The Imperfectionists (21 page)

She wipes her eyes. She can't stop smiling.

"I get to stay."

1975. OTT GROUP HEADQUARTERS, ATLANTA

Frantic calls poured in from the paper in Rome: yet another caretaker editor had
quit and no one was in charge anymore. After years of neglect, Boyd had to take action
.

His previous trip to the paper had been when he was still an undergraduate at
Yale. Then, he'd stayed at a hotel in Rome because he lacked the stomach to visit his
father's empty mansion. This time, Boyd was braver
.

But from the moment he entered he fell into a dark mood. He snaked his finger
along a picture frame, leaving a winding path in the dust. What are all these paintings
for? A woman with a ridiculously long neck. Wine bottles and hats. A chicken in midair.

A shipwreck. These things must have come with the place--Ott would never have wasted
money on ornaments. Boyd called in the housekeepers and, not bothering to greet them,
ordered that the mansion be scrubbed, top to bottom. "Also," he told them, "cover these
paintings."

He opened the shutters. His father would have looked out from here, through the
spiked fence, down the lonely lane. To think that Ott had acquired this spectacular house-

-not to mention the rest of the family fortune--from nothing. It was astonishing; it was
humbling
.

Boyd considered the living room, its soaring rococo ceiling, the worn Oriental
rugs, the bookshelves, the old telephone on the wall. How grand it had been when his
father marched across this room! Boyd could picture Ott striding over the carpets, up the
stairs. Boyd always imagined his father like this--in perpetual motion. He could never
conjure the man sitting still. Indeed, he had no sense of Ott simply living here, month
after month, for years in the end
.

Why had Ott stayed here so long? This place hadn't been his home. That had been
in Atlanta. But buildings adjusted to Ott, not the other way around. He had deemed that
the world needed the paper. So he damn well set about inventing it. He never sat still.

That was how the great man had been
.

Thinking of the paper's current state, Boyd went rigid with anger and shame. It
was an affront to his father's memory, and Boyd himself was responsible
.

The next morning, he met with all the section editors and asked them to hold tight-

-a new editor-in-chief was on the way. When Boyd returned to Atlanta, he employed a
headhunting firm to poach a star from a top American newspaper. Someone young,
bright, with spark. He got two out of three
.

Milton Berber was hardly in the first bloom of youth. He'd already had a long
journalistic career at a Washington paper, starting after military service in World War
II. He'd reported on district court, got a break covering the State Department, became
deputy metro editor, then deputy national editor, then deputy assistant managing editor.

But by 1975 he had to admit it: he wasn't going any higher
.

This annoyed him, since he believed he'd make a fine boss. But no one had ever
given him a chance, not when he was driving a jeep around Naples for the U.S. Army,
nor as an editor in Washington. True, it was not exactly a dream come true to work at a
second-tier international newspaper. But at least he'd be running the place
.

Boyd flew out to Rome with Milton to introduce the man around. After meeting
the downtrodden staff and grasping the paper's mood, Milton had doubts. But Boyd--not
the most charming man, perhaps--did seem intent on turning the paper around. So Milton
said yes
.

He gathered the staff and told them, "Newspapers are like anything else: they're
pure and incorruptible and noble--as far as they can afford to be. Starve them and they'll
kneel in the muck with the rest of the bums. Rich papers can afford to be upstanding and,
if you like, self-important. We don't have that luxury right now."

"So you're saying we have to kneel in muck?" a reporter asked
.

"My point is the opposite. We need to start making money here. People don't read
us at the moment. We're writing stories we think we should write, but not what people
actually want to read."

"Hey," an editor objected, "we know what our readers want."

"Look, I don't intend to ruffle feathers here," Milton proceeded. "I onlywant to be
straight with you. And this is how I see the situation. The paper started out as a
pamphlet."

Boyd bristled at this, interrupting to say, "It has always been more than that."

"Broad strokes, I'm using broad strokes here. Bear with me."

The staff wondered if they were witnessing a fiasco. This was Milton's first public
encounter with the owner and the employees, and he was on the verge of alienating both.

"Withhold your judgment," he said. "I'm going to say some lousy things. Awful things.

You ready? Here goes. This publication started out as a cute pamphlet--please don't fire
me on my first day, Boyd!"

Everyone laughed
.

"The paper started as a terrific idea," Milton went on. "But somehow it has ended
up as blotting paper. That's what it is now. That's not meant as a slight against anyone
here. It certainly isn't a slight against the institution itself. I'm saying it's time to make
this paper into a real paper. The way we do this is with two ingredients--the same two
you need for any success: brains and hard work. I want to quit the wishy-washy
approach. We don't have to match the big newspapers all the time. And we don't have to
be renegades just for the sake of it. I want serious stories that are our own, on the one
hand, and entertaining trifles, on the other. All the rest we run in the briefs column. And I
want laughs. We're too scared of humor--so reverent all the time. Bullshit!

Entertainment, folks! Look how the Brits do it. They print pretty girls, offer weekends in
Brighton. And they sell a hell of a lot more copies than we do. Now, I'm not saying we
turn this into a red top or a big top, let alone force anyone to go to Brighton. Heaven
forbid. But we've got to acknowledge that we're entertainers of a sort. That doesn't mean
phony. Doesn't mean vulgar. It means readable in the best way--so people wake up
wanting us before their coffee. If we're so reverent about public service that nobody
reads us, we're not doing the public any service at all. We're going to raise circulation,
and make money doing it."

The staffers were right to applaud with circumspection. Milton's remarks did not
bode well for everyone, particularly those who had always relied on brains and hard
work
not
being requirements of the job. Boyd, for his part, was tempted to fire Milton
immediately. But he knew how badly itwould reflect on him. He'd chosen the man, had
flown all the way over here. He would give him a year, then fire him
.

Milton stood among his staff, shaking hands, memorizing names. He already knew
them in a way--he understood this breed backward and had foreseen how his speech
would be received. Journalists were as touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as
factory machinists. He couldn't help smiling
.

"76 DIE IN

BAGHDAD BOMBINGS"

* * *

NEWS EDITOR--CRAIG MENZIES

ANNIKA CROUCHES BEFORE THE WASHING MACHINE IN THEIR

apartment, unloading damp clothes. "I'm beginning to suspect that my purpose in life is laundry," she says. "All the rest is just fleeting glory."

Menzies stands behind her and touches his forefinger to the crown of her head, following the swirl of her dyed-black hair. He opens his palm across the top of her skull as if to measure it, then hooks his thumbs under the straps of her dungarees and tugs. She leans against his palm and kisses his fingers, looking up. "Seven hundred and twenty-eight socks last year," she tells him. "That's how many I washed."

"You

counted?"

"Of course." She reaches into the washing machine and draws out a bedsheet that seems never to end.

He kneels beside her, hugs her around the middle. "I have the day off," he says.

"Let me do something."

He gets few days off from the paper. Normally, he starts his labors at 6 A.M., logging on from home to see what has happened overnight in the United States and what is happening at that moment in Asia. He scans the websites of competing news organizations and responds to emails, typing softly so as not to wake her in the other room. By seven, he is at the bus stop on Via Marmorata, urging the No. 30 to hurry up.

He's first in the office and turns on the lights: throughout the newsroom, fluorescent beams flicker on like reluctant morning eyes. He places a thermos of American coffee on his desk, turns on the TV, checks CNN and the BBC, consults the news wires, compiles a list of stories to assign. Other employees arrive: secretaries, technicians, editors, reporters. By nine, he is consulting with staff correspondents and the few stringers they have left overseas. Then Kathleen shows up, demanding a rundown of the world at that moment. She never appears to pay attention, yet absorbs it all. "Quiet day," she says.

"Let's hope something happens." He shepherds the main stories through their various stages: writing, backfielding, copy-editing. He consults with layout, sizes up ad space, requests photos and orders graphics--all through a blizzard of phone calls. Colleagues pester him to take a break, not because they care but to underscore that he's a sucker to toil like this. When the late edition closes, everyone else goes home and he puts the newsroom to bed: the fluorescent beams flicker back to sleep. On the bus ride home to Testaccio, he is assaulted by headlines that stream across his mind like a news ticker:

"Iran test-fires 3 new missiles ... 90% of maritime life forms extinct by 2048 ...

Evangelical leader resigns over gay hooker scandal." He takes the elevator upstairs. The news ticker continues: "Keys in right pocket, officials say ... Unlock deadbolt, sources suggest ... Call Annika's name, report recommends." He does so, and she arrives to kiss him on the lips. She shuttles him into the kitchen, has him tasting bubbling sauces, hearing about her day. All that mattered a minute before no longer does. The news stops.

Annika's day runs to a different schedule. She rises at ten, drains a glass of grapefruit juice over the sink, eats jam toast on the terrace, crumbs floating down to the sidewalk as she watches the neighborhood below: the bank security guard who is always on his cellphone, schoolboys kicking soccer balls, little old ladies tromping to and from the covered market. She stretches her arms above her head, emits a little squeak, licks her jam-sticky fingers. She showers with the bathroom door open, lets her hair dry while reading emails, browses the Internet, sends messages to Menzies. By 1 P.M., she emerges into the sun for a stroll up Lungotevere, along the sidewalk that overlooks the Tiber. She follows the river's snaking path from Testaccio toward the Centro Storico. The bottle-green water eddies in parts, is still in others. As with much in Rome, the river has been left to its own devices, a strip of jungle winding through the caterwauling city. Weeds clamber down the riverbanks, clasping at bogwater, snagging what litter washes downstream: plastic bottles, furniture flyers, shoeboxes, a thousand bobbing cigarette filters. The sidewalk has been abandoned, too, left to the tree roots, which seam the pavement, cracking it upward into concrete lips. Back home, she deposits her groceries on the kitchen table and flings open the shutters. Light slices across the parquet, up the white walls. She stuffs in another load of laundry, sets the dial, sits down with a book.

She is trying to improve her Italian by reading short stories--Natalia Ginzburg and Alberto Moravia of late. She lunches late--3 P.M., typically--in order to contain her appetite till his nighttime return. She watches a little idiotic Italian TV, irons, washes dishes, hangs laundry, preps dinner. By the time he arrives, she is famished and she bundles him into the kitchen. She never inquires about the day's news--news is only disappointing, and there is nothing she can do about it. After dinner, Menzies falls into bed while she watches old movies with headphones, eating homemade yogurt sweetened with rhubarb compote. When friends ask her about life in Rome, she says, "It's fine, it's good," then is out of words. She does not admit that the apartment is magnificent, the neighborhood ideal, and Menzies an endearing mess. She does not speak of the pleasure she takes in tidying him, nor that she hasn't snapped a single photo in earnest since coming to Rome, that she has no desire to, that she doesn't care about grants or galleries anymore, if indeed she ever did. Above all, she will not admit that she is happy.

"I just don't want you to get bored," he says.

"I'm not." She puts on music: Dinah Washington singing "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes." Menzies was clueless about jazz before meeting her, but she has been educating him, introducing him to Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra.