Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (7 page)

           
ANNIE phoned late this afternoon,
and said don’t worry. But then she said, “That’s bullshit, of course.” I have
been cursed with an honest agent.

           
Last Thursday, after brooding about
Vickie Douglas for three days, I finally went to see Annie in her office. She
listened to my tale of woe, and shook her grizzled head and
sighed
a grizzled sigh, and said, “Well, Tom, it never comes easy.” (We were meeting
in the morning.)

           
“I don’t ask it to come easy,” I
said. “I just ask it to
come
.
”

           
“She has a good reputation, Vickie
Douglas,” Annie

           
said
.

           
“Not with me.”

           
“It was a first impression. Maybe
she’ll grow on you.” But immediately she pointed a gnarled finger at my nose:
“If you say, ‘Like fungus,’ I won’t represent you any more.”

           
I had been deciding whether to say
“Like fungus.” I said, “If she grows on me, I’ll have her surgically removed.”

           
“That’s not much better.
More baroque, but not better.”

           
“Annie, the woman spent two hours
talking about her
mother.
The only thing she said about the book was
that my celebrities were
yesterday.
The book bores her. I bore her.
Everything on God’s green Earth bores her except her goddam mother.”

           
“She’s had her successes,” Annie
said doubtfully.

           
“She doesn’t intend
The Christmas
Book
to be among them.
” .

           
“Do you want someone else assigned?”

           
“Oh, Christ,” I said.
“Who?
If I say I won’t work with that bitch, I’ll have a
reputation around the shop for being difficult and then
nobody
will be
on my side. Is
Wilson
on my side? Is there anybody over there
who’s
committed
to this book?”

           
“Well,
Wilson
did approve it.”

           
“Why doesn’t
he
take it
over?”

           
Annie smiled, shaking her head.
“Robert Wilson is an executive now,” she said. “He doesn’t have to work for a
living any more.”

           
“My entire life is passing before my
eyes,” I said. “What does that mean?”

           
“It means you’re self-centered.”

           
“
I’m
self-centered? What does
that make Vickie Douglas?”

           
Annie sighed. “It is a problem,” she
acknowledged. “I’ll go along wdth you, it is a problem. I’ll have a quiet
conversation with
Wilson
,
just see what he thinks of things.”

           
“When?”

           
“Well, this is the w
^r
orst
possible time of year,” she said.
“Worse than August.
Tomorrow's Good Friday, so the Christians won’t be
around,
and the Jews are still contending with Passover.”

           
“The rest of the year,” I said
bitterly, “they’re all atheists.”

           
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said.
“It’s hard to work in publishing without believing there must be a greater
Intelligence
somewhere
in the universe.”

           
So it was agreed that Annie would
try to talk with
Wilson
on Monday, being today, and I went away to
hang on my own cross over Easter weekend.

           
Actually, Easter
is
Passover,
plus additions, most of them pagan, starting with the name, which comes out of
our dim half-forgotten Teutonic past. Just as the northern gods gave us
Wednesday (Wodin-his-day; that’s why it’s spelled funny) and Thursday (Thor, of
course) and Eriday (either Frey or her sister Freya; don’t blame
me),
Easter is derived from a dawn goddess named Eostre or Eostur or Eastre or
Ostara or some damn thing, the difference being that maybe she never existed.
A double nonreality, that; a mythical goddess without a myth.

           
The problem is, the only reference
to her is in the Venerable Bede’s (672-735)
Ecclesiastical History
, and
Bede has taken some knocks recently from people who say he made her up by
working back from the Anglo-Saxon name of April, which was
Eostur-monath
.

           
Maybe so, but I’m with Bede. I mean,
otherwise he’s pretty reliable, and the name
sounds
right. Anyway, if
there ever
was
an Eostur, in the old days, and I mean the
old
days, her feast day was the vernal equinox, when bonfires would be lit in her
honor, which makes sense. Also, the sun would start that day with three leaps
up from the horizon in a dance of joy, and maidens clothed all in white would
appear on mountains and in the clefts of rocks. What these maidens did if you
went over and said, “Hi, you come here often?” I do not know, but spring
festivals used to be pretty sexy before they reformed and got mixed up with the
Christians. The original emphasis on fertility and fecundity is still palely
visible in our Easter eggs and Easter rabbits, but the pizzazz is pretty well
gone now, and it has merely become the only time of year when you can sell an
otherwise sensible woman a lavender coat.

           
A former Easter custom I wish was
still with us was the
Risus Paschalis
, which started in
Bavaria
in the fifteenth century. The idea was, the
priest would tell jokes and funny stories during Easter Mass, in order to make
the parishioners laugh, the laughter supposed to be a good gift for the risen
Christ. However, the jokes got to be a little sacrilegious sometimes, so in the
eighteenth century the practice was banned by Pope Maximilian III.

           
Whenever they hear anybody laughing,
boy, they sure put a stop to it.

           
YESTERDAY I took the boys—my boy
Bryan and Gingers boy Joshua—to the Met’s opener out at Shea. We arrived by
subway just before one, the boys as excited as if they were going to heaven
instead of Shea Stadium, and we found ourselves in the midst of a large and young
and happy crowd. Some people wore large orange buttons that said, in blocky
black lettering, NOW THE FUN STARTS! The idea that there hadn’t been any fun up
till now worked very well into my general mood, but 1 did my best to fight down
my skepticism that things were about to change.

           
It was perfect opening day weather,
sunny and breezy and nippy, which had brought out the Mets’ largest opening day
crowd since 1968. We had press level seats, out beyond third base, high enough
to get a sense of the stadium but low enough to be involved with the game,
which the boys certainly were. This was Tom Seaver’s return to the Mets after
years of exile in
Cincinnati
, so the occasion began with a standing ovation for Seaver as he walked
the length of the right-field foul line to the Mets’ dugout.

           
Much learned discussion took place
all around us as to whether the thirty-eight-year-old Seaver still “had it,”
and how many innings he was likely to pitch; the consensus seemed to be that if
he survived four or five, he could be considered to still have it.

           
The Philadelphia Phillies were the
opposition, and their pitcher was Steve Carlton, another thirty-eight-year-old
veteran, and from almost the first instant it was clear we were going to be
treated to a pitchers’ duel. In the first six innings,
Carlton
permitted only two singles while Seaver
allowed three singles and a walk; neither team ever threatened to score.

           
I spent more and more time watching
the outer world beyond the outfield fence, where the big jets sailed slowly by,
descending like stately matrons toward
LaGuardia
Airport
, and where the unending traffic of the Van Wyck Expressway hurried
along its busy antlike way, elevated above the scruffy neighborhoods. A tower
of the
Whitestone
Bridge
could be seen against the pale blue sky, contrasting beautifully with
the rich green emptiness of the outfield. “What happens if they
never
score?” Joshua asked me. “Then the game never ends,” I told him.

           
And through it all, I kept thinking
about
The Christmas Book.
Baseball starting, spring in the air, and my
mind is filled with Christmas. In the last week I’ve received several more
contributions, and I’m beginning to think the final shape of the book will be a
bit odder than I’d originally planned. I did return Diana Trilling’s “Christmas
In The Gulag,” saying we were trying to avoid politics— particularly global
politics—in
The Christmas Book
, but William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Floating
Celebration” I just cannot resist. It is a description of a Christmas Eve party
on a yacht in the
Caribbean
, involving himself and his wife Pat and
several of their middleweight celebrity friends, and failing a submission from
Louis XVI this one has absolutely got to get into the book. What makes it
wonderful is that, when Buckley describes the darkies singing carols for the
gentry on deck beneath the torrid tropic sun,
be
thinks the subject is
the tropic sun.

           
Isaac Asimov sent me another
article, this one on the uses and meanings of gold, frankincense and myrrh in
the ancient world. I returned it with thanks; why does he keep sending me
things? I’ve already taken one.

           
Roddy McDowall sent a nice letter,
apologizing for not having written sooner and suggesting a series of photos of
famous people opening Christmas presents with their children. He had already
accumulated several such over the years—Elizabeth Taylor, for instance—so he
sent a few contact prints to give me the idea; lovely luminous black- and-white
pictures, very heartwarming in the best possible way. We don’t expect such
expressions on famous faces; it could be that the human physiognomy never looks
sweeter or more blessed than when a present is given to a child. I wrote
McDowall how much I liked the idea, only suggesting en passant that he risked a
certain sameness overall, which I trusted his genius to be aware of and deal
with.

           
Helmut Newton sent six photos of a
naked woman dressed in various leather belts seated this way and that way on a
department store Santa’s knee. I returned them with a note saying we’d
abandoned the project.

           
I
like
what Tomi Ungerer
sent. I’m not sure I can use it, but I like it. In a series of drawings, Santa
Claus walks through the forest with his sack over his shoulder, enters a
cottage, takes toys and cakes and goodies from the sack as delighted children
gather around him—coming in from other cottages in the neighborhood,
presumably—and then Santa grabs up all the children and puts
tbe
?n
in the now- empty sack. He walks back through the
forest, sack over shoulder, and into his cave, where he removes the Santa suit
and white beard and is revealed to be an ogre. Okay!

           
I have also had occasion to write
Andy Warhol.

           
Dear Mr. Warhol:

           
Thank you for the photos of the old
round Coca-Cola tray with the smiling Santa Claus face on it.
and
the Santa Claus hand holding a Coke glass. The outlines
you drew around everything in red and green are very thought-provoking, but
unfortunately we have already made arrangements with the Coca-Cola Bottling
Company,
Atlanta
.
Georgia
, to print a
representation of the same tray in
The Christmas Book.
Not with your additions, of course, but perhaps the simple original will
work best within our context.

           
What I did, when I got the Warhol
package, was immediately phone the Coca-Cola
company
,
and spoke to a PR woman there, and once she understood this was a legitimate
middle-class operation with a respectable publishing company behind it she
agreed I could use the tray photo for free. Those who wish doodles on the
picture can mark up their own copies in the privacy of their homes.

           
In the meantime, despite Annie’s
assurances, the greater shadow still looms over the book and me and all living
things: Vickie Douglas continues to be my editor.
Annies
discussion with
Wilson
changed nothing. Day after day I am
involving myself with this book—not only in correspondence with potential
contributors, but also in library research for oldies and goodies, and in
poring at home over endless anthologies and collections—and all the time, from
the far distance, I can hear the slow beat of that muffled drum. “Vick-ie
Doug-las,” the drum says, steady and deadly.
“Vickie
Doug-las.
Vick-ie Doug-las.”

           
I couldn’t even forget it yesterday
during the ball game. At the top of the seventh Seaver, suffering a strained
leg
muscle,
was replaced by a rookie named Doug Sisk,
who maintained the steady pace, retiring the side without trouble. Unable to
fight it any more, following that third out I got to my feet. As the Phillies
trotted back onto the field, Carlton still leading them, and Dave Kingman (who
had already struck out three times in this game) coming up to bat, I excused
myself to the boys and walked back around the press level to the Diamond Club
bar, where I found a phone booth and called Craig, Harry & Bourke and,
after some small delay, spoke with my
bete noire
in more or less person.
She remembered me almost right away, and I said, “Vickie, I’m worried.”

           
“Worried?
About
what?”

           
“About
us”
I said.
“You and me.
Maybe I was distracted or something last week,
but I just don’t feel we had that real meeting of minds we should—”

           
“Oh, you didn’t?” She sounded mildly
surprised. “Well, of course, we were just getting to know one another, that
sort of thing always takes ...” She faded away, apparently torn between ending
the sentence falsely (“. . . time.”) or truthfully (“. . . forever.”). Outside,
the crowd roared.

           
“Vickie,” I said loudly, in case she
was falling asleep, “I’m not one of your prima donnas, one of those people who
can’t take advice or help. I
believe
in a strong relationship between
author and editor. This is a very important project for me, Vickie, and
I
—”

           
“Well, sure it is.”

           
“And I want us to work on it
together. I
want
your
output,
I want you to
feel this is your book as much as it is mine.”

           
“Oh, that’s sweet,” she said. “But
honestly, Tom, I think an editor who stomps all over a book, leaves his own
footprints everywhere, isn’t doing
anybody
any favors. This is your—”

           
“
Our
,
Vickie.
Mine in concept, mine for the most part in execution, but yours
in translating that concept and work into a marketable, sellable package,
something that Craig, Harry—”

           
“Oh, Tom,” she said, “you should
never let commercial consid—”

           
“I just want the best book
possible,” I said quickly, desperately. When your editor tells you not to let
commercial considerations stand in your way, you
know
you’re doomed.
“And,” I scrambled on, “with you there to be sure I don’t go astray, I can—”

           
“I have every confidence in you,
Tom,” the bitch said, while far away the damn crowd roared again for some
reason.

           
We went on like that, flinging the
responsibility like a baseball at one another, putting ever-increasing spin on
it, neither of us getting anywhere. I was reminded of the old movie cartoons
where Daffy Duck and Yosemite Sam would throw the smoking bomb back and forth
until it finally exploded, and in every case it blew up while Yosemite Sam was
holding it. I have considered our personalities and our relationship, and I
have come to the reluctant conclusion that Vickie Douglas is Daffy Duck.

           
The end result of the phone call was
that we made another lunch date, during which we can get to know and hate one
another even better. Next Tuesday it
is,
the twelfth.
Another lunch.
Now the fun starts.

           
Another result of the phone call was
that I missed the only action of the afternoon. Dave Kingman, whom I’d been
relying on to strike out again, started the inning with a single into left
field, followed by a George Foster single to right, moving Kingman to second.
Hubie Brooks was next, and his sacrifice bunt was so perfect it wasn’t even a
sacrifice; he beat the throw to first, loading the bases. Then came Mike

           
Howard, who bounced another single
into left, scoring
Kingman
. Brian Giles, up next,
belted a long one into right field that Pete Rose caught for the out, but
Foster scored after the catch, making it two to zip with men on first and
second, and only one out.

           
And that’s when I returned from my
phone call, to find the boys careening around in our area like Mexican jumping
beans. They both simultaneously tried to tell me all the terrific stuff I’d
missed, while I sat there and listened and thought about Vickie Douglas and
watched Steve Carlton get things back under control, putting out the next two
men at bat and returning the game to its pitchers’ duel, which it remained
until the end. So the Mets won their opener, two to nothing, making nine
seasons in a row in which they’ve won the opening game, tying the record
(1937—45) of the St. Louis Browns, and I am still flailing away with
The
Christmas Book.

           
I do not want to hear any more about
Vickie Douglas’s
mother.