Slava was not asked to come up with the rejoinder. Paul Shank did that. Once upon a time, Slava had gently flouted this unwritten rule, thinking he would send something brilliant to Paul Shank, impress him, and make his life easier, whereupon Paul Shank would sit up and think: This mother is good; let him write something longer. But when Paul Shank failed to respond in this way — he did, once, run what Slava had proposed, though without discussing it with the brilliant young man on Junior Staff, leaving Slava to feel like he had been slept with but not called the next day — Slava decided to mount a modest rebellion and quit forwarding rejoinders to Paul Shank altogether. This, too, passed without remark by his superior.
So Slava wrote the rejoinders “for the drawer,” as they used to say about the great suppressed writers during the Soviet period. He was Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Bulgakov. He chortled at himself in disgusted amusement. Then noted that he had been communicating with himself at a more frequent rate.
Blearily, he looked back at the papers. A Texas town had renamed itself after a cable network in exchange for free DISH service (The Paris News, Northeast Texas). A Vermont man had invented skis for wheelchairs (Rutland Herald). But no flubs. The clock ticked. He had the naughty idea to invent a flub. Would the Rutland Herald call to complain? Not if he invented the paper as well. He chortled again. For two years, he had spent his weekdays combing through news from Fayetteville, Champaign, Westerly. At first he resented these provincial towns and the news they produced — after a year of strident debate, the Westerly Yacht Club had decided to build dinghy docks — skimming sonorously until he alighted on the haystack needle that would bring him one “Hoot” entry closer to the freedom to work on his own things. At some point, however, he had begun to regard their prominent personages, and the men and women who reported on them, as confederates of a kind. Lubbock, it’s you again. He knew many of its streets, if only by name. He wondered what it looked like in real life. He had never been west of New Jersey.
There was a commotion down the hall. Through the knuckles rubbing his eyes, he registered Beau making his way toward the Junior Staff pen. As Beau passed, the heads of writers and editors popped out of the offices that lined the hallway, several deciding to join the boss’s procession, as if he were leading a chorus. By the time Beau arrived in front of Junior Staff, he had an entourage.
“Morning,” Beau said, surveying the Juniors. With two thumbs, he snapped his suspenders. He held a box cutter. “Mr. Grayson?” he called out. With a great exhalation, Junior Staff’s bow-tied captain bounced from his chair. (Mr. Grayson smoked three packs of Merits a day. For his seventieth birthday, the Juniors threw together to get him a carton of Nat Shermans from the Forty-Second Street store, and he still coughed out praise of their fine smoke two years later, though everyone knew they remained untouched in the bottom drawer of his desk.)
Mr. Grayson declined the bald globe of his head. “Mr. Reasons?”
“How many ad pages this issue?”
“Ho, ho, ho,” Mr. Grayson said, regarding the floor. “I’ll have to count to be sure. Sixty-four, I believe, Mr. Reasons. Sixty-four. Don’t quote me on that.”
“Sixty-four!” Beau yelled. “What was it two years ago?”
The eyes of Junior Staff swiveled back to Mr. Grayson.
“In the twenty-to-thirty range,” Mr. Grayson said obediently. “Is my best recollection.”
“Twenty to thirty,” Beau said chidingly. “And what was two years ago?”
“I believe when you started, Mr. Reasons,” Mr. Grayson confirmed bashfully.
“I raise ad pages twofold — more — and what kind of letters do we get?” Beau said. “‘Too many ads.’ It takes them an hour to find the first story.” He held up his hands. “But that’s fine. We’re in the business of serving our readers. We’re going to change the layout designs. Starting next month, you’ll be able to order the magazine in three versions: the regular, the low-ad, and the no-ad. Like milk. But it has to go manual for an issue or two before the layouts are reprogrammed. Who’s the Layout liaison among you?”
Heads turned to Avi Liss, who raised his hand fearfully.
“So you’ll be the point man,” Beau said. He held up the box cutter. “This is top-of-the-line, okay? One slice and it’s out, straight down the margin. Watch your fingers — this thing can cut glass.”
Avi remained seated, so Beau waved the box cutter impatiently at his employee. “But—” Avi said.
“You don’t have to do all three million!” Beau said, laughing. “It’s a pilot thing. Twenty thousand. Give or take.”
Avi walked up to Beau, closed his fingers around the cutter, and returned to his desk shamefully. Silence took over, ringing phones filling the void. Beau stared at the Juniors. The Juniors stared at their boss.
“That was a joke,” Beau said disappointedly. He turned to the editors behind him. “It was funny back there.” He turned back to Avi. “Give me that razor.”
Avi, his head hung, returned the box cutter, several obliging titters rising from the crowd.
Slava peered at the next newspaper in his pile, wishing Beau would get on with it. On the front page was a photo of earthmovers by a riverbank. A flub invented itself, along with a newspaper to shame:
Paiute (Col.) Star-Bulletin: “During the night, the concrete pilings meant to hold back the river gave way. ‘I’ll be damned,’ Mac Turpentine, the lead engineer, said on sighting the bedlam at dawn.”
Century: “The river won’t be.”
“Good issue next week,” Slava heard Beau say, nodding at Peter. Slava burned in his seat a little. “I need to know where we are on a couple of things.”
Rinkelrinck (Ark.) Gazette: “Drivers on eastbound U.S. 36 over the weekend reported a naked man on the shoulder by Exit 11, near Fran’s Fry-Up. He was brandishing a samurai sword at passing drivers, though he did not cross into traffic. He was taken into custody but almost released due to the absence of penal code for the offense in question. Finally, he was charged with public exposure while displaying a dangerous weapon.”
Century: “He also had a samurai sword.”
Slava’s desk phone rang: 718. Brooklyn. He didn’t recognize the number. In the brief pause of Beau’s monologue, the ring was shrill and grating. Slava grabbed the receiver and lowered it back into the cradle.
“Mr. Headey,” Beau said. “Where are we on food flavoring?”
You just had to give it some specific detail — Fran’s Fry-Up — and it sounded real. You might even get away with inventing a town called Rinkelrinck. Let Paul Shank notice. Finally, he would notice.
Charlie Headey answered Beau in too much detail. Beau politely heard him out, feeling bad about the box cutter. Then he turned to Avi Liss and asked about the layout, though he knew perfectly well from the Layout department. Reliably, Ari flubbed the offer of rehabilitation, mumbling for eternity about sources and deadlines.
“Ms. Bock—‘Missing Leonardo’?” Beau said.
Arianna delivered a false claim of progress, swiftly and briefly; she had barely started. Beau’s eyes thanked her for her quiet efficiency.
Fanning (North Dak.) Advertiser: “In response to the mayor’s claim that the ball was dropped by the developer, Dakota Properties cried foul. ‘That’s a red herring,’ Jim Foulbrush, the CEO, said to reporters. ‘They’re after me like a hungry pack of wolves because they need a straw man.’”