A Likely Story

Wednesday, August 10th

Dewey Heffernan is a menace. Fortunately, so far, he’s mostly a menace to himself.

He phoned me yesterday, and at first I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. He said, “Tom, we’ve got a problem here with the bosses.”

“We do? What problem?” But what I was thinking was, What bosses? Tell me who you’re having trouble with, and I’ll tell you if it’s serious or not.

But Dewey answered the question I’d asked, rather than the one left unspoken. He said, “Well, they’re dragging their feet on this idea we talked about at lunch. Now, I have an artist that has to be paid, and Accounting just kicked the voucher back to me, says it isn’t authorized. Can you imagine?”

“Not yet,” I said. “What artist?”

“You know,” he said. “The one to replace the Dürer.”

Dürer. There was in the book — page 173, as I recalled — an Albrecht Dürer woodcut called “The Adoration of the Magi,” which I had chosen partially because in it St. Joseph looks like John Ehrlichman, but also because Dürer didn’t have to be paid. You don’t pay an artist who’s been dead since 1528.

But wait a minute; replace the Dürer? I said, “What do you mean, replace?”

“Well, I knew you felt strongly about the color stuff,” he said, “and Korban agreed he could give me a good page in black-and-white, so the Dürer just seemed the obvious thing to come out. I didn’t see any point bothering you with a detail like that, I mean we have so much old stuff.”

“Korban,” I said, reaching out at random for something that might be forced to make sense. “What is a Korban?”

“He’s fantastic!” Dewey told me. “He did the most fantastic freaked-out space trip with Santa Claus and the reindeer and this wild nun with an Afro and—”

“Dewey,” I said.

“—the sled’s like a low-rider, and—”

“Dewey!”

“—they go— What?”

“Heavy Metal,” I said, remembering our lunchtime conversation.

“Sure!”

“You want to commission a Heavy Metal artist to do a drugged Santa Claus and—”

“It’s done, Tom! You ought to come into the office, look at it, it’s fantastic!”

“I’m sure it is,” I said.

“But now I got to get this poor guy paid,” Dewey said. “And Accounting’s making all this trouble.”

I said, “Dewey, are you telling me you went out all on your own and commissioned an illustration for The Christmas Book?”

“The one we talked about at—”

“Not me,” I said.

“What?” The sound was so baffled, so lost and hopeless, that I knew this was merely another example of Dewey’s ignorance and that he hadn’t been trying to pull a fast one at all. I don’t think Dewey would know a fast one if he fell over it, which he most likely would. “What, Tom?” this innocent asked.

I said, “Dewey, at that lunch I did not agree that we should add the work of a Heavy Metal cartoonist to The Christmas Book.”

“Tom, you did!”

“I did not, I would not, and I will not.”

“Tom, I distinctly remember—”

“You do not,” I said. “You do not distinctly remember anything from that lunch. I distinctly remember the lunch, and I remember you talked about pop-up books for adults, and I remember you talked about the Heavy Metal artists, and I remember the conversation remained theoretical.”

“Tom, you thought it was a good idea!”

“I thought it was a rotten idea. I also thought it was something you couldn’t possibly do in July for a book to be published in October, so there was no reason to argue.”

“But we talked about it!”

“Who else did you talk to?”

“Korban! The artist!”

“Who did you talk to at Craig?”

“Nobody,” he said, and for the first time a trace of doubt — or perhaps fear — entered his voice.

I said, “So you just went out, without my approval or any permission from anybody at Craig, and offered some clown— How much did you offer him?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars,” he said. Now he was definitely scared.

“Where did you come up with the number?”

“I looked to see what we paid the other artists,” he said. “So I offered him the same. Tom, it’s a really wonderful—”

“And then you put in two vouchers to Accounting,” I said, being deliberately mean, “and they bounced them back at you.”

“Two vouchers? No, just one.”

“What about my thousand dollars?” I asked him.

“Tom? What are you talking about?”

“Dewey,” I said, “you’re the editor on this book. Haven’t you read the contract? Haven’t you read the correspondence? Haven’t you talked with anybody about this book?”

“There’s nobody here to talk to,” he said miserably. “Everybody’s gone away for August.”

“According to the terms of the contract,” I told him, “the contributors receive sixty per cent of the advance, and I receive forty per cent. Everybody has been paid and that part of the deal is done and finished with, but if Craig is now going to pay an additional fifteen hundred dollars to a contributor, then they must pay an additional thousand to me.”

“But they won’t pay him, that’s the problem!”

“Dewey, I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that you gave an unauthorized assignment to an artist. Did you make the proposal in a letter? On Craig letterhead?”

“Why?”

“Because if Craig refuses to pay,” I said, “and I imagine they will refuse to pay, your artist probably has a good lawsuit on his hands.”

“A lawsuit?” He did sound more and more like a mountain climber who’s just seen the end of the rope fall past.

But I was pitiless. “Against Craig,” I said. “But then Craig would naturally recover the money by suing you. Whether I’d sue for my thousand or not I’m not sure at this point.”

“Tom, you don’t mean that!”

“I don’t mean I’m not sure?”

“Tom, listen. If we use the strip in the book, they have to pay.”

“We will not use the strip in the book.”

“I already sent the original to the printer,” he said. “I already told him to pull the Dürer.”

“Oh, you bastard,” I said. “Oh, you baby asshole.”

“Tom, we talked about this at lunch! We did!”

“You call that printer right now, tell him—”

“Tom Tom Tom! Please, Tom, you have to be on my side!”

“The hell I do.”

“You have to see this strip!”

“Not in the book, I don’t.”

“We have to use it or they won’t pay!”

“You have to clear it first before you offer money!”

“I talked about it with you!”

“I don’t disburse Craig’s money! I imburse Craig’s money!” I yelled, inventing new languages in my aggravation.

“Tom, it’s only one page!”

“In MY BOOK, schmuck!”

There was a little silence, in which we both breathed heavily, and then he said, in a small voice, “Tom, I need your help. You’re the only one I can turn to.”

Jesus. Now I’m supposed to feel guilty because he’s a buffoon. I’m supposed to feel guilty because the people nominally in charge left him running the candystore and he’s been giving away the candy. I said, “Dewey, let me give you some advice. How well do you know this Koben?”

“Korban,” said the small voice. “Not very well.”

“All right. The first thing you do, you phone the printer and countermand your first instruction. The Dürer goes in, the—”

“Tom, please! Please!”

“The other goddam thing goes out. Now, the second thing you do, there must have been somebody in that organization who talked to you when you were hired. Find that person. If he’s away on vacation, get somebody to give you the phone number, and call him. Tell him what you’ve done, say you’re sorry, say it was a mistake, throw yourself on his mercy.”

“Tom—”

“Third,” I insisted, “call the artist, tell him exactly what happened—”

“I’m not sure I know what happened.”

“You exceeded your authority,” I told him. “Is that clear enough?”

“I didn’t know I–I didn’t realize—”

“I’ve got that. Anyway, ask the artist if he can sell the work somewhere else; maybe for the Heavy Metal Christmas issue. If he wants, you know, he can still stick you for the fifteen hundred. If you’re lucky, maybe you can talk him out of it.”

“Tom, if we use it we won’t have to—”

“We will not use it.”

“You haven’t even seen it! You’re just throwing your weight around because you can!”

“Weight? What weight? I can’t even keep you from fucking around with my book.”

“I thought— I thought we liked each other!”

“Dewey, Dewey, Dewey,” I said, and broke the connection because there really was absolutely nothing more to say, and called Annie. I described the situation to her, and she sighed and said she’d see what she could do, and I said, “The Dürer goes back in the book, Annie.”

“Oh, I agree,” she said. “It’s just how much trouble there is along the way.”

Oh, how much trouble there is along the way, after all. I am sitting here in my air-conditioned office, away from the August heat and humidity, putting the finishing touches on the presentation for the history of greeting cards, and that total jerk over at Craig is turning The Christmas Book into Zap Comics!

I do feel sorry for him, in a way. He knows so little about anything that he doesn’t even know how much he doesn’t know. His employers turned him loose without a thought, figuring the only people he could hurt were the writers, and now he’s hurt himself and possibly them. Will they fire him? Am I about to have my fourth editor?

It’s like one of the plagues of Egypt; a plague of editors. No, that’s worse than the plagues of Egypt.