Skeleton Crew

"I sat down and asked Jim what I could do for him, or vice versa. I won't say the Reg Thorpe name hadn't entered my mind; having the story was a tremendous coup for Logan's, and I suspected a few congratulations were in order. So you can imagine how dumbfounded I was when he slid two purchase orders across the desk at me. The Thorpe story, and a John Updike novella we had scheduled as the February fiction lead. RETURN stamped across both.

"I looked at the revoked purchase orders. I looked at Jimmy. I couldn't make any of it out. I really couldn't get my brains to work over what it meant. There was a block in there. I looked around and I saw his hot plate. Janey brought it in for him every morning when she came to work and plugged it in so he could have fresh coffee when he wanted it. That had been the drill at Lagan's for three years or more. And that morning all I could think of was, if that thing was unplugged, I could think. I know if that thing was unplugged, I could put this together.

"I said, 'What is this, Jim?'

" I'm sorry as hell to have to be the one to tell you this, Henry,' he said. 'Lagan's isn't going to be publishing any more fiction as of January 1970.' " The editor paused to get a cigarette, but his pack was empty. "Does anyone have a cigarette?" The writer's wife gave him a Salem.

"Thank you, Meg." He lit it, shook out the match, and dragged deep. The coal glowed mellowly in the dark.

"Well," he said, "I'm sure Jim thought I was crazy. I said, 'Do you mind?' and leaned over and pulled the plug on his hot plate.

"His mouth dropped open and he said, 'What the hell, Henry?'

" 'It's hard for me to think with things like that going,' I said. 'Interference.' And it really seemed to be true, because with the plug pulled, I was able to see the situation a great deal more clearly. 'Does this mean I'm pinked?' I asked him.

" 'I don't know,' he said. 'That's up to Sam and the board. I just don't know, Henry.'

"There were a lot of things I could have said. I guess what Jimmy was expecting was a passionate plea for my job. You know that saying, 'He had his ass out to the wind'?... I maintain that you don't understand the meaning of that phrase until you're the head of a suddenly nonexistent department.

"But I didn't plead my cause or the cause of fiction at Lagan's. I pleaded for Reg Thorpe's story. First I said that we could move it up over the deadline—put it in the December issue.

"Jimmy said, 'Come on, Henry, the December ish is locked up. You know that. And we're talking ten thousand words here.'

" 'Nine-thousand-eight,' I said.

" 'And a full-page illo,' he said. 'Forget it.' - " 'Well, we'll scrap the art,' I said. 'Listen, Jimmy, it's a great story, maybe the best fiction we've had in the last five years.'

"Jimmy said, 'I read it, Henry. I know it's a great story. But we just can't do it. Not in December. It's Christmas, for God's sake, and you want to put a story about a guy who kills his wife and kid under the Christmas trees of America? You must be—' He stopped right there, but I saw him glance over at his hot plate.

He might as well have said it out loud, you know?" The writer nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the dark shadow that was the editor's face.

"I started to get a headache. A very small headache at first. It was getting hard to think again. I remembered that Janey Morrison had an electric pencil sharpener on her desk. There were all those fluorescents in Jim's office. The heaters. The vending machines in the concession down the hall. When you stopped to think of it, the whole fucking building ran on electricity; it was a wonder that anyone could get anything done. That was when the idea began to creep in, I think. The idea that Logon's was going broke because no one could think straight. And the reason no one could think straight was because we were all cooped up in this highrise building that ran on electricity. Our brainwaves were completely messed up. I remember thinking that if you could have gotten a doctor in there with one of those EEG machines, they'd get some awfully weird graphs. Full of those big, spiky alpha waves that characterize malignant tumors in the forebrain.

"Just thinking about those things made my headache worse. But I gave it one more try. I asked him if he would at least ask Sam Vadar, the editor-in-chief, to let the story stand in the January issue. As Lagan's fiction valedictory, if necessary. The final Logon's short story.

"Jimmy was fiddling with a pencil and nodding. He said, Til bring it up, but you know it's not going to fly. We've got a story by a one-shot novelist and we've got a story by John Updike that's just as good... maybe better... and—'

" 'The Updike story is not better!' I said.

" 'Well, Jesus, Henry, you don't have to shout—'

" ‘I am not shouting!' I shouted.