The Henderson Equation (13 page)

"It's weird," Margaret said, looking at the odd
people.

"No more weird than the rest of life," Charlie
pointed out.

"I agree with
you,
Margaret," Nick said.

He held Margaret's hand under the table, his thigh pressed
against hers. Lifting his glass, he clinked it against hers.

"Let's order champagne," Nick said. "The
occasion calls for champagne. It's New Year's Eve." He motioned to the
proprietor.

"You got champagne?"

"Champagne?" He yelled across the room to a fat toothless
woman strumming a piano. "Hey, Fanny, we got any champagne?"

"Yesh," she giggled, her booze-burned throat
hoarse but still strong. "We just made a batch in the back room."

"How'd you make it, Fanny?" a man shouted from
the bar.

She put one hand over a huge breast and squeezed it.

"And I've given it my best year, baby," she
squealed.

The proprietor brought over a bottle of New York champagne
and an ice bucket. Popping the cork, he poured it into glasses. They watched it
bubble, lifted their glasses simultaneously, and clinked them.

"To 1948," Nick said. He was feeling warm,
festive.

Edie looked at her wristwatch. "We've still got two
hours."

The girl at the piano began to sing a medley of lewdly
rearranged Cole Porter tunes, to the accompaniment of howls from the bar. Soon
they all had the giggles and the champagne was gone. Even Edie had loosened up
a bit and appeared to be enjoying herself, although Charlie could not seem to
shake his sardonic mood, visible in the way he smoked his cigarette, holding
his hand stiff, the cigarette locked between the two wrong fingers. Nick went
off to call the rewrite desk and fill in the color for the next edition.

"You lucky son of a bitch," the rewrite man said.

"Tough shit," he replied, exhilarated by
Margaret's presence and the effects of the champagne.

They left Sammy's Bowery Follies holding their glasses,
with Nick tucking another bottle of champagne under his arm. Hailing a cab,
they arranged to hire the man for the evening, pooling their meager funds of
about thirty dollars and sealing the deal with the driver in champagne toasts.
They stopped at El Morocco, the Carnival Club, then Billy Rose's Diamond
Horseshoe.

By the time they arrived at the Diamond Horseshoe, Charlie
was staggering, leaning against Edie who was also slightly tipsy but still in
full control. The nightclub was jammed. Noisemakers filled the air with
deafening blasts. Streamers sailed through the smoke like rockets. Nick was in
love, feeling gay, happy, light-headed. Hell, it was 1948! He had lived through
a war. He was working in his chosen profession. He had a great friend and he
was in love with a girl and the future stretched out before him in an endless
verdant landscape. No New Year's Eve could possibly match this one, he thought.

The music grew louder. The din of voices accelerated. Then
the orchestra began the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" and he and
Margaret stood up and kissed, their bodies hungering, lips parted, tongues
deeply entwined. Around them the celebration reached its final intensity. Even
Charlie and Edie were locked in an embrace.

"I love you, Margaret. I love you more than anything I
can think of that exists in the world." He was conscious of the clichés,
the platitudes, but could not find better words. Margaret was silent. He could
feel tears stream down her cheeks.

"Why cry, darling?" Nick asked.

"I'm not sure how happy I should be." She seemed
helpless and vulnerable in his arms. Sensing this only increased his feeling of
strength, of confidence.

He felt the surge of his manhood, the meaning of its
mystery.

"We're going," he said suddenly to Charlie, who
looked up drunkenly and nodded.

"We'll be fine," Edie said, tentatively watching
Charlie, whose head wavered.

"We're going to the apartment. Meet us later,"
Nick said. He smiled thinly, admiring his courage, watching Margaret turn away
her eyes in embarrassment. Outside the streets were jammed. Times Square was
the center of the universe on New Year's Eve, the great symbol of American
optimism that the passage of time would make all things better. They couldn't
find their cab in the crush and walked instead, the air clearing their heads as
they strode with arms around each other's waist.

He had spent the morning, before he went to work, cleaning
and dusting the apartment, even washing the windows and the woodwork, banging
the dust out of the upholstery, buoyed by the hope that somehow Margaret and he
would make it back together. The moment they were inside the apartment, the
consciousness of self-realization goaded him into a swift, lustful, strong
embrace. They stood in the center of the living room, too greedy for each other
to take the time to remove their clothes in logical sequence, and she was still
wearing her coat when he had removed her brassiere, the first priority of his
obsession. He felt the naked breasts in his hands wonderfully firm, the nipples
straight and hard. He could not let her go even for a moment, his right hand
fondling her breasts while his left reached down her back, insinuating itself
beneath the elastic of her panties and down to where her buttocks parted.
Standing there, tongues entwined, still in their coats, the wonder of her flesh
in his hands, he could feel the strong shudder of his own ecstatic orgasm as
its force consumed his body with joy. She must have felt it too since her body
pressed closer as his raged against hers. He could barely catch his breath,
wondering if she had shared the experience.

The orgasm by no means spent his passion and when they had
at last undressed properly and slipped between the cool sheets of the bed,
clinging to each other, he could not believe his happiness. The light from the
living room was enough to spread good visibility in the room and, assured that
her modesty would not be offended, he slid the sheets down and looked at her
wonderful breasts, more beautiful than he had imagined. He squeezed them
gently, fondled them, rolled the nipples gently between his lips, then seeing
her special joy in it, he rubbed the tip of his erected penis around the nub of
each nipple, giving equal time to each breast, until her response in reaching
out to his erection and taking command of the process induced him once again to
a raging orgasm, only this time he could feel the mutuality of their spendings,
a delight never to be replicated in quite the same way. They rested, smoked
cigarettes, and talked in hushed tones about their aspirations, exploring their
feelings.

"You can't conquer biology," he had told her
proudly, as if he were imparting a great truth.

"I guess not," she said.

"You see, it's not so easy to control how you
feel."

"Not easy at all." She paused. "But I still
intend to fight this thing. It just isn't going to louse up my
priorities."

Perhaps it was the implied challenge, but he was reaching
now for her clitoris, gently playing with it until her response became obvious
and he was consciously exciting her, taking his time, fondling and sucking the
fantastic breasts, watching her eyelids flutter with pleasure, kissing her body
with open lust. He put his finger deeply into her tight vagina, wondering if
she was a virgin, hoping in his heart that she was.

He had carefully placed his condoms in the little end table
beside the bed and, clumsily reaching for them, opened a package and watched
her eyes as she sneaked a look at how he was rolling it over his erected
member.

"Please be careful, my darling," she whispered.
The joy of knowing he would be first seemed to enlarge his soul. Certainly it
increased the immensity of his penis as he gently inserted it into her and felt
her tightness as she struggled to fulfill the connection, surely feeling the
mystery of this, her first joining, a special gift to him, a validation of her
commitment.

As his body moved deeper inside her, ignoring her brief
outcry of pain, he could feel the singlemindedness in her, her determination to
complete the offering, as if he were merely a participant in some ritual known
only to her. It was an evening rich in wonders. Later he would contemplate this
memory as a point of beginning, a joyful assertion of himself, knowing that to
her it seemed always a moment of weakness, a kind of self-betrayal. And yet,
between them, it represented the only sustained tangibility left in the
shambles of their marriage, greater than Chums, since from that evening onward
all was downhill in their relationship.

He had fallen asleep in her arms, still entwined in their
connection, When the telephone stirred him to consciousness. Through the rent
in the windowshade, he could tell that dawn was beginning. At first he could
not recognize the voice.

"It's Edie," she said finally. He had not
understood what she had been saying. "Charlie is very drunk. He's sprawled
on the revolving globe in the lobby of the
News
building. I think you
better come."

"My God." He sprang out of bed and slipped into
his clothes. "It's Charlie," he told Margaret, who was stretching
awake. "He's drunk on top of the world."

"What?"

He bent over her and kissed her deeply on the mouth.
"I love you. I truly love you."

"And me you," she said.

He ran through the streets and found Charlie, sprawled on
the top of the revolving globe, his jacket caught on the axis, as if he were
impaled.

With the help of the security guard, who had been
unsuccessful at initial attempts at dislodgement, he detached Charlie and
carried him into the street.

"He's really a nice fellow," Edie said.
"Something seems to be eating at him."

"That's obvious," Nick said. He was annoyed at
the intrusion. Edie looked uncommonly pale in the early morning light.

"He kept pressing me about mercy killing. He started
to get really nasty about it."

"You mean he accused you of something?"

"I couldn't tell." She held out her hand and he
shook it gently. "Even though it ended like this, I had a great
time."

"What made him do it?"

"He said he wanted to screw the world." She
smiled nervously. Such language was obviously not a common practice with her.
He watched as she got into a cab. He never saw her again.

Henry Landau's tan seemed to be fading quickly as he stood
before Nick, his eyes narrowed, betraying a hint of confusion. It was difficult
to think of Landau as conspiratorial, Nick thought, determined nonetheless to
stay on his guard. Deceit was a wily bastard, he had learned. It could stay
frozen into the landscape like a poisonous snake, camouflaged, ready to squirt
deadly venom when one least expected it.

"Maybe I missed something," Landau said,
"but the Henderson thing seems blown out of proportion."

"Frankly, I hadn't meant it to be." Nick forced
himself into a semblance of outward calm. He reached for a cigarette, lit it,
and puffed deeply, letting his gaze slide over papers on his desk. He hoped it
would make him appear less tense, distracted, as if the Henderson thing had
passed.

"Dover gave me Grinnel's Henderson story." Landau
put it on Nick's desk. He had let it drop from a higher distance than might be
polite. "It seems perfectly sensible to me," Landau said. "The
health bill idea, as we all agree, is a great one. Our editorials say so, at
least. And Grinnel, as you'll see, wrote the story as if it were an opening gun
of a new attempt at passage. Essentially the news value is in the timing."

Nick looked down at the copy on his desk. "I'll look
it over."

"It's getting late, Nick," Landau said. "Do
I count it in or out?"

Was Landau putting pressure on him? Nick looked up at the
tanned face and forced a smile.

"I don't want us to go out on a limb. Gunderstein's
working on a story that might be quite damaging to Henderson." Nick
watched Landau's reaction.

"I heard."

From where? Nick wondered. From whom?

"So you see..."

"No, I don't," Landau said. "What's one
thing got to do with the other? Gunderstein's story is one thing, and besides
it's far from being proved out. But the Henderson speech is quite real. What
you're doing is establishing a line on Henderson. Next thing you know we'll
have to hand out lists as to who we approve of and who we're against."

Perhaps it was the reference to lists. Nick remembered
looking over Myra's list. What was happening here? Was Landau simply being
clever, playing with him, manipulating him? Was he Myra's agent?

"Henry, let me ask you a question," Nick said
cautiously, pausing briefly. "How do you feel about Henderson?"

"Feel?"

"That's it. Feel."

Landau hesitated.
"Feel
implies an emotional
response. I don't think I'm in a position to answer the question on that
basis."

"Suppose I put it another way, Henry." Nick knew
he had bungled the trap, but he pressed on. "Do you favor Henderson's candidacy?"

"He hasn't even announced he would run."

"What has that got to do with it? In this town
everybody's always running." Landau appeared to feel foolish, fighting
anger.

"What the hell's come over you, Nick? I think you're
somehow trying to accuse me of favoring Henderson's candidacy. You know me
better than that. Such an implied accusation is patently absurd. I don't give
one shit about Henderson. He's not even the issue here."

He was sorry he had baited Landau. But he felt he owed it
to himself to see how far the battleground had spread. Even if Myra had somehow insinuated herself with Landau it had been too brief an attempt, too
restricted, to do any real damage. Myra could be marvelously subtle, even
during a chance meeting in an elevator, a simple greeting in a corridor. Words
and mannerisms are weighed carefully when they emanate from powerful people,
Nick knew. She also had, he admitted, the ability to project the charm of
personality, a fuse cap which she could add to the stick of dynamite which was
her power over them all. Because of this alone, she could reach people, manipulate
them by her favor and, perhaps, be manipulated by those who sensed her
vulnerability, her thirsts, her needs. There was simply no way to shield her,
warn her of those who had designs on her largesse. If he let down his guard for
a single second ... ?

He was conscious now of his own sense of tactics. The issue
of Henderson was in the air now. It could never again be approached casually.
Responses would be weighed, words measured, intonations calculated. It would
spread like an infection through the other editors, downward to the assignment
editors, the desk men, the reporters. He had sent his message. And, judging
from Landau's reaction, it had been received.

As Nick read the story, he was conscious of Landau standing
over him, fidgeting. He was not really reading the story. The contents, the
thrust, were obvious, the reportage competent. Grinnel was a pro. Landau's
irritation had pointed the way. He would let them run the story, give them
their Pyrrhic victory, but he would keep it off the front page. His power over
the front page was too precious to squander.

"You're right, Henry," Nick said, "it's got
good value."

"Then we can run it?"

"Yes. But I really don't think it's front-page
stuff."

"Well," Landau softened, "you're the
boss."

"If you really feel strongly about it, Henry, lay it
on me."

Nick could afford to be magnanimous now. He knew that
Landau would back off, which he did.

When he had left, Nick swiveled back in his chair and
rested his head against the cradle of his hands. He looked out into the city
room feeling its rhythm, like a surging, foaming, high tide, as the first
deadline approached. At this hour--it was nearing six--the tension seemed to
build. People moved swiftly through the room as in a revved-up movie
projection. Under normal conditions, as if normality could be defined, he might
have stolen a moment to depressurize. He felt tired, strung out. Perhaps age
was taunting him after all, despite the morning episode with Jennie. He had
always secretly snickered at references to the male menopause with its
implications of psychological changes and subtle chemical imbalances, the
slowing down of the blood. At least with women the evidence was conclusive. The
period stopped. Estrogen ebbed. He speculated on how deeply the changes were
affecting Myra. From where he stood, he could see a profound difference in her,
this sudden greed for more power. Was it a compensation for the final curtain
on youth? They were both about the same age. He wondered if she still had a sex
life. Odd, that he had never thought about it for years, having decided that
after Charlie's death there had been a renunciation. Surely it had actually
happened years before, as if Myra thought of it as trivia, a petty
self-indulgence that sapped energy. Earlier he had wondered if Henderson had somehow rekindled her desire, but he had rejected the thought. Too out of
character, from what he had known of Myra in the last few years. Hadn't she
herself admitted her passage into neuterdom?

"I've had enough of this man-woman nonsense," she
had said on the day after Charlie's funeral. "I've been cured of that
frippery. We've got other fish to fry."

It had been said with such passionate finality that he had
assumed its truth. But Jennie had taught him that love, or whatever it was,
could still lurk in middle age, a hidden force ready to recharge the blood.

He punched his intercom and asked Miss Baumgartner to bring
him some black coffee. The effects of caffeine, at least, were predictable.
When she brought the steaming container, he asked her to summon Gunderstein,
whom he could still see hunched over his typewriter, picking his pimples.

"I've been thinking over this Henderson
business," Nick said when Gunderstein had come in and slumped in a chair,
his unshined shoes splotchy and stained, like those of a house painter. His
lensed eyes betrayed his surprise. "I'd like to explore it further."

"Well, frankly, I've been doing that all day. I seem
to hit nothing but dead ends."

"Has it destroyed your confidence in the allegations
of your informer?"

"Not at all. The man's story is quite credible. It's
the other sources that are tough to come by."

Nick watched Gunderstein's face, scrofulous, pasty, the
unhealthy pallor a clue to the obsessed man within.

"Could you set up a meeting?" Nick asked. He
wondered if he was sounding casual enough. "I'd like to see for myself.
Get a feel of it." The very idea of
feel
had the ring of hypocrisy
in the light of his previous discussion with Landau.

"I don't know," Gunderstein said. "The man
is awfully cagey." He thought for a moment. "Perhaps he might come to
my place."

"See what you can work out."

Gunderstein shrugged and edged his rumpled body upward out
of the chair. "I'll try," he said. Before he reached the door, he
turned and faced Nick. "Does this mean that if the man passes muster we
might run the story?"

"I'm not sure, Harold," Nick said.

"Will tonight be okay?"

"I'll be available," Nick said. Gunderstein, Nick
knew, had a similar fetish about procrastination, an affliction of the news
business which demanded immediacy in all things.

As Gunderstein left, Nick glanced into the city room,
catching Ben Madison in mid-turn as he moved back into the familiar hunched
position. What had Madison assumed from this second visit with Gunderstein?

A news aide came in with a pile of page proofs. Nick took
comfort in the new chemical odor that reeked from the sheets as he pored over
them. He picked up the phone and called Nichols, the photo editor. "That
page-four shot has a bad crop."

"I saw that, Nick," Nichols answered. "It's
already fixed."

Details, Nick sighed, proud of his ubiquitous eye which
could snare the slightest imperfection whether it be misnumbered dates or wrong
fonts. Often he would catch these imperfections after they had passed through
an army of double-checking. For years he had kept a file of pornographic
misprints, like "shit" for "shot" and "cunt" for
"can't," and was forever on the alert for a disgruntled typesetter
who might be seeking some uncanny word-vengeance to blow off steam. Like the
famous recipe for apple pie that began with the lead-off head on the food
section "The Prick to a Fart Apple Pie," instead of "Trick"
and "Tart," which had slipped through the street edition to become a
collector's item. He was proud of his ability to absorb himself in minutiae of
proofing, to be able to spot a break in the rhythm of the presented
information, as if the cells and tissues of the
Chronicle
had merged
within him. He had learned to trust his judgment. Was it possible he was always
right on the money or was he merely being victimized by the power in his hands?
He had never dared breathe even a hint of this feeling to anyone, lest they
accuse him of egotism or self-possession. Instead he had honed for himself a
role of modesty, where manipulation and even despotism could be carried out
under the guise of fairness and persuasion. To have discovered this knowledge
in himself, he reasoned, was a sign of maturity, of having succeeded in coming
to grips with his power over others. Being brutally honest with himself, he saw
Myra's muscle flexing as a challenge to that power, a challenge that needed
to be bottled without mercy. He dreaded to contemplate what the
Chronicle
might become in the hands of someone less aware, more obsessed, for example,
with ideology than credibility, with forcing ideas, instead of insinuating
them, in seeking power merely for the sake of exercising it. The day the
Chronicle
lost its suppleness and subtlety was the day of its demise, he knew. He must,
at all costs, protect it from that fate.

The phone intruded on his proofing. It was Gunderstein.

"He'll be at my apartment at Four thousand Mass, six
D, at eleven."

"I'll be there." Nick made a note of the place
and time. It would hardly be an inconvenience since he lived at Foxhall, less
than a quarter of a mile away. He remembered to call Jennie. They had an
"arrangement." She lived across the street from him in the Berkshire
Apartments, but as their relationship had evolved, her one-bedroom apartment
had become simply a dumping ground for dirty laundry and an occasional refuge
when she needed to be alone, a condition he respected and sometimes welcomed.

They had often joked of how her apartment had become simply
a front for respectability and, as he had learned earlier that day, a rather
flimsy one at that.

"I'll be late," he said into the phone.

"What's up?"

"I'm going out on an interview with Gunderstein."

"Who is he after now?"

Her questions were always sharp, incisive. He could never
understand why she could not translate the apparent insight into her writing.

"A Senator--Henderson."

"Well, that's a relief. I thought it might be
God."

"He'll get to that some day."

She was always probing. It was a relief to have someone
with whom he could unburden himself, and she listened to him with keen
alertness.

"I thought he was the fair-haired boy," she
questioned.

"That's the problem."

"I'll be covering a story tonight, too. Judy Barton is
sick and Margaret asked me to cover an embassy thing. The British are having a
small to do. Veddy posh and exclusive."

"Ought to be fun!"

"Anybody who is anybody will be there. Lots of big
politicos and media heroes. I think I'll do a real bitchy piece."

"Wonderful."

"I think I'll deliberately show up tacky. It's so much
fun to be tacky and still have everyone kiss your ass."

"We sending a photographer?" Nick asked. It was a
professional reflex.

"But, of course. We've got a heavy list. Margaret's
got a bunch of kinky requests. All opposites. A big Jew with a big Arab. A
Russian with a Chinese. A Republican with a Democrat, contenders, that is.
They'll all be there. Ambrose, Carter"--she was reading from a
list--"and Henderson."