extrapolated outward, and so the Australian pushed back his chair and stood; he did not need to stay for another course. He concentrated on sliding his spotted hands into plush gloves, even as his dishwasher's dog-destined entree was arriving at the table. His assistant stood in readiness, napkin in hand, but Melchior would leave alone; Kyle was to finish eating with the three Americans. Melchior smoothed the fleecy interior of his cowboy hat with a practiced action, alternating the palm and the back of the hand. "Based on what Harvey here's told us, the amount of your bid. and the value of the Vienna outfit, Kyle here has an envelope with a number in it. It should be sufficient for you. It's not a negotiating position. It's final. I can't go any higher than that number, so either your little item joins the Median family or it sits alone in Median country and we spend our first months here engaged in getting you out of our way. Kyle will wail one day at the Hilton for you to say you're interested. Pleasure to meet you gentlemen." No eye contact. No handshakes. And the cowboy hat and the mole and the abnormal, asocial drawl were swallowed by the maroon curtains.

There was a certain ice-blue pleasure in Melchior's company. John realized only as the velvet stopped billowing and settled into a vertical red sea. He didn't seem to enjoy his work in the slightest, but he also seemed entirely free of artifice in its performance. He said "I want this" and "I'll pay this amount for it" and "No, I won't name it after your comatose boss" and that was that.

"Lovely venison," said Kyle with real feeling, a sadly eager glimmer on his face. Left for a few minutes to his own devices among people more or less his own age, he rushed to make the most of it. 'Are there entertaining places to go around here after supper? Clubs or dancing and the like?"

"Let's see the envelope, Kyle."

"Right."

Charles held the sealed envelope to his temple. "Enjoy your venison, Kyle." He placed the letter, unopened, in his pocket, and everyone spent the rest of the evening wondering when he would finally peek. Kyle. always sensitive to being dismissed, said not another word. He and Harvey graciously paid for the meal.

On the street outside the restaurant. Charles pointed pointedly to two cabs, and Harvey tried to steal a confidential word with him as he could see that the encroaching forced separation was for a good strategic reason and that Charles obviously wanted him to execute certain intricate, advanced negotia-

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tory maneuvers once he had Kyle alone. "Charles, Charles, listen," he said, his arm sliding around Gabor's shoulder, chummily walking him away from the others. Charles bent over to tie his shoe, arose facing the other direction, strode to the cab, pushed John in, and shook two hands. "Kdroly," he corrected Harvey.

Charles didn't open the envelope, didn't even seem to recall he had it. until he and John had escaped, had left the other two standing together in the cold, final February night, the young Australian plainly crestfallen to be left in the company of another middle-aged bore, to watch again, as in so many cities where so many deals were done, anyone remotely fun heading off in the other direction, in a different cab.

The cab had lurched several blocks before Charles, without losing his place in a practiced but still fresh discourse on the Gulf War. retrieved the envelope from his jacket pocket. He fondled the Hilton-crested packet without looking at it and spoke of the ambiguous charms of Saddam Hussein, then finally, slowly, opened the envelope with measured uninterest: He tore the edge off its short end, describing the cold economic truths belying the hot political justifications for the desert combat. With a nonchalant puff, he blew the envelope into a cylinder and slowly slid out a sheet, which he could not be bothered to unfold. A good audience. John was suitably amazed by Charles's languor and repose, or at least by his unquenchable desire to amaze. War motives analyzed ("You can be humanitarian and greedy at the same time; it's just harder"). Charles unfolded the typewritten paper but did not look at it ("I really do believe you can shoot, starve, bury alive, burn, and bomb people, even innocent people, for humanitarian reasons, but it takes a great deal of emotional maturity"). The glow of passing streetlights illuminated his face in regular, sliding washes of pale yellow, each identically speckled with the gray transparencies of the taxi window's smudges.

"Okay, I'm duly impressed. Look at the thing already."

Charles bowed his head in gratitude and at last read the typed sheet. "Huh." he allowed. "That's about what I thought." He started to laugh and shook his head. "If I'd been high"

John redirected the cabdriver, and took Charles to the Blue Jazz for the first lime. His friend's growing, irrepressible excitement and his admission that Melchior's offer had surprised him induced in John a warm feeling toward Charles that he rarely experienced, and this justified sharing his favorite place with the celebratory partner.

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That comradely warmth lasted until j list before they had taken their coats off and sat down: Nadja wasn't there, to John's disappointment, and instead the room was smeared with the pea-green sounds of a sextet of avant-garde free-jazz types. "I love this song!" Charles exclaimed, and John immediately regretted not sticking with the Baal Room. "Jazz is just so great. All the cats poppin' their thumbs to the rat-a-tat-tat of the drums."

The conversation was enlightening, at least. For John, listening to Charles explain the meal they had just eaten was like going out for an entirely new evening, since apparently a whole eveningful of events had transpired without John even noticing. Charles described his frank admiration of. and pure enjoyment in, Melchior's "gamesmanship." The freakish little tics, the candid admission of being fooled, the casual, artless abuse of Kylc, the gruff ycs-no/now-or-never/no-negotiating/no-bull manner tickled Charles, and he respected "the work that went into its preparation." John's assertion that it had been Melchior's natural personality amused Charles nearly to choking. "All of it was very well done," Charles contradicted him, "but it would be meaningless if Melchiorcouldn'I turn it on and off at will. If that's all just him," he lectured patiently, "then the man is nothing but a psycho in a cowboy hat. Worse than that, just a lucky businessman rather than a skilled one. No, he's a serious man. our Hubert. It's very well clone, so don't feel bad. But—and I say this with professional certainty—it's all a put-on, even if he never stops doing it anymore, even if he docs it in his sleep and will die doing it."

Charles had been curious to meet the man, of course, but certainly hadn't expected an offer he could take seriously—maybe a minority investment offer, maybe a slightly marked-up buyout of his 49 percent, he had half hoped back in December, when Harv first started seeming credible about an introduction. But this .. . this was "gloriously, gorgeously high, high beyond dreams."