Bandbox (38 page)

Boylan, who’d already been persuaded against his better judgment to come uptown with this man, narrowed his eyes.

“If you want to,” advised Harris, “you’ll stand up on that table and hoist the kid’s arm into the air.”

Boylan glared at this detestable Barnum for one moment longer, until ambition once more overrode caution.

The crowd, noting that something had gone very wrong with Jimmy Gordon’s expression, fell almost silent when Boylan’s feet joined Shep’s somewhere in the small space between the water pitcher and the coffeepot. And then, accustomed by the age to throwing ticker tape and applause at a new hero every day, it began to clap, first in a slow, rhythmic wave, and finally—once Harris, rising like Tunney from the Long Count, joined Boylan and the boy atop the table—in a thunderous, whooping storm of half-comprehension and complete delight.

With one arm holding Boylan’s wrist, and the other pulling Shep’s hand even higher, Harris looked out into the audience, where he saw Betty mouthing the words “Felicity Shunt” to a confused reporter, and the figure of Cuddles Houlihan, leaving the hall like a man who’d completed his work.

Four hours later, still limp with victory and disbelief, Harris was summoned to Oldcastle’s office. Getting off the elevator on sixteen, he consulted his reflection in the shiny leaf of a giant potted plant. He was combing his hair when he felt the footsteps of Jimmy Gordon coming up behind him. The two men looked at each other and then at the clock, realizing they’d been asked to appear here at the same time.

“After you,” said Jimmy, pointing to the door.

“That’s your problem,” answered Harris. “You always are.”

Oldcastle calmly greeted the two of them. “Joe, Jimmy, come sit down.” The owner sat behind his desk in a blue plaid flannel shirt and bolo tie and spoke, despite the wrangler’s getup, in the emollient tones of a trusts-and-estates lawyer.

“Did you see Condé on your way in?” he asked both men. “He was just here for a little discussion.”

Harris said nothing. He was remembering his last visit here, when Nast’s name had been so chillingly raised. He was also waiting for a word of congratulations.

“I’ll be seeing Mr. Nast this afternoon,” Jimmy said. “We’ve got to go over some projected fig—”

“Actually, Jimmy, you won’t be seeing him,” Oldcastle declared idly, as if observing that a train was a little late, or it looked like rain.

Jimmy frowned, hoping to remind the publisher that he was here as a courtesy, since Hiram Oldcastle hadn’t been Jimmy Gordon’s boss for almost a year.

“Condé’s just sold me
Cutaway
,” the owner at last explained.

Jimmy tightened his grip on the armrest of his chair. The whole day was starting to feel like some colossal practical joke.

“Tell us more, Hi,” said Harris.

Oldcastle went on at his own pace. “It seems, Jimmy, that your Mr. Montgomery got everything about Joe’s subscriber wrong. That’s bad enough—and of course I’m only telling you what Condé feels—but your writer made things very troublesome by suggesting that the New York Police Department is letting the citizenry down. You know, Jimmy, neither Condé nor I can afford to antagonize Captain Boylan’s men. There are delivery trucks that need protecting, outdoor photography shoots that need permits, and business dinners at which the service of certain beverages shouldn’t be interrupted.”

“It was
one story
,” said Jimmy.

“Joe,” said Oldcastle, “how long did it take you to revive
Bandbox
?”

“I believe it was one business quarter.”

“There you go,” said the publisher. “Well, after one business quarter I hope we’ll have achieved a smooth amalgamation of the two magazines. Make ’em go together like bacon and eggs,” he added, pleased to be throwing in this bit of Everyman’s argot. “
Cutaway
, I’ve decided, will be the name of
Bandbox
’s fashion section—a supplement, really. Detachable along a perforation. As its name implies. You see? Cut-away, meaning—”

“I
get
it,” said Jimmy, gripping the other armrest.

“Some of your current staff can stay and work on it. And you,
Joe, can concentrate more on the journalism you do so well. By the way, Mayor Walker wants to give the boy from Indiana—what’s his name?”

“Shep,” said Harris.

“The mayor wants to give Shep a little decoration on the steps of City Hall this coming Monday.”

“We’ll get him there,” said Harris. “And I’ll get Arinopoulos to shoot the ceremony.”

“Good,” said Oldcastle, actually smiling. “You know, gentlemen, Condé was actually quite happy to make the sale. Even during this short-lived success you brought him, Jimmy, his attention had really been moving toward some new idea he has for a travel magazine. He’s got this notion that everyone’s soon going to be traipsing around much more often and more quickly. He thinks we’re going to see more clothes packed into trunks than on people’s backs.” Oldcastle looked directly at Harris. “I suppose that’ll be a challenge for you, Joe.”

Like an aging Dalmatian hearing one last fire bell, Harris was already deciding how he could beat this new book. He’d take a few pages away from sports and food; hire a full-time travel writer who could flit from Tokyo to Timbuktu.

“Joe?” asked Oldcastle.

“Sorry, I was lost in thought.” After a moment’s pause, Harris amended the explanation, with a certain peevishness: “Actually, I was
working
. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my office.” He hoped his rudeness would serve as some small retort against the publisher’s earlier lack of faith, but Oldcastle had always been oblivious to any display of manners, good or bad, by the men he employed. He said nothing while Harris rose to his feet.

Jimmy Gordon’s expression had turned cool and faraway. Revenge, he was thinking, would come slowly. He’d take a year or two off, maybe finish his dissertation on
The Faerie Queene
, and then
return to town atop the masthead of some start-up. Coming back would be even more exciting than coming up had been. But for now he could feel only contempt. He rose from his seat, nodded to Oldcastle, and followed Joe out to the bank of elevators.

The two men waited for their two cars, one heading up, the other going down. Jimmy began to pace, a sulking Achilles without a tent, whereas Harris, realizing that he had a tale he’d be telling his men for years to come around the London campfire, allowed the sentimental broth of his nature to bubble up. His eyes glistened with tears.

“I once told you,” he called out to Jimmy, “that I think of you as a bastard son.”

Jimmy returned to the elevator’s call button and punched it again. It didn’t matter that he still liked Joe and always would. “The Bastard never gets to be the Heir,” he said, showing Harris his back.

“Right,” said the older man, genuinely hurt. “He becomes the Pretender.”

Jimmy Gordon had a desk to clean out, and Joe Harris, to his astonishment, still had a magazine to run. He went back down to fourteen and discovered that everyone, at 2:30, remained out to lunch. Hazel had already sent around a memo about an evening celebration at Malocchio, and the staff, delighted to know they still had jobs, had decided to desert them for the afternoon.

Harris slumped into his big chair, in which he would soon fall asleep under the congratulatory regard of Yvette and Claudine—but not before he took one of his huge-barreled fountain pens and wrote a note, which he inserted into the pneumatic tube that would take it to Cuddles Houlihan.

Mrs. von Erhard always stayed late in the Graybar on Friday nights—doing the books and straightening the merchandise. Tonight she also had a training session to conduct. “The Life Savers,” she said firmly, “must
never
be too close to the edge. If they fall, they turn into, what do you say, smithereens, inside their little paper tubes.”

The Wood Chipper rolled up the French cuffs of his unpaid-for shirt and gave a grunt that Hannelore took as a sign of understanding. “It will be so
nice
to have a man around the place again,” she said, squeezing Chip’s right bicep. “I am so glad I asked if you could use the work.” Word from the Biltmore had traveled fast, prompting Mrs. von Erhard to make her offer of employment just before lunchtime, when she saw Chip rushing to get his few belongings out of the building.

What alternative did he have? None, Chip thought once again, as he picked up Siegfried—so much lighter than he’d been last time—and wiped the portion of the counter near the till. If he didn’t earn some money in the next week, his creditors would be after more than this shirt on his back. And if anybody from
Bandbox
or
Cutaway
had one word to say to him when they slapped down two cents for their morning paper, he’d shove a roll of Hannelore’s precious Life Savers, and maybe a spoonful of Siegfried himself, down their throats.

Gianni Roma was due to report to prison on Monday morning, and tonight’s hastily arranged celebration at his establishment would double as a kind of penal
bon voyage
, but at 8:00, with the dining
room already full, Gianni was still back in the kitchen with the actual guest of honor.

“Listen,” Harris was saying to his old pal. “Four months up in Fishkill is not that long a stretch. Those veal steaks in the freezer will still be plenty good when you get out.”

Fear had replaced most of Gianni’s recent resentment. He just nodded.

“Tell him about my idea,” Harris urged David Fine, who was over near the stove.

“I’m going to come up every week and eat in the dining hall with you,” Fine promised. “I’ve already got permission, for a column on prison food. I haven’t got the title yet—something with ‘Stir.’ I’ll write it, but we’ll put it in your voice and under your byline.”

Agreement to such a thing by Fine, the most territorial of writers, was a matter of such unexpected generosity that Gianni’s apprehension began to melt with his anger. He at last agreed to join the celebrants.

“That’s better!” said Harris, plunging them into the party’s roar.

Betty watched Joe walk around each of the tables, rewarding everyone with compliments, dispensing proposals and permissions like doubloons from a purse. She knew that he had always felt his power more by saying yes than saying no—a tendency much rarer than its opposite on the echelon he still, thank God, inhabited.

Nan and Stuart had arrived actually holding hands, and Harris now stood between them. “We need
everybody’s
talents. You hear me? We’ll have more pages, but we’ll soon have more competition. Miss O’Grady, how about doing a little muckraking for us? You’ve certainly shown a talent for it.” With Rosemary now safely on the newsstands, Nan had at last let the story of the movie star’s grand-maternity be known to a few. Harris continued his pitch: “We’ve got at least a temporary opening in the investigations line.” Max Stanwick,
more shaken by the recent threats than he’d realized, had decided, despite the sizzling success of the Shep saga, to take six months off and write a magazine mystery called
Kill Fee
.

“No, Mr. Harris,” said Nan. “Thank you, but I’m happy where I am.”

“All right, then. That leaves you, Newman. You know, I hear rumors about you and her. So once you get ready to leave that seminary you’re in, I’ve got a new column idea for you—a whole new rubric.” He paused for effect. “ ‘The Husband’s Life.’ Could be very popular with our slightly older readers. Think about it.”

“Uh, I am,” stammered Stuart, squeezing Nan’s hand.

Her face went as red as her hair.

Gardiner Arinopoulos came in to take a picture of each table, as if this were a wedding. Harris backslapped his way into every shot. He dragged Andrew Burn away from a comptometer in Gianni’s little office near the spice closet, though the publisher protested that he couldn’t bring himself to wait until Monday to see what the rates on the new ad card would come out to once the readership inherited from Jimmy got factored in.

Forgiveness was thicker on the air than marinara. Harris had called Connecticut and gotten Spilkes to come down for the party. After all, as things turned out, the victory had been much more complete for the former m.e.’s caution. Harris was even ready to forget about the fiction contest and pardon Sidney Bruck, who’d finally arrived, his Shelleyan hair tousled by the night’s breezes.

“I just made the deal with Mencken’s agent,” said Sidney, explaining the reason, beyond fashionableness, that he was so late. “For a four-thousand-word essay on love in America.” Landing the piece was the triumph of his still-young career as an editor.

“I’ve got the title!” cried Harris, banging Sidney between the shoulder blades. “ ‘Mencken Whoopee!’ ”

Sidney managed a weak smile and took a seat by Richard Lord, the person least likely to spill anything on him.

Two of the tables joined in loud in-absentia toasts to the magazine’s Bunion Derby contestant, who’d telephoned from Ohio, through which he was running only a few miles behind Andy Payne, the Cherokee Wonder. With the way things had been going, who could say he wouldn’t pull ahead?

A few minutes later, a waiter came over to announce that there was a messenger at the door. Judge Gilfoyle and Daisy went a little white from force of habit until they realized the messenger was for Harris: a boy from the Graybar’s mailroom bearing an especially important telegram.

“It’s from Coolidge!” shouted the boss, once it was handed to him.

The crowd quieted down long enough for him to read the president’s entire commentary upon the successful rescue of John Shepard:
COMMENDABLE
.

“Four syllables,” said Fine. “He’s starting to run off at the mouth.”

Burn instantly twitched with a desire to shove the wire in front of some tightwad savings bankers who might be impressed enough by it to try a first ad in
Bandbox
. But Harris, with a dozen waves of sentiment crashing over him, only wondered if Coolidge, so soon after losing his own young son, hadn’t been genuinely touched by word of this lost-and-found boy. “Here,” he said, handing the telegram to Newman. “A souvenir.”