"Accounting will arrange your severance pay," Audibon interrupted and hung up. He examined the water color again, remembering a dark girl in striped clam-diggers and an old shirt knotted under her bosom, sitting cross-legged on a blazing dune ... a drawing board before her, tilted on the bleached remains of a driftwood chair ... the tinkle of a brush washed in a jar of water.
"Never," Audibon said.
The phone rang. He picked it up. "Yes?"
"Mr. Grabinett cannot be reached in his office," the secretary reported in a suppressed voice that soothed Audibon. "Mr. Bleutcher cannot be contacted in Brockton. I left word that you called."
"Word is too little and too late. Keep trying for both."
"Yes, Mr. Audibon. John Macro is waiting to see you."
"Macro? By appointment?"
"Yes, Mr. Audibon. You told me to—"
"Send him in."
For a man who was not in the business, John Macro was the most hated man in the business. He was a Maryland manufacturer who had taken it upon himself to cleanse radio and television of subversive artists. To this he devoted his patriotic heart and ample bank account. Once a month Mr. Macro came to The Rock and purged. He was in no way equipped for the job, intellectually or otherwise. In normal times his impertinent intrusions would have been brushed as contemptuously as Mr. Macro himself would have brushed any unqualified intruder attempting to tell him how to do his own thinking; but these were not normal times.