I'll Take Manhattan (48 page)

“Amberville’s all right, then?”

“As a matter of fact, our profits will be up considerably this year. My brother loved to tinker with the magazines. He had lost interest in the bottom line years ago. His passion was starting new magazines and giving them all the time they needed to prove themselves. You know how costly that can be. And risky. When my wife—as majority shareholder—asked me to mind the store, I decided to cut losses to a minimum. I’m afraid I had to make an unpopular decision—nobody likes to lose his job—but it turned out for the best. Henry, you can clear the fruit away. Sure you
won’t join me for porridge, Mr. Wilder? It’s particularly good here. No? Henry, bring another pitcher of cream. This one is only half full.” Cutter attacked his porridge with relish, adding a judicious amount of butter and sugar to the steaming bowl.

“Profits up, you say?”

“Definitely. Every one of our magazines is showing increases in ad revenue and, as you know, that’s where the money is.”

“ ‘Up’ can mean anything with a privately owned company,” Wilder said, repressing the desire to peek at his watches.

“I don’t feel it’s indiscreet to tell you, Mr. Wilder. I’m talking about fourteen or fifteen percent, possibly more.”

“Hmm. Nice going.”

“Yes, it’s been a most satisfactory experience. On the other hand, Lily, my wife, is British and she misses England. She’s been really stuck in New York, except for whirlwind trips to Europe when Zachary went on business, for more than thirty years. She’s still a young woman and she’d like to spend more time abroad. Hunting, theater, all of that … Lily says there has to be more to life than the magazine business. You’re married, aren’t you, Mr. Wilder?”

“Call me Leonard. Yes, married twenty-five years. You said up fourteen or fifteen percent, Cutter?”

“Right. Ah, thank you, Henry. Those look good.”

Leonard Wilder wriggled on the banquette. He was already late for his nine-o’clock breakfast and Cutter Amberville had just started on his buckwheat pancakes.

“Could we talk round figures?” Wilder asked.

“Round figures?” Cutter poured some maple syrup on the pancakes. “I don’t see why not. You’re known never to repeat things. Something near one hundred and seventy million in pretax profits.”

“Near? Which way? Up or down?”

“I don’t like to overstate, Leonard, but I expect a higher figure. There’s still some deadwood to be trimmed here and there.”

“Business for sale, Cutter? That’s why you called me?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, there is that possibility. As I
said, my wife is longing for a change and she deserves whatever she wants. I’ve urged her not to rush into any decision, told her to take her time, but spring’s in the air and she’s always been impulsive.”

“So the business
is
for sale.”

“It wouldn’t be fair to make any promises … but it might be. It might very well be. At the right price.”

“Naturally.”

“Now take Bill Ziff for instance, and his company,” Cutter said, between bites. “Interesting deal he just made. If you’ll forgive me for mentioning the competition, Leonard, CBS just bought twelve magazines from him for three hundred and sixty-two million dollars, books like
Popular Photography
and
Yachting
. Then he sold Murdoch twelve trade publications,
Aerospace Daily
for one, and
Hotel and Resort Guide
for another, for an additional three hundred and fifty million. Twenty-four magazines in all. Now, admittedly we’ve only got six books to sell, but each is the leader in its field, each a classic. Major magazines, Leonard. We can leave
B&B
out of the discussion—it’s an experiment, at the moment, unproven. But the others have revenues well above Ziff’s, far, far above. So you have to understand that we’re discussing a very large sum of money, certainly near a billion. Henry, more hot coffee, please.”

“UBC is cash-rich, Cutter. That’s not a problem. You talked to anyone else?” Wilder demanded, his other breakfast date utterly forgotten.

“No. Not yet. Lily only brought up the matter a few weeks ago and I didn’t see any reason to hurry. I like to give new ideas time to mature, to ripen. All in good time and no regrets.”

“Cutter, I don’t believe in kidding around. I’m interested. Been looking for a major magazine group for years. Always liked Amberville. Got a three-man executive committee. They can commit whole board. Only ask one thing; don’t speak to anyone else before we have a chance to get together on this.”

“That sounds fair enough, particularly since I’m in no hurry. In fact, our next statement isn’t due for almost three months and I’m so sure that it’s going to show an interesting
jump that I’d prefer to wait until then. If Lily is still of the same mind, then your accountants can go to work, and judge the values for themselves.”

“Three months … you’re sure you want to wait? We could get started a lot sooner.”

“I’m sure, Leonard. But during that time, why don’t we get together for dinner with our wives? I feel I owe you something decent to eat. You missed a wonderful breakfast.”

“Does anybody else know about this?” Toby asked India suspiciously, running his fingers down her belly.

“Could you be more specific?” she asked lazily, drifting up from the glowing globe of great joy in which she floated, feeling the complicated, compelling sense of bliss she experienced at the sound of his voice.

“This tiny scar, right here, below your bellybutton and to the right.”

“Appendix, when I was eight. Even Barbara Walters doesn’t know about it. On the other hand, she never asked.”

“That’s the one hundred and seventeenth thing I know about you that nobody else knows. Your ears are distinctly different sizes; your nose is out of line to the right, only by a hair but still nobody could call it straight; you have thinner eyelashes on your left eye than on the right, and correspondingly, less hair under your left arm than under your right, shave your armpits though you will; there’s a tiny mole under your pussy hair on the left outer labia—”

“Toby!”

“I suppose it’s not your fault if you’re not perfect. You were billed as being perfect but, good Lord, the things I’ve found would fill a book, and I’ve barely begun to look. And as for taste, let me tell you, young lady, you don’t taste the same way two days in a row. A man likes a little consistency in his woman.”

“Am I your woman?” India wondered, knowing she shouldn’t ask, but unable to resist.

“My woman of the moment. The only woman of the only moment. But you know how I feel … I’ve never—”

“Spare me … never committed yourself. Coward! Revolting, timid coward. I wish I had a penny for every fink man in the country who goes around counting pussy hair and not committing himself. Have you no shame?”

“I didn’t count your pussy hair, I counted your underarm hairs.”

“It comes to the same thing and you know it. How did women get into this? Why are you allowed to make me love you and then refuse to love me back?”

“I do love you back,” Toby said in a low voice. “You know I do. I loved you as soon as you threw those drinks over me to attract my attention five months ago. But commitment is something else.”

“Where I come from, when you love somebody and she loves you and there’s no reason why you can’t agree to hope to keep on loving each other for good, logically that will lead to a commitment for some kind of permanent arrangement … called marriage,” India said with the same dogged persistence which had kept her flying back and forth from Los Angeles to New York almost every weekend since she’d met Toby. She had moved half her wardrobe, little by little, to his closets and now even his bed, on which they were lying, was covered with her very own hand-ironed Porthault sheets.

“ ‘Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?’ ”

India sat up fuming. “You dare to quote Emerson to
me
—I invented quoting Emerson, you skunk.”

“ ‘By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote,’ ” Toby declaimed in perfect Emersonian dignity.

“It’s Maxi, I know it’s got to be Maxi. She told you how I used to torment her with Emerson, didn’t she?”

“She may have mentioned it, in passing, as an example of girlish affection.”

“Then the two of you have been talking about me?”

“Naturally. It wouldn’t be in Maxi’s character to maintain a discreet silence, when her brother is in love with her best friend.”

“What does she think?”

“She thinks that I’ll have to make up my own mind.”

“Some best friend,” India said bitterly. The phone rang and startled her.

“Don’t answer it,” she said.

“It might be from one of my managers,” Toby sighed. “The restaurant business never sleeps.” He picked up the bedside phone, listened for a moment and then hung up angrily and abruptly.

“Not him?” India asked anxiously.

“I’m afraid so, darling. It was your ‘biggest fan’ again. And my unlisted number was changed only last month.”

“Oh, Toby, I’m sorry. That crazy guy. He writes me three times a week, and tries to call long distance. My secretary just tells him I’m not available. Forget him, it’s the price of fame.”

Toby unplugged the phone and turned back to India.

“Now listen, my love, you really have the most extraordinary and admirable facility to avoid facing facts,” he said, resuming the interrupted conversation. “Let’s cut to the chase. I’m blind, we can’t pretend that I’m not.”

“You’re not really blind,” India said stubbornly. “You can see something, you told me that your field of vision was less than five degrees, but that’s still
something.
”

“Less than five degrees out of a normal field of one hundred and forty in each eye, and that’s only when I put together a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there, where there are still a few cones functioning in my retina. It’s all fragmented, a nothing, not even black, just a kind of flickering, a now-and-then reality that has no color, no borders or stability. And it will probably get worse, certainly no better. And there’s no cure, no hope at all.”

“But your blindness skills, everything you learned at Saint Paul’s! You can do so much, Toby, you learned so much while you could still see … all those
years
of seeing, more than twenty-five good years. You told me yourself that you have an enormous number of visual clues, thousands of memories that help to piece things together, to make a pattern recognizable, it isn’t as if you’d been born blind. Anyway, what difference does the exact percentage matter, when you can function? When you can work? What does it have to do with the two of us? So what if you’ve
never seen me? When I get old and wrinkled and lose my looks you won’t care about it. You don’t love me just because I’m beautiful. Don’t you realize how much that means? Besides Maxi you’re the only person I know who doesn’t base some of his feelings about me on my particular face, you’re the only person I can trust to
like
me for no other reason than that I’m me. Doesn’t that make a difference to you? Don’t I make sense?”

“Perfect sense, up to a certain point. I don’t think it’s fair to you to involve you in my problems.”

“Fair? What’s fair is to take the happiness you know exists for you, now, this very minute, without doing any harm to anyone else, the happiness that exists if you just stretch out your hand,” India said, her voice trembling.

“You have an incredible ability to oversimplify, India, sweet, imperfect India. I can’t allow you to choose a man with my particular handicap, for it is a handicap, say what you will, even if you’re convinced, at this particular time, that it’s what you want. You have no idea of what the future holds, you can’t know how long I’ll be able to make you happy.”

“I
know
you’re the man I want,” India said, her voice golden with the intensity of her sureness, “and I know I’m not going to change my mind.”

“What, may I ask, does Doctor Florence Florsheim have to say about us?” Toby asked.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“She must have said something, analyst or not.”

“She said that it wasn’t recommended to make major life changes during the analytic process. Not that I couldn’t, just that it wasn’t recommended.”

“That’s all?”

“Word for word.”

“Well, I think she’s right.”

“Oh
rats
!” India howled, pounding her fists against his bare chest. “I knew you’d say that. You make fun of her all the time and suddenly when it suits you, you decide to agree with her.”

“Just because she’s your shrink doesn’t mean she’s necessarily wrong. Hey, what’s this I’ve found? Oh, oh, India, poor baby, I think you’ve got a crow’s foot in its earliest
stages. It probably won’t be noticeable on the screen for a few years, maybe even five if you never smile from now on. Let me kiss it and make it well.”

“You’re a first-class sadist, Toby. You know something? For the first time I’m absolutely convinced that you and Maxi are brother and sister.”

The morning of Cutter’s breakfast meeting with Leonard Wilder, Charlie Salomon had called and told Lily to meet him at the courthouse. He had used his considerable influence to arrange for Justin’s hearing to take place immediately following the judge’s arrival.

“I’ll go with you, darling,” Cutter said, “just let me cancel my breakfast date.”

“No, I don’t really think it’s a good idea,” Lily answered. “Not that I don’t want you there, but I believe it would be easier on Justin if we treated this as … routinely … as possible. Anyway, I promised Maxi to let her know as soon as he could get out of that awful place. I’ll call her and tell her to come with me.”

“Maxi, for moral support?”

“Well, you know how close she is to him.”

“All right, Lily, if you’re sure, but—”

“I’m positive. I’ll call you as soon as I’m back home.”

Lily picked up Maxi on the way downtown to the courthouse. There they met Charlie Salomon and two young lawyers from his office whom he had brought along. When Justin was brought in, handcuffed, Lily grasped Maxi’s hand tightly, and lowered her eyes so that if Justin happened to glance at her he wouldn’t see her watching him until the handcuffs were removed. How stubbornly defiant he looked, Maxi thought. His stance was as dangerous as it had always been, his head tilted at his characteristically aggressive angle but he limped slightly and no amount of toughness could disguise the dark bruises around his eyes, forehead and chin where the detectives had hit him with their saps. His spiky blond hair was matted in several places. Maxi flicked a glance at her brother and caught his eye. On impulse she winked broadly and smiled as if she
were remembering a private joke between them, but Justin looked away, without acknowledging her.