The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (38 page)

Joe looked at Sammy. "We did it together," he said. "Sammy and I. Mostly Sammy. I just said something about a moth."

"Aw, now don't be modest, Joe," Sammy said, stepping over to pat Joe on the shoulder. "He pretty much slapped the whole thing together himself?'

The practice of magic, which Joe had resumed in front of the mirror in Jerry Glovsky's bedroom immediately after meeting with Hermann Hoffman, also seemed to have played a role in her parturition. It was true, however, that Sammy, for some time, had been digging around for a female superbeing. The addition of sex to the costumed-hero concept was a natural and, apart from a few minor efforts at other companies— the Sorceress of Zoom, the Woman in Red—yet to be attempted. Sammy had been toying with ideas for a cat-woman, a bird-woman, a mythological Amazon (all of them soon to be tried elsewhere), and a lady boxer named Kid Vixen when Joe had proposed his secret tribute to the girl from Greenwich Village. The idea of a moth-woman was also, in its way, a natural. National had another huge hit on its hands with Batman in
Detective Comics,
and the appeal of a nocturnal character, one who derived her power from the light of the moon, was evident.

"I don't know," said Shelly Anapol. "It makes me a little nervous." He took from his partner, and held with the tips of his fingers, the painting of Luna Moth, which Joe had invested with all the hopefulness and desire that Rosa, admittedly in person a somewhat less buxom creature, had stirred in him—he had worked most of the time with an erection. Anapol pushed aside a letter that lay open on his desk blotter and dropped the painting there, as if it were extremely hot or had been dipped in carbolic. "Those are very large breasts, boys."

"We know it, Mr. Anapol," said Sammy.

"But a moth, I don't know, it's not a popular insect. Why can't she be a butterfly? There must be some good names there. Red, uh, what? Red Dot... Bluewing ... Pearly ... I don't know."

"She can't be a
butterfly!''
said Sammy. "She's the Mistress of the
Night."

"That's another thing: we can't say 'mistress.' Already I'm getting fifty letters a week from priests and ministers. A rabbi from Schenectady. Luna Moth. Luna Moth." The look of incipient nausea had come into his eyes and slack jaw. They were going to make themselves a pile with this.

"George, you think this is a good idea?"

"Oh, it's drivel, Mr. Anapol," Deasey said brightly. "Extremely pure."

Anapol nodded. "You haven't been wrong yet," he said. He picked up the letter that he had pushed aside, scanned it quickly, then put it back down. "Jack?"

"They got nothing like it," Ashkenazy said.

Anapol turned to Sammy. "It's settled, then. Call Pantaleone, the Glovskys, whoever you need to fill in the rest of the book. What the hell, make 'em all dollies. Maybe we could call it
All Doll.
Huh? Huh?
All Doll.
That's new. Is that new?"

"I never heard of anything like it."

"Let
them
infringe on us for a change. Yeah, good, get the kids in here, George, and get them started on this. I want something by Monday."

"Here we go again," said Sammy. "There's just one thing, Mr. Anapol."

Ashkenazy and Anapol looked at him. You could see they knew what was coming. Sammy glanced at Deasey, remembering the speech the editor had made on Friday night, hoping to find some encouragement. Deasey was watching intently, his face expressionless but pale, his forehead beaded with perspiration.

"Uh-oh," Anapol said. "Here it comes."

"We want in on the Escapist radio program, that's first."

"That's
first?"

"Second is, you agree that this character, Luna Moth, is half ours. Fifty percent to Empire Comics, fifty percent to Kavalier Clay. We get half of the merchandising, half the radio program if there is one. Half of everything. Otherwise we take her, and our services, elsewhere."

Anapol half turned his head toward his partner. "You were right," he said.

"And we want raises, too," Sammy said, with another glance at Deasey, deciding, now that the subject seemed to be open for discussion, to press it as far as he could.

"Another two hundred dollars a week," Joe said. The
Ark of Miriam
was scheduled to sail in the early spring of next year. At that rate, if he put away an additional two hundred a week, he would be able to underwrite four, five, perhaps half a dozen passages more than he had promised.

"Two hundred dollars a week!"
Anapol shouted.

Deasey chuckled and shook his head. He seemed genuinely tickled.

"And, uh, yeah, the same for Mr. Deasey, here, too," said Sammy. "He's going to have a lot more to do."

"You can't
negotiate
for me, Mr. Clay," Deasey said dryly. "I'm management."

"Oh."

"But I do thank you."

All at once Anapol looked very tired. What with phony bombs and millionaires and threatening letters from famous attorneys hand-delivered by messengers, he had not slept well since Friday. Last night he had tossed and turned for hours, while beside him Mrs. Anapol growled at him to lie still.

"Shark!" she had called him. "Shark, be still." She called him "shark" because she had read in Frank Buck's column that this animal literally could not stop moving or it would die. "What's the matter with you, my God, it's like trying to sleep with a cement mixer in the bed."

I almost got blown up!
he wanted to tell her for the one hundredth time. He had decided to say nothing about the cheap-novelty bomb in the Empire offices, as he had said nothing about the threatening letters that had been trickling in steadily ever since Kavalier Clay had declared unilateral war on the Axis.

"I'm going to lose my shirt," he had said instead.

"So you'll lose your shirt," his wife said.

"It's a goddamn very nice shirt I'm going to lose. Do you know how much money there is in radio? With the pins, the pencils, the cereal boxes. We're not just looking at novelties, you know. This is Escapist pajamas. Bath towels. Board games. Soft drinks."

"They won't take it away."

"They're going to try."

"So let them try. In the meantime, you get on the radio, and I have a chance to meet an important and cultivated man like James Love. I saw him in the newsreel once. He looks just like John Barrymore."

"He does look like John Barrymore."

"So what's the matter with you? Why can't you ever
enjoy
anything you get?"

Anapol shifted a little in bed and produced the latest entry in an encyclopedic display of groaning. As was the case every night since Empire had made the move to the Empire State Building, his knees ached, his back was sore, and there was a sharp crick in the side of his neck. His beautiful black-marble office was so spacious and high-ceilinged that it made him uncomfortable. He couldn't get used to having so much room. As a result, he had a tendency to sit hunched all day, balled up in his chair, as if to simulate the paradoxically comforting effects of more cramped and uncomfortable quarters. It gave him a pain.

"Sammy Klayman," she said finally.

"Sammy," he agreed.

"So then don't cut him out."

"I have to cut him out."

"And why is that."

"Because cutting him in would set what your brother calls 'a dangerous president.' "

"Because."

" 'Because.' Because those two signed a contract. A perfectly legal, standard industry contract. They signed all their rights to the character away, now and forever. They're just not entitled."

"So it would be against the law, you're saying," his wife said with her usual light ironic touch, "for you to give them a piece of the radio money."

A fly came into the room. Anapol, wearing green silk pajamas with black piping, got out of bed. He turned on the bedside light and pulled on his dressing jacket. He took a copy of
Modern Screen
with Dolores Del Rio's picture on the cover, rolled it up, and greased the fly against the window. He cleaned up the mess, took off his dressing jacket, climbed back into bed, and turned out the light.

"No," he said, "it would not be against the goddamn law."

"Good," Mrs. Anapol had said. "I don't want you breaking any laws. A jury hears that you're in the comic book business, they'll lock you away in Sing Sing just like that." Then she rolled over and settled in for the night. Anapol had groaned and flopped and drunk three glasses of Bromo-Seltzer, until at last he hit on the general outlines of a plan that eased the pangs of a modest but genuine conscience and allayed his anxieties about the mounting ire that Kavalier Clay's war appeared to be drawing down on Empire Comics. He had not had time to run it past his brother-in-law, but he knew that Jack would go along.

"So," he said now. "You can have in on the radio show. Assuming there is a radio show. We'll give you credit, all right, something like, what, 'Oneonta Woolens, et cetera, presents
The Adventures of the Escapist,
based on the character by Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay appearing every month in the pages of et cetera.' Plus, for every episode that airs, let's say you two receive a payment. A royalty. Call it fifty dollars per show."

"Two hundred," Sammy said.

"One."

"One fifty."

"
One
. Come on, that's three hundred a week. You're looking at possibly fifteen grand a year to split between you."

Sammy looked at Joe, who nodded. "Okay."

"Smart boy. All right, as for Miss Moth here. Fifty percent is out of the question. You have no right to any part of her. You boys came up with her as employees of Empire Comics, on our payroll. She's ours. We have the law on our side here, I know, because I have spoken to my attorney, Sid Foehn of Harmattan, Foehn Buran, about this very subject in the past. The way he explained it to me, it's just like they do at the Bell Laboratories. Any invention a guy comes up with there, no matter who thought it up or how long they worked on it, even if they did it all by themselves, it doesn't matter, as long as they were employed there, it belongs to the laboratory."

"Don't cheat us, Mr. Anapol," Joe put in abruptly. Everyone looked shocked. Joe had misjudged the force of the word "cheat" in English. He thought it merely meant to treat someone unfairly, without any necessary implication of evil intent.

"I would never
cheat
you boys," said Anapol, looking profoundly hurt. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. "Excuse me. Coming down with a cold. Let me finish, all right? Fifty percent is, like I say, we'd be crazy and foolish and stupid to go along with that, and you can't threaten me with taking this dolly to somebody else because, like I say, you made her up on my payroll and she's mine. Talk to a lawyer of your own if you want. But, look, let's avoid confrontation, why don't we? In recognition of the fine track record you two have so far, coming up with this stuff, and just to show you boys, you know, that we appreciate what you've done for us, we'd be willing to cut you in on this Moth deal to the tune of what—"

He looked at Ashkenazy, who shrugged elaborately.

"Four?" he croaked.

"Call it five," Anapol said. "Five percent."

"Five percent!" Sammy said, looking as though Anapol's meaty hand had slapped him.

"Five percent!" said Joe.

"To split between you."

"What!" Sammy leapt from his chair.

"Sammy." Joe had never seen his cousin so red in the face. He tried to remember if he had ever seen him lose his temper at all. "Sammy, five percent, even so, this could be talking about the hundreds of thousands of dollars." How many ships could be fitted out, for that, and filled with the lost children of the world? With enough money, it might not matter if the doors of all the world's nations were closed—a very rich man could afford to buy some island somewhere, empty and temperate, and build the damned children a country of their own. "Maybe the millions someday."

"But five percent, Joe. Five percent of something we created one hundred percent!"

"And owe to Jack and me one hundred percent," said Anapol. "You know, it wasn't so long ago a hundred dollars sounded like a lot of money to you boys, as I recall."

"Sure, sure," said Joe. "Okay, look, Mr. Anapol, I'm sorry for what I said about cheating. I think you are being very much square."

"Thank you," Anapol said.

"Sammy?"

Sammy sighed. "Okay. I'm in."

"Hold on a minute," Anapol said. "I'm not done. You get your radio royalty. And the credit I mentioned. And the raises. Hell, we'll raise George's pay, too, and happy to do it." Deasey tipped an imaginary hat to Anapol. "And cut you two in for five percent of the Moth character. There's just one condition."

"What is it?" Sammy asked warily.