The Henderson Equation (44 page)

"Myra?" She looked dumbly at the copy in her
hand. The pencil dropped to the floor. Perhaps she was contemplating the
possibility of Myra's assistance, because she said, "Myra can't write. Can
she?" Was it an attempt to twist the accusation, test the validity of his
knowledge?

"Don't you know?" he asked, conscious of his own
sense of control.

She watched him, unsure, looking at the face of the clock.
"Please, Nick. Stop playing with me. I'll miss the deadline."

"They already have the guest list and the
pictures."

"Nick, please."

"Story to appear in tomorrow's editions," he
hissed, taunting her.

"Please, Nick. The other paper will have it. You're
being cruel."

She was trying to recover from the reference to Myra,
denying it to herself. He could see she was ravaged by panic. No more
Pygmalion, he told himself. She stood watching him for a moment, her mouth
twisting.

"You're really not going to do this?" she asked.
She was trying a new tactic now, contrived contempt.

"Why should I?" he asked, enjoying his power.

"You owe it to me."

"That is absolutely the ultimate in egocentricity,
Jennie."

She must have seen that her power had diminished
extensively. "You're still mad at me," she said. "That's it.
You're still pissed off."

"I'm nothing."

"You made me so damned mad, Nick. I just had to get
away." Did she really understand how far off the mark she was? he
wondered.

"It doesn't matter anymore, Jennie. I don't give a
flying fuck."

It might have been the hurled obscenity, but he could see
now that it was dawning on her. She sat down at the edge of the bed, the copy
on her lap, her head nodding.

"I'm sorry, Nick," she said, her hand gripping a
thigh, caressing. Even that won't work, he told himself, feeling his soreness
as he shifted away from her. Not now.

"I was flattered," she said. "Myra needed
someone, a woman, to talk things out with. What's wrong with that?"

"Knowing you, a great deal. I trusted you. I told you
things."

"Nick, I swear," she said quickly, genuinely
panicked now. "I didn't break our confidence."

"Bullshit."

"Believe me, Nick."

"Believe you?"

"Nick, please understand. It was a woman-to-woman
thing. She needed someone."

"Loneliness at the top, I suppose."

"Yes, something like that."

"Then why the big secret? Why all the
subterfuge?"

"We didn't want you to be upset, that's all."

"How kind." He could imagine their discussions,
probings. What was the best strategy to manipulate old Nick? First Margaret.
Now Jennie. The conspiracy of the sisters. He remembered Henderson's words.
"I've given you my balls." What a joke. At this rate neither of them
would have any balls to give.

"The king is dead, long live the queen," he said
bitterly, watching her face for some reaction. He imagined he detected
uncertainty, perhaps fright. Then he saw the inner workings of the subtle
cover-up, the grave face.

"We had a mutual interest."

"You mean old Nick."

"As a matter of fact, it was for you," she said,
her eyes misting.

"Come off it, Jennie," he said coldly. "Save
it for the Academy Awards. We both know what you are."

She brushed away a tear and straightened. "Well,
apparently the storm is over," she said. "You do owe me something for
my time."

"You mean for the use of the flesh."

"Well, you've got to admit, I gave you the best of my
talent."

"Your only talent."

"It is something."

"Then we're even," he said bitterly, feeling a
whimper begin somewhere deep inside him. "You did me. I did you."

"Please, Nick. Do me now." She handed him the
copy paper. His fingers refused to grasp it as it fell across his lap.
"Just this once. Until I can get my bearing again. It's one small lousy
favor, purely professional."

"Worried about your damned image?"

"Yes I am, Nick."

He knew she had reached the stage of total capitulation, an
addict in need of a fix. It was the one last ploy and he could assess it
dispassionately. He reached for the copy paper and started to read it again,
searching for the pencil, which she found on the carpet near the bed, handing
it to him. Getting up from the bed, he walked to the den, where the typewriter
stood on its little desk. He punched out the butt of his cigarette and lit
another one, put paper in the roller, and quickly began the rewrite. "You
know, Jennie, you're almost an illiterate." He typed swiftly, reconstructing
the story, inserting the subtleties, the little nuances that might reflect what
she had told him about the ritualized shame of it. After each sheet was
finished, he handed it to her.

"Make sure the names are right."

"Sure, Nick," she said eagerly, looking over the
finished copy.

When he had finished, she reread the entire story again,
reaching out and grabbing his upper arm, which he shrugged off.

"Slug it thirty," he said.

"Fini."

"The end."

She got up and started to the door, turning. He was
expecting it, knowing how her mind worked now, her modus operandi.

"And tomorrow, Nick?"

"It's all right, Jennie. We'll make it look like a
phase-out. I won't leave you hanging by your thumbs. We'll go to the game
together tomorrow." He wondered if she realized that he was delivering her
to Margaret's mercy. Surely she knew, and was even now imagining strategies,
constructing scenarios, calculating a new method of survival in the newspaper
business.

Objectivity, he sneered, as she crossed the threshold and
closed the door quietly.

The sun burst against the cantilevered roof line of the
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, a glistening gem against a rare, deep-blue
Washington sky. It was still too early for the crowds to begin their invasion.
The only people around the stadium at that hour were stadium workers, or
diehard fans determined to catch early glimpses of their heroes, or the special
elite who picked their way up to the private club, sleepy-eyed but expectant.
And then there were the lucky few, the elite of elites, who like Nick were
invited to the owner's box, the one remaining stronghold of the imperial city.
Here the patron could exhibit his prize, the Queen of the City, Myra Parker
Pell, who reveled in her glory, the tiara of her power clearly displayed, the mace
of her authority held high for the assemblage to admire and, if necessary,
kiss.

Nick had always observed the Sunday ritual with some humor.
But having bowed to the mace--indeed, he thought bitterly, having shoved it up
his ass--he could see himself as having joined the vassals in the imperial box,
another fawning courtier. Which was apparently what Charlie was trying to warn
him against from the depths of his inarticulate hell until he betrayed them all
with that bullet and the splattered brains. Yet in an odd way Myra, too, was an
innocent victim. Could she be blamed for wanting to accept the full measure of
her inheritance, for taking what was hers? We are all innocent, he thought,
although knowing it gave him little solace.

His mood was bleak as he waited for Jennie in the chill
outside the stadium. It was all cross and double cross and double double cross
again, everyone thrashing about in search of his private talisman--power,
integrity, objectivity, honesty, truth, glory, admiration. Which was his? he
wondered, not finding it in the catalog.

Despite the sun, the cold stimulated teariness in his eyes.
He had told Jennie to meet him at the entrance, a gruff command, spat out
between gulps of hot coffee as he sat with the
New York Times
spread
over the refuse of his Lucite desk. The depth of the Sunday
Times'
reporting was overwhelming. By comparison the Sunday
Chronicle
was an
inept rag, swollen with trivia. Today he had counted seven advertising inserts,
gaudy-colored with, it seemed, row after row of panty ads. He had never
imagined that there could be so many different styles and qualities of panties.

The city room was quiet at that hour. A single typewriter
clacked and a news aide sleepily opened what remained of a mountain of press
releases. The absence of vibration from the presses made the atmosphere
particularly unreal, almost eerie. In the far corner one of the older
reporters, named McGaren, nodded over his desk reading a book. A widower, he
had no home except here. Like me, Nick thought.

A mailbag lay crumpled on the floor near Miss Baumgartner's
desk. He stifled the urge to open the bag and poke through it, searching out
the hate mail. But knowing it was there, the hallucinatory ravings, the focused
anger, was enough. He would read the letters tomorrow and they would provide
their bizarre reassurance.

He thumbed through the
Times,
seeking ideas for
stories and editorials. Because of the game, he would miss the morning's
editorial meeting. Of course, Monday's editorials were already tentatively programmed.
He knew his search was merely a mask for his real intent. Like old Mac sitting
in the corner over a book, he simply had nowhere else to go. His life had
boiled down to this, at last. The final reality!

Ripping tearsheets from the
Times,
he checked story
possibilities in red grease pencil and flung the remainder on the floor,
revealing again the slightly soiled copy of Gunderstein's story. He glanced
over to Gunderstein's empty desk, expecting to see the intense pimpled face,
calm and myopic.

A news aide brought wire copy. The rest of the world was in
motion now. The week had begun in other hemispheres, reality had descended,
agony stirred, conflicts awoke, birth and death happened, pain began. Words!
Everything was words. Media! He wondered if Martha Gates was scheduled to work
that day, but he refused to look at the attendance roster.

When he had completed the tearsheets and written in grease
pencil the names of the deskmen to whom he wished them directed, he walked out
to the city room and handed them to a news aide. Returning, he caught sight of
Bonville sitting stiffly in his office, a plume of smoke from steaming coffee
rising in the quiet air. Bonville did not see him, could not feel his eyes
watching, even as Nick stood in the doorway, casting a shadow. Bonville's
concentration was beyond destruction. It was only when Nick banged his fist
against the open door, knuckles against the wood, that Bonville looked up,
expressionless.

"Still got a copy of that health insurance editorial,
Bonnie?" Nick asked gently, as if the need to ingratiate himself were
suddenly of primary importance. Bonville looked at him quizzically.

"Yes, I do, as a matter of fact." His long bony
fingers reached into a desk drawer. Unlike his own, the surface of Bonville's
desk was neat and organized. Finding the copy quickly, he held it out for Nick
to grasp. When he had not, he laid it carefully on the desk top as if it had
been something delicate, fragile.

"I'm surprised to see you today, Bonnie."

"I'm rather surprised I'm here," Bonville said,
his Adam's apple bobbing in his scrawny throat. "I mean that figuratively
as well as literally." Nick could sense the beginnings of another
confession. Please don't, he told himself.

"Frankly, I'm going through a bit of a crisis,"
Bonville said.

"You too?" It was a tribute to Bonville's
insensitivity not to have caught the obvious. The man was totally within
himself, Nick knew. He searched for the right moment to leave, but Bonville was
continuing.

"I can't seem to make a dent. I feel I'm talking to
the wind."

"You're the house radical, Bonnie. You keep us on our
toes."

"I see the truth with such clarity," he said,
avoiding Nick's eyes. "Sometimes I feel as if all my nerve ends were
reaching out and finding the meaning, right at the heart of things. If only I
had the power to persuade you, to verbalize the sense of truth."

"Come on, Bonnie. There's a hell of a difference
between truth and ideology."

"That's exactly the point. I don't think of myself as
an ideologue."

Nick found himself getting edgy. He hadn't meant to be
drawn in. There was no point to it, no possibility of resolution. Bonville was
a classic Leftist ideologian, handpicked by him to leaven the editorial
committee.

"I really don't think I can continue to take the
beating," Bonville said suddenly, his pain showing now.

"You take things too seriously, Bonnie." Would he
sense the hypocrisy?

"Not seriously enough," Bonville said, looking at
him as if for the first time. "The world is falling apart."

"Old Cassandra."

"There is injustice everywhere," Bonville said.

Another one, Nick thought. What is it about this business?
he wondered. That damned sense of justice that ran like a stream through all of
them. He felt engulfed by it. Enough!

"We'll discuss that health piece tomorrow, Bonnie,"
Nick said, escaping, conscious that he had left some of Bonville's words in
midair.

Back in his glass cage, he could feel the day begin, as the
room began to fill, actors taking their places, the play beginning. At the
moment their audience was stirring in their warm beds, the prospect of a lazy
Sunday before them, the expectation of the big game, which magnetized their
attention. In his absence a news aide had piled on more copy, the columnists'
filings, the overnights from around the world, the flood of words converging.
He began to read, trying to pick up again the rhythm of his work, the exquisite
balance, as comforting as a pair of old shoes that had grown to fit the
contours of his feet. If only he could stay in his glass cage forever, never stirring
from within its perimeter and the mental boundaries it symbolized. Here is
where he wanted to live and here he wanted to die. Thank you for this gift,
Charlie, he told himself, feeling the gratefulness of a loyal old dog who would
not stir from its master's grave. The loss of this world would be his thirty,
he knew, taking pride in the newspaperman's symbol, the origin unremembered.
Telephones began to ring. Typewriters clacked. Voices hummed. The giant was
stirring.

"Yes," he said into the mouthpiece of his own
telephone which had rung.

"Nick." It was Myra. She seemed surprised.
"I tried your apartment."

"Some loose ends," he said. He would not show her
how much he needed to be here.

"Just wanted to be sure you wouldn't forget the
game."

"Not a chance."

"And Jennie?" There was the slightest change of
pitch, or had he imagined it?

"Jennie, too."

She had paused, her breath expelled, perhaps, in relief. He
was certain now that Jennie had not confided, a mark of her own strategy for
survival.

"And, Nick. I just want you to know how grateful I am
for your attitude on Henderson. He called me late last night. I'm very
thankful."

"He admitted it, Myra. He implied you also knew."
It was important for her to know that he shared their little conspiracy. The
pause was longer now, as she gathered her thoughts for some adequate response.
She also knew the limits of her powers.

"He's our kind of guy," she said, ignoring the
accusation. She could hear only the sound of her own drummer, he knew.

"Yes, Myra. He's our kind of guy." The words came
out rippling, as if they were dragged over an old-fashioned washboard.

"It's going to be one helluva year," she said,
girlish, gleeful.

"We needed an encore," he said. "See you
later."

He had barely hung up when the telephone became persistent
again, drawing his eyes away from the overnights. Finally he picked it up. It
was Gunderstein's flat quiet voice, a slight quiver revealing a tenseness that
might not be detected in a face-to-face talk.

"Will you be in for a while?" Gunderstein asked.

"I'm going to the game."

"I must talk to you." It was a confrontation he
wanted to avoid. Could Gunderstein ever really be placated? The man's tenacity
was superhuman.

"I'm leaving early." He knew then that he should
just hang up the phone and run, as far as he could go. But there was no escape,
not from the all-seeing myopic cyclops that was Gunderstein.

"Please, Mr. Gold. I can be there in ten
minutes." The phone clicked off, leaving the receiver in a wet and
trembling hand. When he had finally returned it to its cradle, Nick felt his
concentration drain away. Moving his body in the chair, he looked into the city
room again. Down the line of desks he could see the dark face of the Atkins
girl, caught, he imagined, in the agony of nonobjectivity. Even at that
distance she must have felt his eyes on her. She looked up, her head bobbing
slightly, then returned to her typing.

The overnights seemed suddenly hollow, pretentious, as if
the reporters were forcing themselves to fill space, injecting interpretations
and stretching them to the point of pontificating. He was tempted to take his
pencil and emasculate the copy, remove all the opinions and propagandizing,
extract the spice of the newspaperman's art like a bad tooth. Usually it was
impossible for him to see this kind of blatancy and do nothing about it.
Sometimes he would excise a word, a paragraph, sometimes kill an entire story.
This morning, though, he felt his powers ebb, a man caught in a never-ending
dream sequence reaching for an object that his fingers refused to hold. Media!
The word buzzed in his head like an insect beating its wings against a light.
Later, he knew, he would read the printed paper with growing anger as he viewed
the words he should have destroyed. It wasn't enough that he had set the line,
at best fuzzy and ill-defined except in his own brain, but policing the line
was a special problem, requiring the alertness and vigilance of an army. It was
impossible for one man's brain to monitor it all. If only the information would
just stop coming for a single day. Even when there were strikes, and they knew
they would skip publication, the information continued to come. It was always
processed and kept in readiness for the moment when the public would be let in,
the zoo reopened.

Gunderstein arrived breathless, the front of his hair
sweaty, plastered to his forehead. Little red circles had already outlined his
pimples, a sure guide to the state of his agitation. He looked furtively from
side to side as if someone might be expected to intrude at any moment.

"I've refocused my story," he said, taking a
sheaf of copy paper from the side pocket of a rumpled jacket. The pages were
folded vertically. He opened and smoothed them as he thrust them on top of the
pile of dispatches.

"It's really a closed issue, Harold," Nick said
looking blankly at the copy, refusing to stir his eyes to read it.

"I've actually cleared the major hurdle, Mr.
Gold," he said. "Allison has agreed to be quoted. I assume that's
your major objection."

"Allison?" He had barely remembered the man's
name, although he had invoked the idea of his non-quotability as a major
stumbling block to publication. Why couldn't Gunderstein let sleeping dogs lie?

"Yes. He has agreed to be quoted." Gunderstein
pointed to the copy.

"He's not afraid?" Nick asked.

"He's frightened to death."

"Then why?"

"I paid him," Gunderstein said simply.

"You paid him?" The cadence of his words
indicated that he wanted to say more. Gunderstein waited for the words that did
not come.

"It was my own money," Gunderstein said, before
Nick could protest that he had not authorized the payment.