The Henderson Equation (25 page)

"You're Assistant City Editor, Gold," McCarthy
had barked without looking up from a sheaf of copy paper. He had not even known
that the post was open, learning only later that the opening of the newspaper's
television station was thinning out the deskmen's ranks.

Is he serious? Nick wondered.

"Boy," McCarthy shouted, looking up, seeing that
Nick was still standing around.

"Don't just stand there with a finger up your ass,
Gold," McCarthy shouted. "Get to work."

"I can't believe it," he had told Margaret on the
phone.

"Why not?"

"It's just hard to believe."

He had dreaded the call, knowing how she related his
success to her own failed hopes. She had been writing with a by-line before he
had been hired.

"You deserve it, Nick. You're a professional." He
could feel her voice crack, then the click, as if further conversation would
have prompted tears. He had meant to tell her that a raise came with the new
job, enough to be able to afford a competent nurse and let Margaret return to
work. Forgoing a night at Shanley's, he had traveled home, the joy of the
promotion erasing the pain of the last few months, determined to make a fresh
start with their marriage. He was barely in the door of the apartment when
Margaret announced that she would return to work whatever the practicalities of
their financial situation. He ate his dinner in silence, feeling the closeness
of the walls. Later, Chums began to cry.

Even in his memory, those first years with Margaret and
Chums' babyhood seemed blocked out by remoteness, as if they had happened to
other people, the impact of recall as muted as the insipid actuality. Both he
and Margaret threw themselves into the rhythm of the
News,
tools of the
great maw, losing all sense of outside involvement. On the level of work, the
incidents and technique, the kaleidoscope of journalistic events, the gossip,
were absorptions that could compete with marriage, which had become poisoned
long before the beginning, which Chums victimized by the evidence of herself.

Neither he nor Margaret tortured themselves over what was,
in retrospect, only neglect of Chums. She was, after all, only a baby, a cocoon
in a narrow world, a toy to be fussed over and played with on Sunday mornings
and then only until she grew moist or smelly or cranky. They went to movies and
sat in the dark, unspeaking, relieved to lose themselves in the lives of the
giants on the screen. Margaret continued to be the assistant movie reviewer and
it was apparent that it was a slot reserved, an heir apparency waiting for
death of the queen reviewer, a frail tiny lady who had already held the job for
nearly twenty years. Who could tell what guilt her wished-for end inspired in
Margaret, whose sense of entrapment grew with every third-rate movie reviewed.
Not that she didn't try to get out of the well-worn rut, once so promising a
stepping stone.

"Please, Nick, get me out of there."

"I'll try." But it was always awkward, since he
had no power of trade-off. The city editor took all the prerogatives of his
fiefdom and, although there was power in certain decisions of coverage, he was
forever the lieutenant, with little clout in getting Margaret promoted to
feature writer. It became another bone of contention, an irritation, poisoning
their bed still more.

"Nick, I'm going nuts, you've got to try."

"I did."

"Well, try harder, damn it."

"You overestimate what I can do."

"Just try. Please."

"I'll try again." But it was too formidable an
obstacle and he could sense stiffening resistance in the features editor, a
peppery redhead who ceased trying to be polite.

"Get off my back, Gold. The answer is no."

As if in direct proportion to her lack of advancement,
Margaret's sexuality began to expire, implanting a new contentiousness. As it
was, her sexual appetite moved in an odd rhythm, running a course from craving
to indifference. This was natural enough, except that craving might come in the
middle of bitter silent pouting anger, an abrupt energy, disturbing sleep as
she prodded his body to the quick intensity of her own need, repetitively
urging him on until inevitable exhaustion. Then it was he who was pushing and
she who dutifully submitted, a receptacle of orifice and breasts, available but
unmoved by all his stirrings.

"I can do better with masturbation," he said to
her after an episode of frozen response.

"Please do," she said sleepily, turning over as
if his flesh inspired only disgust. Then he would vow to stay away from her,
testing his own will and her sexual starvation, the latter proving far more
durable than the former.

In his loneliness, he felt the need for Charlie's
friendship. But Charlie was remote now, an apparition. There had been a wedding,
only relatives, and Charlie had written him a short humorous note. As a wedding
gift, he and Margaret had sent them a cut-glass vase with some sweetish poetic
sentimentality about a perpetually flowering future. They had taken great care
in the choice, which cost them nearly fifty dollars, outrageously high for
them.

They had received only a printed acknowledgment, not even a
handwritten word scrawled beside the neat engraving. It gave Margaret new
opportunities to inflict pain, fresh ammunition.

"A fair-weather friend, your Charlie."

"He's found another life."

"Now that he's up there, why should he have anything
to do with the peons, like you?"

"You're being unfair."

"You mean to say you're not a trifle upset?"

"No, I don't mean to say that."

"Not just a trifle bitter?"

"Charlie and I owe each other nothing."

They did get Christmas cards from Charlie, usually
oversized pictures of the Parker mansion, bathed in snow, and a neatly written
"personal" note in what might have been Myra's handwriting, telling them
how much Charlie and she had been thinking about them during the past year.

If Margaret hadn't made the one-sided estrangement an
issue, Nick might have accepted things with better humor. He did not need any
special symbols of Charlie's friendship and it was with some smugness that he
showed her a note he had received from Myra inviting them to their suite in the
Waldorf "between five and seven," a few weeks off.

"It's a crumb," Margaret had responded, looking
contemptuously at the card.

"You don't have to go," he sneered.

"I won't."

But he had gone in spite of himself, oddly tortured by a
loss of pride. Feeling like a poor relation answering the summons of a rich
uncle, he arrived at Charlie's tower suite, pushing into a large crowd that
spilled out into the corridor. Almost immediately he had wanted to leave,
feeling obscure. But he pressed relentlessly into the throng. They were a
collection of politicians, actors and actresses, celebrities who, as he later
learned, always answered the call of a media mogul. Not that the
Chronicle
had yet arrived at any plateau of power, but apparently it was making inroads,
one measure of which was its steadily rising advertising lineage which he
followed carefully in the weekly editions of
Editor and Publisher
. Under
Charlie's command, the
Chronicle
was unquestionably on the move.

Nick moved through the crush toward the bar. Ordering a
Scotch and soda, he reached through arms and over shoulders to receive the
comfort of the chilled glass and perhaps the courage of the drink itself,
before he would let his eyes search the room for the face of his old friend.
Awkwardly he lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply, forcing himself to find
strength. Then he heard the boom of Charlie's voice rising clearly through the
din.

"Nick." It seemed a gift. "There you
are." Turning, he saw a flushed, filled-out Charlie descending on him,
pinstriped and vested, taller, it seemed, than when he had last seen him. He
crooked his arm around Nick's neck and squeezed hard.

"How the hell are you, kid?"

"Terrific, Charlie."

"Christ, kid, we never get to see you anymore."
His eyes flitted past him as he greeted others with a nod and smile.
"Harry, Joe, Scotty. How the hell are you?"

"So how come we never see you anymore, kid?" he
repeated to Nick, then deflected again. "Hey, Mark, meet Nick Gold, my old
New York roomy." Nick shook limp hands as Charlie introduced him. Myra
lifted her head from conversation and waved to him from the other end of the
room.

"How the hell are you, kid?" Charlie repeated,
lifting a glass of champagne to his lips.

"Terrific, Charlie."

"You old son of a bitch. How come we never see
you?"

"We're busy as hell."

"Hey, where's..." apparently he was stumbling
over the memory of Margaret's name.

"Margaret's fine. The baby's great too."

"Jesus, that's terrific, kid. Did you say hello to
Myra?"

"Yes," he said. "I understand the
Chronicle
's
doing pretty well."

"You wouldn't believe it, kid."

"And how's Mr. Parker?"

"Getting on. Doesn't come in too much now." He
kept glancing past Nick, calling out names, shaking hands. It was definitely a
different Charlie. Or was he, Nick, different, outclassed, perhaps? He wanted
to cry, knowing that he could not.

"So how come we don't see much of you anymore?"
he heard Charlie say, wondering if the words had been directed at him, watching
Charlie moving away into the crowd, a stranger. When finally Charlie's back was
turned, he edged his way into the corridor and putting down his glass near the
wall, pressed the elevator button.

In the street, he stood for a long time in a deserted store
front, feeling for the first time the end of his youth.

Coincidentally with the deterioration of his personal life,
the
News
experienced its first major circulation setback. Not considered
cataclysmic, it produced just enough shock waves for management to demand
remedial steps. The cause of this visible interruption in the rising graph was
not a mystery. Television had come. Out of its infancy now, the bouncy baby was
growing too fast for comfort, a gawky, squawky pre-adolescent, knocking down
all competing media in its path.

Reactions to the new phenomenon spawned overreaction and
decisions were made emphasizing areas where the
News
and television were
not competitive. One of these was the province of sex. Television news, inhibited
by the watchdog FCC, dominated by a basic provincialism and fear of government
reprisal, was both cautious and circumspect in its coverage. But the
News,
which had built itself as a maverick, had always set aside columns for
titillation, reporting in gossipy terms the couplings of movie stars and the
peccadillos of the rich and powerful. Stories about these juicy tidbits of
scandal were concentrated on page 3, whose operation fell to Nick, the junior
deskman.

Each day, Nick would confer with Al Pinelli, fat and
perpetually breathless, who was on permanent assignment to the area of
adulterous divorce scandals. It was a role he played with great seriousness,
believing that he was actually the legal reporter for the
News
. Pinelli
had built a vast network of informants--divorce lawyers, judges, court clerks,
private detectives, prostitutes, policemen--most of whom would, for pin money
or spite, tattle on those who made the best grist for the page 3 mill.

To Nick it had become a game, the high point of the day, as
he gleefully picked over the catalog of dying marriages that Pinelli, with an
air of self-importance, would provide. The objective was to find a divorce
involving some well-known figure. Heirs and heiresses, particularly if they
could be traced to well-known products, were particularly good material.

At first it had seemed to Nick a harmless, almost trivial
pursuit. Many times, according to Pinelli, the adultery account was merely
trumped-up legal maneuvers, a collusion of both parties. Besides, as long as
the human aspect remained locked in ink and pulp, legitimized by public
acceptance, the stories seemed fictional, unrelated to real people. It was only
when the human wreckage came in over the transom that Nick learned the full
extent of editorial power, the power to torture and destroy, as it did one day
in the guise of Mrs. Brett Carter.

It had seemed a routine story. A Mrs. Carter was being sued
for divorce on the ground of multiple adulteries by her husband, Brett Carter
of the pharmaceutical Carters, the company that made a well-known brand of
prophylactic. What could have been better grist? Pinelli wrote and Nick edited
the stories which had developed into a big city-room joke, replete with scores
of imaginary headlines alluding to the Condom King and his "royal
screwing." The euphemisms used to describe the product provided pinnacles
of challenge for both Nick and Pinelli that sent waves of laughter down the
copy chain.

Mrs. Carter, according to the legal briefs obtained by
Pinelli, had been diligently traced by private detectives. They had documented
a pattern of incipient nymphomania. All of the better East Side hotels were
cited as scenes of her trysts, promoting an avalanche of calls from desk
clerks, upset that their hotels had been omitted. Nick had let Pinelli write
beyond the allotted words. It was, after all, the quintessential phenomenon of
its genre.

To Nick, Mrs. Carter had the same reality as a character in
fiction. She was real only in his mind. He suspected that the stories were
inflicting pain on a real person but he could not visualize its depth except as
it related to him. And since he was uninvolved emotionally, he could understand
only the comic overtones, not the human considerations. Later, he would
actually seek such a state of uninvolvoment, deliberately avoiding the human
subjects of a story. Humanness destroyed objectivity, he was to learn.