And Gerald was an author himself. In the early years of his career, he had become vaguely unhappy, working as an editor, then editor in chief, and, finally, publisher. It seemed to him that all of it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. Being the midwife at the birth of an important book was exciting, but after a dozen years of it Gerald had realized that the spotlight was never on the midwife but always on the mother and child—and some of them were real mothers. Gerald had realized, rather late in life, that he wanted to write.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Gerald did not want to write, he wanted to have written. He wanted to see his name in the New York Times Book Review, on the spines of books, and on the cover of volumes displayed in bookstore windows. He wanted to be mentioned in “Hot Type” in Vanity Fair. He wanted a black-and-white photo of himself, taken by Jill Krementz, on a dust jacket. Gerald wanted the thing that writers got, which eluded all editors: He wanted credit.
He also wanted money. After all, there he was making million-dollar contracts with barely literate horror-genre writers, people who thought that brand names were adjectives, for God’s sake, while he himself was perennially short of spondulicks. Something was wrong with the picture.
But Gerald had not been sure he could write. He had a deep fear of making a fool of himself—after all, he was already Gerald Ochs Davis and didn’t need to make his name. He also didn’t need to destroy the name he had by doing something louche or stupid. So he had begun cleverly, dipping his toe in the water of words, so to speak, by writing a nonfiction book called Getting It All. He had used every contact he had to launch and promote the book. He had also mounted a campaign to have each secretary at Davis & Dash call bookstores across the country and buy multiple copies. It had all managed to get the slim self-help volume onto the bestseller list. He had been clever and picked the right subject at the right time. Twenty years ago his book gave people permission to be selfish. The altruism of the sixties had faded, but the outright greed of the eighties had not fully kicked in when his book, a sort of updated Machiavelli, had pointed the way.
He had his first success, but Gerald didn’t want to write nonfiction. There was no status in that, unless you did exquisitely researched biographies of important artists or political figures. Definitely not his style. Nor was there any real money in it. So, with a certain amount of fear but propelled by the success of Getting It All and his need for more cash, he wrote his first novel, a roman à clef. It was a scabrous tell-all about two sisters, one who marries the president and the other who manages to sleep with her sister’s husband along with almost everybody else. He’d gotten lots of dish from Truman Capote, Louis Auchincloss, and Gore Vidal, and the book had sold like hotcakes. The only downside was that Jackie never spoke to him again. But that was not such a bad thing—after all, there was a certain éclat in feuding with the Queen of New York, and anyway, she worked for a rival publisher. The book had certainly raised society eyebrows. But it had raised his income as well, and for the second time, Gerald Ochs Davis had a bestseller. If critics tore it apart and those in society pretended shock at his disclosures, Gerald knew their invidious cavils were based on envy.
But the truth was, it had been more onerous since then. The novelty of a well-known publisher-turned-writer and the rehash of a well-known scandal wore off quickly. Sadly, there weren’t that many unknown skeletons for Gerald to rattle as a basis for his plots. His second novel, Polly, was the story of a prostitute who worked her way up to become the madam of the most exclusive whorehouse in New York and,-eventually, the wife of a Corporate chairman. Once again, Gerald based the story on reality—he used Davis & Dash staff to help with research—and those in the know were aware that he was writing about Molly Buchanan Dash, now a widowed doyenne in her eighties. It may have been ungallant, but Polly was a modest success and paid tuition bills and alimony for two years—though it didn’t quite make the lists.
But with the precedent set, Gerald felt free to write himself a three-book, million-dollar contract, and that was back in the days when a million dollars was real money. Then, dutifully, he had written a book each year since, mainly because he needed the money. Each book sold a little less well than the one before, but if the royalty payments were smaller, the advances got bigger. Yet they were spent so fast.
Now, working on his latest novel, Gerald needed the money more than ever. But he also needed this book to succeed. If he had been hurried and lazy on the last two—and he had—it must have shown, because he had been punished.
Publishing was unlike any other business. When books were ordered and shipped, it did not mean that they were bought. Booksellers had the right, unique among industries, to return books that didn’t sell. As Alfred Knopf had wittily put it, “Gone today, here tomorrow.” (It was considered very bad form to wish authors on their birthdays “many happy returns.”) With his last book, he had picked a subject that never seemed to pall: Lila Kyle, the murdered starlet. He didn’t call her Lila Kyle, of course. Still, the story of a Hollywood brat raised by her wacky movie star mother to become the flavor of the month, only to be assassinated by a crazed fan, was in a way the story of the American dream turned nightmare. Despite Gerald’s exhortations to the sales force and his insistence on a first printing of 150,000 hardcover copies, the book had shipped only 100,000 copies. Of course, it hadn’t helped that Laura Richie, the celebrity gossip, had written a book on the same subject. Hers sold, making all the lists. His did not. On top of that, an unbelievably humiliating 80,000 had been returned. Even now they were stored in a Midwest warehouse because Gerald was too proud to remainder them and see them on book tables all around the country at a dollar a copy. He thought of Jonathan Cape, the prestigious London publisher, who was once asked by an Englishwoman if he kept a copy of every book he printed. “Madam,” he replied, “I keep thousands.”
Gerald’s returns had been a major débâcle, and he was still licking his wounds and fudging numbers to cover the failure. Because now, when he needed the money more than ever, Davis & Dash was publicly held, and accounting was trickier and more difficult. If Gerald did continue to use Davis & Dash as a private fiefdom, at least he was smart enough to cover his tracks. Even in a huge, publicly held company there were ways to manipulate numbers, to move inventory credits from one author and have them assigned to another. You had to be smart and careful. Gerald was both—and his returned books had been moved to the columns of other, more successful writers like Peet Trawley, who would never notice the difference. After all, what were they going to do? Stand in the warehouse and count all the printed and shipped volumes?
But Gerald’s contract would run out with this latest book, and to justify another huge advance he would have to see some sales. So he was doing his best. It was actually the story of his aunt and uncle, both prominent New York socialites in the Roaring Twenties, who were famous for their style, their parties, and the dissolute ending of their lives. Gerald’s uncle had shot his aunt dead after finding her in bed with another woman—one he had been sleeping with. And Gerald, desperate for a plot, had used this family scandal as the basis for his glitzy potboiler. If he had nothing new to disclose—after all, he’d only met his uncle once or twice—the book revived a forgotten juicy scandal.
The problem was, what if his best wasn’t enough?
Now he looked up at his secretary, patiently waiting for him. “Did you review them?” Gerald asked Mrs. Perkins. Gerald enjoyed being recondite—he always tried to use words people would not know. But despite his multi-prep-school education—or because of it—Gerald’s spelling and punctuation still weren’t what they should be, and his senior secretary was allowed to review his draft simply to make it understandable.
“Yes,” Mrs. Perkins said. “But I think the lesbian love scene is too graphic.”
“Mrs. Perkins, editor of genius,” Gerald snapped. What he did not need now was negative feedback. What he had to do was push forward, finish the goddamned book, and see what happened then. If worse came to worst, he could always bring Pam in to edit it. Pam Mantiss was his editor in chief, a woman he had slept with, promoted, and piled work