running like this?"
"Not a clue. I'm only seeing it now. The thing that bothers me is--well, a few things, I guess. First, there's all the money the paper spent sending me up there. Second, there's the effort I took in going back. Especially after everything that happened." He kicks the door of the study closed so Visantha won't hear.
"Exactly," Kathleen says.
"But more than anything else," he goes on, "it feels like a disservice to Gerda. An important twentieth-century writer, a serious thinker, in my view. Already she's way too overlooked. And what do we do? Clint turns her into a brief. At the bottom of some Cuban liar. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but I find it offensive. And it makes the paper look bad. It makes us look like philistines, when all Clint needed to do was hold it for one day and then run it at full length, as I told him to. As I said you wanted. I told him, 'Don't run anything today. Kathleen would want you to hold it until tomorrow.'
Anyway. I'm sorry--I'm bitching," he says. "I don't mean to slag off Clint. It's just--"
"No, you're right to be angry. I'm pretty annoyed myself."
"Could we run my piece at full length today?" He knows the answer.
"We can't report her death twice," she says.
"What stuns me is that I specifically brought up your name when Clint and I discussed this."
"Seriously?"
"I was crystal clear."
"You know what," she says, anger mounting, "I don't want your stuff under Clint anymore. This is ridiculous."
"But politically? I mean, I have to be under Clint. I'm. Which is his."
"Nothing
is
his ."
"What about my fixtures: the puzzles and all that?"
"You shouldn't have to do that crap anyway. An intern could do that."
"Clint will give you a hard time about this."
"I'm not worried."
"I don't want to get ahead of myself here," he says, picking at the Scotch tape holding one of Pickle's old magazine clippings to the wall. "But I've been meaning to talk to you about something."
When Arthur is named the new culture editor, he moves into Clint's former office.
It is deemed too blatant to make Clint sit in Arthur's old cubicle, so they find him one at the edge of the sports department, facing a pillar.
At home, the atmosphere between Arthur and Visantha is strained. She is openly hunting for a job back in the United States, and there is no talk of his returning with her.
Indeed, he will be relieved when she leaves--the old Visantha is long gone anyway, just as the previous Arthur has perished.
These days, he prefers to stay late at work. After-hours, he admires his new office.
True, it is smaller than those of the other section chiefs. And he is farther from the cupboard of pens. Then again, the watercooler is a good deal nearer. And this is a consolation.
1954. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME
The paper was established on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a broad east-west thoroughfare lined with dirty-white travertine churches and blood-orange Renaissance palazzi. Many of the buildings in central Rome were colored as if from a crayon box: dagger red, trumpet yellow, rain-cloud blue. But the paper's dour seventeenth-century building seemed to have been colored with a lead pencil: it was scribble gray, set off by a towering oak door large enough to swallow a schooner, though human beings entered through a tiny portal hinged within .
A doorman sized up new arrivals from his glass booth, pointing down the long hallway, its brilliant burgundy runner halting just short of the elevator cage, the metal door ajar, its operator sitting on a velvet stool. " Che piano, signore? What floor, sir?"
For Cyrus Ott, it was the third, formerly the headquarters of a Fascist movie magazine that went bankrupt after the fall of Mussolini. Ott rid the place of its dusty furniture and had all the interior walls knocked down, creating a wide-open newsroom, rimmed with tidy offices that looked inward, like box seats directed toward the stage. He bought wooden swivel chairs,
"Not a clue. I'm only seeing it now. The thing that bothers me is--well, a few things, I guess. First, there's all the money the paper spent sending me up there. Second, there's the effort I took in going back. Especially after everything that happened." He kicks the door of the study closed so Visantha won't hear.
"Exactly," Kathleen says.
"But more than anything else," he goes on, "it feels like a disservice to Gerda. An important twentieth-century writer, a serious thinker, in my view. Already she's way too overlooked. And what do we do? Clint turns her into a brief. At the bottom of some Cuban liar. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but I find it offensive. And it makes the paper look bad. It makes us look like philistines, when all Clint needed to do was hold it for one day and then run it at full length, as I told him to. As I said you wanted. I told him, 'Don't run anything today. Kathleen would want you to hold it until tomorrow.'
Anyway. I'm sorry--I'm bitching," he says. "I don't mean to slag off Clint. It's just--"
"No, you're right to be angry. I'm pretty annoyed myself."
"Could we run my piece at full length today?" He knows the answer.
"We can't report her death twice," she says.
"What stuns me is that I specifically brought up your name when Clint and I discussed this."
"Seriously?"
"I was crystal clear."
"You know what," she says, anger mounting, "I don't want your stuff under Clint anymore. This is ridiculous."
"But politically? I mean, I have to be under Clint. I'm. Which is his."
"Nothing
is
his ."
"What about my fixtures: the puzzles and all that?"
"You shouldn't have to do that crap anyway. An intern could do that."
"Clint will give you a hard time about this."
"I'm not worried."
"I don't want to get ahead of myself here," he says, picking at the Scotch tape holding one of Pickle's old magazine clippings to the wall. "But I've been meaning to talk to you about something."
When Arthur is named the new culture editor, he moves into Clint's former office.
It is deemed too blatant to make Clint sit in Arthur's old cubicle, so they find him one at the edge of the sports department, facing a pillar.
At home, the atmosphere between Arthur and Visantha is strained. She is openly hunting for a job back in the United States, and there is no talk of his returning with her.
Indeed, he will be relieved when she leaves--the old Visantha is long gone anyway, just as the previous Arthur has perished.
These days, he prefers to stay late at work. After-hours, he admires his new office.
True, it is smaller than those of the other section chiefs. And he is farther from the cupboard of pens. Then again, the watercooler is a good deal nearer. And this is a consolation.
1954. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME
The paper was established on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, a broad east-west thoroughfare lined with dirty-white travertine churches and blood-orange Renaissance palazzi. Many of the buildings in central Rome were colored as if from a crayon box: dagger red, trumpet yellow, rain-cloud blue. But the paper's dour seventeenth-century building seemed to have been colored with a lead pencil: it was scribble gray, set off by a towering oak door large enough to swallow a schooner, though human beings entered through a tiny portal hinged within .
A doorman sized up new arrivals from his glass booth, pointing down the long hallway, its brilliant burgundy runner halting just short of the elevator cage, the metal door ajar, its operator sitting on a velvet stool. " Che piano, signore? What floor, sir?"
For Cyrus Ott, it was the third, formerly the headquarters of a Fascist movie magazine that went bankrupt after the fall of Mussolini. Ott rid the place of its dusty furniture and had all the interior walls knocked down, creating a wide-open newsroom, rimmed with tidy offices that looked inward, like box seats directed toward the stage. He bought wooden swivel chairs,
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