There was the time our publisher-in-chief got ahold of a floppy disk with the software program that Knopf used to determine print runs and prices, and he figured out that we hadn’t been printing enough books to cover our overhead.

"We should be printing at least 8,000 copies," he insisted, even though we only had orders for 3,000.

For a year, by his iron rule, we printed twice as many books as we could sell. Finally I snuck into his office and changed a few variables in the Knopf program.

"After only a year, look how much better it is around here," he said, proudly calling me into his office. "Now we only have to print 4,000 to cover our overhead."

We heard stories about how big-time New York publishing was all about money. But it wasn’t real money. It was Ego money. It was *fait accompli* money--pay half a million for a novel, forcing the marketing department to pull out all the stops to make it a bestseller. Money was heft and weight. Money was status. But they had no idea what real money was.

Real money was coming in on Saturdays to search the mail for any checks that might be worth depositing. Real money was telling an author that the novel it had taken him four years to write was worth an advance of only $2,000. Real money was borrowing ten grand from your distributor to pay off the ten grand to your printer, a loan you had incurred only to repay the 3rd mortgage you’d taken out on your house in order to make payroll.

Anything but sell the painting. The painting was our last resort. The publisher-in-chief had always promised that we could fund the press for several years if we sold the painting. Our publisher-in-chief had inherited it from his parents, and it had been painted by Charlie Russell, who did western scenes. Knowing that it anchored our balance sheet gave us the confidence to live in such constant impoverishment. Four feet tall and three feet wide, it hung proudly in our conference room, above where the interns worked.

"It offends me," decided our hypersensitively politically-correct Head Intern one day, and she put down her red pencil, refusing to do any more proofreading. As is often the case with unpaid labor, she believed she was only a heartbeat away from ruling the country.

"How can it offend you?" I asked, trying to coax her back to work. "It’s a Charlie Russell original."

"Those men are brutalizing that bear."

"They’re shooting it."

"It’s cruelty to animals," she said with summation.

"The bear’s attacking them."

But my explanation failed to quell her rebellion.

"It offends me, that such a brutal act would be glorified in a painting. I can’t work in front of it any more." She crossed her arms defiantly and spent the rest of the day glowering at anyone who walked by. We were long accustomed to her tempermental moods, so nobody paid her any attention, which only infuriated her more and turned her glower into a hard-set scowl. It was a tremendous and remarkable scowl, a scowl that could have struck guilt in politicians or brought a New Year’s Eve party to somberness. Among the left-leaning media elite, such a scowl of complete disapproval was an incredibly powerful tool, and our Head Intern’s natural gift for scowl was recognized all-around. Staffmembers emerged from their offices to take a peek, then retreated to their petty fiefdoms, jealous that they did not possess an equal look of daggers. How could this 23-year-old Head Intern, who had not yet devoted her adult life to publishing books that did not sell because they were not crap, so perfectly express the resentment and disdain of one who had? They closed the doors to their offices and practiced their scowls, invoking the Stanislavsky method to harden their faces, working themselves into such a contemptuous lather that all work at Libra House completely came to a halt.

Around three o’clock, all of the doors in all of the offices slammed open, and the great Carnival of Scowl competition was had. In the doorways their faces hung, gallows-like. It was gloomier than Beckett. It was crueler than Mamet. It was more tragic than Bronte. It was more profound than Havel.

I had to think quick. I had no choice. I went into the Publisher-in-Chief’s office. Having no idea what was going on outside his door, he’d spent his day typing into his manifesto.

As if we’d been speaking about it all day, I said, "I checked with our landlord. They’re red-tinted all right."

"What are you talking about?" he responded, leaning back in his chair, glad for the interruption.

"You didn’t see the newspaper this morning? About the red flourescent lights?"

"I must have missed it."

"The museum in Denmark? The collection ruined?"

When I told him that red-tinted flourescent lightwaves were found to penetrate and denature oil paintings, he scrambled out from behind his desk and charged past me in direction of the Charlie Russell. He came back a minute later, gripping the frame across the headbeam. "Thank God I’ve got the direct light from the windows," he said, leaning it up beside his desk.

Calm returned. Work began again. For two hours books were edited, designed, proofread, shipped. Then I went to check in on the Head Intern. Her arms were crossed again. The scowl was reforming.