working on your column and doing this kind of special research.”
“Special research?”
“Yes. I know I can help in lots of ways. You’ll see how important and helpful I am. That’s what Dr. Coffee says about marriage. About getting married. What I have to do is work. Work very, very hard and show you, sort of unconsciously, how much you depend on my working.”
“That’s Coffee’s idea?”
“Yes. We talk about it all the time. And of course I add things of my own. I know what you like after all. Don’t I?”
“Especially in our honeymoon suite.”
“Yes, especially there,” she says dopily, half-laughing.
Chapter 10
“So, you’re the ones. I figured it had ta be you,” Mrs. Spendip says at the doorway. Pam and I are right on time. Pam carries a small Sony microcassette recorder. I have a leather folder with copies of my columns in it. “The Hane Tribune?” Mrs. Spendip says. Is there a trace of sneer in her voice, I can’t quite decide.
“I sent you some of the earlier columns, and here are some more, if you want copies of them.”
“Ah more copies, yeah sure. Maybe on a pearl grey matting, is that it? Incidentally they don’t show me much,” she answers easily, stepping back so that we can come into what turns out to be a very narrow hall, leading left and right. She takes us to the left. “They show me you can copy whatever you read in Chess Review, but they don’t show me much. And I see you brought along your space cadet friend.”
“What?” Pam says.
“Nothing. Nothin’. You’re nearsighted, aren’t ya? Maybe you wear contacts, eh?” she says to Pam, who nods.
We’re led into a small room dominated by a three-quarter size bed. There is a small table with three chairs. Mrs. Spendip takes the furthest one, and signals us to sit down. “Now why don’t ya tell me about this, this Hane Tribune.”
“Paid circulation around 63,000. Readership well over two hundred thousand. Some people think it’s the best and most conservative paper on the West Coast of Florida.”
“Very nice. Conservative, eh? K.K.K., that kind of crap?”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, don’t beg my pardon, sweetie. That crap I don’t like. Why don’t we talk a little substantively? Like five hundred bucks up front, right here on the table.”
“The Tribune never pays for interviews.”
“Isn’t that quaint, positively old world. Special. You and she look a little old world all right—something you might see on the old Danube.”
“I’m sorry, but I only wanted to talk with David a bit for some human interest stuff for the column.”
“You only wanted to talk to David for a little human interest stuff for your little column in, in, what is it, on the West Coast of Florida?”
“Hane Tribune,” Pam offers, working her fingers together on the Formica top of the little table.
“Well, wherever. You know the New Yorker wanted to do a profile, but no money up front, no interview. I told ‘em that, and that was the end of it. They never came round again.”
I look at her for a moment and then decide, since all was lost anyway, simply to be blunt about the situation. “That was a stupid decision.”
“For them, or for me?” she asks, suddenly disengaging from our colloquy. She repeats “For them, or for me?” It seems the phrase interests her, as if the sound of uttering it was soothing.
“For you,” I continue, worried that she might not be listening. “You should have paid them to do the profile. Not the other way round. Then you could have billed the hell out of everybody else, since the kid had already been profiled in the New Yorker. It would have been worth a small fortune. Why throw away that kind of publicity for a few lousy bucks?”
“Lousy bucks,” she says slowly. “You mean tick-filled deer? You could mean that.”
“I mean it was a stupid, silly decision. Cutting your own throat or David’s—-“
“Mikey,” she interrupts me. “Mikey.”
“Okay, Mikey’s throat. Right now you need publicity. The more, the better. Otherwise he’s just another talented kid who spent too much time at a chessboard . Believe me there are a million of them.”
She straightens up, seems jerked out of whatever sphere she had slipped into. “Yeah, that’s why you’re here, begging for an interview. Because there are a million of them.”
“I’m here ‘cause I don’t know shit about chess and I got this crappy assignment to write a chess column three times a week for the rest of my lousy life, or until I can think of some better way to make a living. That’s why I’m here. Since I can’t write about the actual chess, I thought, what the hell, I could write about the people who play the stupid game. That way I could disguise my ignorance until I learned something about the game. But I’ll tell you something. I don’t give a good goddam about learning the moves, the combinations, the openings, the endgames—all that crap. I just want to turn in a few more columns till I can think of something better. Now, if you can help me, I can give your boy, your Mikey, if that is his name, a lot publicity in a remote area of Florida. But if that’s not good enough, I can always find some squirrel somewhere in some seedy chess club that’s willing to talk about his toilet training and his middle game.”
Pam began pressing her head down toward the tabletop. Was she embarrassed by this little tirade? Did she sense something had been left out or was she simply leaving, in another vacancy response to apparent tension? Actually I was feeling better and better, thrashing through my litanies of mild woe. Feeling very good indeed.
Mrs. Spendip was smiling, “Call me Vera. You and I can talk. Why don’t you put her on ice for a while,” she nods toward Pam.
“She stays, if she wants. Do you want to stay, Pam?”
“I’d like to sit in the other room,” Pam says, slowing standing up.
“That’s Mikey’s room.”
“Mikey’s?” Pam replies.
“That’s his name. He never uses David. And he don’t like to be disturbed in his room.”
“She won’t disturb him, believe me. She doesn’t disturb people. She’s very quiet.”
“Oh yeah,” Vera says, “of course she’s very quiet. So go ahead, disturb him.”
Pam lingers at the turn into the hallway and then waves to me as if departing on a cruise ship.
“Okay, what kind of publicity can Mr. Publicity deliver?”
“You tell me what to say, just tell me and I’ll spread it all around south Florida.”
“For
