The Plant (12 page)

All three must hit the
Times
list
this year,
which means you better get them in production as soon as possible.

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Sorry about the rush-rush, babes, but to quote The Chairman of the Board (Frank Sinatra, not Mr. Redbone), “That’s life, that’s how it goes.”

Yours,

Harl Enders

Comptroller, Apex

from the office of the editor-in-chief

TO: John Kenton, Herb Porter, Bill Gelb, Sandra Jackson DATE: 3/30/81

MESSAGE: Okay, fearless editorial staff, the balloon has gone up.

You will want to read the attached Harlow Enders masterpiece for yourselves, but the challenge we have been given is clear: to put three paperbacks on the
Times
list, where no Zenith House product has ever gone before, on or before December 31st. This is absurd, of course—like challenging someone to climb Mount Everest in Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes—but that changes nothing.

Editorial meeting later today, as always, but for now I’d like it in writing: do
any
of you have a book you consider to be bestseller material? I want memos by noon.

Memos,
please, not calls. From now until the end, I want tran-scriptions of everything we do. If nothing else, I might want a large wad of paper to stuff up somebody’s ass.

Roger

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i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

TO: Roger

FROM: Bill Gelb

RE: Possible Bestseller???

You’re kidding, of course. This is lunacy. I have a new Mort Yeager (he wrote it in the prison library—Attica) and it’s publishable after we take out the bestiality (halfway through the book, I’m not shitting you on this, the villain has sex with his housecat), but that’s about it. We also did succeed in getting rights to novelize
Lesbo Dracula
(see pictorial in this month’s ish of
Horny Babes)
, but now there seems to be some question if it will be released anywhere except the porno houses. Otherwise, the cupboard is bare.

B.G.

P.S. This memo from Enders is a joke, isn’t it? A cruel joke.

P.P.S. When does Riddley get back from Alabama?

i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

TO: Roger

FROM: Herb Porter

RE: Possible Bestseller

The idea of this place producing one bestseller, let alone three, is ludicrous.

Having said that, I have a wacky idea, and you can shoot it down if you want, but here goes. Let’s get Olive Barker—still our best ghost writer, in my estimation—to write a quickie bio of Iron-Guts Hecksler, concentrating on his final rampage. Now that the guy is dead, we’ve got the whole tale—

beginning, middle, fiery climax. I could even kick in a chapter about what went on here, maybe juice it up a little. What do you think?

Herb

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P.S. I think you should hunt Enders down and kill him just for calling you

“babes.” Bad news is bad enough. The man is patronizing.

P.P.S. Has anyone heard from our mailroom and janitorial staff? Riddley, in other words. Went by his cubby today. Something in there smells really good. Sort of like hot toast and jam.

i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

TO: Roger Wade

FROM: SANDRA JACKSON

RE: Totally silly request

Roger (or should I call you “Babes”?),

Zenith House has never published a bestseller and never WILL publish a bestseller. But I DO have a rather nutty idea. It has to do with Anthony L.K.

LaScorbia, our Nasty Creatures from Hell writer. People have apparently been sending Tony
jokes.
For example: “What do you call 5 million marching Brazilian fire-ants?” Answer: Lunchtime in Rio. Or: “How many babies does it take to satisfy a pack of rampaging scorpions?” Answer: How many have you got?

These may not strike you funny, but I laughed my butt off, and several people I’ve told them to have also laughed (some against their will, from the look on their faces). Why not let him loose on this? It can’t hurt. He wants to call it
Jokes from Hell
. He insists it’s a new kind of joke, he calls it the “Sick Joke.”

What do you think?

Sandi

P.S. When does Riddley get back? My wastebasket is absolutely
overflowing
! I peeped my head in his cubby today, and do you know what? It smells
good.

Sort of the way my grandmother’s kitchen used to smell when she was baking cookies. Maybe I’m losing it.

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i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

TO: Roger

FROM: John

RE: Insane request

RE: Responses from Bill, Herb, and Sandra

Herb said it best, babes—the idea is ludicrous. Nevertheless, I keep working my way through the old manuscripts. Nothing even close so far, and I’m down to the last two shelves. If nothing else, we can all go on unemployment knowing that the mailroom is clean for the next company that moves in.

Having said that, let me tell you that I feel depressed (more than usual, that is) to realize I must count myself, along with Bill, among the goats instead of the sheep. I mean, Herb and Sandra at least came up with ideas, didn’t they? Which leads me to the real purpose of this memo. You’re the boss, not me, but I actually think both ideas have merit. A book about the General would sell, especially if we really hustled it out there. I know that we don’t have the ability to produce an “instant book” like the ones which followed the release of the Watergate tapes, but Olive could work fast, especially if Herb worked on it with her. I’m sure he’d give himself a starring role, but even that might work.

The joke-book idea is more nebulous, but I have to tell you that when I read that, I felt some obscure circuit (probably one I should feel ashamed of) go hot. Possibly we could widen the scope,
i.e.
sick jokes on every subject? And stick a funny name on the author, something like Ima Sicko or I.B. Ill? I know how it sounds—in a word, sub-juvenile—and yet it seems to me something might be there.

My first reaction was I wish I’d thought of that. A sick joke in itself.

Clearly we have reached the bottom of the barrel, but I think you should 94

give it a shot. Meanwhile, I’ll continue with the last of the unreturned scripts. I’m in too deep to back out now.

John

P.S. A book of jokes would be an even faster turn than a factoid book on old Iron-Guts. Like a week. All we have to do is put our heads together and come up with the most scabrous jokes we can remember. Q. What do you call a kid with no arms and legs? A. Second base.

P.P.S. I really was president of the Literary Society at Brown, although all that seems like a dream to me now. In fact, this whole year seems like a dream.

P.P.S.S. Why is everyone so worried about Riddley? What’s this about good smells coming from his closet? The last time I was down there in smelled like mold and Lysol. I might have to check this out. Also, I’m tempted to tell Sandra I know exactly where she can put her wastebasket. I’d be glad to help with the insertion procedure, too.

P.P.S.S.S. When does Riddley get back? I sho does miss dat man! Yassuh!

from the office of the editor-in-chief

TO: Herb

DATE: 3/30/81

MESSAGE: The book about Hecksler is green-lit. Tentative title:
The
Devil’s General
. Talk to Olive Barker at once. You’re authorized to offer her $2,500 plus expenses up to $150 a week for four weeks. If we’re going out, we might as well go out spending Apex’s money just 95

as hard and fast as we can. We’ll want photos for a middle-of-the-book section. You’ll be working on her every step of the way, Herb.

Tell her she’s off downers for the duration.

Uppers are fine.

Roger

from the office of the editor-in-chief

TO: Sandra

DATE: 3/30/81

MESSAGE: The joke book is green-lit, but forget LaScorbia; let him concentrate on his wasps and flies. The five of us are going to write this scabrous little tome ourselves. Tentative title:
World’s Sickest
Jokes
. We’ll have our first editorial session on this project this afternoon, at Flaherty’s Pub down the street. This is the closest thing we’ve got to a winner, so let’s take it seriously. We need to think about whether or not we want (or dare) to go ethnic, as in “How many Poles does it take” and “How many Mexicans does it take.”

My feeling is if we’re going to go sewer-diving, we might as well go all the way to the bottom. And don’t you or anyone else talk to me about sharing royalties on a book of jokes about dead babies and sodomy. We’re saving our jobs here, or trying to.

Perhaps we should invite Riddley into our little brain-trust. He’ll be back next week, and I hope you’ll pass that along to your col-leagues. We’re dying here, and all anyone seems to care about is the goddamned janitor.

Roger

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P.S. Also, stay out of his closet. I think he keeps his personal stuff in there.

P.P.S. Unless you want to wash some windows or wax some floors, of course. In that case, be my guest.

i n t e r o f f i c e m e m o

TO: Roger

FROM: Bill Gelb

RE: Riddley Walker’s possible contribution to insane and degrading joke-book

By all means let’s get him in on the project when he gets back. Maybe he can contribute a few dead-mommy jokes.

from the office of the editor-in-chief

TO: Bill Gelb

DATE: 3/30/81

MESSAGE: As someone who hasn’t even come up with a
dim
idea for a book of
any
kind, I suggest you keep your wisecracks to yourself.

Or maybe go down to R.W.’s closet and sniff the air. It seems to have done wonders for Herb and Sandra. That is not a serious suggestion.

As I told Sandra, the janitor’s closet is strictly Riddley’s domain.

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From John Kenton’s diary

March 30, 1981

I staggered into my apartment tonight half-drunk from the weirdest brain-storming session of my life (place, Flaherty’s Pub; subject, what do you call a leper in a hot tub, etc., etc.). I’m drinking far too much lately, yet I would be a flat liar if I didn’t say I felt a weird, shameful excitement. Nor is it just booze driving my emotions—at least I don’t think so. I don’t know if a joke-book can possibly hit The New York Times bestseller list—probably not—and yet I think we all felt that sense of something actually happening. Before we were done, half the people in the pub were contributing jokes, my favorite being the above-referenced about what you call a leper in a hot tub (Stu, of course). If it’s any consolation, Sandra and Bill both finished up drunker than me, Roger perhaps a shade less so. Herb Porter doesn’t drink. I believe he’s got a problem with it, and goes to those meetings where you introduce yourself by your first name.

Weird, weird meeting. But not as weird as the letter I found waiting for me in my mailbox when I finally swam home. I’m too headachey to write much more tonight, all I want is to eat something non-contentious and go to bed, but I will clip Ms. Barfield’s letter to this page of my diary, and take it in to the office tomorrow. Perhaps by then the nagging chill I feel running up my back will be gone.

Roger will know what to do. At least I hope so. And perhaps he’ll know something else as well: how a woman who runs a flower shop and greenhouse in Central Falls, Rhode Island could have known my address. My home address.

And Kevin.

How in God’s name could she had known about Kevin? Not just Kevin, either. Kevin Anthony, she writes.

Kevin Anthony, 7/7/67.

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She also says she doesn’t like Carlos Detweiller—that she’s afraid of him—and there’s that much to be grateful for, but I find I’m not much comforted.

After all, she could be lying.

Fuck this, I’m going to bed. With luck, they’ll all stay out of my dreams.

Ruth Tanaka most of all. Something odd: at one point during our time in Flaherty’s, I went into the bathroom. While I was standing at the urinal, Ruth’s name popped into my mind. Her name but not her face. For a couple of seconds there I couldn’t see her face at all. What came instead was the last of the “sakrifice photos.” Carlos Detweiller, his face in the shadows, holding up a dripping heart.

Christ.

l e t t e r t o j o h n k e n t o n f r o m m s . t i n a b a r f i e l d
Mar 28 ’81

Dear Mr John Kenton,

You don’t know me from Eve the First Mother but I know you. Also we have
Carlos in common and you know exactly who I mean. I am Tina Barfield the
prop of the Central Falls House of Flowers. You think you are thru with Carlos
but Carlos is not thru with you. You are in danger. I am in danger. Everyone at
the publishing house where you work is in danger. But also you have great
opportunity. The Dark Powers must give before they can take. There are things
I can tell you. Come and see me as soon as you get this letter. As soon as you get
it. My time here must end soon. Some of the Tongues have begun to wag.

Do you think I am crazy. Answer is yes you do. But I can help you find the
one you’re looking for. It has been in that room all the time. Why do I do this.

Partly because my soul, although mortgaged to the Goat, may still be
redeemable. Mostly because I fear & loathe Carlos Detweiller. Hate that son of
a bitch! Would do anything to see his plans brought to Wrack and Ruin. Believe
me when I say reports of his death will be greatly exaggerated. Like the General.

Come Tuesday if you can. Bring the WaterBoy if you want. You can do
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