The Imperfectionists (9 page)

On the arm of his chair she sits, watching him struggle with the cork.

"Pop," he says finally, pouring the first dash into his own glass.

"Pop," she says and presses a kiss into his shoulder. No reason to mention anything at all.

1957. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME

The paper increased to twelve pages a day, adding a culture section, Puzzle-Wuzzle, and the obituaries. Circulation broke fifteen thousand, with most of the copies
sold in Europe, plus a sprinkling in the Maghreb and the Far East. Despite all
predictions, Ott was still there, running the show
.

His life, beyond the paper, was lived alone on the Aventine Hill in a sixteenth-century mansion that he had bought from an impoverished Italian noble family. The place
was four stories of stone, painted orange and brown, with long yellow shutters, giving the
impression of habitable marzipan. A spiked fence surrounded the property, and maids
and cooks and odd-job men made their way in and out through the squeaky front gate.

Inside, the ceilings were covered with frescoes of a highly sentimental nature--cheeky
cherubim and plump lovers frolicking by waterfalls. Ott disliked these and was tempted to
have them painted over
.

However, he rarely looked upward, focusing instead on the walls, which he
covered with paintings. His proclaimed interest was financial--Europe was full of
bargains after the war, he said. But it was Betty who adored art. During her years in
Rome, she had become passionate about paintings, haunting Renaissance churches to
study dimly lit masterpieces, or using her press pass to sneak into newly opened art
exhibits. So Ott made her his counselor: whatever she admired, he bought
.

They frequented a private gallery near Quattro Fontane run by a flamboyant
Armenian emigre named Petros, whose chief preoccupation was the provenance of works
rather than their artistic merit. He listed illustrious past owners and recounted barely
credible tales of how the pieces had ended up in his hands: train wrecks in Chungking,
cutlass duels in the Crimea, pouches of counterfeit rubies. He rarely deigned to identify
the artists, so Betty conveyed this detail to Ott: "That's Leger, I think. Not sure about this
one. But that's Modigliani, for certain. And this is a Turner."

Betty even decided where in Ott's mansion each work should hang. She nudged
the frame a little to the right, a little to the left. "Straight now?"

He stood a distance back, studying the shipwreck by Turner, all swirling doom
and sinking sailors. "Tell me what's good about this one," he said
.

She took a step back and, hand on hip, strove to explain. Her confused answer--he
half smiled as he listened--grew all the more fervid as clarity failed her
.

"If you don't get it," she concluded, "well, then, you just don't get it."

"Who says I don't?" he responded, winking. "Maybe I just like watching you tell
me."

Downstairs for lunch, Betty placed a vast
mozzarella di bufala
upon a plate and
fetched the carving knife and fork. Poised above the cheese, she paused, not looking up.

"What," she asked, "are you doing out here?"

"The paper," he replied
.

"I know, but ..." She inserted the fork: a milky pool expanded across the plate
.

He took the cutlery from her hands, speared a piece, and fed it to her off the knife
.

"GLOBAL WARMING GOOD

FOR ICE CREAMS"

* * *

CORRECTIONS EDITOR--HERMAN COHEN

HERMAN STANDS BEFORE THE COPYDESK, TORCH-EYES PASSING

over the three editors on duty. They halt in mid-keystroke. "And I haven't even accused anyone yet," he says darkly, opening that morning's paper as if it contained a murder weapon. What it does contain is worse: a mistake. He touches the error with contempt, pokes at the despicable word, as if to shove it off the page and into a different publication altogether. "GWOT," he says. He slaps the page, shakes it at them. "GWOT!"

"G

what?"

"GWOT!" he repeats. "GWOT is not in the Bible. And yet it is here!" He jabs the article, driving a sausage finger through page three.

They deny responsibility. But Herman has infinitely less time for pardon than for blame. "If none of you nitwits know what GWOT means," he says, "then why is GWOT

in the paper?"

An arctic silence settles upon the copydesk.

"Have

you

read
the Bible?" he demands. "Any of you?" He glances at the sorry trio of copy editors before him: Dave Belling, a simpleton far too cheerful to compose a decent headline; Ed Rance, who wears a white ponytail--what more need one say?; and Ruby Zaga, who is sure that the entire staff is plotting against her, and is correct. What is the value in remonstrating with such a feckless triumvirate?

"Sooner or later ..." Herman says, and allows the partial threat to hang there. He turns from them, prodding the air. "Credibility!" he declares. "Credibility!"

He elbows into his office, and the momentum of his belly topples a stack of books--he must tread with caution in here, for this is an overstuffed room and he an overstuffed man. Reference works clutter the room--classics like
Webster's New World
College Dictionary, Bartlett's

Familiar Quotations, National Geographic Atlas, The World Almanac and Book
of Facts
, along with idiosyncratic tomes like
The Food Snob's Dictionary, The Oxford
Dictionary of Popes, Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet, The Visual
Dictionary of the Horse, The Complete Book of Soups and Stews, Cassell's Latin
Dictionary, Albanian-English/English-Albanian Standard Dictionary
, and
A Concise
Dictionary of Old Icelandic
.

He notices a gap on the shelf and searches the book skyscrapers rising from the floor for the missing volume. He locates it
(A Dictionary of Birds, Part IV: Sheathbill--Zygodactyli)
, slides it back into place, hikes up his belt, lines himself up with his desk chair, and inserts his bottom--one more bulky reference work returned to its rightful home. He drags the keyboard to his bunchy gut and, condescending to the screen, types a new entry for the Bible:
* GWOT:
No one knows what this means, above all those who use the term. Nominally, it stands for Global War on Terror. But since conflict against an abstraction is, to be polite, tough to execute, the term should be understood as marketing gibberish. Our reporters adore this sort of humbug; it is the copy editor's job to exclude it.

See also:
OBL; Acronyms;
and
Nitwits
.

He hits save. It is entry No. 18,238. "The Bible"--his name for the paper's style guide--was once printed and bound, with a copy planted on every desk across the newsroom. Now it exists solely within the paper's computer network, not least because the text has grown to approximately the size of metropolitan Liechtenstein. The purpose of his Bible is to set down laws: to impart whether a "ceasefire" is, properly speaking, a

"cease-fire" or indeed a "cease fire;" to adjudge when editors must use "that" and when

"which;" to resolve quarrels over prepositions, false possessives, dangling modifiers--on the copydesk, fisticuffs have broken out over less.

Kathleen raps on his door. "Such were the joys," she says wearily.

"Which joys are these?"

"The joys of trying to put out a non-embarrassing daily with roughly five percent of the resources I need."

"Ah, yes," he replies. "The joys of the paper."

"And you? Whose self-esteem are you dismantling today?"

He massages his fingers and dips them into his trouser pocket, which is swollen as if with pebbles. He retrieves a mound of sucking sweets that have melted together.

"You'll be thrilled to hear," he informs her, popping the candies into his mouth, "that I have a new copy of
Why?
ready." By this, he means the monthly internal newsletter in which he decants his favorite blunders from the paper. It is fair to say the staffers do not greet each edition of
Why?
with elation.

Kathleen

sighs.

"Duty does call, I'm afraid," he says. "Now, what can I do for you, my dear?"

She often stops by for advice. Her deputy may be Craig Menzies, but Herman is her true counselor. He has worked at the paper for more than thirty years, has held most editorial jobs here (though never reporter), and served as the acting editor-in-chief during interregnums in 1994, 2000, and 2004. Staffers still shiver to recall his stewardship. Yet for all his bluster Herman is not disliked. His news judgment is envied, his memory is an unfailing resource, and his kindness emerges for all those who hang around long enough.

"What are your thoughts about my culture shake-up?" she asks.

"You managed to dislodge Clint Oakley finally."

"Very proud of myself over that," she says. "And you were right: Arthur Gopal isn't a write-off. Things remain ugly on the stringer front, though. Still no one in Cairo.

And Paris remains unmanned."

"How can Accounts Payable refuse to replace Lloyd?"

"It's

insane."

"Outrageous."

"You here tomorrow?"

"Day off, my dear. Wait, wait--before you wander away, I wanted to warn you that I have a delightful new correction upcoming."

She groans; he grins.

Corrections

have

proliferated of late. A handful even earned a place on Herman's corkboard: Tony Blair included on a list of "recently deceased Japanese dignitaries;"

Germany described as suffering from "a genital malaise in the economy;" and almost daily appearances from "the Untied States." He types out his latest publishable correction: "In an article by Hardy Benjamin in the Tuesday business section, the former dictator of Iraq was erroneously referred to as Sadism Hussein. The correct spelling is Saddam. We doubt that our typographical error impinged on the man's credibility, however, we regret--" He checks his watch. Miriam leaves tonight, and Jimmy arrives tomorrow. Herman still has much to do. He slips on his coat, jabs a finger in the air.

"Credibility!" he says.

The front door to his apartment in Monteverde won't budge, so he shoulders it halfway open and, with a grunt, squeezes inside. His wife's luggage is blocking the passage. She is scheduled on an overnight flight from Rome back to Philadelphia to visit their daughter and grandchildren. The
click-clack
of her heels sounds down the hallway.

"Sweetie pie," he calls, and edges past the luggage. "Sweetie pie, I'm afraid I banged one of your suitcases. The red one."

"Burgundy," she corrects him.

"That's not red?"

At work, Herman makes the corrections. Not here.

"I hope I didn't break anything. Were there presents in there? Should we open and check? What do you think?" Awaiting her judgment, he contorts as if before a teetering vase.

"It was packed perfectly," she says.

"I'm so sorry."

"I took ages doing that."

"I know. I'm terrible. Can I help?"

She kneels to unbuckle the luggage straps, and he raises a finger--not to prod the air this time but to beg permission. "Darling, might I possibly make you a drink? Might that be nice?"

"Can I check my bag first?"

"Yes, yes, of course."

He takes refuge in the kitchen, dicing carrots and celery. At the sound of her clicking heels, he swivels around. "A nice, hearty soup to fill you up for the long trip."

"You make me sound like a thermos."

He resumes chopping. "These vegetables are delicious--could I slice you a few?"

"Such a pity you can't come. But I guess you prefer Jimmy."

"Don't say that."

"Sorry," she says. "I'm being awful." She steals a carrot.

"Are you worried about the flight?"

She blinks in affirmation, then studies his soup mix. "Needs salt."

"How can you say?" he protests, then tastes it. She is right. He salts the soup, stirs it, kisses her cheek.

After dinner, he sees Miriam off at the airport and speeds home in their dented blue Mazda, a tiny model that, with him inside, looks like a bumper car. He tucks fresh sheets on the spare bed for Jimmy and tidies up. But there is not as much preparation as he'd expected. He runs a finger around the pot of cold soup
(acquacotta di Talamone:
chopped carrots and celery, chopped pancetta, pumpkin, zucchini, kidney beans, lima beans, artichoke hearts, grated pecorino, ground pepper, eight boiled eggs, fourteen pieces of toast). He and Jimmy met in Baltimore in the late 1950s, the only Jewish kids at a Presbyterian private school. Herman had been sent there by his father, a foul-tempered Zionist and a dead ringer for Karl Marx who believed the best school in the district should be forced to swallow a fat little Jew, namely, his son. The fat little Jew himself saw few benefits in being someone else's battering ram. But, thankfully, he had been preceded at the school by another Jewish kid, Jimmy Pepp, who enjoyed legendary status there for having climbed atop the church library and smoked a pipe on the roof. They said he had descended via the drainpipes and kept the tobacco smoldering all the way down.

And it had been windy. The tale was dubious, but there was no denying that as a youth Jimmy had kept a pipe, a curved marvel with a meerschaum bowl and mahogany body that he puffed on the hill behind school, often leaning over a book of poetry--E. E.