Free Bandbox by Thomas Mallon Page A

just realized I’ve never given
you
one of these.”
    Max regarded the frontispiece of this volume, widely known around the office as
Going Down for the Count
, and thanked her: “It will be a thrill to crawl between your covers, Countess.”
    Daisy rapped his knuckles and laughed a brave little laugh, tucking the judge’s name and address into the top of her stocking while, with her free hand, she waved goodbye. Max, running late, rushed past the reception desk—“Gotta zoom zestily, Mrs. Z”—and boarded the elevator just as Cuddles and Becky were getting off it.
    They were in an even greater hurry, but their double-timing down the corridor was stopped by a low-voiced greeting from Stuart Newman’s office: “Becky?”
    Politeness overtook urgency, and she halted Cuddles at the open door with a tug on his elbow. The two of them entered Newman’s space, where a half-dozen bottles of cologne, all of them open, stood on the desk.
    “Sorry about the stink,” he said, woozily. “Harris has me doing this comparative thing on men’s fragrances. I guess I reek.”
    What he reeked of most was implausibility. Becky knew from the more lucid moments of this morning’s meeting that Stuart, in between “Bachelor’s Life” columns, was supposed to be at work on something quite different from men’s cologne. “What happened to your piece on Shipwreck Kelly?” she asked.
    Newman appeared to have forgotten his assignment to write about the flagpole sitter. “Could I talk to you, soon, about Rosemary LaRoche? He’s got me on
that
now, too.” The screen siren, admired hotly from afar by Harris, had agreed to be
Bandbox
’s first femalecover subject, a stunt the editor-in-chief hoped to spring on newsstand customers before Jimmy Gordon thought of doing something similar. “I don’t know anything about the movies,” Newman confessed, in his little-boy’s voice.
    “Sure,” said Becky, deciding not to be annoyed that Harris had given this prime Hollywood subject to someone else. You couldn’t reasonably expect him to have another woman writing about
that
woman, when the whole point of the article would be to have the slavering male scribe whip up the excited male readers—a bit like Boy Scouts in a shared tent, if she could believe the tales her little brother used to harrow her with.
    “First thing tomorrow morning, if you like,” she told Stuart, tugging Cuddles back into the corridor.
    “What’s with the field hand’s workload?” asked Houlihan, once they were over the threshold. “Is ’Phat trying to drive this guy back to the sauce?”
    “I think he’s trying to keep him
off
it. If it’s not too late already,” Becky replied, considering the open cologne bottles and Newman’s rheumy eyes. “But there’s no time for that now.” They had arrived at Hazel’s desk. Becky asked if she might borrow an envelope. Hazel shrugged from behind
True Story:
“Be my guest.”
    “Now, listen,” Becky told Cuddles. “You keep the third copy.” She put one print of the photo into his hand and sealed up the other two for Harris. They would leave it for him, without explanation, like a foundling in a basket. Becky wouldn’t dream of owning up to the authorship of this fraud she was perpetrating (if Daniel even knew she’d set
foot
in the
Graphic
’s offices!); and Cuddles’ battered sense of chivalry would never let him take credit for what any girl—let alone herself—had done to pull his chestnuts out of the fire.
    “Slide it under the door,” suggested Hazel, without looking up. “Half of what’s incoming doesn’t exactly make it over the finish line. He’s more likely to notice if he trips over it.”
    “Thanks.” Becky motioned Cuddles back to his office. She then went to her own, and waited to see what would happen. She thrummed her fingers on the desktop and tried to look at the pile of press agents’ letters that had arrived in the few hours she’d been gone, but she was too nervous to