included building shelves and getting my hands dirty on a daily basis, he took me to lunch and made me an offer that I could not refuse.
“Timothy, I want you to run the magazine for me while I take off on a trip around the world.” I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I just listened to him go on and on, as if he knew that I wasn’t going to say no to his offer. I mean, how could I turn down a dream come true?
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, Timothy,” he told me as we made our way back to the office, my belly full and my brain going a mile a minute.
“Well, what do you think? Will you do it?” he asked, patting me on the back at we walked down the streets of Manhattan.
You’re the only one I trust to do it right,” he added, before I could reply. I nodded.
“Of course, I’ll do it, Jason.”
“Great! I knew you would, Timothy. I’ll draw up a contract for you to sign.”
“When are you leaving?” I asked, thinking that I would have a month or so to pick his brain.
“Next week.”
“You’re kidding, right! Tell me you’re pulling my leg, Jason!” He laughed and told me not to worry and assured me that I would be fine.
“ I have all the confidence in the world in you, my son. You were born to do this.”
“Thank you, Jason,” I said, my stomach beginning to churn.
“Don’t thank me, thank your parents and that young man you see in the mirror every morning,” he said, trying to cheer me up. Although I couldn’t have been happier, I was just a little nervous about the responsibility I had just inherited.
Three months into his cruise, Jason came down with a severe case of pneumonia, and died in a hospital bed halfway around the world. I was mortified and thought that might be the end of the magazine, not to mention my job. But, I was wrong. I didn’t have enough faith in the man.
A week after the funeral, I got a phone call from his personal lawyer in lower Manhattan, down by the Battery.
“You have to come down here, Timothy. I have some papers for you to sign.”
Oh, oh, here we go, I thought. An hour later, I arrived at his office and was shown into a private suite with red leather chairs and original art work from a well known New York artist. The lawyer’s name was Bernard Lewis. He had white hair and was Jason’s oldest friend. Once a week, for forty years, they had played Pinochle.
“I’ve called you down here to read you what Jason wrote before he left on his cruise. I must have had a confused look on my face.
“It’s about you, Timothy.”
“Me?”
“Yes, he really liked you, you know. He thought of you like the son he never had. And that brings me to the point. He told me, in no uncertain words, that if anything happened to him he wanted me to make sure the magazine continued on. He would prefer that you stayed and ran it in his memory.”
He waited a moment while I took this in and then he really took me by surprise.
Plus, there is this.”
He handed me a thick package and told me to open it up. I did as I was told as he tried to explain, but it was hard for him. There were tears in the old man’s eyes, but he did his best.
“He doesn’t just want you to run the magazine, Timothy. He’s giving it to you.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Giving it to me?”
“That’s right. In addition to the deed to the building there’s a key to the strong box at the bank next door. Inside that box you will find much of Jason’s worldly possessions, a considerable amount of cash, government bonds that he has been saving for the past two decades and blue chip stocks that he has been accumulating since he was thirty years old. As you probably know, he had no family and he considered you to be like a son to him. In short, Timothy, he wanted you to have it all. His only wish was that he’d hoped you would make the decision to keep the magazine going.”
I had no words to respond that day. I was overtaken with emotion and sadness. To say I was moved would have been an understatement.
That was fifteen years ago. From that moment on, I considered myself the luckiest man in the world.
I still do.
A few days later, I picked up my man at Laguardia airport.
This older version of the man looked nothing like the young man I’d seen in pictures from back in the sixties. He was frail and slightly bent over. Gravity was taking control of his posture. He had the beginning of a set of jowls and was wearing thick glasses. I could see a tiny hearing aid in his left ear and a few brown spots on his face and hands. He probably would have looked even older if he wasn’t a former Marine.
“I still do about fifty push-ups every morning. I use to do a hundred but I kept spraining my wrists so I had to cut back to a more reasonable number.”
I took him to a restaurant where they served excellent French cuisine. I had asked the Maitre’d (who I knew quite well) to seat us in a remote area where we would not be disturbed by other diners. I ordered a nice bottle of Merlot and we started out with Oysters Rockefeller, my favorite appetizer.
Two hours of small talk followed.
We told each other stories, had a few drinks and got to know each other on an intimate basis. He wanted to know more about me and, of course, I was more than curious about him. He let me know right away that there were areas (from his past) he did not want published. I was not completely comfortable with that, and told him so. He closed his eyes and reflected for a moment.
“Look, I will tell you everything you want to know,
Timothy, but some of my story is private and must stay between the two of us. My European family knows nothing about my past and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Do you think that’s fair to them?” I asked, a moment later.
He shrugged.
“Probably not, but in order to keep the peace at home, it’s necessary.”
I gave that some thought.
“Okay, if that’s the way you feel, I will honor that request,” I added.
“Thank you,” he said.
When I walked into the conference room the next day my interview subject was waiting for me. He was standing at the floor to ceiling window looking out onto Broadway. From four stories above the street, on any given day, you can see a hundred thousand people walk past my building. The possibilities are endless. The potential is beyond explanation. I myself have spent many hours staring out that same window so it did not surprise me when my guest could not tear himself away. For a few moments, I kept my mouth shut, content
