then Paul thought he understood. “Nathan sent you here,” Paul said. “You two are working together again.” It made sense; they used to be partners and Paul thought his recent meeting with Nathan had been promising. Leo held Paul’s gaze in a way that seemed significant and said, “Officially? No. Officially? This is just a friendly visit.”
“I see,” Paul said. He didn’t see but hoped to God that Leo was there on unofficial-official Nathan business. At one of the countless holiday parties he’d attended in December—he couldn’t even remember which one, they all blurred, all the cheap Prosecco and waxy cubes of cheese and gluten-free cupcakes—one of his old SpeakEasy colleagues mentioned that he’d heard Nathan was thinking about starting a literary magazine—or investing in one.
“As a write-off?” Paul asked, unable to imagine any other reason.
“I think it’s more of an ego thing,” his friend had said. “Something respectable and highbrow to balance the other stuff.” The other stuff, Paul knew, referred not just to the gossipy lowbrow nature of SpeakEasyMedia’s online presence, but to the soft-core porn site that generated most of the company’s revenue.
“Any idea who he’s considering?”
“None. You should call him. The money he’s willing to throw at someone is chump change for him but probably massive by your standards.”
Paul had been on the phone scheduling a meeting the next day. Keeping Paper Fibres afloat sometimes felt like trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a leaky skiff. He was constantly plugging one hole, just to have another appear and then another and he felt like the whole venture was going to sink more times than he cared to think about.
The rental income from his building, in addition to allowing him to work and live rent-free, provided some income—enough to pay himself, Bea, and his one other full-time employee (a managing editor who spent most of her time filling out grant applications and chatting up prospective donors and trying to keep existing contributors from turning fickle) a modest income. Paper Fibres had a solid subscription base—as far as those things went—and even managed a decent amount of advertising revenue, but not enough to cover all his costs and pay writers and keep his related projects thriving.
The majority of outside funding came from Paul’s two elderly aunts, his deceased father’s sisters who’d never married and treated Paul like a son. They were a certain type of elderly New Yorker, sharing the same rent-controlled apartment within walking distance of Lincoln Center for decades and decades. Voracious readers, eager travelers, regulars at all kinds of readings and the Broadway Wednesday matinee. They had annual subscriptions to the ballet, Carnegie Hall, and the Ninety-Second Street Y and box seats at Shea Stadium. Every January since he’d started his publication, they sent an extremely generous check. The Sisters’ Fund, as he thought of it (and how he listed it on the contributors’ page, which thrilled them), was how he could pay writers and manage, once or twice a year, to publish a book under his very modest imprint. Usually a poetry collection, the occasional novella, or a book of essays.
Two years ago, the January check had been a little less. The following year, less still, and last month, nearly half what it used to be. Paul would never question them, but he worried that maybe something was wrong and they weren’t telling him. He invited them out, as he did every January, to thank them for their contribution—drinks at the Algonquin and dinner at Keens Steakhouse. Before Paul got a chance to ask if everything was all right, they brought up the diminishing checks, speaking in their typical fashion, almost as one person. He was used to their eccentricity by now, but on the few occasions they stopped by his office—“just to have a look around”—he realized how they appeared to others. “Like those Grey Gardens ladies,” one of the interns had said once, admiringly, “minus the dementia and cats.”
“We’re so sorry,” they told him over lunch. “It seems we’re going through our retirement fund a little more quickly than is ideal.”
“Our accountant has put his foot down, dear. He’s trying to get us to cut all expenses by half.”
“Especially ones he deems ‘unnecessary,’ anything charitable.”
“You can imagine our distress. Of course we initially refused, but then—”
“He summoned us to his office! Like a principal bringing truants called to account. It was mortifying—”
“Mortifying. He had charts.”
“Not charts, graphs. They were very colorful.”
“Very.” Mutual and grave nodding commenced; Paul waited.