My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [75]
“You mean Eminem?”
“Yes, exactly, the freestyle vocalist. Can you call his people and set something up? I should think you might want to do the interview yourself.”
“Yes, George.”
“Incidentally, given the success of your foray into the Midwest, I’m thinking of sending you to another fair later this fall. How do you feel about Akron?”
The phone rings, and George picks it up.
“Hullo?” It’s George’s agent, evidently calling for a progress report on the memoir. “Yes, things are going swimmingly.” George winks at me. “The words are flying out so fast my fingers can barely keep up! You’ve disturbed me mid-sentence! Oh, and you might be interested to know that our next issue, the anniversary issue, is going to have an interview with the great rapper, Numnum! Ben is going to do it.”
Feeling increasingly tense, I wander off into George’s living room. If Brigid is going to quit after the fall issue, then we’re running out of time. There might not be another opportunity to tell him the ship is going down. But what if in his current fragile health that pushes him over the edge?
It all goes back to George’s vision. Brigid is right: ultimately it’s his magazine, and you have to respect what he’s built. But for the sake of the future, can’t it be just a bit more serious now and then? Why does he always have to resist being responsible? Is the fun-plus-youthfulness formula such a crucial element of the magazine’s identity, or is it merely an excuse for George to divert himself when he doesn’t feel like writing?
“Ah, there you are,” says George, padding into the living room. “Our sandwiches have arrived.”
We return to the kitchen and sit down at the table, where George begins regaling me with the kind of story he seems to draw no end of pleasure out of telling, no matter how many times he has told it before:
“… and then I said, ‘My God, man, get us out of here,’ but the door to the cave was locked and it was so bloody hot that I had no choice but to take off my pants …”
As he’s talking to me, I become preoccupied by George’s ever-fascinating bird’s nest of white hair, which occasionally attains Warholian dimensions of unruliness. Today, however, the style is more that of a foppish prep schooler, bangs hanging droopily over the corner of one eye, and as I look at it I can’t help thinking, Don’t we all have to grow up sometime? Even George?
“… I’d never seen a pair so large. It was unspeakable. You couldn’t peel your eyes away even if you wanted to …”
“George …”
“Snakes everywhere, flicking their tongues and hissing, while the helicopter tried to drop the ladder just a few more inches …”
“George …”
“Yes, Ben, what is it?”
George’s eyes are surrounded by folds as thin as parchment, and he can’t keep his jaw from hanging slack, or his chest from heaving when he gets this worked up. Don’t we all have to grow up sometime?
Suddenly George gets a serious look on his face and shoots up from the table.
“I’ve got something to show you. Will you wait here?”
Two minutes later he returns carrying a cardboard box full of magazines, which he hands to me proudly.
“What are they?”
“Take a look.”
I open the box and pull out an ancient copy of Sports Illustrated with George’s byline on the cover.
“One of my first articles,” he says.
I glance at the piece, about a foray of George’s into the world of sports as a “professional amateur,” the role that characterized so much of what he does, whether it’s writing, publishing or acting. The next magazine I pull out is an ancient edition of Harper’s, also with a story by George—the whole box is filled with George’s early writing. He’s been rereading his work as a young journalist, trying to jog old memories.
“I hadn’t looked at these in forty years,” he says, leaning back. He’s hardly touched his sandwich and is now eyeballing the bar in the kitchen.
“Why not?”
“Because I dreaded the embarrassment. I was terrified that if I looked back I