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“There” was an apartment house on Riverside Drive, the scene of a landlord-tenant dispute over alleged harassment by Chapman, which Doug had read about, the argument eventually ending in a compromise.

“You had some problems there.”

“We settled. We’re all friends. I’m for the tenant, I’m for the city. I came from the Lower East Side. I’m fair, The Fair Landlord.’ That’s our motto.”

“I didn’t know real-estate companies had mottos.”

“I thought it up myself. Now how do we get it across?”

“We’re talking about a sports tie-in principally in New York?”

“I don’t own real estate in Chicago.”

“I’m a little slow today. I’m not a water person.”

“You want to go back?”

“Yes, to be truthful.”

“Hey!” he yelled. “Back!”

“A nice event could be a walk race through the streets of the city, ending in Central Park. There haven’t been many walk races. We could set this up in advance with classes, walk race clinics.”

“The people, they would wear my T-shirts?”

“You could donate T-shirts to the walkers.”

“And on the front would be my picture and it would say, ‘Chapman, the Fair Landlord’?”

“You want your picture and your motto on the T-shirts?”

“ ‘The Fair Landlord.’ I’m stressing that.”

“I hear you. I don’t think the public will go for it, Mr. Chapman. They may feel a little used, to become walking billboards for you.”

“Why should I do this, then?”

“For general publicity, for goodwill.”

“The finish line, there’s a banner?”

“Yes.”

“It could go there, too.”

“These are not political campaigns.”

“I’m going to have to think about it. But you try to get my picture in. I got a nice picture. Bachrach. Fancy photographers.”

Doug was interviewed in his office the following week by a reporter for
Business Times
magazine on the subject of sports tie-ins. The reporter was in her early 20s, a studious-looking brunette who used a tape recorder and constantly checked to see if it was recording. She asked questions from a prepared list in her notebook, so intent on her system and her tape recorder, Doug was not certain she was listening to the answers. When she asked if tie-ins weren’t a vulgarization of sports, a question he had asked himself, he answered that they were not, as long as they were bona fide events, which he tried to maintain as a requirement.

“You’re doing a tie-in with Sy Chapman, I understand.”

“We talked. We don’t have anything definite. How do you know that?”

“He hounds our office for publicity. Now—do you find any difficulty—” she read from her notes—“doing business with a man accused of harassing tenants and blocking the designation of a Greenwich Village apartment house as a landmark in order to demolish it for profit purposes?”

“A compromise was reached in the first instance and in the second he withdrew his plans. He’s not guilty of any crimes, and we’re talking about an event that will be good fun for the public.”

“Do you think tennis tie-ins are saturated in the marketplace?” she said, briskly moving on.

As she pressed along with her questions, he was still thinking about the way he bluffed his way through the hard part—and that he’d probably succeeded. He was on the other side now, doing what people he had interviewed attempted to do—finesse the interview.

Ann was interested in going to an antiques show in Greenwich, Connecticut, and asked Doug to join her. She did not bother to own a car; she used a car service for herself in the city, and Doug rented a car for this excursion. At the show she bought a child’s needlework sampler from 1840, exquisite and four thousand dollars. “I’ve been looking for one,” she explained, and wrote a check. A few minutes later he saw a patchwork American quilt, red, white, and blue squares, which Ann pronounced “well executed,” and he bought it for four hundred. I didn’t need that, but this life-style is not about need, is it? What the hell. It’s “well executed.” Doug and Ann left the show with their purchases and Ann suggested, since they were so near, that they stop by to see her mother in Darien. Ann called, her mother was out, but was expected within the hour, and they drove to her house. He expected a house, not Versailles. Past thick, tree-height hedges, and through a locked gate, opened after communicating by phone with the main building, they entered a long circular driveway leading to a Georgian style red-brick structure that made John Gannon’s Mamaroneck Colonial look like a bungalow.

“How many rooms?” he asked.

“Twenty or so,” Ann replied.

“And who lives here?”

“Just my mother. And the staff.”

“Is this where you grew up?”

“With my brothers.”

An elderly uniformed butler greeted them at the door.

“Miss Ann.”

“Walter. This is Mr. Gardner.”

“Your mother will be back soon.”

“Where did she go?” Ann asked.

“OTB.”

“Your mother went to the betting parlor?” Doug said.

“It’s a hobby,” she answered.

They strolled the beautifully landscaped grounds. A crew of grounds keepers were at work under the supervision of an old man in green work clothes whom Ann greeted, and he tipped his hat.

She showed Doug the inside of the house, bedrooms Ann and her brothers had occupied, a bedroom suite which had been her father’s, who had died ten years earlier—her mother had her own bedroom suite—guest rooms for adults, guest rooms for children, a billiards room, a Ping-Pong room, dens, parlors, a servants’ wing.

A vintage Cadillac limousine, high off the ground, with big fenders and large whitewall tires came into view, driven by a chauffeur so old and fragile he could barely see over the steering wheel. Moving stiffly, he came out to open the door for Ann’s mother, Mrs. Grace Fielding, a small gray-haired woman in her 80s, stoop-shouldered, with a well-preserved face, probably once a beauty. She was in a pink dress, pink shoes, carrying
The Daily Racing Form,
and wearing a green eyeshade.

“A terrible morning,” she said. “All my ponies were out of the money. How are you, Ann? Who is this?”

“Doug Gardner, a friend of mine.”

“A new friend? What do you do?”

“I work in the sports field. I put together sports events which corporations can sponsor.”

“I never heard of such a thing. Do you know the ponies?”

“It is not my strongest point.”

“Doug used to be a sportswriter, Mother.”

“Were you? Tell me about it over tea.”

She moved slowly into the house, servants opening doors for her as she went.

“Fast start, slowing now toward the finish,” she said to Doug on the way to the rear patio. “But don’t count this filly out.”

An elderly maid served tea and cookies at a wicker table and chairs. Except for the laborers in the garden, nobody on the staff looked under 70.

“Happy Banquet. Off at twelve-to-one and I had him. Led all the way and went into stud on the back stretch. Know the horse?” she asked Doug.

“Not personally.”

“Not personally. Amusing. Did you ever know any horses personally?”

“I was introduced once to Dr. Fager.”

“And?”

“He tried to bite me.”

“He
was
a biter! That’s true, Ann.” She opened the
Racing Form.
“Let’s talk a little about the trotters.”

“Mother, I don’t think Doug wants to sit here and pick horses.”

“Where did you do your writing?”

“
Sports Day.
The
New York Post
”

“I used to buy the
Post
for the charts. Then I went over to the real horse sheets. Remember Native Dancer? Short odds, but I bet big. I furnished the bedrooms off that horse.”

“Jimmy Cannon wrote a piece about him I’ll never forget. It was nearly over the line of taste, how Native Dancer was a great horse, but a nicer guy.”

“He wouldn’t bite you, the Dancer.” She turned to Ann. “I like him,” she said about Doug. “Why don’t you marry him?”

“Mother!”

“We can throw you a nice wedding on the grounds.”

“I’ve been married on the grounds.”

“But
he
hasn’t.”

Ann’s mother announced she wanted to play croquet, Ann declined, and Doug went with her mother, taking instruction from her on how the game was played.

“You never played croquet? Where have you been? You should think about marrying Ann. Faded last two starts. Could surprise.”

“I’m flattered.”

“She’s not the liveliest of women.”

God, is this my future, too, muttering about sports and saying outrageous things?

“Ann is a good person,” he said.

“Yes, she is. And she comes with the house. I left her the house. My boys don’t need it. They have houses.”

They played awhile and then she grew tired.

“I appreciate your doing this,” she said, and they walked back to the patio where Ann was sitting.

“One of your best,” she pronounced about Doug, and sat in a chair. “Impressive start. Could close well.” Her head dropped down and she fell fast asleep.

“She is very colorful,” Doug said.

“Less so when she’s yours.”

He could see himself sitting with the old lady on a Saturday, sipping tea at the wicker table and handicapping horses, drifting along in this convenient, slightly emotionally detached affair with Ann, accruing benefits, or one day even marrying her and being in this immense house on these elegant grounds. I played baseball. I could learn to play croquet.

T
HE EXECUTIVE DINING ROOM
for Tom Daley’s company was in a glass-enclosed terrace on the top floor of the office building overlooking the harbor, fresh flowers on the table, two waiters serving wine and pâté. Doug and Daley were joined for a drink by the advertising manager and the promotion manager. In two meetings with these associates of Daley’s neither had said anything Doug would have characterized as particularly insightful or creative. They probably held well-paying jobs and lived in nice homes in the suburbs, the kind of men Doug saw illustrated in advertisements in
The Saturday Evening Post
in the 1950s and had aspired to be when he enrolled in the business program at NYU. Now in the room with them, he felt they were unexceptional. Daley was sharper than his two executives. Doug did not know if he could handle Daley’s job. He was sure he could match the other two.

“What would you like for dinner tonight?” Daley asked Doug.

“What is on the menu?”

“There is no menu,” Daley said, smiling. “Order whatever you feel like eating. My chef will send someone for the ingredients and prepare it.”

“The Ultimate Take-Out Order.”

Doug asked for poached salmon and a salad. Daley ordered the same. They talked about the Street Olympics, and other likely promotions. Dinner was ready in about an hour and on cue the two executives, who had not been invited by Daley to remain, excused themselves. Daley’s mood changed when they left, he became more intense, now he could do the real talking.

“Doug, our company is moving to take on the Japanese in international markets. I see us getting involved in a sports tie-in on a grand scale, something global. And you’re the guy who can put it together.”

“It’s what I do.”

Daley opened a file folder that had been on the table and thumbed through copies of some columns and articles Doug had written.

“You’re creative and you don’t come up from the corporate ranks.”

“I did get a B in Management, as I recall.”

“Most of the people around me wouldn’t say that. They’re too frightened. I like that you didn’t work your way along in the bureaucracy.”

“I have paid my dues, Tom.”

“But you’re not all smoothed out from fitting in. You have a unique feel and I’d like it full time. Doug, I want you to come and work for me.”

“Tom, the guys who were in here before, they were dismissed from the room. Basically you just dismissed them. I wouldn’t want to be in that situation. I answer to Macklin in a loose sense, but I’m on my own.”

“Let’s talk about that. You’ve got to call on companies to make sales. You have competition. The competition could get tougher. What looks good now won’t in a few years.”

“Once a tie-in is set, it goes on making money.”

“But you’ve got to keep selling tie-ins. Doug, I want you here very much. I see myself relying on you for the company’s image, my public image, overseeing speeches and in other areas, too, in corporate decisions. I see you as an important right-hand man for me.”

“Looking at those guys skulk out of here—”

“You won’t answer to anybody in the corporation but me, and I’ve got a feeling you won’t be toadying up to me, either. We’ll put you outside the organizational lines. Vice-president in charge of special promotions. This is the gold ring on the carousel.”

“You have that.”

“Yes, I do. But there’s a smaller ring and it’s still gold. Two hundred thousand a year to start. A three-year guaranteed contract. Fifty thousand a year automatic increases. Stock options, and we’re growing. You’ll never touch that kind of money with Macklin. And we’ll throw in access to one of the corporate limos with a driver. This job doesn’t exist, Doug. It’s being created for you.”

“You’re giving me quite a lot to think about.”

“From my standpoint, there’s nothing to think about. You’re moving from seller to buyer, doing interesting work, and getting rich. By the way, how’s the salmon?”

“Excellent.”

“This room is yours. Only a few of us are permitted to use it. I’ll make it available to you.”

“Amazing. The last perk was suits. Now it’s personalized poached salmon.”

Doug spoke to Bob Kleinman that evening who said the job offer was “fabulous.” His main concern was whether access to the limousine and driver extended to personal use.

“Incidentally, I’m not seeing Connie anymore,” Bob said. “She started making demands like a wife. I have a wife. I figured out if I spent as much time on the marriage as I spent maintaining the affair, maybe I wouldn’t need the affair.”

“I think you made the right move, hot pants.”

“I doubt if Sarah ever knew. But I got into the habit of doing the dishes at home, something I picked up when I was with Connie. And Sarah looked at me sort of suspiciously one night.”