Read One Fifth Avenue for Free Online Page B

a year and was shocked by his appearance. Redmon’s hair was gray and sparse, reminding James of the head of a baby bird. Redmon looked seventy, James thought. And then James wondered if he looked seventy as well. But that was impossible. He was only forty-eight. And Redmon was fifty-five. But there was an aura about Redmon. Something was different about him. Why, he’s happy , James thought in shock.
    “Hey, buddy,” Redmon said, patting James on the back. He sat down across from James and unfolded his napkin. “Should we drink? I gave up alcohol, but I can’t resist a drink during the day. Especially when I can get out of the office. What is it about this business now? It’s busy. You actually have to work .”
    James laughed sympathetically. “You seem okay.”
    “I am,” Redmon said. “I just had a baby. You ever have a baby?”
    “I’ve got a son,” James said.
    “Isn’t it just amazing?” Redmon said.
    “I didn’t even know your wife was pregnant,” James said. “How’d it happen?”
    “It just happened. Two months before we got married. We weren’t even trying. It’s all that sperm I stored up over fifty years. It’s powerful stuff,” Redmon said. “Man, having a baby, it’s the greatest thing. How come no one tells you?”
    “Don’t know,” James said, suddenly annoyed. Babies . Nowadays, a man couldn’t get away from babies. Not even at a business lunch. Half of James’s friends were new fathers. Who knew middle age was going to be all about babies?
    And then Redmon did the unthinkable. He pulled out his wallet. It was the kind of wallet teenaged girls used to have, with an insert of plastic sleeves for photographs. “Sidney at one month,” he said, passing it over to James.
    “Sidney,” James repeated.
    “Old family name.”
    James glanced at the photograph of a toothless, hairless baby with a crooked smile and what appeared to be a peculiarly large head.
    “And there,” Redmon said, turning the plastic sleeve. “Sidney at six months. With Catherine.”

    32
    Candace Bushnell
    James assumed Catherine was Redmon’s wife. She was a pretty little thing, not much bigger than Sidney. “He’s big,” James said, handing back the wallet.
    “Doctors say he’s in the ninety-ninth percentile. But all kids are big these days. How big is your son?”
    “He’s small,” James said. “Like my wife.”
    “I’m sorry,” Redmon said with genuine sympathy, as if smallness were a deformity. “But you never know. Maybe he’ll grow up to be a movie star, like Tom Cruise. Or he’ll run a studio. That would be even better.”
    “Doesn’t Tom Cruise run a studio, too?” James smiled feebly and tried to change the subject. “So?”
    “Oh yeah. You probably want to know what I think about the book,”
    Redmon said. “I thought I’d let Jerry tell you.”
    James’s stomach dropped. At least Redmon had the courtesy to look distracted. Or uncomfortable.
    “Jerry?” James said. “Jerry the mega-asshole?”
    “One and the same. I’m afraid he loves you now, so you may want to amend your assessment.”
    “Me?” James said. “Jerry Bockman loves me ?”
    “I’ll let him explain when he comes by.”
    Jerry Bockman, coming to lunch? James didn’t know what to think.
    Jerry Bockman was a gross man. He had crude features and bad skin and orange hair, and looked like he should be hiding under a bridge demanding tolls from unsuspecting passersby. Men like that shouldn’t be in publishing, James had thought prudishly the one and only time he’d met Jerry.
    But indeed, Jerry Bockman wasn’t in publishing. He was in entertainment. A much vaster and more lucrative enterprise than publishing, which was selling about the same number of books it had sold fifty years ago, the difference being that now there were about fifty times as many books published each year. Publishers had increased the choices but not the demand. And so Redmon Richardly, who’d gone from bad-boy Southern writer