The publishing house, which if course was not a house at all, leased several floors in a Manhattan high rise not far from the UN. On the floor where I picked up and returned the manuscripts I now edited, book covers were splayed on the lobby walls and bound books exhibited in glass cases; science and historical fiction, romance and horror, mystery and how to do or build this or that, mass market offerings featured in drugstores, airports, and a few that actually could be found in bookstores.
Once in a while there were some I’d done, recognizable authors in eye-grabbing colors and graphics. I took a certain pride in that, but not much. Freelance copy editors were a secret society, after all, laboring in anonymity over commas and semicolons, character and plot consistency. There was a different, almost outlaw pride in that. The receptionist, at least, knew what I was. Looking up and seeing my book bag, she’d wave me inside.
It was a maze in there, but not having to find the core of the operation, only the copy department, a left and a right down two corridors brought me to my destination. There, in a long room, in-house editors sat at desks separated by partitions, laboring over manuscripts like the one I’d brought with me, making detached, professional decisions on the accuracy of grammatical and stylistic judgments.
Like me, they worked alone, in their cubicles, except they had each other for advice and counsel if necessary, or just to blow off steam over phrases and clauses, dashes and ellipses and parenthetical asides, and arcana that still befuddled a seat of his pants operator like me. Having graduated from proofreading—not looking to correct mistakes others had made, but making changes a proofreader would eventually have to vet—I was attentive to their shop talk during those periodic visits.
For instance, did a certain string of words require which for a relative clause or that for a subordinate clause?
“Cite an example,” one of the cubicle editors might reply to another, pausing over her own manuscript.
“‘A journey through the forest, which was greener than it soon would be.’ or ‘that was greener’?”
Once in a while there were some I’d done, recognizable authors in eye-grabbing colors and graphics. I took a certain pride in that, but not much. Freelance copy editors were a secret society, after all, laboring in anonymity over commas and semicolons, character and plot consistency. There was a different, almost outlaw pride in that. The receptionist, at least, knew what I was. Looking up and seeing my book bag, she’d wave me inside.
It was a maze in there, but not having to find the core of the operation, only the copy department, a left and a right down two corridors brought me to my destination. There, in a long room, in-house editors sat at desks separated by partitions, laboring over manuscripts like the one I’d brought with me, making detached, professional decisions on the accuracy of grammatical and stylistic judgments.
Like me, they worked alone, in their cubicles, except they had each other for advice and counsel if necessary, or just to blow off steam over phrases and clauses, dashes and ellipses and parenthetical asides, and arcana that still befuddled a seat of his pants operator like me. Having graduated from proofreading—not looking to correct mistakes others had made, but making changes a proofreader would eventually have to vet—I was attentive to their shop talk during those periodic visits.
For instance, did a certain string of words require which for a relative clause or that for a subordinate clause?
“Cite an example,” one of the cubicle editors might reply to another, pausing over her own manuscript.
“‘A journey through the forest, which was greener than it soon would be.’ or ‘that was greener’?”
“Sounds to me like a restrictive clause,” one editor might tell the other.
“In this case, it could be either one.”
Which might elicit laughter in still another cubicle, or a didactic response, depending upon the person, as I tried to wrap my head around the concept of restriction. What I knew about the lingo was limited.
“We’re in the business of making decisions, Sonia. You can’t say ‘either one.’ Take the plunge.”
“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it’s which. Does it take a preceding comma?”
“Personally, I’ve never encountered a ‘which’ clause that didn’t read better with one, but maybe that’s just me.”
“Unless you’re English.”
“Well, our readers aren’t, are they?”
I’d linger there in the aisle between cubicles and listen, too intimidated to offer an opinion but enjoying the banter, until summoned up front by the copy chief, who sat at a desk facing the editing warren, drop off my manuscript and hope to pick up a fresh ream to take home with me. Then on my way out I’d drop in on my mentor, Allan LeBlanc, if he was in his cubicle.
If not scurrying to another department to deal with blurbs and copyrighting information, he usually would be, gesture me in to the chair beside his desk, and engage me in still another informal tutoring section. Beyond our hermetic profession, no one knew Allan LeBlanc any more than me, and still don’t, but then, how many readers notice that an introductory phrase of eight words or more requires a comma? A sentence falls apart without it, which was his discovery, in any book you’ll ever read. He was, in other words, a stylistic genius.
Often, Allan was editing while eating from a take-out container, bean sprouts and alfalfa, or some such whole grain offering. In a three-piece suit, he looked like a legal executive, though stripped down in his cubicle to the vest, shirtsleeves rolled up on forearms, a manuscript, pens and pencils, dictionary and style book, on his desktop, sharing space with his lunch.
Which he’d push aside, saying to me, “Don’t mind that,” and maybe holding up a plastic fork and grinning at the absurdity of the modern world. “What can I do for you today?”
But usually he already knew, having anticipated my problems with a recent manuscript, taking Xerox copies he’d made of certain pages from a drawer and laying them on the desk before I’d finished telling him. My script insertions in red pencil were black on his copies, typewritten sentences highlighted with yellow marker, his own comments in black felt tip pen in the margins.
“How do we express sarcasm?” he once asked, in his Socratic way.
Which was annoying, that he spoke to me as if I were a child, before I came to realize that Allan the same superiority complex with everyone.
“You’re saying it shouldn’t be italics,” I replied.
“Correct, but why not?”
“Well,” I said, “I can guess, but why don’t you just tell me.”
He leaned forward, tapping me on the knee, excited; language and usage turned him on. “With sarcasm—or irony or mimicry—the word or phrase is not stressed, but rather, inflected.”
“That makes sense … ”
“So if I said the ‘sarcasm’ … ”
“It’s inflected, because you’re quoting it … ”
It was odd, with his elegant fussiness, that Allan seemed comfortable with me. With others, he was quick to pass judgment, on clashing colors, the food his colleagues ate, which he derided as disgusting, the books and movies they liked, just about anything concerning taste and style. Compared to them, I was a ragamuffin, in my worn clothes and uncultured manner of speech, with its Brooklyn slurs and contractions.
But if Allan liked to be Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle, it was all right with me.
Before leaving, I’d check back with Joanne, the copy chief, who by then might have found a manuscript for me.
It was my old friend Nick, who’d been freelancing for years, who persuaded her to try me on a set of galleys, which since he had I had fallen out was now awkward between us. Sometimes she’d say something about Nick, as if he were a distant relation we had in common. Like, “I wish Nick would listen and switch to copy editing. We’re still cutting back on proofers … ”
As if bringing him up obliquely might affect a reconciliation, or that I might have an influence on him if we ran into each other.
Everyone liked Joanne. She had a good heart. But then, it was a company, and she had a position of authority, and she could be tough too. Too many botched jobs and she’d send freelancers to Allan’s cubicle to be disciplined, or even dismissed. He was her faithful underling, waving to me when I left, if he wasn’t busy poring over another project from a perpetual pile of work.
“In this case, it could be either one.”
Which might elicit laughter in still another cubicle, or a didactic response, depending upon the person, as I tried to wrap my head around the concept of restriction. What I knew about the lingo was limited.
“We’re in the business of making decisions, Sonia. You can’t say ‘either one.’ Take the plunge.”
“Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it’s which. Does it take a preceding comma?”
“Personally, I’ve never encountered a ‘which’ clause that didn’t read better with one, but maybe that’s just me.”
“Unless you’re English.”
“Well, our readers aren’t, are they?”
I’d linger there in the aisle between cubicles and listen, too intimidated to offer an opinion but enjoying the banter, until summoned up front by the copy chief, who sat at a desk facing the editing warren, drop off my manuscript and hope to pick up a fresh ream to take home with me. Then on my way out I’d drop in on my mentor, Allan LeBlanc, if he was in his cubicle.
If not scurrying to another department to deal with blurbs and copyrighting information, he usually would be, gesture me in to the chair beside his desk, and engage me in still another informal tutoring section. Beyond our hermetic profession, no one knew Allan LeBlanc any more than me, and still don’t, but then, how many readers notice that an introductory phrase of eight words or more requires a comma? A sentence falls apart without it, which was his discovery, in any book you’ll ever read. He was, in other words, a stylistic genius.
Often, Allan was editing while eating from a take-out container, bean sprouts and alfalfa, or some such whole grain offering. In a three-piece suit, he looked like a legal executive, though stripped down in his cubicle to the vest, shirtsleeves rolled up on forearms, a manuscript, pens and pencils, dictionary and style book, on his desktop, sharing space with his lunch.
Which he’d push aside, saying to me, “Don’t mind that,” and maybe holding up a plastic fork and grinning at the absurdity of the modern world. “What can I do for you today?”
But usually he already knew, having anticipated my problems with a recent manuscript, taking Xerox copies he’d made of certain pages from a drawer and laying them on the desk before I’d finished telling him. My script insertions in red pencil were black on his copies, typewritten sentences highlighted with yellow marker, his own comments in black felt tip pen in the margins.
“How do we express sarcasm?” he once asked, in his Socratic way.
Which was annoying, that he spoke to me as if I were a child, before I came to realize that Allan the same superiority complex with everyone.
“You’re saying it shouldn’t be italics,” I replied.
“Correct, but why not?”
“Well,” I said, “I can guess, but why don’t you just tell me.”
He leaned forward, tapping me on the knee, excited; language and usage turned him on. “With sarcasm—or irony or mimicry—the word or phrase is not stressed, but rather, inflected.”
“That makes sense … ”
“So if I said the ‘sarcasm’ … ”
“It’s inflected, because you’re quoting it … ”
It was odd, with his elegant fussiness, that Allan seemed comfortable with me. With others, he was quick to pass judgment, on clashing colors, the food his colleagues ate, which he derided as disgusting, the books and movies they liked, just about anything concerning taste and style. Compared to them, I was a ragamuffin, in my worn clothes and uncultured manner of speech, with its Brooklyn slurs and contractions.
But if Allan liked to be Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle, it was all right with me.
Before leaving, I’d check back with Joanne, the copy chief, who by then might have found a manuscript for me.
It was my old friend Nick, who’d been freelancing for years, who persuaded her to try me on a set of galleys, which since he had I had fallen out was now awkward between us. Sometimes she’d say something about Nick, as if he were a distant relation we had in common. Like, “I wish Nick would listen and switch to copy editing. We’re still cutting back on proofers … ”
As if bringing him up obliquely might affect a reconciliation, or that I might have an influence on him if we ran into each other.
Everyone liked Joanne. She had a good heart. But then, it was a company, and she had a position of authority, and she could be tough too. Too many botched jobs and she’d send freelancers to Allan’s cubicle to be disciplined, or even dismissed. He was her faithful underling, waving to me when I left, if he wasn’t busy poring over another project from a perpetual pile of work.
The trek to the city, the screeching fluorescent lit subway with its mirrored windows against dark tunnels, produced its own excitement, in contrast to midtown Manhattan streets, which itself produced a letdown, being less than its busyness at first implied. It was just people like me, after all, waiting for a light to change, lining up at take-out counters, moving back and forth to and from work.
At the familiar building I’d open my knapsack for inspection in the lobby, a new twist to the old routine, after the bomb scare, explain my reason for being there then proceed to the bank of elevators that would take me to the fourteenth floor. And then the walk up one corridor and down another and into the cubicled editing department, where on one fateful day I knew right away that something was wrong.
It was quiet, too quiet; not just without grammatical queries and workaday repartee, but with tense gravitas. No one looked up from desktops to greet me when I appeared, except Sonia, who threw me a stricken glance and went back to her pages.
I hesitated at the opening to Allan’s cubicle and saw he wasn’t there as Joanne called out to me from her desk up front in a strained voice, not like her at all. Taking it personally, I assumed I’d screwed up, that she was about to ream me over a botched manuscript, or worse, dismiss me. But that didn’t make sense in context, with the room deathly silent, which was confirmed as I approached and she said, in a muted yet agitated voice: “Allan tried to kill himself.”
Stunned, I stood before her as she blurted details in the same tone, which I had trouble following. Someone smelled gas and made a call, the police broke into his apartment, and looking up at me before I could respond, “They found an uncashed check for three hundred dollars! Can you imagine that?” Her voice rising, incredulous, and angry too. “What kind of person leaves a check for three hundred dollars sitting on a kitchen table for two weeks?”
I’d never been to Allan’s apartment, or even seen him outside the office, but now pictured it, a generic room, empty, lonely, said, “He killed himself?”
“No,” Joanne replied. “He tried to and failed,” as if the failure was an indictment.
Which I didn’t understand, how the uncashed check and his failure were more unforgivable than dying, in that tense room permeated by his absence.
Then, even angrier, she told me that his name wasn’t Allan LeBlanc at all, but Allan Levine, and he’d never gone to the Sorbonne in Paris, but Forest Hills High School in Queens and then to Hunter College, and his parents were not university professors; his mother was a schoolteacher and his father an insurance adjuster. , they worked for the city.
I’d never heard any of that, and like the uncashed check, wondered what difference it made and why she was so furious, and didn’t know what to say, picturing Allan as I knew him, in suit and tie, who’d tried to kill himself.
Finally, I asked, “Where is he now?”
“Bellevue,” Joanne replied; the mental hospital. And then, as if waking up, becoming another person altogether, said, “Allan liked you … You should go see him.”
At the familiar building I’d open my knapsack for inspection in the lobby, a new twist to the old routine, after the bomb scare, explain my reason for being there then proceed to the bank of elevators that would take me to the fourteenth floor. And then the walk up one corridor and down another and into the cubicled editing department, where on one fateful day I knew right away that something was wrong.
It was quiet, too quiet; not just without grammatical queries and workaday repartee, but with tense gravitas. No one looked up from desktops to greet me when I appeared, except Sonia, who threw me a stricken glance and went back to her pages.
I hesitated at the opening to Allan’s cubicle and saw he wasn’t there as Joanne called out to me from her desk up front in a strained voice, not like her at all. Taking it personally, I assumed I’d screwed up, that she was about to ream me over a botched manuscript, or worse, dismiss me. But that didn’t make sense in context, with the room deathly silent, which was confirmed as I approached and she said, in a muted yet agitated voice: “Allan tried to kill himself.”
Stunned, I stood before her as she blurted details in the same tone, which I had trouble following. Someone smelled gas and made a call, the police broke into his apartment, and looking up at me before I could respond, “They found an uncashed check for three hundred dollars! Can you imagine that?” Her voice rising, incredulous, and angry too. “What kind of person leaves a check for three hundred dollars sitting on a kitchen table for two weeks?”
I’d never been to Allan’s apartment, or even seen him outside the office, but now pictured it, a generic room, empty, lonely, said, “He killed himself?”
“No,” Joanne replied. “He tried to and failed,” as if the failure was an indictment.
Which I didn’t understand, how the uncashed check and his failure were more unforgivable than dying, in that tense room permeated by his absence.
Then, even angrier, she told me that his name wasn’t Allan LeBlanc at all, but Allan Levine, and he’d never gone to the Sorbonne in Paris, but Forest Hills High School in Queens and then to Hunter College, and his parents were not university professors; his mother was a schoolteacher and his father an insurance adjuster. , they worked for the city.
I’d never heard any of that, and like the uncashed check, wondered what difference it made and why she was so furious, and didn’t know what to say, picturing Allan as I knew him, in suit and tie, who’d tried to kill himself.
Finally, I asked, “Where is he now?”
“Bellevue,” Joanne replied; the mental hospital. And then, as if waking up, becoming another person altogether, said, “Allan liked you … You should go see him.”
I didn’t go right away.
It could be that his dual identity, which had struck me as irrelevant, settled in. It bothered me. Who exactly had he been? And then, a week or so later, shaking that off, I went to visit him.
Bellevue, a notorious place, was among other hospitals in a district on First Avenue, north of 23rd Street. It was a grim-looking institutional building behind a wrought-iron fence topped with spear points; like in Frankenstein, not the book but the movie, which had frightened me as a boy. But the chaotic lobby inside was no more ominous than an airplane terminal, people coming and going, crowding at the bank of elevators on either side that would take them to a certain correct floor, or disgorging them after a visit; worried-looking families in huddles amidst the chaos, gathered at benches along the walls, beneath high windows, comporting or shouting at children, as doctors in white coats pushed through. It was a madhouse, which is what they called Bellevue, for other reasons.
In a smaller lobby on an upstairs floor, an orderly at a desk told me to sit down; I was the only one there. After a while Allan pushed through double doors, wearing a blue hospital gown, and shuffled across the smooth floor in slippers. Otherwise, he looked the same, though quieter, without his usual effervescence.
I stood as he approached, said, “There you are!” in a hearty voice, straining for levity, which sounded ridiculous.
He didn’t take it that way, grinned wryly in response, said, “You found me,” which put me somewhat at ease.
But while following him through the double doors, into a wide, tile hallway, the loose ties in back of his gown opened, revealing an expanse of flesh from his neck to the crack in his ass, which was disturbing, stripping him of identity; Allan, who wore three-piece suits and was always careful about his appearance.
We walked down the tile hallway together, though he guided me, and into a lounge with vinyl covered couches, chairs, and formica tables. A television set bolted high on a wall was showing a soap opera, none of the patients in gowns paying attention. They were scattered about the spartan room, sitting, aimless, except for an emaciated man in an open terry-cloth robe who wandered around the perimeter. Allan led me to a table where two men were playing chess, and when they looked up, introduced me. They nodded and went back to their game.
He was always generous with me that way, letting me into his editorial world, where, despite his superior attitude, he’d been accepted. Until he blew himself up. I wanted to ask about that—Forest Hills and Paris, France—but didn’t.
Then we left the lounge and he led down the hallway to his room, which he told me he’d shared with someone who left the day before. It contained two beds and dressers, plastic chairs, and another television bolted to a wall. At the iron mesh window I looked out at adjacent hospital, or maybe an addition to the one we were in, with yellow brick walls and a gravel rooftop, a slash of the East River visible through a break between buildings.
“You’re the only one who’s visited,” he said, sitting on the bed, one leg folded beneath another. There was a hint of sadness in that.
What could I say? Did the others, his colleagues, feel as betrayed by his fictional persona as Joanne? He would have missed her more than anyone else.
I wondered if he had any friends outside of work, gay men perhaps, though he’d never told me he was gay, only that he went to the gym three times a week because if he didn’t stay in shape no one would pay attention to him.
“Joanne was upset,” I finally said, and then did see sorrow flicker across his face. “Everyone was.”
“It’s what happens when you try to kill yourself,” he said, with another wry grin. “No one wants to know you. Also, you lose your job.”
I hadn’t known that.
I brought up freelancing, told him I’d help him out if I could, and offered to speak to people at another company where I did occasional work, though Allan no doubt had far more contacts than I did.
A middle-age man in a tweed suit knocked on the jamb of the open door then, and with a nod walked in. Allan stood and introduced me. It was his psychiatrist, who assessed me with frank curiosity, which made me uneasy.
“I know Allan from work,” I said.
He nodded again, then asked, “Would you mind if I ask you some questions?”
“About what?” I replied, uncertain.
“About Allan, of course,” he said, and looking at him, asked, “Would that be all right with you, Allan?”
“Sure,” he replied, and left the room.
On edge now, I said, “What do you want to know?”
How long had I’d known Allan? Did I know any of his other Allan’s friends? Had he been anxious or depressed recently? He didn’t ask about the false identity, and I didn’t volunteer that. Allan was my friend, I realized, and I owed it to him to keep his secrets.
It could be that his dual identity, which had struck me as irrelevant, settled in. It bothered me. Who exactly had he been? And then, a week or so later, shaking that off, I went to visit him.
Bellevue, a notorious place, was among other hospitals in a district on First Avenue, north of 23rd Street. It was a grim-looking institutional building behind a wrought-iron fence topped with spear points; like in Frankenstein, not the book but the movie, which had frightened me as a boy. But the chaotic lobby inside was no more ominous than an airplane terminal, people coming and going, crowding at the bank of elevators on either side that would take them to a certain correct floor, or disgorging them after a visit; worried-looking families in huddles amidst the chaos, gathered at benches along the walls, beneath high windows, comporting or shouting at children, as doctors in white coats pushed through. It was a madhouse, which is what they called Bellevue, for other reasons.
In a smaller lobby on an upstairs floor, an orderly at a desk told me to sit down; I was the only one there. After a while Allan pushed through double doors, wearing a blue hospital gown, and shuffled across the smooth floor in slippers. Otherwise, he looked the same, though quieter, without his usual effervescence.
I stood as he approached, said, “There you are!” in a hearty voice, straining for levity, which sounded ridiculous.
He didn’t take it that way, grinned wryly in response, said, “You found me,” which put me somewhat at ease.
But while following him through the double doors, into a wide, tile hallway, the loose ties in back of his gown opened, revealing an expanse of flesh from his neck to the crack in his ass, which was disturbing, stripping him of identity; Allan, who wore three-piece suits and was always careful about his appearance.
We walked down the tile hallway together, though he guided me, and into a lounge with vinyl covered couches, chairs, and formica tables. A television set bolted high on a wall was showing a soap opera, none of the patients in gowns paying attention. They were scattered about the spartan room, sitting, aimless, except for an emaciated man in an open terry-cloth robe who wandered around the perimeter. Allan led me to a table where two men were playing chess, and when they looked up, introduced me. They nodded and went back to their game.
He was always generous with me that way, letting me into his editorial world, where, despite his superior attitude, he’d been accepted. Until he blew himself up. I wanted to ask about that—Forest Hills and Paris, France—but didn’t.
Then we left the lounge and he led down the hallway to his room, which he told me he’d shared with someone who left the day before. It contained two beds and dressers, plastic chairs, and another television bolted to a wall. At the iron mesh window I looked out at adjacent hospital, or maybe an addition to the one we were in, with yellow brick walls and a gravel rooftop, a slash of the East River visible through a break between buildings.
“You’re the only one who’s visited,” he said, sitting on the bed, one leg folded beneath another. There was a hint of sadness in that.
What could I say? Did the others, his colleagues, feel as betrayed by his fictional persona as Joanne? He would have missed her more than anyone else.
I wondered if he had any friends outside of work, gay men perhaps, though he’d never told me he was gay, only that he went to the gym three times a week because if he didn’t stay in shape no one would pay attention to him.
“Joanne was upset,” I finally said, and then did see sorrow flicker across his face. “Everyone was.”
“It’s what happens when you try to kill yourself,” he said, with another wry grin. “No one wants to know you. Also, you lose your job.”
I hadn’t known that.
I brought up freelancing, told him I’d help him out if I could, and offered to speak to people at another company where I did occasional work, though Allan no doubt had far more contacts than I did.
A middle-age man in a tweed suit knocked on the jamb of the open door then, and with a nod walked in. Allan stood and introduced me. It was his psychiatrist, who assessed me with frank curiosity, which made me uneasy.
“I know Allan from work,” I said.
He nodded again, then asked, “Would you mind if I ask you some questions?”
“About what?” I replied, uncertain.
“About Allan, of course,” he said, and looking at him, asked, “Would that be all right with you, Allan?”
“Sure,” he replied, and left the room.
On edge now, I said, “What do you want to know?”
How long had I’d known Allan? Did I know any of his other Allan’s friends? Had he been anxious or depressed recently? He didn’t ask about the false identity, and I didn’t volunteer that. Allan was my friend, I realized, and I owed it to him to keep his secrets.
He was neatly dressed that evening, in sweater and stacks instead of a suit, enjoyed playing a word game that ended the meeting but was subdued afterward as we looked for a place to eat. He rejected a half dozen places after we checked menus, eventually agreeing to a health food restaurant.
As we ate, I asked if he missed the company of other editors.
“It’s not so bad, working alone,” he said, sounding resigned. “I put out a few feelers but haven’t had any luck so far.”
Not long afterward, when I went into the city to pick up work, Joanne told me he’d overdosed on tranquilizers.
