“I ain’t got it, mister.”
“I understand that. What I’d like is, since I’m in California, could you give me the names and numbers of some of the other stores down there. They might have it and there aren’t exactly an abundance of New York yellow Pages drifting around out here.”
“They don’t help me, I don’t help them.” He hung up again.
I sat there with the receiver in my hand.
“What’s this special book?” Sandy Sterling asked.
“Not important,” I said, and hung up. Then I said, “Yes it is” and picked up the receiver again, eventually got my publishing house in New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and, after a few more eventuallys
, my editor’s secretary read me off the names and numbers of every bookstore in the Fourth Avenue area.
“Hunters,” my father was saying now. “Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies.” He was camped in my cranium, hunched over, bald and squinting, trying to read, trying to please, trying to keep his son alive and the wolves away.
It was 1: 10 before I had the list completed and rang off from the secretary.
Then I started with the bookstores. “Listen, I’m calling from Los Angeles on the Morgenstern book, The Princess Bride , and . . .”
“ . . . sorry . . .”
“ . . . sorry . . .”
Busy signal.
“ . . . not for years . . .”
Another busy.
1: 35.
Sandy swimming. Getting a little angry too. She must have thought I was putting her on. I wasn’t, but it sure looked that way.
“ . . . sorry, had a copy in December . . .”
“ . . . no soap, sorry . . .”
“This is a recorded announcement. The number you have dialed is not in working order. Please hang up and . . .”
“ . . . nope . . .”
Sandy really upset now. Glaring, gathering debris.
“ . . . who reads Morgenstern today? . . .”
Sandy going, going, gorgeous, gone.
Bye, Sandy. Sorry, Sandy.
“ . . . sorry, we’re closing . . .”
1:55 now. 4:55 in New York.
Panic in Los Angeles.
Busy.
No answer.
No answer.
“Florinese I got I think. Somewhere in the back.”
I sat up in my lounge chair. His accent was thick. “I need the English translation.”
“You don’t get much call for Morgenstern nowadays. I don’t know any more what I got back there. You come in tomorrow, you look around.”
“I’m in California,” I said.
“Mashuganuh,” he said.
“It would mean just a great deal to me if you’d look.”
“You gonna hold on while I do it? I’m not gonna pay for this call.”
“Take your time,” I said.
He took seventeen minutes. I just hung on, listening. Every so often I’d hear a footstep or a crash of books or a grunt—”uch— uch” Finally: “Well, I got the Florinese like I thought.”
So close. “But not the English,” I said.
And suddenly he’s yelling at me: “What, are you crazy? I break my back and he says I haven’t got it, yes I got it, I got it right here, and, believe me, it’s gonna cost a pretty penny.”
“Great—really, no kidding, now listen, here’s what you do, get yourself a cab and tell him to take the books straight up to Park and—”
“Mister California Mashuganuh, you listen now—it’s coming up a blizzard and I’m going no place and neither are these books without money—six fifty, on the barrel each, you want the English, you got to take the Florinese, and I close at 6:00. These books don’t leave my premises without thirteen dollars changing hands.”
“Don’t move,” I said, hanging up, and who do you call when it’s after hours and Christmas on the horizon? Only your lawyer. “Charley,” I said when I got him. “Please do me this. Go to Fourth Avenue, Abromowitz’s, give him thirteen dollars for two books, taxi up to my house and tell the doorman to take them to my apartment, and yes, I know it’s snowing, what do you say?”
“That is such a bizarre request I have to agree to do it.”
I called Abromowitz yet again. “My lawyer is hot on the trail.”
“No checks,” Abromowitz said.
“You’re all heart.” I hung up, and started figuring. More or less 120 minutes long distance at $1.35 per first three minutes plus thirteen for the books plus probably ten for Charley’s taxi plus probably sixty for his time came to . . . ? Two hundred fifty maybe. All for my Jason to have the Morgenstern. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Two hundred fifty not to mention two solid hours of torment and anguish and let’s not forget Sandy Sterling.
A steal.
They called me at half past seven. I was in my suite. “He loves the bike,” Helen said. “He’s practically out of control.”
“Fabbo,” I said.
“And your books came.”
“What books?” I said; Chevalier was never more casual.
“The Princess Bride. In various languages, one of them, fortunately, English.”
“Well, that’s nice,” I said, still loose. “I practically forgot I asked to have ‘em sent.”
“How’d they get here?”
“I called my editor’s secretary and had her scrounge up a couple copies. Maybe they had them at Harcourt, who knows?” (They did have copies at Harcourt; can you buy that? I’ll get to why in the next pages, probably.) “Gimme the kid.”
“Hi,” he said a second later.
“Listen, Jason,” I told him. “We thought about giving you a bike for your birthday but we decided against it.”
“Boy, are you wrong, I got one already.”
Jason has inherited his mother’s total lack of humor. I don’t know; maybe he’s funny and I’m not. We just don’t laugh much together is all I can say for sure. My son Jason is this incredible-looking kid—paint him yellow, he’d mop up for the school sumo team. A blimp. All the time stuffing his face. I watch my weight and old Helen is only visible full front plus on top of which she is this leading child shrink in Manhattan and our kid can roll faster than he can walk. “He’s expressing himself through food,” Helen always says. “His anxieties. When he feels ready to cope, he’ll slim down.”
“Hey, Jason? Mom tells me this book arrived today. The Princess thing? I’d sure like it if maybe you’d give it a read while I’m gone. I loved it when I was a kid and I’m kind of interested in your reaction.”
“Do I have to love it too?” He was his mother’s son all right.
“Jason, no. Just the truth, exactly what you think. I miss you, big shot. And I’ll talk to you on your birthday.”
“Boy, are you wrong. Today is my birthday.”
We bantered a bit more, long past when there was much to say. Then I did the same with my spouse, and hung up, promising a return by the end of one week.
It took two.
Conferences dragged, producers got inspirations that had to carefully get shot down, directors needed their egos soothed. Anyway, I was longer than anticipated in sunny Cal. Finally, though, I was allowed to return to the care and safety of the family, so I quick buzzed to ll.A. airport before anybody’s mind changed. I got there early, which I always do when I come back, because I had to load up my pockets with doodads and such for Jason. Every time I get home from a trip he runs (waddles) to me holl ering, “Lemmesee, lemmesee the pockets” and then he goes through all my pockets taking out his graft, and once the loot is totaled, he gives me a nice hug. Isn’t it awful what we’ll do in this world to feel wanted?