“Jimmy said, ‘I read it, Henry. I know it’s a great story. But we just can’t do it. Not in December. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake, and you want to put a story about a guy who kills his wife and kid under the Christmas trees of America? You must be — ‘ He stopped right there, but I saw him glance over at his hot plate.
He might as well have said it out loud, you know?”
The writer nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the dark shadow that was the editor’s face.
“I started to get a headache. A very small headache at first. It was getting hard to think again. I remembered that Janey Morrison had an electric pencil sharpener on her desk. There were all those fluorescents in Jim’s office. The heaters. The vending machines in the concession down the hall. When you stopped to think of it, the whole fucking building ran on electricity; it was a wonder that anyone could get anything done. That
was when the idea began to creep in, I think. The idea that Logon’s was going broke because no one could think straight. And the reason no one could think straight was because we were all cooped up in this highrise building that ran on electricity. Our brainwaves were completely messed up. I remember thinking that if you could have gotten a doctor in there with one of those EEG machines, they’d get some awfully weird graphs. Full of those big, spiky alpha waves that characterize malignant tumors in the forebrain.
“Just thinking about those things made my headache worse. But I gave it one more try. I asked him if he would at least ask Sam Vadar, the editor-in-chief, to let the story stand in the January issue. As Lagan’s fiction valedictory, if necessary. The final Logon’s short story.
“Jimmy was fiddling with a pencil and nodding. He said, Til bring it up, but you know it’s not going to fly. We’ve got a story by a one-shot novelist and we’ve got a story by John Updike that’s just as good… maybe better… and — ‘
” ‘The Updike story is not better!’ I said.
” ‘Well, Jesus, Henry, you don’t have to shout — ‘
” ‘ I am not shouting!’ I shouted.
“He looked at me for a long time. My headache was quite bad by then. I could hear the fluorescents buzzing away. They sounded like a bunch of flies caught in a bottle. It was a really hateful sound. And I thought I could hear Janey running her electric pencil sharpener. They’re doing it on purpose, I thought. They want to mess me up. They know I can’t think of the right things to say while those things are running, so. .. so. ..
“Jim was saying something about bringing it up at the next editorial meeting, suggesting that instead of an arbitrary cut-off date they publish all the stories which I had verbally contracted for… although…
“I got up, went across the room, and shut off the lights.
” ‘What did you do that for?’ Jimmy asked.
” ‘You know why I did it,’ I said. ‘You ought to get out of here, Jimmy, before there’s nothing left of you.’
“He got up and came over to me. ‘I think you ought to take the rest of the day off, Henry,’ he said. ‘Go home. Rest. I know you’ve been under a strain lately. I want you to know I’ll do the best I can on this. I feel as strongly as you do… well, almost as strongly. But you ought to just go home and put your feet up and watch some TV.’
” ‘TV,’ I said, and laughed. It was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. ‘Jimmy,’ 1 said. ‘You tell Sam Vadar something else for me.’
” ‘What’s that, Henry?’
” ‘Tell him he needs a Fornit. This whole outfit. One Fornit? A dozen of them.’
” ‘A Fomit,’ he said, nodding. ‘Okay, Henry. I’ll be sure to tell him that.’
“My headache was very bad. I could hardly even see. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was already wondering how I was going to tell Reg and wondering how Reg was going to take it.