I'll Take Manhattan (41 page)

“What else do you do?” he asked, giving her no time to ask about him. He had a habit of command, she realized as she replied.

“I … work … and, well, you know, live, like everybody else. I feed my dogs and go to exercise class and read a lot and swim and, well, go to a few parties, and that’s about it. I guess that doesn’t sound like a very full life … oh, and I go to my shrink, of course, Doctor Florence Florsheim … stop laughing! I don’t see what’s so funny about that, it’s a name like any other, she can’t help it though … with Florence for a first name perhaps she shouldn’t have … married Mr. Florsheim.” India was reduced to a puddle of giggles. “She must have been madly in love, or maybe it’s her maiden name.”

“Did you ever ask her?” he wanted to know.

“She rarely answers questions. She’s very orthodox about that anyway.”

“My shrink answers questions.”

“Then he’s not a Freudian,” she pronounced with a superior air.

“He told me that, like every other shrink, he stood on Freud’s shoulders, but he’d thrown away the stuff he didn’t believe in … if you say you hate your mother he assumes that your old lady was a tough number, until proven otherwise, not that you wanted to make love to her when you were three.”

“I like the sound of that. But I’m stuck with Doctor Florsheim … she knows too much,” India said darkly.

“Other people’s shrinks always sound better than your own. It’s the first rule of analysis. However, I agree about
your life, it doesn’t seem exactly full. What about a husband and children?”

“Nonexistent. And you?”

“Never married, no kids.”

“Aren’t you interested or haven’t you had the time?” India inquired cautiously. There had to be something wrong. There always was.

“It’s just never happened yet, but it will. Meanwhile I’m available, shamelessly available, and I’d like to get out of this hellhole and take you to dinner. Shall we go?”

“Oh,
yes
,” India replied.

“
India! What
are you doing here?” Maxi asked, so surprised that she squeaked.

“Hello, darling. I’ll tell you later. I have to go out to dinner now,” India said ruthlessly, trying in one glance to convey love, support, and the absolute necessity of Maxi’s letting her escape the party with this man, this heavenly, heavenly man, before another second passed and someone—perhaps the person he’d been getting the drinks for—appeared and tried to get him away from her, because she would not, could not run that risk.

“But Toby, you just can’t disappear with India like that,” Maxi wailed, outraged. “She is
my
friend, damn it, not yours, and nobody ever even told me she was here.”

“Toby?” India whispered in a voice of wonder that held both shock and the beginning of choice.

“India?
That
friend? The one who’s the most beautiful girl in the world?” Toby stopped dead, a complex set of emotions appearing on his face, hesitation first among them.

“Oh, shut up!” India said, timid no longer. “You said you
liked
me four times. So don’t act like a … dumbbell. Anyway, it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

“My, my,” Maxi cooed, “I think the two of you are going to have your first fight. Oh, good! Can I listen?”

Cutter Amberville seemed intent on retracing his exact path, as if he were putting his feet into footprints he’d made on a wet and sandy beach, as he walked back and forth on the carpet that lay in front of the window behind his desk. His hands were clasped tightly together behind his back, his knuckles cutting off the circulation to his fingertips so that they were much redder than his fingers. Maxi watched him as he walked, perched on the arm of the chair she had chosen, refusing the low chair he had offered. Instead, taking her time, she had picked out a chair with a reasonably wide arm, and pulled it to precisely the spot she intended to be in, at a distance too far away from his desk for his comfort.

She swung her legs, clad in high shining riding boots and brown velvet jodhpurs laced from boot-top to knee. She caressed the frilled neck of the Victorian lace blouse she wore under a brown velvet, shawl-collared jacket, nipped in at the waist, a Chantal Thomass fantasy that was never meant to come near the saddle of a horse.

“Cutter,” she said, breaking his fuming silence, “my driver is double-parked downstairs. Would you disgorge whatever you seemed so anxious to see me about, so that he doesn’t get a ticket?”

Cutter turned and finally stopped his pacing, leaning with both hands on the top of his enormous desk.

“I can see that I underestimated you, Maxi,” he said.

“Couldn’t you have told me that on the phone? I’m a busy woman, and this trip downtown has fouled up my morning. Time is money, Cutter, time is money!”

Weeks had passed since Rocco had finished the miraculous dummy, dozens of expensive people were on Maxi’s payroll, the work of completing the first issue and laying
out those to follow was going on at top speed, all propelled by Maxi’s flood of energy, working seven days out of seven.

Not only was the door to her office always open, the room did not, by her instructions, even have a door, nor did Maxi have a desk. There was a big table in the middle of her office covered with cases of cold soft drinks and urns of coffee, tea and Sanka which were always kept full by the cateress Maxi had hired for that task; a woman who kept platters piled with cookies and brownies and made stacks of thick, delicious sandwiches that were constantly replenished. A number of high, round tables surrounded the feast, with bar stools invitingly placed about them. The tables could easily be pushed together when the group around them grew larger. Her office was as close to the kind of eighteenth-century coffeehouse in which Samuel Johnson would have felt at home as Maxi could devise, and the result was the one she had planned for: everyone on her brilliant, young, constantly growing, highly paid staff wandered in at least once or twice a day, knowing that they were permanently welcome and would be royally fed. They tended to hang around and talk about
B&B
, people from all departments getting to know each other; and from this constant rubbing together of the best talent in the magazine business, from these excited “why the hell not?” conversations, came a steady stream of new ideas for the magazine, not one of which was ever lost, for Maxi noted them all down, unobtrusively perched on one or another of the stools. When she was busy elsewhere, or on the phone, one of her rotating staff of three secretaries replaced her. The only reason that Maxi had agreed to come down to Cutter’s office was that she wouldn’t let him see her own. He’d contaminate it.

“I never would have believed you had it in you,” Cutter continued. “No, not even you.”

“But you haven’t even seen the first layouts,” Maxi answered, annoyed. Could someone have leaked him pages? Did he have a spy planted on her staff?

“I’m not talking about your magazine, Maxi, whatever it may be.” Cutter looked her full in the face and she realized that he was flushed, almost crimson, with suppressed rage. He pushed a pile of paper across the desk to her.

“These are what I’m talking about,
these
! Bills for millions of dollars, bills that those damn fool accountants have been paying automatically, because they were signed for by an Amberville, paying without asking me, without questioning them, bills for paper, for rent, for furnishings, for salaries, for photos, for articles, for expenses, for …”

“Food,” Maxi interrupted. “Start-up money is always more than you expect,” Maxi added with composure. “It won’t be as expensive once
B&B
is actually out and, naturally, as soon as we start making money the whole picture will change.”

“No, don’t play that game with me, Maxi. I know, and you know that I know, what we agreed on.
Buttons and Bows
! That was the magazine you wanted and that was the one you got. A trimming magazine with almost no budget at all. This thing, this
B&B
, whatever it is, has absolutely nothing to do with the deal we made.”

“Not so,” Maxi said coolly. “It’s as much
Buttons and Bows
as
Buttons and Bows
was
Trimming Trades Monthly
. It even says so on the masthead. You never said I couldn’t update the magazine, Cutter. You didn’t utter a word about not changing it into something more viable. You gave me a year and I’m taking my year, and that year has barely begun.”

“
I never gave you the right to spend millions
,” Cutter said violently, hitting the desk with his fists.

“I hope that desk isn’t valuable,” Maxi commented with a tiny yawn. “It looks authentic, but then they make such good copies these days.”

“
Millions of dollars
 … I never said …”

“Ah, but you didn’t say I couldn’t, did you, Cutter?” Maxi smiled lazily at him, and readjusted the lace at her neck, preening, and then flicked a spot of dust off one of her boots. Her eyebrows rose in amusement until they were hidden by her bangs. “It’s too late now, you see. I’ve already—and in person—sold six months of advertising, at very special introductory rates, to dozens of major advertisers. They also all advertise in the other Amberville publications, and, naturally, they have every reason to believe that when an Amberville comes to them with a splendid concept for a new magazine and an absolutely smashing
dummy, they’re spending their money safely. Amberville Publications is
committed
to
B&B
, Cutter, totally committed as far as the advertising and business community is concerned. As long as the magazine is being published we
have
to run those ads, or else give them their money back and look, at the very least, frivolous, unbusinesslike. Especially since you just took it upon yourself to fold three other books. They all know that
B&B
has your special blessing, Cutter. I’ve made sure they realized that. You can’t
touch
my magazine without making everyone suspect that the entire company is about to go under.”

“Do you have any idea what the money you spent is going to do to our balance sheet?” he demanded.

“Punch a giant hole in it, I imagine. And, Cutter,” Maxi said, rising and moving toward the door, “about those bills, it’s only fair to tell you, because your blood pressure looks dangerously high to me, the bills on your desk are only the beginning. I’ve gone way out on a big, long, lovely limb for the first six months—you have to spend money to make it, and I can’t risk disappointing my readers. ‘First catch them, then keep them,’ as my father used to say.” Maxi reached the door and held it open while Cutter sat immobilized by sheer rage behind his desk. “Another thing, I’ve taken a series of ads in all the major magazines and newspapers that are read by media people, telling them about
B&B
and our plans for the future, an introduction to the newest Amberville Publication as it were. You should be getting those bills very soon. Don’t bother to get up—I’ll see myself out … as usual.” She went through the door and half-closed it behind her. Then she turned, cast a glance at him, looked closer, shook her head and made a little tut-tut sound of concern. “Goodness gracious, Cutter, you
do
look upset.” She shut the door softly but not until she’d asked, “Was it something I said?”

“Lily, love, come and sit closer to me,” Cutter said, patting the space at his side on the couch. Obediently, Lily left her chair and took the offered place, her pliant, slender body curving into his side.

She sighed in a satisfaction almost deeper than love.
These moments together, when he came home from his office, these long-awaited moments were, she often reflected, the reward for her years of patience. Even more of a reward than physical passion, although the endurance of that unquenchable, living connection of their two bodies was her great pride. The years that had separated them had left the embers of a fire that needed only a breath of wind, another match, a twist of paper and a bit of wood, to make it flame into hot life. But to be able to sit together at the end of a day and talk quietly, as she had never totally enjoyed doing with Zachary … ah, that was the even more delicious joy. It was at moments like this, when the easy comfort of their long-sought, so-long-delayed intimacy, was combined with the new happiness of being married to Cutter, that she knew that she finally had what she had always wanted, had always
deserved
.

“Darling, something happened today at the office that suddenly made me think about you, about the future of our life together,” Cutter said.

Alarmed at the gravity of his tone, Lily lifted her head from his shoulder abruptly.

“No, no,” he laughed, “nothing to worry about. Something to dream about, something that I would never have initiated on my own, but still, a piece of business I can’t not tell you about.”

“Business?” Lily asked. “You promised that we wouldn’t waste our time together talking business. I’ve never understood it and when Zachary used to drone on and on, I’d get a headache just from having to sit and listen.”

“It is business, and yet, in a way, it isn’t. Not boring business. You have to listen, darling.”

“All business is boring,” Lily said willfully, “but I’m the patient sort, as you should know.”

“I had an extraordinary phone call today from a man at the United Broadcasting Company, a perfect stranger to me. He wanted to know if there was any possibility of your meeting with him to discuss … to talk about an eventual sale of Amberville Publications.”

“What! But he’s mad! Who on earth does he think he is?
What utter nerve
. What makes him think the company’s
for sale? I just can’t imagine anyone rude enough to make a call like that out of the blue,” Lily said, stung into indignation, as if her jewelry had been stolen while she looked on helplessly.

Cutter laughed indulgently. “That man from UBC’s not trying to take advantage of you, my darling. He’s just doing his job. It’s not some sort of attack. In fact, it’s an enormous compliment. All I have to do is to call him tomorrow and say you’re not interested, that Amberville Publications isn’t for sale. And he’ll go away, or maybe he won’t. But one way or another you can expect to get more and more calls like that.”