A Likely Story

Monday, September 19th

I’ve been talking to this typewriter less because I’ve been talking to Mary more. (She’s out at the library, and I’m waiting for Annie to call back re Hallmark and the greeting card book.)

At first, I was extremely cautious about talking to Mary, not wanting to sit through any more verbal sex scenes, but they seem suddenly to have stopped. There hasn’t been one in the five weeks since I moved my office back here, a change I try not to look at too closely. There has certainly been nothing sexual between Mary and me in these five weeks, and yet the other stuff has stopped. All right, it has stopped; I avoid asking why. I merely accept with gratitude the opportunity to talk with Mary again.

In the old days, she and I would discuss the projects I was working on, the editors I was dealing with, all the nuts and bolts of this endless extrusion of words, and her manner back then was unfailingly calm and encouraging and receptive. It was so unfailingly all those things, in fact, that I gradually came to the conclusion I was boring her. Ginger takes a much more emotional part in my day-to-day business affairs, being angry or excited or fearful or expectant on my account, so there’s never any question as to whether she really means it. Up till now, I’ve much preferred Ginger’s style to Mary’s.

The problem now is, Ginger’s emotionalism is precisely the wrong reaction to this lawsuit mess. If I mention it at all to her, she just gets mad (as I did at first), accuses the Muddnyfes of being frauds and con-men, and demands variously that I countersue, that I have nothing to do with the matter, that I write a strongly-worded letter to PEN insisting they take my side in the case, that I sue Craig for letting the situation develop, that I phone Harold Muddnyfe direct and give him a piece of my mind, that I write strongly-worded letters to all the contributors of The Christmas Book demanding their moral, emotional and financial support, and other similarly helpful suggestions. If I seem less than totally enthusiastic about any of these windmill-chargings, Ginger gets mad at me, accuses me of knuckling under, assures me I have a secret urge to fail which is very common among white males of my age and background, informs me I have no backbone, lets me know that I’m afraid of publishers in general and Craig, Harry & Bourke in particular, says I might as well get a job somewhere because I’ll clearly never make a living as a freelance, and in other such ways improves the shining hour. So I tend not to bring the subject up.

Mary’s calm, on the other hand, has never been more useful. Her assumption (which I now agree with) is that the Muddnyfes are sincere but naive, and that they have merely misunderstood the situation. What good that does me, and whether they will ever smarten up, I do not know, but at least it’s comforting to believe that I’m not the object of a conspiracy nor in the grip of a gang of knowing clever confidence men.

It’s also comforting to be able to turn to Mary after I’ve had a conversation with either Dewey (my sole remaining contact at Craig), or with my attorney, Morris, who assures me this case will take “years to resolve, Tom, years. A fascinating case.” You do not want to hear your attorney tell you you have a fascinating case.

No matter what happens, even if I am totally vindicated (as I damn well ought to be), this thing is going to cost me, starting with Morris’s fee and the loss of my own time. Craig’s attorney’s went to court last week to try for a summary dismissal on the basis of the Muddnyfes’ action being “frivolous and without merit,” but the judge denied the motion, saying a trial would best determine whether the suit had no merit. (Apparently he too thinks it’s a fascinating case.)

Now Craig’s attorneys are initiating a countersuit, declaring the Muddnyfes’ action to be a deliberate “nuisance suit,” of a kind fairly common in publishing (apparently, there are a lot of creeps out there who figure it doesn’t cost that much to sue, and maybe a big publisher will give them a few thousand bucks to go away and not cause too much trouble), but Morris thinks the Muddnyfes’ obvious sincerity and unimpeachable background doom that effort. After all, how much crime or moral turpitude is possible to a woman confined to an iron lung? Nevertheless, Craig and I are contractually lashed together in this enterprise, so I am listed as a party in the countersuit, which I think a jury in the main suit (if it ever comes to trial) is likely to hold against me.

Then there are the Muddnyfe attorneys. They have one in Iowa, whose competence, according to Morris, doesn’t extend much beyond the drawing up of farmers’ wills, but they have a New York attorney as well, since this suit will be tried under the laws of New York State, and their New York attorney is in Elmira! What do they know of big-city life, out there in Iowa, of the difference between New York, New York and Elmira, New York, which are just as close together as anything on the Rand McNally map? And what do they know of the publishing world in Elmira? Nothing. (Apparently, the Elmira attorney and the Iowa attorney went to college or camp or the Army or the daycare center together, way back when, which is the normal, rational way things happen in this world.)

For one happy millisecond I believed the incompetence and ignorance of my opponents’ attorneys might be good for me, but Morris burst that bubble at once: “If they had a New York guy,” he explained on the phone, “somebody who knew the publishing business, he’d know right away what the story was and what his chances are, and we could maybe resolve this thing. As it is, I’m on the phone to Elmira, he’s on the phone to Iowa, none of those people know what they’re talking about, it’s gonna take years for them to gain the expertise to be able to have a negotiation and know what the fuck the terms are.”

“Tell me less,” I said.

But he told me more: “To begin with,” he said, “their dollar expectations are through the roof. They see Norman Mailer, they see Mario Puzo, they see Arthur C. Clarke, they say, ‘Each of those guys gets millions, so a book with all of them must be in the zillions.’ So they want a discovery proceeding on the publisher’s financial records, and you’ve already got three of your contributors going to court to block any release of records pertaining to them because they aren’t part of the suit, so that makes Iowa and Elmira doubly suspicious, so even if they do get to see the records, by then they won’t believe them. So they’ll still want zillions.”

“Tell me less, Morris,” I said.

“In addition,” he said, ignoring my whimpers, “because they don’t know anything they find it very hard to agree to anything. Initially, they were determined to hold up publication of the book until the suit was settled—”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“—because they didn’t want the book published without the plaintiff’s name on it. Maureen Muddnyfe could breathe her last at any minute—”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” I said.

“Wouldn’t help,” he said. “The estate could, and certainly would, continue the suit. And if you think it’s tough to go into court and beat the bedridden, that’s nothing to trying to win a judgment over the dead.”

“Hell.”

“Anyway, they actually went into a courtroom here in New York County — Pudney took the stage all the way down from Elmira — and they demanded the book not be published before resolution of the action. We finally had to show them a couple of the contracts with contributors with the time limit on it—”

“That was Annie’s idea,” I said. What Annie had done, in arranging the terms by which I would be buying the original material for the book, was put a time limit on our ownership of first publication rights, and the time limit is this calendar year. It helped us get a lot of people who were otherwise reluctant to contribute, because it meant that if for some reason the book never got published, they wouldn’t have to buy their pieces back to publish them elsewhere.

“Well, thank Annie next time you see her,” Morris said, “because once Pudney understood the reversion clause — which took, I may say, considerable time — and once he had managed to communicate that understanding to the folks in Iowa, they no longer insisted on a halt in the publishing schedule.”

“I should think not.”

“What they want now,” Morris said, “is for you and Maureen Muddnyfe to be listed as co-editors, which at least gets—”

“What?”

“—her name on the book, so she can see it before she expires. His argument—”

“Morris! I am biting the telephone!”

“—is that while this issue is still sub judice and not resolved, you and Mrs. Muddnyfe have equal claim to authorship and—”

“Morris Morris Morris!”

“Well, its absurd, of course,” Morris said.

“Thank you, Morris.”

“But Pudney doesn’t know it yet. See the problem? You know and I know, and I certainly hope the judge knows, that putting Maureen Muddnyfes name on the book is itself a resolution of the suit, in her favor, but all Pudney can see is that it will make a dying woman happy, so why are we New Yorkers all being so stony-hearted, when eventually the court will decide the issue anyway, no matter what it says on the book.”

“Oh, God,” I said.

“We are going to spend the next several years,” Morris told me, “educating our friend Pudney in legal matters that will be of absolutely no use to him in Elmira, New York.”

“And I’m paying the tuition,” I said.

“You’re helping,” he agreed.