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Review on art andarchitecture stories. She had “files” on all her pet projects: if Jack brought her attention to an interesting art topic, she put him in his place right away by showing him that she’d already been maintaining a file for years on that and all related subjects. Or she’d say, “You seriously prefer Michaels to Gwathmey?” She had a way of wrinkling her nose to express a shade of doubt or scorn. Or, in a more benign mood, she’d say, “I’m glad you’re interested in contemporary architecture. God knows no one else around here is.”
    What flabbergasted Jack was that all the files so rarely led to assigning a real writer to turn out a real article. Harriet just kept building up her files. “Remember, Jack, we can all have fun ideas—ideas are a dime a dozen—but you need the perfect images. So if you don’t have a good take—and I mean a striking take from an original photographer, quality pictures—then the whole operation is pointless. The perfect take, the ideal writer, a focused subject—that’s what it requires to turn out a real Northern Review story.”
    He could tell by her phone conversations that she was very deep into many potential projects, but none of them promised to bear fruit anytime soon.
    Nor did she want them to. Each Monday the staff had a meeting, the “story conference,” and if someone became excited about a show of Old Masters that had originated at the Hermitage and was traveling to four North American museums, then Harriet lit up one cigarette after another and scrunched in her chair until Gephardt said at last, “And what do you think, Harriet?”
    “Well, I can see why Jane is so enthusiastic, and that’s certainly refreshing.”
    “But?” Gephardt asked with a touch of malice.
    Harriet waved her hands in front of her like windshield wipers. “No buts. Just one tiny word of caution. All we have for these paintings are some pretty weird Kodachromes that the Soviets have sent us and everyone else, and the reds are all sort of orange, and the yellows are too gold, and the dark blues are shading off into black. If we publish these things without being able to correct the color, we’re going to look like the biggest fools on earth. This show went to Belgium first, for some reason, and every color supplement I’ve seen from there is wildly different. I mean it’s a goddamned joke!” After starting mildly enough out of deference, supposedly, to her colleague, Harriet had built up to a shout. “Everyone in town will be laughing at us,” she added darkly, though Jack had a hard time picturing all these four-color-printing connoisseurs chortling together and mocking them.
    “Maybe,” Gephardt said, smiling slyly and looking out over his half-moon glasses, “we’ll just have to send someone to Stalingrad with the reproductions in hand and correct them there.”
    “Oh no,” Harriet said. “Un-unh, I’ve got way too much to do here. I could never just toss everything aside”—she made it sound like the acme of frivolity—“and go gaily gamboling over to Russia to work out the colors with some numbskull printer.”
    Gephardt rejoined with no pause. “I have in mind a very intelligent Swiss-German from Skia who would go with you. With Hans beside you, Harriet, you’d have no fears of being ridiculed for false colors throughout America.”
    Jack thought that Harriet looked sick—or maybe just a bit frightened. Her own color needed correcting. Was she afraid of planes? Of letting the whole office live happily without her for an entire week? Jack kept constructing scenarios and then revising them. Everyone around the table started warming to the idea.
    “Okay,” Gephardt said, “then it’s settled. This will be our new cover story in the next issue: ‘The Old Masters Come Toddling out of Red Russia.’ That will be our headline.”
    “I don’t think mumble mumble,” Harriet mumbled.
    “What?”
    “I don’t think you know what ‘toddle’