Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,13

making now? Is that possible?”

We stood staring at each other across the open drawer, stunned by our naïveté; he was a producer at CBS and I’d worked at the country’s biggest papers, but neither of us had ever known that journalists could earn that kind of money.

“I made Kathy repeat it twice. And that’s not all. There’s a driver. A car. A clothing allowance.”

“A clothing allowance?” It came out halfway between a sputter and a snort. He had finally located the opener and I watched him open the beer and take a quick gulp.

“Apparently they pay for everything. Country clubs—”

“Can’t you just see us in a country club?”

“—hairdressers, travel. You name it. It’s kind of unreal. I worry about the money, worry it will change us.”

Michael came to the sink, turned off the water, and put his arms around me. “If this is what you want to do, then you should go for it. It’s risky, but you’re fifty years old and if you’re ever going to do it, now’s the time.”

“I’ll probably make an enormous fool of myself.”

“No, you probably won’t.”

“And then there’s all that other stuff—like the sixty people I’m supposed to send packing.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Don’t have to what?” With a child’s unerring instinct, Nick chose that moment to appear with the empty plate. He set it in the sink and looked up at me.

“Fire a lot of people.”

“Oh.” Nick’s eyes went to Michael, knowing something was missing.

“Mom’s just been offered a new job.”

“You mean you wouldn’t be a restaurant critic anymore?” Nick’s voice rose, excited. “You wouldn’t have to go out all the time? We could eat dinner at home? Every night?”

“Well, yes.”

“Do it! Do it! Do it!”

THREE MINUTES AFTER THE CONTRACT arrived, the phone rang. When I picked up the receiver, a torrent of staccato screeches came pouring out. I held it far away from my ear, trying to decipher the words. At last I grasped that Condé Nast’s PR czar was on the line. I had yet to meet Maurie Perl, but her rat-a-tat communication conjured up a large, fierce woman with dark hair and huge red lips. She finally ran out of steam and slowed down enough to make me understand that she was talking about the need to control the news.

“When,” she said very slowly, as if speaking to someone of limited mental capacity, “were you planning to give notice at the Times?”

I had not given this a single thought. “I guess I’ll tell my editor tomorrow morning.”

An intake of breath. “Not your editor! You have to go right to the top.”

“You want me to tell Lelyveld directly?” Joe Lelyveld was the executive editor of The New York Times.

“Of course!” A pause. “Now, we have to consider the timing. This is going to be very big and we want to be on top of it.”

“It was so funny,” I told Nick and Michael at dinner. “She has such an exaggerated sense of the importance of this.”

“These are the people who think paparazzi are following them around,” Michael reminded me.

“Well, I hope Maurie’s not disappointed. I can’t imagine many people are going to care, but she’s treating it like a military operation. She’s timed it to the last millisecond.”

“Does she have a stopwatch?” Nick asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s created a minute-by-minute timetable. I tell Joe. Then I call her. She calls Truman. He fires the current editor.”

I didn’t know Gail Zweigenthal, but I knew she’d been at Gourmet for her entire career and was, by all accounts, a very nice woman. I hoped this wasn’t going to come as a terrible shock. I also hoped the rumors about Condé Nast’s generosity were true and that she had a golden parachute (although there was no mention of such a thing in my contract).

“What then?” asked Nick.

“Then Maurie makes phone calls. She’s very concerned about some guy named Keith Kelly, who’s the Post’s media critic; she kept saying we have to give him an exclusive interview before the news leaks out. And she must have told me a thousand times that I’m not allowed to talk to anyone unless she says it’s okay.”

The next morning I made pancakes and watched Michael pack his suitcase. The Clinton impeachment hearings were in full swing, and he was off to Arkansas to work on yet another story. As an investigative producer for CBS, he was always on the road, following the story wherever it led. “I wish I didn’t have to leave right now.” He