"Would you say in your own mind that the haircream people do or do not enter into it?"
"The haircream people definitely do not enter into it as far as I can see at this juncture, pending final word from Morgenthau himself when he returns from the islands."
"Which islands?"
"Which islands," Jones said. "I'll get on that right away."
"Let's move to World War III," Weede said.
"Apropos of Grace Tully," Joyner said. "I have it on good authority that back in the old days she used to make it with some of the biggest names on the Coast. Both coasts in fact."
"Let's get together," Weede said. "What I want to know at this juncture is whether the World War III idea is any more viable than it was a week ago in the light of recent developments on the international scene."
"At this juncture," Richter Janes said, "the World War III idea is about forty percent less viable than it was a week ago."
"That's what I wanted to know."
"What I want to know," Walter Faye said, "is why we can't show the toilet bowl in the effects-of-solitude prison thing. We can show toilet bowls in prime time. Why not in the afternoon is what I want to know."
"Kids might be watching," Weede said. "And I don't think the subject is germane at this point. I can't imagine any idea conceived by this unit which would necessitate the on-camera appearance of a toilet bowl. Besides, if we're not going to show the thing in use, there's no reason to show it at all. I believe it was one of the Sitwells who said if there's a gun hanging over the mantelpiece in act one, it had better be fired by the final curtain. Or words to that effect."
"Why can't we show the thing in use?" Walter Faye said. "Just once I'd like to see somebody on TV take a tremendous steaming piss. It could even have dramatic justification. We could think up some reason to make a pissing scene necessary. Maybe our protagonist has to get some poison out of his system; or, if it's a documentary about some disease of the liver or bladder, we could actually evoke some sympathy for our guy by showing how painful it is for him to take a simple piss. I wouldn't care where the camera was. We could stay on his face. The important thing is the sound. If we could just get that sound on the airwaves, just once, I honestly think we could take credit for expanding the consciousness of our nation to some small degree."
"Yes," Weede Denney said. "It would be almost as good as Ruby shooting Oswald."
The room relaxed, appreciating the jagged wit of this remark, and we all painted one more kill on Weede's already impressive fuselage. He lowered his barber chair two hydraulic notches and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. Mrs. Kling, his secretary, came in then with a large breakfast tray and began distributing the coffee. I watched the construction workers in the building across the street. Richter Janes was sitting next to me, waiting for the coffee to reach him.
"Most of the high-steel men in this city are Mohawks," he said. "They all live out in Brooklyn someplace. There's a whole colony out there. They specialize in the high dangerous stuff. Any building more than thirty stories, you know those are Mohawks you see up there."
"It must have something to do with their inherent catlike agility and superb sense of balance," I said.
We were whispering for some reason.
"There was an Indian in my fraternity back at school. Nicest, quietest guy you'd ever want to meet."
"What was his time for the hundred?"
"Let's break bread some time," Richter said. "I'd like to pick your brain on a project of mine. I've been hearing good things about you."
"From whom?" I said.
"Word gets around," he whispered mysteriously.
Mrs. Kling left and the meeting resumed. At the network, people were always telling other people they had heard good things about them. It was part of the company's unofficial program of relentless cordiality. And since our business by its nature was committed to the very flexible logic of trends, there always came the time when the bearer of glad tidings became the recipient. Each of us, sooner or later, became a trend in himself; each had his week-long cycle of glory. Richter Janes' remark suggested that this might be the beginning of the David Bell trend. Richter himself had been a trend only a few months before; during his trend, which lasted a week or so, people popped into my office or sidled up to me in the corridor on a number of occasions to comment on what a good job Richter Janes was doing, how many good things they had heard about him, and how they had told him, just that morning, about some of the good things they had heard. I was never able to figure out how these trends started, who started them, or how the word spread. They seemed spontaneous enough and I found it hard to believe that top management would devise the whole thing, designate a trend-man of the month, someone whose morale needed boosting, and then instruct paid trendsetters to make spot remarks and chance comments concerning the good things they had heard about him. Up to that point I had never been a trend and had never felt any particular need to be one. Almost everyone sitting in Weede's office at that moment had been a trend at some time or another, but never, as far as I knew, more than once. In a given year there were usually nine or ten trend people. The trends ended as they had begun, with mystifying suddenness, and the person who had just been trendexed seemed a bit forlorn when it was all over, the gloss and neon gone, the numbers filed away, all the screens snowing and the airwaves bent with static.
"Quincy and Dave," Weede said. "Ball's in your court."
There was fatherly amusement in his voice. Apparently the destruction of Walter Faye had put him in good spirits. I had no idea what I was going to say since I had accomplished absolutely nothing all week. I thought I might simply paraphrase my remarks of the previous meeting, hedging and improvising as I went along, but there wasn't much chance of making that kind of escape. It had been tried hundreds of times and everyone was familiar with the clawprints and scent.
"Quincy, why don't you start the ball rolling?" I said.
"The Navaho project."
"The Navaho project," I said.
"There are long- and short-range problems," Quincy said. "Who's going out there, for how long, and will the Indians cooperate? I've been in touch with the Bureau of Indian Affairs."
"We both have."
"They'd like to know more before they commit."
"The Indians don't want pity," I said. "They want dignity."
"I got the same impression. We must have talked to some of the same people."
"They don't want pity in any shape or form. They want dignity. I think Richter can tell us more about that. Richter actually knows an Indian. Old fraternity brother."
"We're not actually in touch anymore. It's been more than fifteen years since college and I didn't really know the gentleman all that well. He was a nice quiet boy. I definitely remember that much about him. He was five-ten or eleven, weighed about one-sixty, lean as a whip, not an ounce of fat on him. He wasn't actually copper-colored if I remember correctly. If I remember correctly he was actually only three-eighths Indian. Three-eighths or four-eighths Indian. Crow I think he was. Crow or Blackfoot. But he was definitely one of the nicest, quietest fellas you'd ever want to meet. That much I'm sure about. It's absolutely vivid in my mind."
"Would you say this man wanted pity or dignity?"
"Dignity, Dave. There's not the slightest doubt in my mind. It was definitely dignity."
"Go, Quincy," I said.
"The thing of it is: Who's going out there, when, and for how long? If we want blizzards we want to get cracking. We want to get this thing nailed to the mast before any more grass grows under our feet."
"I've been in almost constant touch with the weather bureau," I said. "I'm trying to pin them down on some kind of long-range forecast for that sector of the country."
"What sector?" Jones Perkins said.