King of the World Read online

Speak of the devil. No sooner had Cornell pushed through the glass doors of Huff House than who appeared but old Eloise herself, baggy tweeds, eternal pipe, and brushy mustache: her own lip-hair, and not the paste-on device currently in fashion; she was inordinately vain about it.

  On her way to the toilet, her impatient hand already at the top of the zipper. Her kidney condition was well known.

  Cornell had not been able to phone in that he would be late. No one would yet have been at work when he left home, and he was closeted with Dr. Prine thereafter. To call en route would have been pointless even could he have found a public telephone that functioned. The last time he tried, he left the booth after depositing three zinc dollars for as many replays of the synthetic monologue of the robot operator.

  Luckily, old Eloise was as usual in a state of egocentric oblivion.

  “Hello, Johnny,” she said. “Back from lunch already? These mornings get away from me when I’m reading manuscripts. I’ll just send out for a malted today, I think.” She burped. “Off my feed these days. Fifteen-twenty years ago I was a three-martini luncher. Could drink most authors under the table.” Her gray mustache was stained yellow from the pipe, and dandruff flecked the shoulders of her old blazer. If she was laying Willie, he was to be pitied. Cornell’s stomach rolled at the thought of being touched by such a dirty old woman.

  He smiled and murmured something—Eloise never listened to anybody but herself, anyway—and trotted down the corridor. Before he cleared the range of Eloise’s reach, however, he felt her sharp pinch of his left buttock. He seethed all the way to his desk, but that was the sort of thing you had to put up with if you were a working boy.

  “Kid,” said Charlie, as Cornell reached the cubicle they shared, “Ida’s gonna chew your rump.”

  Charlie as usual was ill-shaven, and there were grease stains on the front of his dress.

  Screw her, Cornell mouthed silently, with reference to Ida Hind, senior editor and his immediate superior.

  “Maybe you ought to,” Charlie cried. “You can use all the help you can get.” Charlie’s wig was a fright; he was balding under it. His beefy face wore no makeup. His stomach extended farther than his falsies, and the latter were out of balance, the left one having strayed almost into his armpit.

  “I was at my doctor’s,” Cornell cried indignantly.

  “I told her that you probably were.” Charlie’s fat cheeks bulged in humor. “Why you pay that quack to ream you is beyond me. Ida would do it for nothing.”

  Cornell put his purse in the lower desk drawer. To gain room for it he had first to push clatteringly back the collection of cosmetic bottles, jars, and tubes there. He saw a spare pair of pantyhose, new in cellophane, which he had forgotten he owned. He sat down and gasped at the sight of the overflowing In-box.

  Charlie kept it up. “She’s got the hots for you, son. Old Ida is the house stud. Her office door has been closed for an hour. She’s probably putting the blocks to that little first novelist who came in from the Midwest. He was unaware that a paragraph in his contract obliges him to lay for his editor. Prone on the desktop, his creamy white hams being violated by her brutal claws searching for the mossy crevice of delight.”

  “Come on, Charlie. I’ve got to get to work.”

  “I’m quoting from his book,” Charlie protested. “I did the first reading, you know.” Some of the unsolicited manuscripts were given to the secretaries to read. Cornell generally tried to evade that chore; you got no extra pay for it, and the books were usually hopeless. Not that he thought that much about the books that Huff House published, which lately had been running heavily to memoirs from retired stateswomen, with an exposé or two thrown in of professional wrestling, roller derbies, and the like. Cornell’s own taste was for romantic novels, but you hardly ever came across one any more.

  “Recommended it unreservedly,” Charlie went on, “as a sensitive, passionate account of a young man’s deflowering.”

  Cornell ignored him and began to type from a letter that had been dictated by Ida the afternoon before. He had never finished his Speedwriting course, and improvised a good deal, then often forgot what certain ad hoc abbreviations signified. The missive at hand was addressed to a has-been named Wallace Walton Walsh, whose first novel had been a super-seller about twenty years before, but whose subsequent volumes had grown ever less successful throughout the years since. The message which Cornell now tried to unlock from his runic scribble was Ida’s rejection of WWW’s latest manuscript—diplomatically couched, naturally, but in essence an unequivocal No.

  Cornell felt sorry for the poor old hack, who, as was well known, had served his term as Ida’s paramour.

  DEAR WINSOME WALLIE,

  Well, love, what can I say about FRIENDS OR FIENDS? Here and there are unmistakable reminders of the old [what was that word, mgc?], but frankly, Wall, most of it you have done before and, if you’ll pardon my saying so, better. Remember the characters from UPSHOT[the original blockbuster]—Clara and Harvey and Simone, such rich, rounded ctrzn [characterization, of course!].

  Now before you start hollering, my darling Three W’s, let me assure you I realize you are trying something new, to break out of the [oh, pee! look at this:] stjkt f tdtnl tknk n açv nu mgs, and I admire you for making that effort, Wall, believe me, when you have long since earned the right to sit back and—

  Cornell handed his stenographer’s notebook to Charlie, glazed fingernail pointing to the cryptic passage.

  “Would you have any idea what I wrote there?” The earlier mgc, he suddenly understood, meant “magic.”

  Charlie was himself typing, sporadically following some copy to the left of his machine while reading an opened book on the right. He took the notebook and provided an instant translation.

  “‘Unmistakable reminders of the old magic’”

  “No, this one.”

  “‘To break out of the old straitjacket of traditional technique and achieve new meanings.’ What doo-doo.”

  “How can you read my shorthand?”

  Charlie laughed. “I started out here working for Ida. She says the same thing in most of her letters.” He passed the notebook back to Cornell. “Not only is Wally getting the boot, but he also has to read that crap. But, as usual, sympathy is misplaced. That’s precisely the kind of prose for which WWW is himself noted. She probably picked up his style years ago when she was banging him.” Without transition he said: “When are you going to learn real shorthand? Or the Stenotype—then you could become a court reporter and get out of here.”

  “What about you?” asked Cornell.

  “I never get around to anything,” said Charlie. “Including suicide.”

  “What banned book are you reading today? Certainly nothing published by Huff House.”

  “A classic criminal text.” Charlie turned back to it without further identification. He actually did openly read proscribed works, obtained through some underground source of pornography, but always in pocket-sized editions that could be quickly concealed. In the case of some really raw title he might cut off the cover and glue on another from a harmless volume—The Gentle Man’s Guide to Needlepoint, say, disguising the text of Men Without Women, a collection of stories notorious for their shameless perversity, by—

  “Hey, Charlie, who was the author of Men Without Women?”

  Charlie shushed him and deftly covered the book with a sheaf of correspondence.

  “I don’t know, Charlie, you take all kinds of chances, but when it comes to me, I can’t even ask—”

  The motive for Charlie’s furtiveness was soon apparent. Cornell should have known better. A stern voice spoke to the back of his head.

  “Georgie, I want a word with you.”

  He rose and, on weak ankles, followed Ida Hind into her office, across and down the corridor.

  Ida was cleanshaven, skull as well as face, and the latter was naked even of eyebrows. Sometimes while dictating, Ida gave Cornell the treat of watching her apply the el
ectric razor. If he had had to localize his hatred for Ida, he might have done it in her ears, which projected obscenely from her head at 85-degree angles.

  Ida now reached down inside the collar of her turtleneck sweater and relieved an itch in the area of the clavicle.

  “Georgie,” she said, staring with her lashless eyes, “what am I going to do with you?” After she shaved, Ida washed her entire head with alcohol. She glistened.

  “Call my analyst,” he answered indignantly. “Go ahead. That’s where I was.”

  “I’ve done that already, Georgie. And do you know what Dr. Prine told me?” Ida paused to let the foreboding establish itself. Cornell could happily have lighted her with a match when she was wet with alcohol. “I’ll tell you. ‘Georgie Cornell is hopeless, I’m afraid.’ That’s a direct quote. ‘He’s beyond the reach of effective therapy.’” Ida did something with her throat. “That’s what Dr. Prine told me, and I am telling it to you now, not to be cruel—please believe me when I say that, Georgie—but because I think the time has come to face facts and not to sweep them under the carpet any more.”

  Cornell crossed his legs the other way, and Ida did not fail to mark the movement. She was a notoriously horny devil, but too much of a pro to bed any secretary of hers. However, Cornell had no other defense except weeping, and it was too early to use that.

  “Georgie,” said Ida. She came around in front and leaned her behind against the rim of the desk. She clutched the right lapel of her tweed jacket. Cornell sat below her, peeping up under his false eyelashes.

  “What I have to suggest,” Ida said, “is nothing terribly drastic. But I think a little transfer might be the answer to both our problems—I mean, the problem we share. Namely, that the present job doesn’t seem to jibe with what either of us needs. As it happens, an opening has fortuitously, uh, opened up. Now don’t scream before you hear me out. Stanley—you know old Stanley.”

  Cornell could not long endure Ida’s browless stare. He was alternating between the colored book jackets on the shelves to left and right and the window behind the desk with its yellow smogscape.

  “Stanley?”

  “Stanley, our old Stanley,” Ida said impatiently.

  “Stanley the janitor?”

  “Stanley the custodian,” said Ida. “He is leaving us for a well-deserved retirement.”

  That was good news. Perhaps now the roller-towel in the men’s lounge would be changed more frequently. Stanley was supposed to be an old boy friend of Eloise Huff’s. He had got the sinecure when she was done with him. That must have been years ago. Now Stanley was an ancient harridan, slumped over his mop.

  But suddenly the pitiful image was flushed from Cornell’s mind.

  “Oh, no,” he moaned. “Oh, no.”

  Ida’s voice, hitherto drifting, at once came into sharp focus.

  “Georgie, it takes you two days to type a letter, all week to find a contract in the files. You are habitually late in the morning, and you leave as early as you can in the afternoon. About the only good thing that can be said is that you aren’t insolent. In fact, you are rather sweet. That’s why I haven’t even considered firing you. I want you to understand that, Georgie, though I have been under considerable pressure to do so. I realize that your fecklessness is due to your personal problems. You are distracted. You stare into space when you are being addressed. In fact, you’re doing it now.”

  Ida leaned forward and put a hand on each of Cornell’s shoulders, looking into his face. He was forced to stare back. Her head was like a bowling ball.

  “I have been more than patient,” Ida said solemnly. “So much so, in fact, that there has been some talk.” She laughed with a certain brutal sound. “If you get what I mean.” She pushed him back and herself away, with a great shove.

  Cornell made a tactical simper, mainly to relieve his own embarrassment. He loathed being talked to confidentially about himself, unless he was paying for it, as with Dr. Prine, and thus retaining his self-respect.

  “Well,” Ida went on, “you are an attractive boy, dear, and I’m a normal woman.” She smirked vainly. “And then some.”

  “I am?” Cornell was trying to hide his repugnance, but his gorge rose. Now was the time to sob, and he did so.

  “I don’t want to be a janitor and clean toilets!”

  “Now, now, none of that,” said Ida. “You promised to let me explain. I’m not asking you to take a cut in pay. Not all the job is in the rest rooms by any means. The offices are mopped and dusted, and you can choose your own time for that: either before working hours, in the morning, or just after everybody leaves at the end of the day. It amounts to only an extra hour or so. As to the lounges, they are quickly managed: only three basins and three stalls in each.” Ida winked horribly. “You will do the women’s john too. When it’s empty, of course! Throughout most of the body of the day your time will be your own. You’ll be on call for paper or soap, but otherwise you can occupy yourself as you see fit. Stanley has made an entire fleet of model ships from toothpicks in his spare moments over the past twenty years. He has a little work-nook in the corner of the custodian’s closet—have you ever seen it?”

  Ida turned to a shelf. “Here’s a Roman trireme that I think is rather cunning.” She picked it up gingerly and handed it to Cornell. “Easy, now. The glue is probably brittle.”

  Even as she spoke, one of the tiny oars came loose and fluttered to the floor. Cornell bent over to fetch it, and as he came up he saw Ida trying to see his breasts through the neck of his blouse. This event, combined with her earlier reference to the gossip which linked them, suggested he might through sexual means cause the whole matter to be drastically reconsidered.

  He returned the oar and the model galley, allowing his hand to linger against hers. He could feel his tears drying on his cheeks. It was time to squeeze out more. He put his face into his lap. He was certain that Ida had enough of the brute in her to be made lustful by a man’s weeping. He was right.

  “Come on, now.” She put her hands onto his shoulders again, then soon slid them down his arms.

  But the door was flung open at that point, admitting some old, whory-looking type with teased hair, heavy orange pancake makeup, and green satin over soccer-ball breasts.

  Ida pushed Cornell away so vigorously that he and his chair almost toppled over.

  “Wallie!” she cried.

  The newcomer glared redly at Cornell.

  Ida said guiltily: “I’ve got one sick secretary on my hands, Wallie.”

  Cornell realized this was Wallace Walton Walsh, the has-been novelist. And was he old! The troweled-on pancake was badly eroded. Vultures had left tracks at the corners of his eyes, porters had abandoned steamer trunks underneath. Heavy, flabby arms like whole liverwursts in the foolishly sleeveless dress, varicose veins below the skirt. Imagine a man of his age wearing satin. It was almost too disgusting to be pathetic.

  Walsh clopped to the desk on his platform shoes and rooted furiously through the papers there.

  “Where’s my book?” he demanded, big breasts swinging, old chins wobbling, crimson mouth like a burst pomegranate, the teeth behind it a false blue-white.

  Ida rummaged in a drawer and found a thick, tattered manuscript secured by a rubber band. The title page showed an enormous coffee stain. Walsh ripped his property from Ida’s clutch, at which shock the rubber band broke and he was left holding front and back sheets as the inner pages fell into a heaped mess on the floor.

  Walsh squatted and gathered them up, a grotesque spectacle. He rose and screamed.

  “Six months! You’ve kept this six months.”

  Ida remained cool. “A letter is on its way to you right now. I’m afraid the situation has changed in the past few years, Wallie. We can’t give most of our fiction away, and you know, we have to face the fact that publishing is after all a business.” Her voice trailed off.

  Walsh slapped her face.

  Even with a reddened cheek Ida retained her composur
e.

  “That wasn’t necessary, Wallie.”

  “Oh,” Walsh screamed, “go to hell, go to hell!” He broke down for an instant and smeared his makeup with distraught fingers. Recovering, pointing the handful of loose manuscript at Cornell, he said: “And take that little tart with you.” He marched out on heels which, Cornell noticed, were badly run over. Also, his slip was showing about an inch and a half. What an old horror he was.

  Ida lowered her shaved head. “Once we were lovers, you know. That’s the tough aspect to this.” She breathed dramatically. Her face, where it had been struck, was now in full flush. Walsh had a spongy-looking but large hand. “What can you say to someone like that?” said Ida.

  She plunged her arm into a lower drawer and withdrew a flat bottle of either gin or vodka, most likely the latter because it was odorless. Ida had a boozer’s reputation but you never smelled anything on her. She tipped the bottle up and swallowed mournfully.

  “Georgie, this would never have happened if you had got that letter out.” She tossed the exhausted pint into a rosewood waste-basket. “Nuff said. Get your In-box cleaned up today. Tomorrow you report to Stanley, who will show you the ropes.”

  When Cornell returned to the cubicle, Charlie said: “Don’t tell me: you got canned. You’ve been asking for it, old buddy.” He dramatically turned his stout back to Cornell. “I can’t stand losers.” Then he peeped over the shoulder of his infamous cardigan. “I can let you have a few bucks.” He swiped back the tangled mess of his fright wig and swung halfway around. “Hell, man, lots of guys have been fired in their time. I have myself, and more than once.”

  Cornell told him about the transfer. Charlie scratched his fat nose.

  “Well, it’s not the end of the world.” He slapped his knee. “I got an ideal How about feeding with me tonight?”

  Cornell thought about it for a decent interval. He had not had a date with a woman in ages, but he did not want to advertise his loneliness.

  At last he said: “I’ll have to make a call first.”

  “Don’t cancel anything,” Charlie said earnestly. “I meant if you were free. I want to talk over something.”