I'll Take Manhattan (37 page)

“Can I just bring one white rose in a white bud vase for my desk?” Julie begged, blushing with excitement.
Wholesale! Justin
!

“I’ll supply the rose,” Justin announced.

“I’ll
lend
you an onyx vase,” Leon announced. “White vase indeed.”

“Hmm,” sniffed Maxi, “I rather thought
I’d
like an all-white office to go with the streak in my hair. We can’t have two.”

“Julie gets it,” Leon decreed, feeling much better. “She’s the only one we have to be nice to now.”

“Pavka, I’m so glad you asked me to lunch. I haven’t seen you in, oh, much too long.” Maxi had rushed into his arms in an effervescent swirl of plaid pleats and a sweep of her fine limbs that proved forever that the knee is, under some circumstances, far, far from an unlovely joint.

“I’ve missed you, but I knew you were busy,” Pavka said, careful not to sound reproachful. He was perfectly aware that she had been avoiding him. There were rumors all over Amberville Publications about Maxi’s plan, but no one had a single solid detail to contribute.

“We’ve been painting the office,” Maxi said demurely.

“Well … that’s a beginning.”

“I think so.” Maxi studied the menu at the Four Seasons Grill Room which had developed into a virtual club of the top executives and agents in publishing, people so important that their perks included the limousines which jammed Fifty-second Street off Park Avenue as if a gangster’s funeral were going on inside. As well it may have been, in certain subtle senses of the phrase.

“And when the offices are painted,” Pavka continued patiently, after they had ordered, “you will hang curtains, bring in furniture, put down rugs?”

“We’ll most likely get around to doing something like that, or at least drifting in that general direction,” Maxi admitted gravely, giving the question her most serious consideration.

“And, if I understand correctly, eventually you will publish a magazine?” Pavka pounced, but she didn’t flinch.

“Ah, that. I imagine so, eventually. Of course, eventually is never tomorrow, but I suppose that sooner or later we’ll putter along and see if we can manage to squeeze out a little … a nice little … magazine.”

“Which doesn’t, by any chance, have a name yet?”

“Not a name really. No, I don’t think you could say it had a name.” Maxi’s Imperial Jade eyes had suddenly turned as uncompromisingly and flatly green as a color sample. She was determined not to reveal any details to Pavka. She felt like a mother bird who was being disturbed in her nest while she was hatching her first egg.

“But, my darling, surely you intend it to have a name?”

“In time. In time.” She looked sinfully, blissfully lazy. Time was to be ignored, she seemed to say without words …

“But Maxi, you do understand the importance of a name?”

“
Good Housekeeping, Readers Digest, National Geographic, Playboy
—of course I do.”

“I assume you’re looking for a name that tells the reader what the magazine is about, hmm?”

“More or less in that general area, yes. Pavka, did you know that Russell Baker says there are only six subjects: sex, God, marriage, children, politics and baseball?”

“So may I conclude that your magazine is about sex?” he pressed.

“I’d never ignore it, not completely. Marriage is good too. So is divorce.”

“Maxi! Why won’t you tell me anything? You’re teasing me, you sound like somebody in a bad off-Broadway play. Don’t you know that you have to have an
informative
title so that you can get people to even
glance
through the first issue, which is only one of your problems, and at that, only
the first
of the
dozens
of problems involved in launching a new magazine. You have to get them to open it, Maxi, much less actually buy it.”

“Pavka, angel Pavka, I have the most enormous favor to ask of you.” Maxi tossed him a look of cosmic prettiness.
His heart melted. She really didn’t have to bother, she had always had his devotion.

“Anything you want. You know I’ll help, whatever it is—do you want to discuss your plans in detail? Or can I help you with the dummy? Nothing is too much trouble for my Maxi.”

“All I want you to do is
not
to tell me about my dozens of problems,” Maxi answered in her sweetest voice. “I know how much marvelous advice you could give me, but Pavka, you
know too much
, you’ve seen too many magazines fail. Would you tell a baby who’s about to take her first step about the dangers in downhill skiing? About hang-gliding? Ice dancing?”

“Have it your way, my darling, but there is one thing you can’t stop me from insisting on saying—you need to hire someone experienced to handle traffic control, someone usually called an executive editor, or managing editor, someone who won’t impose his opinion about what goes into the magazine, but who will steer ideas through the many tedious stages from conception to completion, and then get the copy and photos and ads to the printer on time. He should be a pessimist who never believes anything will go right unless he does it himself. A beast of burden, if you will, but a beast you can trust with your life. Otherwise your magazine will be a boat without a rudder.”

“I’m the rudder.”

“No, Maxi, you’re the boat—and the ocean and certainly the wind that fills the sails, but your temperament isn’t that of a rudder.”

“Hmm.” Maxi didn’t know whether to be irritated or placated but she rather fancied herself as a boat—a trim forty-eight-meter, three-masted racing yacht. “I suppose you have someone in mind?”

“There’s a man I can put my hands on. He was managing editor of
Wavelength
before Cutter’s massacre, and he took a vacation when he was fired so he’s still available … a man named Allenby Montgomery. Allenby
Winston
Montgomery.”

“Do I have to call him ‘General’?”

“
Évidemment
—by now he doesn’t answer to any other name. But there’s no need to salute if you don’t want to.”

“He sounds like an easygoing guy,” Maxi gloomed, resignation in her voice. She knew Pavka was right. She needed someone utterly steady around, so she could do all the unsteady parts herself.

“I hope you’ve thought about an art director,” Pavka continued cautiously. If Maxi had been at all clear about what she planned to do, she’d never have been able to keep from unfolding it to him, even if she didn’t want his advice. She’d have been too pleased with herself. Did she even have a concept? If she did, and he doubted it, whatever it was, it existed on some half-baked drawing board in the back of her little delicious, maddening head, somewhere under that cockatoo hairdo which went every which way including up and made her look as if she were actively in bed with a few very close, energetic friends.

“An art director?” Maxi murmured vaguely. “Of course I’ve thought about one … but that’s as far as I’ve got. We’re still waiting for the paint to dry—I don’t need an art director yet.”

“I asked a great editor once what was the worst single thing his enemies in the publishing business could do to destroy him and he answered, ‘Steal my art director,’ ” Pavka said, almost to himself.

“What editor?”

“Your father. I was the art director.”

“
Évidemment
. And
touché
. But I
am
thinking about people, from other magazines. It’s a winnowing-down process, a culling, a matter of finding the pearl in the oyster bed—I’m
considering
it, Pavka, I just haven’t made any decisions. Trust me.”

“How could I not? So tell me, how are you coming with the dummy?”

“Brilliantly, just … brilliantly. I feel just like the cowboy who jumped into the cactus bush. When they asked him why he’d done it, he answered, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ ”

Laughing, Pavka was able to hide this confirmation of his conviction that Maxi was lying to him. Her summer job at
Savoir Vivre
had indeed led to major events, marriage and motherhood among them; but he doubted that she’d been allowed anywhere near a dummy, much less become
capable of making one. He sighed but he was far from surprised.

“Remember, my darling, I’m here if you need any kind of help,” he said, keeping up the pretense since she wanted it that way. “And I’ll tell the General to call you as soon as he gets back.”

“Thank you, Pavka. You’re too good to me.” The two of them finished lunch laughing at the atmosphere of the Four Seasons, that hotbed of sexual possibilities. They observed editors seducing writers, writers seducing editors, publishers seducing editors and editors seducing publishers, but never saw a writer seducing another writer, for that would be like two professional football linebackers falling in love. In the dignity of the marble room half the people present had been married two and a half times to the other half and were working on the third alliance. Their only permanent relationships were with the headwaiters.

After lunch Maxi found Elie right in front of the revolving door, stolidly resisting the efforts of the doorman to make him move the limousine farther up the street. As she was driven back to her office, she felt relieved that she hadn’t been provoked into telling Pavka anything, tempting as it had been. When all was said and done, he was just a little old-fashioned, a bit of a pessimist. He might not have understood that now that she had found her concept the rest of it was
all out there
, all waiting for her. It merely needed a spot of pinning down. Nothing more. Just a little more … thought … a touch of … oh, work … yes, face it, work.

That night, refusing three invitations for dinner, Maxi stayed home. She wished that the men she knew hadn’t all hooted when she told them that she couldn’t join them because she had to work. She frowned as she settled herself in the center of her enormous bed, propping herself firmly on the least floppy of her many pillows, pulling up the white mink throw that lay at the end of the bed so that her knees made a little fur desk.

All the materials she thought would be necessary for the fabrication of a dummy lay neatly beside her. She’d
bought ten packages of the thickest paper she could find in a rainbow of vivid colors, five types of Scotch tape, two boxes of special number-three Dutch pencils, a miniature portable pencil sharpener from Sanyo, a vast assortment of ballpoint pens in every color that existed on the market, a complete calligraphy set, and close at hand were the latest issues of all the women’s magazines published in the United States. She looked at the magazines scornfully. She had never seen a complete dummy, only scattered pages of layouts, but obviously it must be a magazine-shaped object. She intended to use the other magazines to clip out ads to put into her dummy so the finished product wouldn’t just be text and pictures. In fact, she decided, hefting the long, expensive, Swiss-made scissors, why not clip a good assortment of the best-looking ads now, to have easily at hand? Then she could get the magazines out of the way and into the wastepaper basket where they belonged.

Soon she had a thick sheaf of ads, most of them in color. After deliberation, Maxi added a few in black and white; Bill Blass, Blackglama, Lancôme and Germaine Monteil, just for contrast. She shoved the magazines off the bed with a sign of good riddance and, feeling efficient, clipped the ads together in two groups with the paper clips she had not forgotten to buy.

Now.

Now for the dummy.

Perhaps she should just check up first on Angelica, make sure she was doing her homework. No, Angelica’s school didn’t begin until next week. She’d be in the library waiting impatiently for “Hill Street Blues” to begin. Perhaps she should call India and tell her what she was doing. No, they’d just talk for hours and the evening would disappear. Resolutely she took one of the steel-tipped quill pens from the calligraphy set and experimented drawing an ampersand on a sheet of stiff red paper. The ampersand was tricky to draw but she did a fairly neat job on her fifth attempt. Eventually she inked boldly,
B&B
. At the bottom of the page she made a small circle and carefully inked in the letter C in the middle of the circle. Now she had the copyright on her title; that was all it took. Extraordinary. Perhaps it had something to do with the Library of Congress?
Once published it would belong to her. Once published. She never believed the person who had told her you can’t copyright titles. She’d like to see the person who could take
B&B
away from her.

Well. So far so good. Now for the text and pictures. Text first, it stood to reason, or how would she know what pictures she needed? Or if they should be photographs or illustrations? Yes, text. No, not text! She wasn’t going to write the magazine herself, after all. That was what writers were for. All she needed were headlines. Titles of articles. How lucky she was that she knew what she didn’t want, that she’d spent so much time eliminating the sort of thing that made women envious or depressed or guilty. She’d already done most of the work, actually, when you came to think about it. Perhaps she’d join Angelica in the library and see what they were doing up on the Hill this week. Maybe Mick had bought a new suit. Maybe Furillo would fall in love with a blond. Maybe Renko would take up bodybuilding. Maybe Joyce would get a different hairstyle. Maxi sighed deeply. She should have waited till tomorrow to start this dummy. Any day was good for a dummy but only Thursdays brought the Hill. She could just stay to watch the opening shots.

No. She would,
she had to
stay right here. The program was probably a repeat anyway. She reached for the still-empty yellow legal pad that had been malevolently half-hiding under a pillow, picked up a pencil and slowly wrote “Why Short, Fat Men Are Better in Bed, by Nancy Kissinger.” Nancy should be glad to get a chance to tell the world, Maxi thought, and breathed deeply for the first time since she’d arranged herself on the bed. She licked the pencil and reflected deeply. She tugged three times at her white streak and slowly wrote “I Was Wrong About Penis Envy: An Unpublished Manuscript, by Sigmund Freud.” A little long, that title, Maxi decided, but it did jump off the page at you. Her stomach rumbled. She had never realized how hungry it made you to think. Resisting the urge to go into the kitchen she scribbled “Why You Must Have Lots of Chocolate in Your Daily Diet.” Who was head of the space program? She would get him to do it. Or Jane Fonda.
Which one was the greatest authority figure? Jane, of course.