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“Listen, let me buy you a drink. Apologize in person.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Please, I insist.” The baritone again. Buford can tune it to accommodate an incredible range of emotions. “Look at it this way: you can tell me in person that you don’t like my work, which will erase the impersonal offense of e-mail, and I can apologize in person for being too persistent.”
Lincoln hesitates. The relief flowing through him at the sudden slaking of anger leaves him feeling slightly giddy. His clarity of purpose gets clouded, and for the moment, he forgets he’s the object of a police investigation. “OK.”
“Terrific! It’ll be a couple of weeks. I’m about to head off on a little trip to Iceland.”
“Iceland?”
“Beautiful country. You’ve never been there? Remarkably happy people. I’ve got a conference in Reykjavik that I’m turning into a vacation. But I’ll send you an e-mail when I get back.”
“OK.”
“Terrific. Maybe in the meantime, you might just take another look.”
“Another look?”
“See you in a few weeks.” Click.
Lincoln gently places the phone back in the cradle, then stares dumbly at the machine. Did I just make another mistake? he wonders. How did this happen? Maybe, he tells himself, maybe this is like a hostage situation—better to keep the perpetrator talking, hope that he’ll tire or that something serendipitous will happen. Maybe time will heal—even heal the old lady’s neck.
After a minute or so, Lincoln gets up from his desk and pulls the last three years of Pistakee catalogs from his bookshelf, then makes an inventory: out of fifty-seven books the house published in that time, the period of Lincoln’s employment, only three were by African Americans, and two of those were acquired before Lincoln arrived. This, in a city that is almost 40 percent black. That sent the first black man in history to the White House. Lincoln immediately confects a scene outside the Pistakee building—a crowd milling, traffic stopped, bullhorns blaring, the Reverend Jesse Jackson leading an angry protest with Tony Buford as the aggrieved centerpiece, the noise and infamy blowing away Lincoln’s reputation, his dignity, his family’s honor—and all his various hopes, up to and including the possibility of getting a job in New York.
12
THANK GOD FOR Bill Lemke, thinks John Lincoln. The washed-up sportswriter puts in a week of heroic work, e-mailing chapters to Lincoln that arrive at all hours of the day and night (11:44 p.m., 2:19 a.m., 5:05 a.m.—when does the man sleep?). Long ago, Lemke enjoyed an all-state career as a third baseman for Chicago’s huge Lane Tech High School, and Duddleston’s challenge has tapped the dormant competitive instincts of the vanished athlete (like extracting DNA from a fossilized bone). Lincoln has never heard Lemke sound so focused and thoughtful, so youthful. Lincoln crunches and polishes the new work, rationalizing sentences, excavating clichés, trimming lines, tightening scenes, inserting questions for the author that the two of them will go over later, though Lincoln finds that Lemke has done an admirable job of cleaning up his own text (apparently taking to heart many of the snippy and embittered suggestions Lincoln ma
de on the original manuscript).
On the first weekend of the book’s new, frantic publishing schedule, Lincoln spends most of both days at the office to keep up with Lemke’s prodigious pace. Lincoln feels drugged by the stale building air and sodden with Starbucks coffee, but in a nice turn, Duddleston swings by late Sunday afternoon. He’s ostensibly come to pick up some symphony tickets left in his desk, but Lincoln wonders if the boss hasn’t in fact found an excuse to check up, knowing the harsh deadline Pistakee faces to produce a finished manuscript.
“Hard at work!” Duddleston pronounces admiringly when he finds Lincoln in his office.
“Comin’ ’round the bend,” responds the executive editor, secretly thrilling, since he had been about to leave for the day and this small triumph of dedication could easily have been missed.
“Been here long?”
“Since about ten this morning.” Lincoln pauses, then adds modestly, “I was here most of yesterday, too. Bill is really churning the stuff out.”
Duddleston nods his appreciation. The two men consider each other’s casual attire. Duddleston’s trim white polo shirt and navy linen slacks outclass Lincoln’s old Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt and khaki shorts, but that’s OK with Lincoln (evidence of his utter focus on the task at hand). “How are you and Mary getting on these days?” asks Duddleston when the pause in the conversation grows uncomfortable.
“Oh, we talk.”
“I hope this tough deadline doesn’t get in the way of your reconciliation.”
“Not a problem.”
“Well, if you can manage it, take her out to dinner tonight and charge it to Pistakee. You guys deserve it.”
“Thanks!” says Lincoln, wondering whether the offer would work for Flam, since he hasn’t heard from Mary since their brief, prickly Sedona conversation.
“Give her my best,” says Duddleston as he departs, and Lincoln decides, no, better not to have to explain Flam to the company’s vigilant comptroller.
At the office several days later, Lincoln is finishing up a Wrigley Field chapter on the Bleacher Bums of ’69 when a message from Duddleston pops up in Lincoln’s e-mail inbox tagged with the bland subject “Personnel Communication.” Lincoln assumes it’s more on changes to the company health plan, which he can never understand anyway, so he continues editing. He only opens the message a few minutes later when he takes a break. “Senior Editor Arthur Wendt has resigned from Pistakee Press as of this morning,” the e-mail reads. “Arthur contributed seven years to the success of the company, and we wish him the best in his next endeavor.”
And that’s it. No elaboration. Nothing about why he’s leaving or where he’s going.
