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By now, Lincoln is prepared. He turns to the poet and addresses him earnestly. “Look, you’re an educated guy. You majored in English at Kenyon, for Chrissake. You’re extremely well read. You can’t really think there’s any quality to those poems.”
Buford absorbs this mixed insult evenly. “I’m surprised at you, John,” he says, for the first time addressing Lincoln by his first name. “Do you think you’re living in the nineteenth century? We’re in 2009. No one suggests there’s a relation between quality and popular culture, except perhaps an inverse one.” He reaches for his thin briefcase and unzips the top, then pulls out a copy of Pistakee’s spring catalog. “Shall we consider some of the books you’ve been publishing? The John Wayne Gacy Labyrinth: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer. Or maybe The Lava Lamp Story.”
Lincoln holds up his hand to interrupt. “But it’s a business—it’s all about sales, or potential sales. Before we take on a book, I have to convince Byron Duddleston, our owner, that the book will make money.”
“Who do you suppose has a better sense of the consumer—a former trader of hog bellies or someone who has spent more than five years studying human desire?”
So Buford has done his homework. He knows Pistakee. Lincoln smiles but shakes his head. “I’m sorry. Byron would laugh me out of the room.”
Buford sighs noisily. He has a way of exhaling through his nose that suggests both pain and menace. Tony Soprano featured the same tic. “You make things too hard on yourself, John. One of the lessons I’ve learned, one of the things the studies all show us, is that successful people know when and how to make compromises with themselves.”
“But what about principles?” Lincoln protests. “What’s the harm in sticking up for your principles?”
“Principles are fine. But like every other living thing, they should evolve.” Standing, Buford takes a card from a leather wallet in his inside jacket pocket. “My brother,” he says, handing the card to Lincoln.
The type is embossed:
Lucas Buford
Attorney at Law
Above the list of contact information, Lincoln recognizes the name of a Loop law firm. “Your brother is a lawyer?” Lincoln asks wanly.
“You’ll be hearing from us,” Buford says before climbing the stairs to Wacker Drive.
Lincoln places the card in the pocket of his shirt, then lingers for a few minutes by the river. The cheerful effects of the champagne have worn off. He leans on the railing above the water, communing with the hundreds of forgotten victims of the Eastland Disaster. Buford admires the march of progress, the erasure of folly and sorrow, but it hardly seems fair. Losers can’t catch a break.
14
IT’S HARD TO lead a normal life when you have to plot your movements to avoid a process server. Lincoln assumes Buford’s lawsuit will drop at any moment, and his sketchy knowledge of civil litigation suggests that word will come when some shady guy in a soiled overcoat jams a legal document into his hands. Leaving home in the morning, Lincoln pauses with the door cracked to make sure no one is lurking outside. He alters his commute, exiting the train one station early so he can approach Pistakee’s building from the rear, unseen. Rather than go out to lunch, he has a Jimmy John’s sandwich delivered daily, and he reminds Kim not to buzz in anyone she doesn’t know. Does any of this do any good?
Lincoln worries about his health
. Stress is a killer. He’s started to break into a sweat at the least provocation, or no provocation at all, and he seems to spend all day chilling in the office as the air conditioning hits his damp shirt. Sitting there one afternoon, feeling clammy and distracted, he wonders if maybe Buford is right, maybe Lincoln really is making things too hard on himself. He finds that he can (seemingly) lower his blood pressure simply by letting his imagination play with the preposterous notion that he might get rid of Buford by publishing him.
Lincoln never got around to returning the poet’s manuscript, so he retrieves it from the side table and leafs again through the pages, not certain what he hopes to find. He absently recites titles, “The Typewriter,” “Buttering an English Muffin.” In Buford’s poetic world, “The Brown Easy Chair” memorializes an avuncular hunk of wood, cushion, and corduroy that comforts a little boy. Lincoln lets himself wonder if perhaps he’s grown jaded and too quick to judge. After all, Buford is probably right about one thing—Lincoln lives within the bubble of the cultural elite.
In this frame of mind, Lincoln comes up with the notion of shopping for a second opinion. But from whom? Duddleston hasn’t yet replaced Arthur Wendt, and Lincoln has so little regard for Hazel Lanier that even her gushing endorsement (unthinkable, of course) wouldn’t mean much. Flam—well, Flam would guffaw at this stuff and never let Lincoln forget it. Lincoln needs a fresh, unbiased eye, so when Amy stops in to drop off some photographs for the Wrigley Field book, Lincoln figures, why not?
By now, they’ve relaxed somewhat their frosty office interactions, but Amy still looks puzzled when Lincoln hands her Buford’s manuscript. “See what you think,” he says.
“A book of poems?” Amy asks. “You think we should publish it?”
“Just tell me what you think. But quickly. I’ve promised to get back to the author.”
Early the next morning, Amy returns to Lincoln’s office. Lately, she has reverted to her long, puffy peasant blouse, and her eyes look heavy. She drops Buford’s manuscript on Lincoln’s desk and flops into a chair. “Well, I read it,” she says, “but first I had to work something out in my novel, and I didn’t finish that until almost two in the morning. But I think I get it, I think there’s really something there.”
“The poems?” Lincoln asks optimistically.
“No, my book.”
“Terrific,” Lincoln says without enthusiasm. For a few minutes, the two discuss the progress of the novel. Amy says she might have something for Lincoln to look at in a month or so (he envisions a scene: poring over the manuscript in his office, trying to focus while Reverend Jackson’s forces mass and chant outside the building).
As she stands to go, Lincoln taps Buford’s manuscript with his finger. “Did you have any thoughts...”
“Oh! I completely forgot.” Amy laughs and sits again. “Those poems are awful, John.”
“I know, I know.” (Lincoln thinks: well, at least my sensibility is reliable.)
