Bandbox by Thomas Mallon

Author:Thomas Mallon [Mallon, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82431-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

28

Joe Harris sat, overcoat buttoned, under a tartan blanket, on an enclosed portion of the ship’s upper deck, not far from the second of its four great funnels. He sipped his lobster cocktail and finished a six-month-old issue of Punch, imagining what he could do with that moribund franchise.

For more than three years, between the time Bandbox had really hit its stride and the moment Jimmy left, Harris had more than once thought of his magazine as a big liner just like this, sleek and punctual, sliding into subscribers’ mailboxes the way the ship docked to the pleasure of all awaiting her arrival. The boiler room below might be a sweaty, even chaotic, affair—Jimmy shoveling ideas so fast that half his coals spilled onto the ground instead of going into the furnace—but none of that showed on deck, where everything was bridge games and balloons.

On this actual ship he gave his travel companions more freedom of movement than they had in the London hotel—Spilkes signed up for rhumba lessons and lectures on the Boer War; Fine played billiards and haunted the kitchens—though Harris insisted on their unanimous assembly for dinner. He shunned any invitation to the captain’s table, preferring each night to be the captain of his own.

Through the glass enclosure he could now see Paul Montgomery standing alone out on the deck, staring at the freezing February sea. Poor guy, thought Harris, imagining how Paulie must be thinking of his old man, still lying full fathom five in the vasty deep.

Whereas, in fact, Paulie was thinking about Billy Durant, the Jersey manufacturer who’d given up making motorcars to concentrate on stock deals. The rusted jalopy and the solid-gold stock ticker: the story he’d be starting work on once they got home. Might, Paulie wondered, a book come out of it? He really needed to talk to Harold Ober. But wait: Ober was in a bad odor with Harris over Roebling’s bulls-and-bears fiasco. Better not approach him just now. Maybe Stanwick would have some good advice about getting a deal through some other agent?

Writing a book would be personal insurance against whatever fall the magazine could be getting ready to take. Throughout this whole trip he’d wanted, hopelessly, to talk with somebody about how far off his game the Big Guy seemed. Those advertising numbers: Would they be even worse on their return home? Would Jimmy Gordon be lapping up ever more press and subscribers? Paulie still wished he’d been able to spend more time with Jimmy at Oldcastle’s party, just to get a feel for what sort of welcome might await him on the eighteenth floor.

He gazed out at a tiny whitecap. Once he was back on dry land, wouldn’t it be time to jump ship?

And yet, for now, they were still on the bounding main. He should be spending some time with the chief, he decided, so he turned around to send Harris a big smile through the glass.

Alas, Fine had just sat down in the deck chair to the editor’s left.

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