Hot Night in the City

basket. His characters were still men of flesh and appetite rather than spirit and mind, more moody than deep, more hesitant than reflective, but they became a little older, a little kinder, and hitherto unknown elements began to play a part in their actions: compassion and regret, for instance... even remorse. A short story was offered and published; then another. He won a minor award for a piece about the Paris of his youth, the self-lacerating jealousies and self-inflicted anguishes of his 'lost generation' of self-imposed exiles. He started a novel. And when he went dry, the encouragement he received from his agent, together with gloomy financial prognostications from Plimsoll, made him keep working, flogging out the words, despite his grumpy complaints that nothing flowed naturally and easily, as it had done in the old days. As he licked the drafts into shape, his critical sense told him the writing was not bad, and was getting better.

The book gave the critics a chance to fill their columns with comparisons between his earlier style and this new one, and The Graying of Matthew Griswald became a fashionable topic at literary cocktail parties. The book never breached the top half of the best-seller charts, the first of his novels not to do so; but the fact was, the heroic era of American letters was passing, soon to be replaced by moist, adjective-strewn, soap-opera novels written about and by ambitious women seeking fulfillment and self-discovery through commercial success and musical beds.

An honest and therefore only moderately successful film was made from his novel; then another novel followed; and soon his stories were in demand everywhere, despite the collapse of the short fiction market in America, where the reading classes were more interested in articles on self-assertiveness, advancing one's career, getting in touch with one's inner self, and skillful money management. The Great Drought was broken, and his life routine slowly returned to its old rhythms. His flat became a meeting place for the literary luminaries of London: young talents on their way up, writers scratching to maintain their place in the public eye although they produced little beyond reviews of other people's work, society drones who viewed idleness as a sign of breeding, media creatures who, lacking any talent other than their ability to thrust themselves forward aggressively, became talk show hosts and television panelists—in fact, all the social perennials: the climbers, the succulents, the epiphytes and parasites, the delicate blossoms that flourish best in reflected light. Parties sprang up of their own volition, always at his expense, and more often than not he ended up drunk in bed with one of the literary ladies or one of the cute young things who gravitate to such gatherings. He found that he could reduce his work rate to only three or four hours a day, easily half of which was dictating answers to letters and requests into his tape recorder, while Plimsoll cleaned up the latest pages of whatever tale he was working on.

Over the next four years of relative success, his waist and eyebrows thickened, his hair thinned, his beard whitened. But Plimsoll never altered in energy, attitude, or appearance. Always crisp, always exact, always pushing him to deadlines and duties; she was a dour presence in tweed skirt and white, high-necked blouse, sensible shoes, and long, meatless legs. Her expression seemed to blend strained patience with mute rebuke, particularly when she arrived, as she would this morning, to find the flat strewn with the litter of a party. And her attitude towards the women who sometimes lingered into the morning was a politely arctic version of the reaction one might have at finding something alive in the bottom of one's soup bowl.

Naturally Matthew resented this, just as he resented Plimsoll's busy, productive proximity as a silent recrimination to his laziness. But above all he resented her being so remorselessly, so unrepentantly plain! He sometimes felt she did it on purpose.

Just last night during the party he had been stung by the persistent ribbing of one of those people who feel they must pay their way by being unceasingly clever. He had contended that all writers sleep with their secretaries (or, if not exactly 'sleep with', at least use them occasionally to relax from work tensions). Many of his guests had met the cool and proper Miss Plimsoll in passing, and they found hilarious the image of Matthew Griswald, Iron Man of Letters, reduced in his waning years to grinding away on the razor-sharp pelvis of Miss Plimsoll.

That was the last straw. It was time to be rid of Plimsoll. He could easily manage his own revisions and corrections... or whatever the hell it was Plimsoll did. All he really needed was someone to juggle his calendar and respond to earnest letters from readers, using the standard forms he had worked up to save time and thought. Any good typist could do that, even a cute young thing with no more brains than a racehorse. Yes, his mind was made up. This morning he would find an opportunity, and the courage, to interrupt their iron-clad routine and inform her that her services would no longer be required. That was it. Settled.

...Or maybe it would be better to write her a letter. Just to keep the whole thing from becoming tacky and... well, personal. No fair-minded person could call that cowardice. No, it was simply handling a nasty chore in the most dignified way.... For everyone concerned.

Yes, but what reason would the letter cite for sacking her? The problem, Plimsoll, is that you have a sharp pelvis? Sorry, kid, but the roundness of your glasses and your lack of chin are beginning to affect your typing speed?

No, the letter idea was stupid! After all, he'd have to dictate it to her, and that would lose him the advantage of emotional distance. The best way to play this would be to find fault with everything she did for a couple of weeks so she wouldn't be surprised when he finally said that all this arguing and bickering was making it impossible for him to work! Hey, maybe if he found fault persistently enough, she'd quit of her own volition. He'd be surprised and hurt by her decision to leave him, but he'd try to understand her feelings, and he would be—

He heard her key in the door, which then closed with a precise click. She had an irritating way of pressing a door closed behind her, rather than just shutting the goddamned thing. Like any normal person would! Christ, she even closed doors tidily!

'Mr Griswald?' she said, as she entered, crossed to the little table that served as her desk, and dropped off the letters she had collected at his door. She greeted him exactly that way every morning, the slight interrogative lift at the end of his name serving in place of 'good morning'. She glanced at the debris of the party with infuriating expressionlessness.

'Damn it, Plimsoll...' he began. But although his irritation was genuine enough, he couldn't think of anything specific to complain about.

'Sir?' she asked, as she opened the oversized new attache case she had begun to affect lately, drew out the retyped pages of yesterday's output, and tapped them on his desk to make the edges perfectly smooth before setting them on his desk for his pencil corrections... if any. 'Sir?' she asked again. 'Is something wrong?'

'Damn it, Plimsoll! I was thinking my way through a problem and almost had the solution, when you came bursting in and drove it out of my mind!'

She measured him with her frank, intelligent eyes. Then she smiled faintly and began collecting the messy pages he had ground out yesterday between her departure and the arrival of his unexpected guests. 'I'm sure it will come back to you, sir,' she said over her shoulder as she brought the work to her own table.

' '...sure it will come back to you, sir,' ' he iterated in a singsong chant that he instantly regretted as infantile. 'It frigging well won't come back! It's lost now!'

From her straight-backed chair she looked at him, her eyes slightly narrowed, as though she were hefting his mood. 'Are you feeling ill, Mr Griswald?'

'Feeling ill' was her euphemism for hungover, and Matthew answered that he was not 'feeling ill'!

Her smile thinned. 'Perhaps not, sir. But you are a little tetchy this morning.' She dropped the junk mail into her wastepaper basket and began opening the other letters, reading them with her rapid, vertical scan and setting them on her desk in order of urgency. 'Oh, here's a letter from Mr Gold. Details of the MCA option with which you should familiarize yourself. He'll be telephoning from New York at...' she tipped up the pendant watch that was her chest's only ornament '...at one o'clock our time.'

'Yes, yes, I remember,' he growled. 'The bloodsucking bastard.'

'That's hardly fair, sir. Mr Gold stuck by us through our difficult times.'

'There's no such thing as an honest agent. Certain people have a warp in their DNA spirals that cripples their consciences and lets them become drug dealers or child rapists or tobacco company executives or literary agents. And what's all this about our difficult times?'

'Just a manner of speaking, sir. Shall we go over your calendar?'

'No,' he growled. 'Where in hell is Mrs What's-her-name? This place looks like a pigsty!'

'Yes, it does, rather,' Miss Plimsoll said, in a tone so expressionless that Matthew could take it for arch. 'But I'm afraid Mrs O'Neil won't be in. She telephoned me this morning to say she was feeling a little off.'

'Off what?'