Bright Lights, Big City, Page 3

  You got that part of the story from the switchboard operator, who listened in on the conversation. The editor never spoke to you again. After Clara returned, there was another lecture, much the same, with the addition of the idea that you had embarrassed her and the entire department. When the issue came out, you noted with some satisfaction that your best stuff was incorporated in the review. But it was the end of Clara’s warm maternal act.

  To give Clara her due, lately.you have not been impeccable in the performance of your duties. It’s a matter of temperaments. You try and you try, but you can’t see this as God’s work, or even Man’s work. Aren’t computers supposed to free us from this kind of drudgery?

  In fact, you don’t want to be in Fact. You’d much rather be in Fiction. You have cautiously expressed this preference several times, but there hasn’t been an opening in Fiction in years. The people in the Verification Department tend to look down on fiction, in which words masquerade as flesh without the backbone of fact. There is a general sense that if fiction isn’t dead, it is at least beside the point. But you’ll take a new story by Bellow over a six-part article on the Republican convention at the drop of a hat. All the magazine fiction passes through the department, and since no one else wants it you take it upon yourself to do the routine checking-make sure that if a story set in San Francisco contains a psycho named Phil Doaks, there is no Phil Doaks in the San Francisco phone book who might turn around and sue. It’s the opposite of verifying a factual piece. To confirm that the story doesn’t unintentionally coincide at any point with real people and events. A cursory process, it does give you a shot at some decent reading.

  At first Clingfast seemed pleased that you were taking on a job no one else wanted, but now she accuses you of spending too much time on the fiction. You are an idler in the kingdom of facts. Meanwhile, the Fiction people are none too thrilled when you inform them that a story which contains a fly-fishing scene incorrectly has a hatch of Sulfur Duns occurring on a stream in Oregon where, in fact, no Sulfur Duns have ever hatched. You are an unwilling emissary from the land of pedantry. “So what the hell does hatch in goddamned Oregon?” the editor asks. “Salmon-flies, for one,” you say. You want to say: It’s my job-I don’t like it either.

  Megan Avery comes over to your desk. She picks up the framed needlepoint sampler Wade embroidered for your last birthday, which reads:

  Facts all come with points of view

  Facts don’t do what I want them to.

  – TALKING HEADS

  When Wade gave it to you you weren’t sure whether to be grateful for his time and effort or insulted by the implied comment on your professional incapacities. Megan asks, “How’s everything going with you?” You say you can’t complain. “Are you sure?” Megan makes honesty seem like a viable alternative. She is a person who could give lessons in sanity. Why have you never confided in her before? She’s older and wiser. You’re not sure how old; she doesn’t seem to have a particular age. You would describe her as striking, or attractive, but she has such an earnest, practical nature that it is hard for you to envision her as a sexual being. Although married once, she seems the West Village type meant to run her own life and help her friends through their many disasters. You admire her. You don’t know many sensible people. Maybe you could have lunch sometime.

  “I’m okay, really,” you say.

  “Need any help with the French piece? I’m not real busy just now.”

  “I think I can manage. Thanks.”

  The Clinger appears in the doorway. She nods at you. “We’ve decided to move the French thing up an issue. That means I need it on my desk before you leave today. We’re closing tomorrow afternoon.” She pauses. “Can you handle it?”

  There is not a snowball’s chance in hell and you suspect she knows it. “I could just give it directly to Collating tonight and save you the trouble.”

  “My desk,” she says. “Tell me now if you’re going to need help.”

  You shake your head. If she sees the shape the page proofs are in at the moment, you’re screwed. You have not followed procedure. You have used pen where you should have used pencil, red pencil where you should have used blue. Phone numbers written in the margins, coffee rings in the columns. You have done all the things that the “Manual of Factual Verification” tells you not to do. You’ve got to try and find a clean copy of the proofs to work from. The Clinger is large on procedure.

  The prospect of the work in front of you resurrects the unspeakable headache with which you woke. You’re already exhausted. You’re so tired. Eight days of sleep would put you right. A boatload of Marching Powder might get you through this ordeal. But simply to face it seems like more than you can do. You should protest the change in scheduling. Why the hell didn’t someone ask you if it was almost ready to go? Even if you could speak French, it would take several more days. If you were not afraid of having Clara or the Druid examine your proofs as they stand, you would protest.

  If you were Japanese, this would be the time to commit seppuku. Pen a farewell poem about the transience of cherry blossoms and the fleet transit of youth, wrap the sword blade in white silk, plunge it home and pull upward, right-ward through your intestines. And no whimpering or sour expressions, please. You learned all about the ritual while checking an article on Japan. But you lack that samurai resolution. You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute. Manhattan does not lie in an earthquake zone, but there is always the possibility of nuclear war. Short of that, nothing you can imagine would alter the publishing schedule.

  At a little after noon the Druid tiptoes past the office on his way to lunch. Because you happen to be staring out the door at nothing in particular you catch his eyes, famously nearsighted. He bows formally. The Druid is elusive; one has to look very closely, and know what to look for, to see him at all. While you have never actually seen a Victorian clerk, you believe this is what one would look like. At the magazine, his temperamental reticence has been elevated to a principle. Fourth in a dynastic succession, he has run the show for twenty years. Trying to discover what he is thinking is the preoccupation of the entire staff. Nothing passes into the magazine without his enthusiastic approval and his own final edit. There is no arbitration and no explanation. It pains him that he requires a staff to assist him, but he is invariably polite. There is officially no second-in-command, because that would imply an eventual changing of the guard, and the Druid cannot imagine the magazine without himself. The Kremlin must be a lot like this. Perhaps because he suspects he is mortal, fiction that deals too directly with death is unwelcome here; most references to myopia are edited out. No detail is too minute for his attention.

  The only direct contact you have had with the Druid was when he called you up one day to worry about the English usage of the President of the United States. You were checking a piece in which the President warned against precipitous action. The Druid felt that precipitate was the word the President was looking for. He asked you to call the White House and get approval for the change. You dutifully called the White House and tried to explain the importance of this distinction. You spent several hours on hold. Those who actually believed you were serious would not commit themselves. Others just cussed you out. Meanwhile, the magazine was going to press. The Druid called three times and encouraged you to keep trying. Finally, with the composing room screaming for the final pages, an accommodation of sorts was reached, unknown to the President and his staff. While Webster’s Second distinguished the meanings of the two words, the racier Third Edition listed them as synonyms. The Druid gave you a final call to explain this and to approve-not without trepidation- the original quote. The magazine went to press. Government continued apace.

  At one o’clock you go out for a sandwich. Megan asks you to bring her a Tab. Downstairs, you semi-revolve through the doors and think about how nice it would be not to have to return at all, ever. You also think about how nice it would be to hole up in the nearest bar. The glar
e from the sidewalk stuns you; you fumble in your jacket pocket for your shades. Sensitive eyes, you tell people.

  You shuffle off to the deli and pick up a pastrami-on-rye and an egg cream. The bald man behind the counter whistles cheerfully as he slices the meat. “Nice and lean today,” he says. “And now for a little mustard-just how your mom used to make it.”

  “What do you know about it,” you ask.

  “Just passing the time, pal,” he says, wrapping it all up. All of this, the dead meat on ice behind glass, everything, puts you off your meal.

  Outside, waiting for a light, you are accosted by a man leaning up against a bank.

  “My man, check it out here. Genuine Carder watches. Forty dollars. Wear the watch that’ll make ‘em watch you. The genuine article. Only forty bucks.”

  The man stands beside the torso of a mannequin, the arms of which are covered with watches. He holds one out to you. “Check it out.” If you take it, you’ll feel committed. But you don’t want to be rude. You take the watch and examine it.

  “How do I know it’s real?”

  “How do you know anything’s real? Says Carrier right there on the face, right? Looks real. Feels real. So what’s to know? Forty bucks. How can you lose?”

  It appears authentic. Slim, rectangular face, regal roman numerals, sapphire-tipped winding knob. The band feels like good leather. But if it’s real, it’s probably hot. And if it isn’t hot it can’t be real.

  “Thirty-five bucks to you. My cost.”

  “How come so cheap?”

  “Low overhead.”

  You haven’t owned a watch in years. Knowing the time at any given moment might be a good first step toward organizing the slippery flux of your life. You’ve never been able to see yourself as the digital kind of guy. But you could use a little Carder in your act. It looks real, even if it isn’t, and it tells time. What the hell.

  “Thirty dollars,” the man says.

  “I’ll buy it.”

  “At that price you ain’t buying it. You’re stealing it.”

  You wind your new watch and admire it on your wrist. 1:25.

  Once you reach the office you realize you have forgotten Megan’s Tab. You apologize and tell her you’ll go back for it. She says not to bother. While you were gone she took two messages, one from Monsieur Somebody at the Department of Something, and one from your brother Michael. You don’t really want to talk to either of them.

  By two o’clock it’s eight in Paris and everyone has gone home for the day. For the rest of the afternoon you will try to fill in the holes with reference books and calls to the consulate in New York. Your eyelids feel as if they are being held open by taxidermy needles. You push on blindly.

  Your new watch dies at three-fifteen. You shake it, then wind it. The winding knob falls off in your hand.

  The editor of the piece calls to ask how it’s going. You say it’s going. He apologizes for the scheduling change; he wanted to save it till next month at the earliest. For no clear reason, the Druid moved it up. “I just wanted to warn you,” he says. “Take nothing for granted.”

  “That’s my job,” you say.

  “I mean especially in this case. He hasn’t left Paris in twelve years, and spends most of his time in restaurants. He never double-checks anything.”

  Jesus wept.

  Twice during the afternoon you call the writer to ask him where he picked up his facts. The first time you call you go through a list of errors and he concedes each point cheerfully.

  “Where did you get this about the French government owning a controlling interest in Paramount Pictures?” you say.

  “Don’t they? Well, shit. Run a line through that.”

  “Your next three paragraphs depend on it.”

  “Damn. Who told me that?”

  By the end of the second call he is annoyed, as if the errors were of your devising. This is the way it goes with the writers: they resent you to the degree that they depend on you.

  Late in the afternoon a memo arrives addressed to “staff.” It is signed by the Druid’s assistant, which makes it gospel.

  It has come to our attention that a Mr. Richard Fox is writing an article about the magazine. Some of you may already have been approached by Mr. Fox. We have reason to believe that the intentions of this reporter are not coincident with the best interests of the magazine. We would like to remind all staff members of the magazine’s policy with regard to the press. All queries and requests for interviews should be referred to this office. Under no circumstances should any employee presume to speak for the magazine without prior clearance. We remind you that all magazine business is strictly confidential.

  The memo occasions amusement in the Department of Factual Verification. The magazine has been involved in many freedom of press trials, but in this gag order there is not a glimmer of irony.

  Wade says, “I wish Richard Fox would call me.” Megan says, “Forget it, Yasu. I know for a fact that Richard Fox is straight.”

  “For a fact? I’d be very interested to hear about your verification procedure.”

  “I know you would,” Megan says.

  “At any rate,” Wade says, “I only meant that I would be fantastically curious to know how many pieces of silver some of the institutional dirty laundry is worth. But don’t get me wrong-it’s not that I don’t find Fox attractive.”

  Rittenhouse is tugging at his glasses, indicating that he wishes to speak. “I, for one, do not feel that Richard Fox is an objective reporter. He has a penchant for sensationalism.”

  “Of course,” Wade says. “That’s why we love him.”

  The possession of dangerous information excites a brief feeling of power here in the Department of Factual Verification. You wish Richard Fox or anyone else cared enough about Clara Tillinghast to perform a character assassination.

  By seven everyone is gone. They all offered to help, and you waved them away. There is a shabby nobility in failing all by yourself.

  Clara sticks her head in the door as she’s leaving. “My desk,” she says.

  My ass, you think.

  You nod and, in token of your earnestness, hunker down over the page proofs. From this point on it’s a matter of covering your tracks, running pencil lines through anything that you have not been able to verify and hoping that nothing important slips through.

  At seven-thirty Allagash calls. “What are you doing at the office?” he says. “We have plans for the evening. Monstrous events are scheduled.”

  Two of the things you like about Allagash are that he never asks you how you are and he never waits for you to answer his questions. You used to dislike this, but when the news is all bad it’s a relief that someone doesn’t want to hear it. Just now you want to stay at the surface of things, and Tad is a figure skater who never considers the sharks under the ice. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don’t want to invite anyone inside.

  Allagash tells you that Natalie and Inge are dying to meet you. Natalie’s father runs an oil company and Inge is soon to be in a major television commercial. Moreover, the Deconstructionists are playing the Ritz, one of the modeling agencies is sponsoring a bash for Muscular Dystrophy at Magique and Natalie has cornered a chunk of the Gross National Product of Bolivia.

  “I’m going to be working most of the night,” you say. Actually, you are about to give up, but a night of Allagash is not the remedy for your blues. You’re thinking of bed. You are so tired you could stretch out right here on the linoleum and slip into a long coma.

  “Give me a time. I’ll pick you up,” Tad says.

  The phrase “last-ditch effort” jumps out from the column of print in front of you. It makes you ashamed of yourself. You think of the Greeks at Thermopylae, the Texans at the Alamo, John Paul Jones in his leaky tub. You want to rally and whip hell out of falsehood and error.


  You tell Tad you will call him back in half an hour. Later, when the phone rings, you ignore it.

  At a little after ten you put the proofs on Clara’s desk. It would at least be a relief if you could tell yourself that this was your best shot. You feel like a student who is handing in a term paper that is part plagiarism, part nonsense and half finished. You have scoped out and fixed a number of colossal blunders, which serves only to make you more aware of the suspect nature of everything you haven’t verified. The writer was counting on the Verification Department to give authority to his sly observations and insidious generalizations. This is not cricket on his part, but it is your job to help him out and it is your job that is on the line. There has only been one printed retraction in the magazine’s history and the verificationist responsible for the error was immediately farmed out to Advertising. Your only hope is that the Clinger won’t read it. A fire of mysterious origin might sweep through the offices. Or Clara might get sloshed tonight, fall off a barstool and crack her head open. She might get picked up by a Sex Killer. Any Post reader will tell you it’s possible. Happens every day.

  There was a cartoon you used to watch, at least you think there was, with a time-traveling turtle and a benevolent wizard. The turtle would journey back to, say, the French Revolution, inevitably getting in way over his head. At the last minute, when he was stretched out under the guillotine, he would cry out, “Help, Mr. Wizard!” And the wizard, on the other end of the time warp, would wave his wand and rescue the hapless turtle.