Small Town

By Monday, when Tracy Morgensen called, he knew about Friday night’s three firebombings. Tracy was a senior publicist at Crown, and told him she’d be his publicist, and how did he feel about doing some early publicity now? Because they did have his two books scheduled to ship in September, The Goldsmith’s Daughter and Nothing But Blue Skies, and the sales reps would be taking orders for both titles this week, so a little publicity wouldn’t be a bad thing. There wouldn’t be a tour, because there wasn’t enough time to set it up, and besides these weren’t new books, and he’d probably toured when they were first published, hadn’t he?

Well, no, he hadn’t. But he couldn’t really tour right now anyway.

“Because you’re working on a new book. Yes, I know, and we’re all excited. They didn’t tell me the title. Do you know what it’s going to be?”

He said he didn’t. She ran down a list of things she was working on. All local, she said, so he wouldn’t have to travel, in order to keep any interference with his writing time to a minimum. He told her that was just as well, because he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to leave the state, given that he was currently out on bail and charged with homicide. That stopped her right in her chirpy little tracks, but only for a minute, and then they were back to work, figuring out what shows he would go on, what reporters would get to interview him.

By Thursday, when he went downtown to be Lenny Lopate’s guest on WNYC radio, the police had released a photo of the Carpenter. Friday’s papers carried the NAILED! and GOTCHA! headlines, and he’d watched coverage on New York One and read a long story in the Times before he walked over to Jones Street to meet a Daily News reporter at the Vivaldi. They sat outside, where they both could smoke, and ordered cappuccino, and she fumbled with questions, asking him what he as a novelist made of a person like the Carpenter, and how did incidents like those of the previous week affect his use of New York City as a canvas for his novels.

The questions didn’t make sense to him, but that wasn’t the point; they were in this together, she trying to write something that would pass for news, he looking to get some ink and sell some books. And, while he was at it, to give the public at large the impression that he was one of the good guys.

Maury Winters had made the latter point when he’d asked the lawyer if it was all right to go on the air. “It’s a godsend,” Winters told him. “Anything about Fairchild, the charges, the trial, you smile and explain you’re not allowed to talk about it. You get some prick won’t leave you alone on the subject, you stand up and walk out. Anything else, you’re helpful, you smile a lot, you think crime’s a terrible thing, you think the police do an outstanding job, you’ll be glad when this Carpenter momzer’s locked up and the city can get back to normal. As for you, all you want to do is sit home and write books. And John? They want to interview you, you meet them somewhere. They’ll want to come to your apartment, they’ll want to photograph you at your desk, or in front of a wall of your books. Your apartment’s off limits. You don’t want ’em nosing around in your things. Meet in the park, meet for coffee. They keep asking the wrong questions, you can get up and leave. That’s not so easy to do when you’re already home. You meet a cute one, you want to fool around, go to her place. If she’s married, go get a room.”

The News reporter was cute, in an angular, hard-bitten sort of way, but she wasn’t his type, nor did he sense that he was hers. At the end she turned off her tape recorder and put away her notepad and said that was fine, she’d be able to get a nice feature out of what he’d given her.

They both lit fresh cigarettes, and he asked how long she’d been at the paper, and how she’d decided on journalism. And she said what she really wanted was to write fiction, and that she’d almost enrolled for his workshop at the New School.

“You’d have been shortchanged,” he said. “They canceled the last two classes.”

She said, “Why?” and then winced when she figured it out; they’d canceled the classes because the teacher had been arrested for murder. “I’ll bet I wouldn’t have felt shortchanged,” she said, recovering nicely. “I’ll bet you’re a good teacher.”

“I didn’t do much,” he said. “Teaching writing is like practicing medicine. The Hippocratic Oath, I mean — First, do no harm. Mostly I just encouraged them to write. The good ones, that’s all they need. The others, well, nothing’s going to help them, and at least they’re writing.”

She got out her pad and made him repeat all that and wrote it down. Then she said she guessed he wouldn’t be doing any more teaching, and he agreed that he was probably done with that. She paid for the coffee and they shook hands and he went home.