Hot Properties (31 page)

When they were released onto Seventh Avenue, surrounded by the happy departing crowd, Tom turned to Fred in a determined manner (as though this was something he had been considering for a while and had made up his mind to do because he had decided it was the right thing) and said. “I told Karl I’d drop by the poker game and play for the last couple hours. Why don’t we both go?”

“Uh …” Fred couldn’t think how to put it, and found himself telling the truth: “He didn’t invite me.”

“I know. Cause of crazy Sam. Well. Karl’s being stupid about it. Come along. Sam’s bark is worse than his bite. He’s a child. He has to be told no, or his demands just escalate endlessly.”

Fred tried to refuse, but Tom insisted, and later, sitting at the game, while everybody totaled up winnings and losses, and Karl was busy writing a check to Fred for thirty dollars. Sam said to him, “You really played good poker tonight,” in a tone that implied concession and acceptance.

I’ve won, he thought calmly, without the usual silly rush of adrenaline. He felt like tragic Ray Williams, head bowed, a champion at last, scarred to be sure, but with the home crowd finally—finally, at long last!—on
his
side.

David Bergman sipped his cold coffee. Presumably that morning its flavor had been heated and reheated away, and now it had even lost that one virtue—heat. But he liked sipping it. He was at the cover meeting, listening to a furious argument between Chico and Harpo over whether the Russian withdrawal from the Olympics was a Nation story (Chico’s domain) or an International story (Harpo’s bailiwick).

David listened dispassionately, enjoying, as were the other senior editors, the spectacle their supervisors were making of themselves. The effort Chico and Harpo put into disguising this battle of ego as a disagreement of substance was especially diverting. Harpo, with his longish blond hair, cheerful open face, and relaxed manner, contrasted well with Chico’s dark-haired, beady-eyed controlled rage.

The majority in the room felt friendlier toward Harpo. He now occupied, and had occupied in the past, a position of less power than Chico, but only part of the good feeling toward Harpo was a result of his having fewer natural enemies. After all, Harpo was a Marx Brother. He hired and fired, he top-edited, he had to (in theory) obey the law of middle management: toady to superiors, bully inferiors. But Harpo, unlike Chico, seemed to take
Newstime
(its intrigues, its etiquette, its self-delusions) less to heart than Chico. On a week when
Weekly’s
cover clearly bested
Newstime’s,
Chico seemed hurt and baffled, a grieving man, while Harpo made jokes, sometimes gallows humor to be sure, but jokes nevertheless, which implied he had a sense of proportion, a knowledge that after all, this was simply a job, and
Newstime
merely a magazine. Chico made people feel that to point out such an obvious fact to him would be roughly equivalent to informing Genghis Khan that a battle he had just lost was insignificant, and his quest, in general, merely a transitional phase between one empire and the next. Telling Chico the truth might get you decapitated and your head stuck on top of a hot-dog stand’s multicolored umbrella.

Today, however, Harpo seemed to be taking things seriously. “Look, five countries have pulled out. More will follow. There’s no way LA’s problems are bigger news than the international implications.”

“They’re national!” Chico’s voice squeaked. An amusing disparity with his huge body, it brought secret smiles to the faces of the senior editors. David looked away from Mary Gould (senior editor, back-of-the-book) because her mischievously twinkling eyes threatened to crack his smile into noisy laughter. He studied the only neutral face there— Rounder’s. “Who gives a shit whether Yugoslavia will come or not! This is really about Soviet-American relations, the MX, the effect on the election—”

“We’ve heard the list,” Harpo said dryly. “I agree, no question, there are obviously important Nation implications but, my God, how you can argue that the Olympics, by definition, isn’t an international story is beyond me.”

“Excuse me,” Rounder said. There were laughs around the room. But they were cut off by the surprised look on the editor in chief’s face. Apparently he hadn’t meant his polite interruption to be sarcastic. “We’re not going to put this in either Nation or International, are we? It’s the …” He hesitated, as though unsure. “… cover, right?”

David looked down. He had again caught the eye of Mary Gould and several of the other senior editors, and he felt himself want to laugh at their astonishment. It
was
astonishing. Surely Rounder should know what Chico and Harpo were really arguing about, namely whose writers were more qualified to cover the Soviet withdrawal, and therefore who was going to top-edit the story. Normally Chico could conduct a raid on someone else’s province like this without opposition, but today Harpo had decided to put up a fight (justifiably, David thought, since it really was an international story) and it was up to Rounder (as editor in chief) to resolve the conflict. Apparently he didn’t even understand its terms.

“Yes,” Chico said, his voice loud and impatient, “but who’s gonna write it?”

There was an uneasy silence. Rounder made the situation worse by trying to look imperious to cover what was obviously confusion. “Why don’t we first decide if it is the cover?” Rounder said haughtily, implying that Chico was the one who was asking foolish questions.

“The Russians withdraw from the Olympics!” Chico said so vehemently that a stranger entering the room might think the news had just broken and Chico was a proprietor of several large Los Angeles hotels. “What else are we gonna put on the cover?”

“Robert Redford in
The Natural?”
Mary Gould suggested playfully. That had been a proposed cover before the Russians had withdrawn, but she was kidding.

Chico, however, wheeled on her. “We’d look like assholes if we did that!”

“Sell more copies than with news that’s four days old,” Harpo said, throwing the line away. He meant this as bitter fact, not a rationale for giving in.

Again Chico chose to attack as though the speaker was in earnest. “Oh, great! So why don’t we just close up shop and let
People Magazine
handle all the news?”

“Maybe we should go with Redford,” Rounder said, only he was
not
kidding or musing philosophically. He spoke in a tone of wonder while making the suggestion, as if the notion hadn’t been discussed at all and he had just had a flash of inspiration.

His question hung in the air like a mysterious phenomenon of nature. They all looked incredulously at it, unable to guess at its origin, its future course, or what action could be taken. Primitive tribesmen couldn’t have been more stunned by a comet than they were by this naive indecisiveness.

“Fine!” Chico said abruptly, and sat down. He stared at the table, silent, like a sullen child, intending to deprive them of any further human intercourse.

Harpo stared at Chico, amazed by his silence. He looked at the others (David met his eyes briefly and saw the desperation, with a plea implicit in their quick, darting movements. Can’t somebody help me? they asked). Then he seemed to pull himself together. Harpo looked at Rounder. “I think we’d look really irresponsible.”

“But
Weekly
will put the Olympics on the cover, and there won’t be any way to distinguish ourselves from them.”

Rounder said this in a tone of discovery, a medical researcher uncovering a previously unknown and deadly microbe.

Again Harpo looked at Chico imploringly. Chico folded his arms and sank lower in his chair, his eyes fixed on the table. Harpo despaired of him and said to Rounder, “That’s always the problem. But it’s inevitable that we do the Olympics anyway. There are some news events that can’t be ignored, no matter how obvious or boring to our readers they will be.” The surreal quality of this moment, someone explaining to the editor in chief of a national newsmagazine its most basic fact of existence, washed over David, numbing him. He began to feel he wasn’t really present in the scene, that it was something he was watching or dreaming. “Sure,” Harpo continued, “on Monday everybody will pass the newsstands and groan at the Olympics being on the cover, but if it wasn’t …” Harpo stopped, as though the implied explosion of rage on the part of their readership was too horrible to imagine.

“But why?” Rounder smiled his brilliant smile, his blue eyes glistening with excitement. “We have to start questioning these assumptions we make. By Monday the Russian withdrawal will be old, old news. The magazine will sit on the stand for the next few days becoming more horribly dated with each day. I’m not saying we don’t banner it inside and give it thirty columns anyway, but let’s do Redford on the cover. At least we’ll sell more copies and therefore more people will have the benefit of reading our excellent coverage of the Olympics.” He beamed at them with the pleasant immodesty of a child topping adults at something their greater experience should have taught them.

“If we really want to surprise them,” Chico said in a mumble, “let’s not cover it at all. We could do a thirty-column takeout on Redford’s marriage.”

Several people laughed. David did not. He stiffened, a soldier ready for incoming artillery. Sarcasm at a Groucho suggestion was simply not done without consequences. Either it signaled the end of Rounder or the end of Chico, David believed, or rather felt instinctively. You don’t make fun of the boss’s major policy ideas. You can kid him about his tie, or the way Mrs. Thorn praised him at a general meeting, but never joke about his ideas in front of the staff—at least not when he’s there to hear you. To David it was unthinkable, unbelievable, something he never thought he would see someone like Chico do. It was as if the bartender had just tossed a shot of bourbon in Jesse James’s face—get away from the bar and duck behind a table, cause there’s gonna be some shootin’.

Instead of such dramatics, Rounder turned to Mary Gould and said, “I’m sorry, I haven’t seen the piece. Is there material about his marriage?”

Chico audibly groaned. He sank lower in his chair, his small eyes scrunched together, fiercely staring at the table. Mary, suddenly on the spot, dropped her cheerful attitude and answered in a hasty rush: “No, not really. Just an allusion to it. It’s really about the movie and how long it’s taken Redford to do one. Been four years since he’s appeared in anything, and three since he directed
Ordinary People.”

“Wow,” Chico said in a dull, flat voice.

“It wasn’t intended as an exposé,” Mary said at Chico’s head, since he was still utterly absorbed by the conference table and made his comments in a tone that implied he couldn’t be heard, as though they were private thoughts. “It’s not controversial or newsy,” she added, apparently a polite way of voting no on its superseding the Olympics.

“But it’s fun? It looks good?” Rounder asked imperiously, making his question seem silly, since his attitude implied that only an affirmative answer was acceptable.

“Yes,” she admitted, but with a trace of reluctance. “We have great pictures. Redford looks sensational.”

“Easy, Mary, whoa, girl,” Harpo said pleasantly.

She winked at him. “Say, how come senior editors don’t get to do interviews?”

The room broke up, except for Chico, who seemed to have become statuary, his big body still, although in David’s mind there was explosive, ominous animation implied.

“This is what I suggest,” Rounder said. “Let’s proceed with both the Olympics and Redford as covers. We’ll see how lively the Olympics story is by the end of the week. If there’s more juice in it, we’ll do the Olympics and, run Redford the next issue.”

“Redford’s a cover either way?” Mary asked.

“Definitely,” Rounder said. “That’s a cover or it’s nothing. Don’t you agree?” he asked Chico, or rather, the body of Chico.

Chico stood up. The speed of it startled those around him. For a moment he said nothing. “Yes,” he announced to the wall finally. “Who’s top-editing the Olympics?”

“Ray, why don’t you do it?” Rounder said to Harpo, using his real name, of course. Harpo, now having won the battle he began, looked as though he considered it a Pyrrhic victory. Chico nodded knowingly at this news of his defeat and announced. “I have to go to the John,” and made for the door.

“We’re done,” Rounder said, continuing his style thus far namely making no acknowledgment of Chico’s behavior.

They filed out slowly and quietly. That was atypical of the end of cover meetings. David caught the eyes of several others while they moved, and each time, there was an embarrassed glance away on both sides. All of them knew that they had witnessed a remarkable meeting, that they would be gossiping like mad about it soon, but right at that moment they all tried hard, far too hard, to pretend that it had been routine.

Back in his office, David tried to think it through. He needed to have a line on it for the drinks at lunch. (He regularly ate on Tuesdays with a group of other senior editors and a number of the top writers.) But his search was for a real explanation. He felt upset. And that also bothered him. Why should he?

His Power Phone buzzed. He jumped at the loud squawk. It made him react nervously. No doubt it had been designed to produce that effect. “Yes?” he called into it.

“David.” Chico’s voice thundered metallically, “could you come up for a few minutes?”

“Sure,” he said. He tried to block out any thoughts of the meeting, assuming that Chico wanted to see him about something else and that even a hint of self-consciousness might anger Chico.

He found Chico reading blues. He nodded at David and held up a finger while he finished a paragraph. He nodded at the door. “Could you close it?”

As convinced as David had been on his way there that Chico wanted to see him about something other than the cover meeting, he was now persuaded that it was about that bizarre scene. He closed the door slowly, nervous, wishing he could delay talking with Chico until after lunch. He had had no time to think. But no matter how lightly he pushed the door, it still shut too quickly for David to have an answer to the question Chico then asked: