Chapter 2: A Fine Romance

"A fine romance, my friend, this is,
"A fine, romance, with no kisses..."

-- Dorothy Fields

By now, Cora had shifted from her seat and had wound up sitting near to Gene, although he was half turned away from her and was unaware of her presence. She acted as if she was unaware of his.

There were ice buckets containing large bottles of Champagne on all the tables, and Gene had been indulging in the bubbly. He was tipsy, but not drunk, and was lost in his own thoughts.

Thomas Crown had left Vera Crown holding court at their table. He had been making the rounds of all of the bigwig tables, and now was moving down in rank and class. He liked to exchange a word or two with as many of his people as he could at these affairs. He was fairly remote in the Crown offices by choice, but he liked to think of himself as not that much of a stuffed shirt. He prided himself as knowing most of the Crown Books employees by sight and by name.

He spotted Folger Parris' table and saw that Cora was sitting with the little group there. That was unusual, he thought. She usually hung around with the playboys; the sons of the bigwigs. They were there at another table across the room, swilling the free Champagne and being rowdy and condescending to the hoi polloi. They were of Thomas' social rank but he despised the wastrels.

When he saw Gene Tolliver, he recalled that this was the original champion of that damned Heap that he had been forced to take a damned stand on. In a boozy mix of good humor and a desire to have some fun, he decided to rag him and Folger Parris a little bit about it.

So he sauntered over and first started to talk to Folger, who was pleasantly sloshed by then. When Folger Parris was out socially and away from his shrew of a wife, he liked to party. When he sat down at the table, like his daughter, Crown started out by ignoring Gene, which was fine with the young First Reader.

"Did you see the Heap as it went on by, Folgey?" he said. "After all of the fuss, it took me all of five minutes to decide that it wasn't publishable. What a tangled jungle of excess verbiage!"

Parris bestirred himself and looked at his boss and old friend. "Ok, Thomas, I'll grant you, it was overwritten, for sure. But tell me something, did you happen to look into Tolliver's rewrite? If you looked at that, and still rejected it, well then, ok then, I'm just plain stumped. With your eye for talent, I just don't get it. It took me some getting used to, but I thought that the author, young Wolfe Webber has a gift. And I particularly thought that Gene's rewrite showed it loud and clear.

"So tell me, Boss, did you read the rewrite?"

Thomas Crown realized that his friend was deadly serious. But he wasn't in a mood to be serious just then. He turned slightly so that he could see young Tolliver's face.

"Hell no, I didn't read Tolliver's rewrite," he said. "I looked at the first couple of pages of the Heap, and that was all I needed to know. Overwritten undisciplined dreck! What? Am I supposed to take the recommendation of some lowly First Reader over my own gut instincts?"

He was looking at Folger Parris when he said it, but just off-center, he saw Gene's face redden. Over the young man's shoulder, he noticed his daughter Cora staring at him with an shocked unhappy expression on her face. Looking back at Folger, he saw dismay.

It suddenly dawned on Thomas Crown that he had pushed this too far, probably from the booze. He had simply intended to tweak his editor and the young man, of whom he had heard good things. He belatedly realized that the "lowly First Reader" crack was insulting.

He realized that he was drunker than he had first thought.

Gene stared at this man, whom he had admired for years, and wondered what was going on. Crown had gone out of his way to demean him. Gene knew that his job might well be over in the next few minutes, but he had been raised to stand up for himself and not be bullied. He had been insulted, and his pride would not permit him to meekly submit.

He was not that drunk, and he knew what he was risking; Hell everyone within hearing knew. He saw that Folger Parris was trying to get up and say something to defuse the tense scene. But Gene spoke too quickly for his slow-thinking friend and mentor to intervene.

"Mister Crown, one of the reasons that I came to work at Crown Books was the chance to work with you. Or at least to work on your team." He felt a cautioning hand on his shoulder and was surprised to see that it was Cora Crown's, and that there was concern on her lovely face. But he simply smiled and nodded at her and turned back to face his boss. She did not remove her hand, and he patted it in simple thanks for the gesture.

"I would normally never think to put my judgment up against yours, Mr. Crown. You have become a rich and powerful man on the basis of your judgments. But this time, on this one thing, I firmly believe that you are dead, dead wrong. I took a lot of my own time to edit the start of the MS to show you that Webber's work had elements of genius. You chose to ignore my work.

"I believe that you may come to regret that decision, Mr. Crown. Just the opinion of a lowly First Reader from deep in the depths of the Slushpile."

He was on his feet now, staring Crown in the eye, man-to-man. The tension between the two was palpable.

"Mister Tolliver, you had best mind your tongue," Crown growled. "You are dangerously close to getting your ass canned right this very minute."

"No one knows that better than me, Mister Crown," Gene said. "But you have always had the reputation for being a fair-minded man who accepts adverse criticism. Right now I am not on the job, but am on my own time, and we are talking shop as equals.

"We are two people in the same business having a disagreement over a property.

"You know, when I was on the job today, I read and decided on 31 MSs, and that's probably high man for the day. In other words, I did the job you pay me to do. There were no winners among those 31.

"The Heap, in my humble opinion as a lowly First Reader, was better than anything I have ever read from the slush pile. I made my pitch for it the best way I could. Nonetheless, you made your decision, and it's off the table now.

"But I'm still sticking to my opinion."

The room was quiet, as almost everyone at the party was listening to the exchange. No one had ever heard Mister Thomas Crown being so challenged. Every listener was glad that he or she was not Gene Tolliver!

Thomas Crown stared at Gene for a long minute. Then he chuckled and said, "I still might can your ass, Tolliver, but I have to say that I admire your brass."

"Yes you might," Gene said. "And maybe Monday morning you will. But that would go against your reputation of not letting personal feelings influence your business decisions. I'm a good First Reader and a better Junior Editor. The fact that we disagree on a book shouldn't get me fired."

Thomas Crown smiled at Gene's boldness. "No," he said, "It shouldn't.

"You have yourself a Merry Christmas, Mr. Tolliver." Then he turned to the fascinated audience and wished the table and all within earshot a Merry Christmas. He looked back at Gene for a brief moment, and turned to ask Folger Parris to call him the next day.

Then he was gone, heading back to his own table.

Gene let out the breath he was holding and sat down. He downed the bubbly in his glass and someone kindly poured him some more. He said thank you and looked up, and found that the kind someone was Cora Crown.

"You know," she said, "you came about as close to getting canned as I've ever seen anyone come. Daddy was brick red. What the Hell was all that about? The Heap? What's the Heap?"

Gene took a small sip. "Oh, your father and I have a difference of opinion about a book. It was a fairly big MS and people started calling it The Heap. I thought it had a tiny bit of genius in it. You father disagreed and he's killed it. I'm trying to figure out how to get it published on a Junior Editor's salary."

She hadn't quite caught his name and so she looked at the little signboard that marked where he was sitting. "Mr. Tolliver, you took an awful chance there. Don't you realize that there's a deep recession on? Jobs are hard to come by."

Gene shrugged. "I was betting on your father living up to his reputation for fairness." He eyed her, wondering why she was bothering to talk to him; why a privileged person like her could care, or even know about that recession. "Where are my manners, Miss Crown? Would you like some Champagne?"

Cora put her hand over the top of her flute. "No, I've decided to stop drinking. I have to drive tonight."

"Oh? I thought you had an apartment near here."

"I do, but you live where? Queens or Brooklyn, right?"

"Queens," Gene replied.

"Well, there you are. I'm driving you home tonight. You've been swilling the wine down what with all the excitement, so you can't be trusted to handle things for yourself. The trains and streetcars won't be running by now. How else will you get home?"

Gene was a bit puzzled, and knew he was more than a tad bit snockered. After his face- off with Mister Crown, he had been drinking out of relief. He was also still pretty juiced up from the energy of the verbal confrontation. He found that he was having a hard time figuring Cora out. Why does she care? What on earth is she talking about, he wondered.

"Well," he said, peering around the room. "I was going to catch a ride home with Tommy, one of the other shushies, but I don't see him around."

"See," Cora said, "You do need a ride, and I'm offering. But we have to stop by the Crown offices first."

"The offices? Why?"

"Because I want you to run up and bring back the Heap," she said. "You still have it, don't you? Oh, and your edited version, your rewrite. Bring that along, too. I want to see if you're as good an editor as you seem to think you are."

Gene was not following along with this.

"Miss Crown... '

"Cora."

"Ok, Cora. But, look, over there are a couple of tables full of your kind of beau, the guys that you are famous for dating. Wouldn't you normally go home with one of them? That's what the scandal sheets say you would do." He knew it was not complimentary. He expected her to be offended.

This was quite a night for him to be pissing off the Crowns, he thought!

Cora was apparently unfazed. She looked over at the tables with her presumptive playmates. At a quick glance, she realized that she had gone to bed with seven of them, over half of the group. Someone noticed her gaze and raised his glass in what seemed like a mocking salute. Most of the others did as well, and the ones who had known her in the Biblical sense had that same smug smile as the first man who had saluted: Dudley.

Cora didn't like the Cora she saw reflected in those faces. She turned back to her new companion.

"Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers, Mister Tolliver. Things change. People change."

He shook his head. "People say that, but I don't think people change, much. I've not seen it very often."

"They do when they come to their senses," Cora said. "Please, Mister Tolliver, let's get going.

Across the room, Thomas Crown sat back down at his table and took a sip of wine. He glanced over at his wife and found her staring questioningly at him.

"What?" he said.

"Oh, I was just wondering what all was going on over there at Folgey's table. Everyone in the room quieted down and was watching. Who's that young man you were getting after?" Vera Crown asked.

Thomas sighed and told her what had happened with the Heap, and what he had said, and how things had gotten a little bit out of hand.

When he was finished, Vera Crown put her hand over his. "Tommy, that's not like you to hassle a junior. You usually take on people your own size — your peers. You put that poor young man in an awkward position."

"I know. I'm not proud of myself about that. There's something about young Tolliver that just got my back up. He's pretty cocky about that Heap monstrosity. On the other hand, I had to admire his guts. He stood up to me and didn't back down.

"I got hot because he and a few others just kept pushing that book on me. I guess got my dander up. A little too much, just now.

"From everything I hear, Mister Collins and Folger think highly of him. Fact is, I'm half thinking about promoting him on Monday to Editor."

"Guilty conscience?' Vera laughed.

Crown shook his head. "No, they like his work and I respect their judgment." He took another sip. "Well, maybe, a little bit. That's why in hindsight, I'm not happy about my reaction to that overgrown MS. I should have given it a more thorough look. After all, Collins and Folger were for it, and they have good instincts. Hell, I should have read Tolliver's rewrite.

"But I didn't, and it's too late to back down now.

"I just hope he's not right about the book. You know, missing the next Hemingway, and all that."

Vera Crown was listening, but her eyes were on her daughter. She noticed that she was trying to talk the young man into something. Oh, now THERE's a surprise, she smirked inwardly. She watched them get up and leave together. Not close like lovers, nor quite apart like strangers. Interesting. Not one of Cora's usual crowd of layabouts and fortune hunters.

Mr. Tolliver might be something new for Cora; a man with some backbone. And the courage of his convictions.

"You know, Tom? I think I may know why Mister Tolliver rubs you the wrong way."

Her husband looked at her, waiting.

"He's like you were thirty years ago."

A few hours later Cora and Gene were plopped down on the narrow divan in his small sitting room. He had a small basement apartment in the Jamaica section of Queens, and the divan came with the place. It was in a house owned by an elderly couple, who had been pleased to rent it to a pleasant young man who could help them with chores.

Cora had snagged two magnums of the Champagne and a tub of ice from the hotel wait staff. Now, they were committing oenophilic desecration: sipping the wine from Welch's grape jelly jars, which were what passed for glasses in Gene's household.

She had slogged her way through about fifty pages of the heap; all of pad number 1. "Damn, Gene," Cora said, "This is hard to get through, but I think I see what made you think this guy has talent. But he does everything in his power to hide it under all that verbiage." She put down the pad. "Ok, now where's your revised version?"

Cora glanced up and caught him staring at her. She saw a certain look in his eyes and smiled. She knew that look well; she knew that Gene wanted her.

She spent the next eight hours waiting for him to make his move.

Gene handed his typescript to her, and she settled in to read, a small, sly, smug smile at the corners of her mouth. She knew it was just a matter of time before his first overture.

As close as they were sitting on his divan, more of a loveseat, really, it was almost impossible for Gene to ignore Cora's charms. Everything else aside, she was possibly the most captivating woman he had ever seen. Not the most beautiful; the most captivating.

As in captivating him.

Her proximity and the scent of her hair were having the expected effect under his fly front. He didn't want to react like that; she was everything that his rational mind rejected. Cora was amoral, decadent, wanton, a woman of casual passions and no commitment, he reminded himself. And he wanted her. But he didn't have strong feelings other than lust, and that was not enough for him...

He kept telling himself that.

From where Cora sat, the effect was visible, expected, and desired. Somewhere in the course of the party and the rest of the long evening, Cora had decided that she wanted Gene as a lover. But she had heard him expound on his principles, and realized that she was in for a hell of a battle! But she was sure she was going to win. She had all the weapons and she could see his reaction to them.

He had his philosophy of sex and affection, and she was going to change it.

This was all running through her mind, while she was reading carefully through Gene's revision of Webber's manuscript pages, comparing it to Webber's version. She had grown up in a family that breathed the printed word, and she was an astute reader. When she got to the end of Gene's typescript, she put it down on the cloth-covered orange crate that served him as a coffee table.

"That was damned interesting," she said. "I believe that you are right. Two things jump out at me.

"First, is that the Heap could be made into a very good book. Or maybe more than one, if you can find a place in there to end the first book. I suspect that you and Uncle Folgey are right, and my Father is going to be red-faced some day.

"Second, is that you are one hell of an editor, Mister Eugene Tolliver. If it wasn't for your skill, this could never even be considered for publication."

She sat back watching smugly as he tried to disentangle the unbidden feelings that he was struggling with, and the compliment she had just paid him. She knew she had him.

"Gene," she said, "You do the revisions so well. You have a voice of your own. I think you'd make a pretty good writer yourself. Ever try a novel?"

Gene tore his eyes away from her. "What? A novel? Oh well, who hasn't? I have two half-done historical novels tucked away in a drawer. But I'm a realist; I'm no Hemingway. Hell, I'm no Webber. I can write pretty well as a work-a-day story-teller, but I don't have the spark like Wolfe Webber."

He watched her drain the jelly glass and pour herself a refill. She asked him more questions about his writing attempts as she sipped. Then she refilled her glass.

"Gene, earlier you said something about trying to publish the book himself. What's stopping you?" she asked.

He started trying to list the obstacles, and they got into a discussion of all of the things that it took to publish a book; all the things that they would have to take on. For some unknown reason Cora seemed to have invited herself into the process.

But their discussion was interrupted when she handed him the second magnum and asked him to pop the cork for her.

"Wait a minute," he said. "You're drinking. Cora, don't you have to drive home?"

"Nope," she said, taking another sip and licking her lips. "I'm spending the night here."

"The hell you are. You're going to go home"

"Nope," she repeated. "I'm not leaving. I'm way too tipsy to drive." She looked at Gene. "What's the matter? Are you afraid I might seduce you?"

"Fat chance," he scoffed. "I'm quite familiar with your reputation for bed hopping, and I'm just not up for that."

"So I've heard. But something about you gives the lie to what you say. You said that you'll only have sex with people you love, right?

Gene was surprised. "Yes, that's true. Or at least someone that I really care about. But how do you know that? I've never told you that."

"Oh, I overheard you talking to your friend at the party. After I was rude to you, and you were rude back.

"But I thought you were just making it all up as a cautionary tale for your friend. Are you serious about no casual sex?"

"Yes, I am."

"You mean that if I stripped down naked right here in front of you, you wouldn't have the slightest interest in me?"

"Good God, Cora, don't be ridiculous. I'm not queer. Of course I'd be interested and aroused. Who wouldn't? You're gorgeous! I'd be just as horny as any of your jerk society boyfriends." Gene didn't think it would be a good idea to mention how aroused he already was.

Cora considered his last. "You know what I think, Gene? I think you're jealous of them. You're jealous of them because they've had me and you haven't."

Gene snorted. "That won't fly, Cora. You're making it pretty clear that if I wanted you tonight, I could have you. No, of course I want you. You have no idea how aroused I'm getting.

"Well, maybe you do. But here's the thing with me; I want you, but I'm not going to act on it. I've seen what casual sex can lead to: bitterness and pain and ruined lives."

"Those two young women?"

"Oh, my God, you heard that too? Yes, I was such a cad, the way I treated them, Cora. If there's anything in my life I could undo, it would be about them. Now, you claim that you're carefree and nothing like that would happen to you. Maybe. But I'm dead set against that kind of carelessness.

"And there's the other part of it that I told Tommy. When I make love to a woman, I'm looking for a deep caring relationship, because that makes the sex fantastic. Casual sex is just ok, as far as I'm concerned ... So I vote not to accept ok."

Cora was getting annoyed. This was not going the way she'd thought. Then another thought struck her. How much of this was about his opinion of her?

"Gene, do you think I'm a slut? Just suppose that some real feeling might develop between us. Would you turn away from me and refuse to go to bed with me because I've acted like a slut?"

Gene decided to duck the question, because he wasn't sure of his feelings at the moment. "Cora, it doesn't matter what I think. Do your society boyfriends think you're a slut? Do your parents think you're a slut? Do you think that you're a slut? If the answers to any of those are "Yes," how do you feel about that?

"Those are the only opinions that matter, Cora, not mine. I'm not involved with you."

Cora sat, sobered by the thoughts racing through her head. She turned to face Gene, and he was surprised to a glistening of moisture in her lovely eyes. My God, he thought, she's really concerned about what I think of her.