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$750,000 to $1.2 million. Having established that the cheapest of these had enough space, I asked Rose Flynn, our accountant, bookkeeper, factotum, and Dutch uncle, to get the property vetted by a real estate inspector, and now Bill hands me the check sheet, which includes such items as:
 TERMITES: Evidence of
□ Not observable
□ [checked] Suspicion of
□ See "Remarks"
     I ask Bill to tell me simply whether the building passed muster, and the answer is Yes, but that to put it right for our company would cost about $100,000, or four fifths of a year's rent under Scholem. The next question is how to finance a hypothetical purchase. The only money we have access to is the Employees' Retirement Fund, which is under the supervision of three members of the board of directors, and a preliminary inquiry tells us that anything it invests in should yield a minimum dividend of fifteen percent. So the mathematics are quickly done, and we wind in and out of that one, calling in Rose for a half hour or so. Meanwhile, a telephone call from Bill establishes that Fred the Non-Red, as I now call him, will permit us the time to think the matter over: i.e., he will lease us our eighteen suites in the building on a monthly basis beginning when the rise goes into effect.
    I muse with Bill that we are poorly situated to get mad at a capitalist who asks of us what the going price is of equivalent quarters, to which Bill quite properly responds that our rabbit warrens, adapted over twenty-five years to our particular requirements (what other tenant would need a dumbwaiter from the corner of my room, next to my desk, descending to Priscilla, into a cavity she can plumb from her desk chair, or Kevin Lynch from his?), are not all that easily rented to other parties, and that Fred rather likes getting a single check from one tenant, instead of (conceivably) eighteen separate ones; and that one other tenant just finished moving out rather than pay the increase.
    I ponder the extraordinary hold on you that a property, and an area, can develop. We could move to Queens, or to New Jersey. . . . But this would also impose a burden on most of the (fifty) employees, who over the years have made their own arrangements with some reference to the fixity of their employer's. There is that, and also the psychic need of a journal of opinion for accessibility—to writers, visitors, foreign editors. "It isn't far, no further than downtown New York—and really, from the other end of George Washington Bridge you're practically there," a friend trying to coax me to lunch in his office in New Jersey once told me. It may be true—that you can reach some parts of New Jersey in about the same time it takes you to get downtown. But it is different, isn't it? That would appear to be the verdict of the marketplace, as witness the prices people are willing to pay to be housed in central New York. We decide to pursue the investigation of the brownstone, and to go once more to Fred Scholem, suggesting a compromise. . . .
    Bill then goes through his stack, and by 4:15 I am back in my office, and Frances gives me the day's telephone messages. WNET wants me to act as host for the television series, Brideshead Revisited , whose huge success in England I have read about. They need to know, says Frances, whether I am even remotely interested—enough so to sit through the thirteen hours of videocassettes. I tell Frances I'll let them know within a day or two, and please to try to find Alistair Cooke's November telephone number (he has about twelve) since preeminently he would be in a position to advise me on what is involved in hosting a series. I am taken by the idea, since Brideshead is a haunting and controversial book. . . .

    The New York Times called to ask who had taken the photograph of me and Pat on the Orient Express that they will use in the Travel section, as they will want to send him a check (for $75). I tell Frances that the picture in question was taken with my own