I'll Take Manhattan (57 page)

“Are you sure she’s not an alcoholic, Maxi?” George asked. Maxi turned slightly toward him, with the faintest necessary movement, the minimal successful movement of someone who knows that she has the best legs, the best posture that shows off the best breasts, the best shoulder pads and the best haircut of any woman in the room.

“You have a delightful sense of humor for such an attractive man,” Maxi said, with enough of a twist of diabolical mockery mixed into her winsome flattery to make him wonder exactly what she had meant … all that night long. “So many otherwise sensational men lack humor. They take themselves so seriously.”

“I know what you mean,” George assured her, pedaling like mad. Where exactly was she coming from? “Interesting demographics. Very interesting. Four million women, all sipping a drink and reading
B&B.
”

“Now, George, I never said that. Only seventy percent of my four million readers drink
while
they read
B&B
. The others do other things.
Then
they drink. That’s why I have so many liquor clients who want to buy next year’s run of the back cover.”

At the next table the two men eyed each other with faces that were a study in willful blankness.

“Kelly, she can’t get away with that,” whispered Lefkowitz. “George won’t buy it. Nobody would buy such a blatant lie.”

“Wanna bet?” Kelly hissed at him.

“Actually, no. I mean, look at her, for goodness’ sakes. Yum.”

“After all, what does it cost him? He’s not spending his own money,” said Kelly, finally laughing.

“Where do you suppose she gets the demographics?”

“
Pravda
?” Kelly ventured.

“They’re more accurate. Listen, let’s do her a good deed,” proposed Lefkowitz. “Rocco’s been awfully uncreative lately. We’ve only pulled down two new accounts since that magazine of Maxi’s started. All right, they each bill about twenty-five million a year, but I still think something is bothering him. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t connected to worrying about the success of
B&B
—you know what it’s like to have an ex-wife who goes into business.”

“Tell me. No, don’t tell me, I know,” Kelly amended quickly.

“Let’s be nice to her.”

“Rocco said that we weren’t to give her any favored-nations treatment.”

“I just said nice,” Man Ray Lefkowitz said, “nothing extravagant.”

They paid their check and rose to leave, passing Maxi’s table as they turned toward the door.

“Miss Amberville, I didn’t see you there,” Kelly said. “Oh, hi, George, how’d you get so lucky? Trying to get the jump on the rest of the space buyers? Naughty boy—but I don’t blame you. I hope you’re paying for lunch. Miss Amberville, may I say how pleased we are with our buys in
B&B
? Best deals we ever made.”

“Just a minute, Kelly,” said Lefkowitz, who saw, not to his surprise, that Kelly had cast him in the role of the bad cop. “Just one tiny minute. I think that
B&B
owes us a favor. We bought in before the first issue was published. That showed confidence and the willingness to take a risk on a new book. I think that as far as the proposed changes in ad rates are concerned, we should get some sort of break. Something, I don’t know what, but something, damn it! I’m not suggesting that we can renew at those start-up giveaway prices … but I’ll be very unhappy if we don’t deserve some kind of favored-nations treatment. After all, Miss Amberville is almost a member of the family.”

“Hey, guys, take it easy,” Maxi said sweetly. “I’ll split the difference … on one buy. Tell Rocco that there’s no way, no way in the world, that I’m about to give away space in my magazine this time around. I suppose he told you to hit on me?”

“Those weren’t his exact words,” Kelly said sheepishly.

“No, Rocco always speaks of you with respect. He did say that this was the time to buy, if you were selling, but he wasn’t taking anything for granted, just because … well, because of old times’ sake,” Lefkowitz finished delicately.

“Where,” asked Maxi, “are the snow jobs of yesteryear?”

“Do you fellows intend to join our table or just stand there?” George asked in irritation. “I’m trying to do a little business here. See you two around, huh?”

* * *

“I hope that your auction is coming up soon,” Monty said, watching Maxi sign checks toward the end of May. “Tomorrow would be good. Today would be better.”

“It isn’t exactly tomorrow,” Maxi said, carefully casual. “I thought all I had to do was make a phone call and it would happen like that—sort of a superior garage sale. But no, Sotheby’s tells me that the jewelry can’t be sold until their next jewelry sale in the fall—it’s past the season now, there aren’t enough rich people in town, it’s too soon to be pre-Christmas, all sorts of silly reasons. And my collections are just too varied: the pictures have to wait till exactly the right big picture sale; the boxes won’t bring as much until they’re included in a major box sale. Boring. Almost the only thing that they can sell in June is my furniture. Auction-arranging is some sort of fine art in itself and they refuse to let me rush them into anything. Apparently I didn’t have quite enough of everything to warrant their doing a special auction of all my possessions at the same time; unless I’d dropped dead, which, I gather, would have given everything a certain cachet and brought in more money.” Maxi shrugged it off: a petty problem.

“June! You’re not getting any more money until then?”

“You heard me. And who knows how much it will be, after they finish taking out their commission? The apartment turns out to have been my major asset and Donald was only able to sell it for almost the six million he gave me. I returned the difference. It had something to do with the overvalued dollar. Almost half of Trump Tower is owned by foreigners and last month they weren’t spending dollars. Ah—go figure the economy. It’s a waste of time.”

“We’re in very deep into … waste products, Maxi.”

“Eighty-five percent—maybe more—of the advertisers have renewed at the new rates.”

“Some of them don’t go into effect until July, many of them not till August or September.”

“Why don’t we borrow from a bank against the page rate increases? Our advertisers are all major companies. They’re good for the money. No, Monty, don’t tell me we can’t. I know it already … I’ve tried.”

“If it were up to me, I’d lend you anything but I’m not a bank. I wish I were.” Monty sighed as if he were about to be embalmed. “Don’t you think it’s time to ask the staff to take pay cuts?”

“Even if they worked for nothing, their salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to our other costs. And if word of pay cuts got around on Madison Avenue people might think we were in trouble and start to renege on the advertising commitments they’ve made. No, nothing gets cut, not the free lunch, not the quality of the photographs, not the amounts we pay to get celebrity writers. It would be fatal. We’ll go down in glory or continue in glory, but no in-between measures.”

Maxi finished signing the checks with a brave flourish and smiled so encouragingly at Monty that he decided not to jump out of the window. The May sunlight seemed to scatter like drops of water off her shiny, dark, messy hair when she moved and although she was down to her very last million she refused to let Monty know how desperate she felt until it was necessary. Each issue of
B&B
that was sold proved to her that she’d been right in her idea about the need for a magazine that didn’t count on women’s ever-present supply of depression, guilt and anxiety for its subject matter. “Admit it, Monty, don’t you get just a tiny kick out of being on the cutting edge?” Maxi asked, laughing, her eyes so green that he blinked.

“Of what?” he asked, almost smiling back.

“Bankruptcy.”

A week later, in the first days of June, Maxi sat down by herself to leftovers in Toby’s kitchen. Everybody was out with springtime projects, but as worn out as she felt, she hated to find herself alone. During the working day Maxi still managed to present a picture of confident leadership but more and more frequently, when she found herself without an audience, even an audience of one, she felt beset with anxiety. For the first time since her struggle with Gutter began she wondered if she weren’t being ridiculously quixotic, if she hadn’t started a fight that was impossible to finish, a struggle whose dimensions she had never
anticipated when she first went to see Cutter to try to use moral suasion on him. Who, after all, had appointed her trustee of her father’s heritage? He had left control to her mother. Could that have possibly meant that he wanted her mother’s wishes to be followed strictly, even if they did involve the destruction of Amberville Publications? Why was she, Maxi, the only one in the family who knew—or thought she knew—as absolutely as if she could hear Zachary Amberville talking to her, that nothing must be left undone to keep the magazines together? Oh, she had had a special closeness to her father that not even the boys had felt. He had been the one person in the world who had always believed in her, stood up for her, no matter what escapade she had been involved in, but did that mean that she could know
now
what he would have wanted?

The only person with whom she could share a part of her worries was Pavka and she’d seen him that day for lunch. She made a point of meeting him at least once a week so that she could keep track of what was happening on all the other Amberville publications. The picture he reported grew steadily worse. Every shrewd, ingenious and experienced move he had made to keep up the excellence of the magazines during the last few months since Cutter’s edict had been accomplished only by the exercise of utmost cunning and patience. Nevertheless half of the things he had tried to do had been detected and countermanded by Lewis Oxford who was in touch with Cutter every day. Only his promise to Maxi not to resign kept Pavka on a job in which he was no longer in control, and Maxi, who knew how close to the end of the line she was, felt guilty for the struggle he was undergoing. Yet neither of them was acting out of selfish or ambitious motives; they were both doing it for Zachary Amberville, or, to be accurate, for his memory.

It couldn’t last much longer, she realized. The sale to UBC, if it were made, would take place at the end of June, when the quarter’s profits were known. The struggle couldn’t go on for more than another month in any case. By the end of June she might not have the money left to go to press. It all depended on the auction of her furniture that was scheduled for the following week. If that went exceptionally well she could just scrape by, and if she were sure
she could publish the next issue she could ask Lily to reconsider.

That afternoon Maxi had decided to take her jewelry and her precious boxes out of the unhurried, deliberately careful hands of Sotheby’s and sell them herself to anyone who would buy them. To hock them if she couldn’t sell them, although how she’d find the time to do it she didn’t know. She didn’t begin to know how you hocked things or where. If only she’d bought real estate instead of beautiful playthings. If only she’d worn fake pearls. If only she’d invested in the safest possible bonds instead of buying old furniture with uncertain market value. If only she hadn’t put central heating into Castle Dread but had frozen to death without protest. If only she’d acted like the squirrel in the fable and had stored away nuts for winter instead of like the feckless grasshopper. If only. If only she hadn’t acted like herself, she thought angrily. Too late now, and a pointless exercise. The doorbell rang and interrupted her fruitless replay of her life.

“Justin? Am I glad to see you! I can offer you pâté, five kinds, all original and still nameless, of Toby’s own making. I haven’t started to eat yet—come on and I’ll put another plate on the kitchen table.”

Justin followed her, sat down but only accepted a glass of wine. “How’s the news from the front?” he asked.

“We’re not taking prisoners.”

“So I’ve heard. That’s the word that’s around.”

“What are people saying?” Maxi asked, frowning.

“Oh, it goes all the way from rumors of the sale, which might have come out of UBC, to outraged denial. You name it, people are saying it. Confusion in the ranks, civil disorder, darkness at noon. Listen. I don’t want you to think that I’m avoiding the showdown but I’ve
got
to get out of New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town. And too much for me, Maxi. I can’t take all these stones any longer, now that the weather is so beautiful. There are so many other places I want to be. Better places. I’m going to hit the trail, kid, before the monsoon season starts. I like a Gershwin tune, but babe, I
hate
New York in June.” He tried to speak lightly but his expression was mordant.

“I know you feel that way and, truly, I understand. At least I know you’ll always come back, sooner or later.”

“I’m going to miss your birthday.”

“So what, darling? You always miss my birthday. But honestly, it doesn’t hurt my feelings. Oh, you’re worried about my turning thirty, you think I’m going to go into a decline or something. That’s it, isn’t it? Oh, Justin, what’s thirty? What’s forty? Betty Friedan is what forty looks like, for God’s sake.”

“Gloria Steinem,” Justin corrected her.

“You see, it doesn’t matter. And I’ve got other things to think about, believe me.”

“Well anyway, what the hell, I wanted to give you an advance birthday present to take the pain out of leaving your outrageous, picaresque, lust-filled twenties.” Justin casually pulled out a piece of paper and put it down on the table. Maxi didn’t reach for it.

“Since when,” she asked, “do you give your own sister a check?”

“When she’s grown up,” Justin answered, “enough to know what to do with it.” He took it, and delicately deposited it on her empty plate. She looked down and read the figures. It was enough to keep publishing
B&B
until all the new space she’d sold had been paid for, enough to save the magazine.

“Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t borrow from you? Would not, could not and will not,” she reminded him somberly, picking up the check and pushing it back across the table. “I have to see this through by myself.”