"My own mother didn't even want to read it with that jacket. She saw the mock-up, she says-"

"Danny-"

"-says 'what kinda cover's this, Danny? Black, white, silver, no picture, no girls? Go beat some sense into them."

"Danny-"

"Jacket approval." Danny rolled up the doc.u.ment and took a few friendly swipes at Clive's chin.

"Could we get to our problem?"

"You mean, can I handle somethin' personal? I'm in-"

"No, no, not you yourself. Just recommend somebody. Put us in touch with someone. I know you're supposed to be in"-he'd almost said "hiding," then thought Danny wouldn't like that, so he changed it-"visible these days. You're keeping a very low profile. You might be out of touch-"

"Outta touch? h.e.l.l, no. It ain't safe to be outta touch."

Clive thought it didn't look all that safe to be in touch.

"I know some guys might do me a favor. Me a favor: you, you pay, right? Ones I'm thinking of, it might take a few days. They make themselves hard to get ahold of."

They? "We only need one."

Danny shook his head. "Ones I'm thinking of work absolutely together. They're the best, don't leave no trail, nothing. Only they're particular. Well, that's what you want, ain't it? Wet work may be wet, but it don't have to leave a puddle. I guess I'm not surprised; I guess it was only a matter of time before they got in."

Clive frowned. What was he talking about?

Danny took a long drag of his cigarette, flipped it, and watched it arc out over the river. "h.e.l.l, if they're into spas these days, no reason they're not into publishing. Makes sense, just look at the way publishing's going. Big conglomerates taking over, big fish sucking up the little fish-"

Clive was still back on spas. Spas?

"-it was only a matter of time. I guess the mob don't miss nothin', right?"

"You mean, you think this is a mob thing?"

"Ain't it?"

"Not exactly. It's a, ah, publishing thing."

"Same difference. Meet me back here in a coupla hours. No, let's say midnight. Back here at midnight."

"Come on, Danny, can't you simply give me a call?"

Danny just looked at him. "Better to do it in person. These guys, they don't like their names bandied about over a cell phone. Back here."

Clive sighed.

The dinner at Pastis had done something to restore Clive's flagging spirits, which were quickly dissipating again as he stood on the pier, beating his gloved hands against the cold.

Danny appeared again, fog bound. From somewhere came the deep, hollow growl of a boat.

"Candy and Karl. They'll meet you and Bobby Mackenzie two o'clock Friday at the RTR. They don't wanna do lunch, necessarily, but they'll have coffee, drinks, whatever. Get a banquette in the rear. They said."

"That's the Russian Tea Room, Danny. It's closed."

Danny's eyes widened; he stopped chewing his gum. "Get outta here!"

"No, it's true. It shut down."

"Jesus. You can't depend on nothin' anymore. Okay, Michael's, then. Only make sure Bobby gets a table near the front. Michael's is a swell restaurant only I remember me and Jerry Bransoni went in there once-that's when we were still talking-and they stuck us in the back room. I mean around the corner. As far back as you can get. The whole f.u.c.king Giancarlo family could have walked into Michael's and me and Jerry none the wiser. You'd think, my G.o.d, they'd be more careful, that maitre d' and all. The place coulda gone up in smoke."

"I don't think Michael's gets all that many drive-bys, Danny."

"Yeah, well all the same. Don't get the idea of meeting in some crumby coffee shop on Lex."

"There are no crumby coffee shops in New York."

Danny's gum traveled from one side of his mouth to the other. "Just remember, these two, they're the creme de la creme."

p.r.o.nounced, Clive noted, with a long e.

"Make 'em sit around the corner and I can't answer for what could happen."

Oh, for G.o.d's sakes. Clive sighed and said, "Look. Bobby won't get a table back there. He's too d.a.m.ned important."

"In the window, maybe?" Danny was recklessly chewing his gum.

In another minute, Clive swore to himself he'd kick this guy into the Hudson and not look back. "Maybe, maybe. But wouldn't it make more sense to meet somewhere private?"

"Like, you mean, here? Maybe in some dark alley? You see too many gangsta movies." Danny twitched his shoulders to better settle his black cashmere coat. "You're afraid they'll show up wearin' porkpie hats and yellow shoes?"

"Of course not." Clive's laugh was stagy.

"In case you want to know for future reference, they get all their stuff at Armani or Faconnable." He reached out and plucked a bit of fluff from Clive's lapel. "As do I." He pulled on his own lapel. "Armani, this is. He makes good wpp clothes-grays and blacks, deconstructed-h.e.l.l, you could carry a Uzi." Danny still had the contract and stuck it in an inside pocket. "I never stopped, you know."

What? Killing people? Clive took an involuntary step back.

Danny, though, was looking out across the river. "I got maybe ten chapters going on this"-he patted his pocket-"so it's not like I'm going at it, you know, cold turkey."

"Good. Look, I hope coming out here tonight hasn't, you know, compromised your, uh, safety." What did these witness protection people do for G.o.d's sakes?

"You kidding? I go out all the time."

"But isn't that dangerous? You've got a lot of people looking for you, surely. I mean, I would have thought remaining in New York pretty dangerous."

Danny laughed, shook his head at, it would seem, Clive's ingenuousness. "People see what they expect to see. Papa B, he expects to see me run like h.e.l.l. The Bransonis are looking for me all over the map-except in Manhattan. I live here, you know." There was an inclination of his head toward the streets behind them.

"You live in Chelsea?"

"Hub of the art scene, Chelsea. SoHo's moved out, moved here. You should see the installation over at White Columns. You know this scene?"

Clive said no. "Look, uh, Danny, about-"

"You gotta see this stuff. There's one installation of ephemeral art that'd blow you f.u.c.king away."

"Ephemeral? Look-"

"Yeah. Ephemeral art, it's hot-"

"Danny-"

"-see, it wears itself out, I mean, like some of it disappears like hours after it's put in. Some of it in just minutes. Like the cut flowers wilt, like ice in the trays of ice cubes melts. Funny n.o.body ever thought of it before."

"Somebody did. Frigidaire. I'll just continue creaking around the Metropolitan and MOMA, thanks. Now, about these two-"

"Listen, I got nothing against that stuff in the Met. I just don't happen to think Monet and that bunch speak to a lot of people right now."

"They speak to me. You've got your contract. Tell me about these men, how I can get hold of them if I need to."

"I told you. Michael's. Two o'clock, Friday." Danny reached up his hand almost daintily to adjust his tinted gla.s.ses and walked back into the fog.

THIRTEEN.

Bobby Mackenzie's a.s.sistant-he had four-Melissa was retooling her face in front of a mirror propped against a small pillar of what had turned out to be Jordan Strutts's nonbest-seller, a book that Bobby and Peter Genero had championed the past June: "championed" meaning talked about, gotten the buzz out on rather than actually "stood behind." "Stood behind" would have been a real commitment, one for which Bobby could get the entire roller coaster of promotion, publicity, and sales fired up to launch a book like a rocket. Strutts's book hadn't been so blessed.

As Sally pa.s.sed by the outer office, Melissa rose quickly, rushed to the door into the corridor of plush carpeting, and called to her to come back.

"I've got to go to Bloomie's for a final fitting and it sounds like they'll be in there"-she bucked her head back toward the inner office-"like, forever. Are you busy?"

Sally sighed. She was always busy. It's what came with the good fortune of being the right arm of an editor who more than did his job. Tom Kidd took on more books than he could comfortably manage within the limits of the ordinary working day, so he changed the limits. Right now he had four books on the spring list, and there were endless tasks to perform in the publication of just one, much less four. If you were Tom Kidd, there were.

"You want me to sit at your desk. Okay, but not, believe me, 'forever.' If I see forever coming, I'm out of here. What fitting?"

"My dress. My wedding dress, for G.o.d's sakes. I am getting married."

Married. Did people still do that sort of thing around here? Did Bloomingdale's have a bridal department? Fat lot Sally'd know about it. So Sally smiled at Melissa, hoping it was a smile worthy enough for a woman about to marry. "I forgot, sorry. Yes, of course I'll answer your telephone. And whatever." She could hear the voices in the inner office. Loud laughter, then laughter pitched low.

Melissa was shrugging into a black cloth coat, pulling her long taffy-colored hair out from the imprisoning collar. "There's not really much 'whatever.' Bobby's been energy deprived the last few days. That, or what he's doing doesn't involve anything I do. 'Bye."

Sally sat down in Melissa's typist's chair, which was just like Melissa: pert and small. How a chair could be "pert" she didn't know, but this one, with its little curved back and ergonomic seat like a sealed b.u.t.tock, managed to be, as if it might spring into action at Melissa's slightest touch. Melissa wheeled everywhere-to the filing cabinets, to the Xerox machine-with the momentum of a veteran paraplegic racing down a ramp. There should be contests. Sally felt what little energy she had brought into the office was being sapped by the chair.

She closed her eyes, heard the drone of voices, heard a few words that sounded like "over my dead body" (Bobby talking), and felt weary, weary and old. She was thirty-two and, although she really loved her job (and how many could say that?), she still felt wasted. For Sally really wanted to write, too. It would be almost impossible to have so much exposure to good writing and the thrill (writers mightn't admit it, but that's what it was: thrilling) of seeing one's words in print, more than "in print," published by a prestigious publisher who's willing to pay for it. Well, she had tried to write, but-and she supposed that this was the difference between writers and nonwriters-had grown horribly frustrated in the mere attempt to set down one single sentence. It was as if she were staring at nonreflecting gla.s.s, the words congealing in her mind, coagulating into a full stop. It was simply transferring the words in one's mind to the page, wasn't it? Then how was it the words seemed un-graspable? She had attempted this time after time and the same thing happened. It brought her to tears.

Without giving her own poor attempts away, she had asked Tom Kidd, who had told her, after mulling the question over (one of the reasons she liked him), that writers just kept on staring at nothing until they wrote something. Might be two minutes or two weeks. Maybe it was something ordinary mortals couldn't do. Not write (Tom said), but wait.

"You make it sound as if they're more holy or more n.o.ble." She had been irrationally irritated by his answer.

And Tom mulled that over, too. "Holy, maybe; n.o.ble, no."

They talked a lot about things like this, sometimes eating their lunch in Tom's office, Sally bringing in her insulated bag with the colored cats on the cover; Tom getting out his brown bag that always held his white meat of chicken sandwich. On white bread, Wonder Bread. This same sandwich his wife had been making for him over the years and he said every lunchtime that it was the best chicken sandwich in the world. Sally had once accepted a quarter of his sandwich to see if this was true, expecting that she'd be sampling stars or the silver dust of a comet's tail, and being disappointed when it turned out to be plain old chicken. Just chicken, b.u.t.ter, Wonder Bread. But she'd made an ummm sound and told him that yes, he was right.

After perhaps a hundred failed fiction-writing attempts, Sally hit on possibly writing nonfiction. That might be her forte. She didn't believe this, but one day she did ask Tom, from the other side of the piles of books on his desk and her chin nearly grazing the garish jacket on top, whether anyone had recently written a book about the sheer h.e.l.l of writing.

Tom had said he didn't know it was sheer h.e.l.l, at least if what she meant was incredibly hard work, which he could only demonstrate by citing four of his own writers, and the rest-and G.o.d only knew the rest of the house's-made it look like a day at the beach. Anyway, no, he didn't know about any nonfiction books about a writer's turmoil (though he could list off the top of his head a dozen fictional accounts of turmoil). There were, however, a lot of how-to books, which were relatively worthless. Would-be writers read them for company, not direction.

He must know, of course, why Sally was asking these questions, but he didn't come out with it. He was too much of a gentleman to embarra.s.s her.

She thought about Ned and Saul and holiness. What did Tom mean by "holy," anyway? It had been a word she'd tossed out like a sneer that he had taken at least semiseriously. Was it like dedication? No, it had to be more than that, or something other than.

The telephone rang again just as the fax machine started spitting out pages. She told the caller Bobby was at a sales conference and the caller rang off. The fax machine stopped. She paid no attention.

Concentration, what about that? Was that some kind of "holy" thing? Being centered? Focused? They-Ned and Saul-certainly shared the capacity for all of these things. It was almost transcendent, the way they kept their writing selves intact and nearly untouchable. She wondered if the more that ability was used, the more the centered and transcendent part grew until one day it was all of them, it was the whole self. They became their writing; they were their characters. She thought: how incredible, no longer having to drag around as if you had a dead body shackled to your ankle, that part of the self that wept over publishers' indifference, that wailed at bad reviews, and, once landing on the TBR list in fourth place, raging against the three guys who had bested you at first, second, and third.

The egos of writers were really that hard to satisfy, that insatiable. Yet who could blame them? Having poured a quart of blood into even the shoddiest offering, why blame a really good writer who had poured out the whole four quarts? It was his life's blood in that book, don't you forget it! But Saul and Ned- ". . . Ned Isaly . . ."

Sally jumped slightly in her chair. For a second, she thought the name had been spoken in her head. It came, of course, from Bobby's office and it wasn't until then that she realized the door was open a crack-just a sliver, enough to let through light and sound. The voices rose and fell like the tide coming in and going out.

". . . Isaly's contract . . ."

One of them said it again . . .

Inside the office, Clive was pacing. His steps took him nearer to the door and farther from it. "Bobby. For Christ's sake-!"

"You said it yourself; you used the argument yourself. If we break Isaly's contract, we'll have to contend with Tom Kidd." Bobby had his feet on his desk and was leaning back, sans coat, holding a dust jacket up to the light splashing in through his window. Central Park glittered in the light. "This jacket sucks, Clive." He tossed it across the desk. "As long as Ned Isaly delivers a ma.n.u.script, we can't touch him. I mean, it would be pretty foolish to pretend it was unacceptable. That's even without the complication of Kidd's walking out if we did it. So what else did Zito say?"

Clive made no move to pick up the cover mock-up, appalled that Bobby could take this whole business so calmly. "That's all. Just that these two always work together."

Sally sensed, if she didn't actually hear, someone moving toward the door. She zipped the typist's chair over to the Xerox machine and punched it on. She had nothing to copy but a page from a book lying there, but it made no difference as her back was to the door and she was on the other side of the room. She slapped the open book down and pushed the b.u.t.ton.

"Where's Melissa?"

It was Clive. She removed the book and turned to face him, trying to look really dumb, her mouth slack, eyes wide. "Oh. Melissa had to leave for a while. It was a kind of emergency about her wedding."

Clive wasn't interested in the wedding; he was looking at her for a long moment, obviously trying to a.s.sess what, if anything, she'd heard. He wouldn't have worried about Melissa; she was too self-absorbed to let any talk intrude that hadn't to do with her wedding. But Sally, that was cause for concern. Sally was known to be smart, quick, and intuitive.

Sally turned back to the machine as if she couldn't care less what they got up to in there.

"What're you doing out here?"

Over her shoulder she said, "Copying some pages. Why? Did you want something?" Still wide eyed, she was all candor.

"What? No. Yes. Make some coffee, will you?"