I Hated to Do It: Stories of a Life Read Online Free

when they were followed by a dinner sponsored by the publisher.
    I gradually did more work for Kurt, who was starting to become very popular, and Max and Kurt and I, sometimes with John D. MacDonald, were drinking more Silversmiths at the Century Club. It became habit-forming, and about once every ten days, Kurt, Max, and I would meet at the club, and each of us would consume close to three of those potent, if not lethal, drinks.
    During our trips to the club, about three in the afternoon each time, we would make a trip to the kitchen, which, of course would be closed. By banging on the door, we could get someone in the kitchen to come out with a few sandwiches to stop the racket. Convivial talk ensued, the sandwiches were consumed, and then it was time for bed at three thirty in the afternoon. Kurt walked home. He always walked home. Max disappeared. I went home or tried to work in the office. Another day’s work done.
    With Max having his office around the corner from the Century Club and with him spending a lot more time at the club drinking Silversmiths than he spent in his office, his author client Richard Gehman one day was prompted to remark, “Hey, Max, I need an agent in the afternoon, also.”
    It just happened that as I started advising Kurt, Annie and I became friends with him.
    ***
    I was now negotiating major business deals for Kurt at the suggestion of and in cooperation with Max. As I did more and more for Kurt, Max was pleased to be relieved of the major responsibility of negotiating some complicated deals, and Kurt was relieved that I was gradually doing more and more of his personal business, which included assuming the responsibility of collecting his money and paying his bills. Our friendship with Kurt and the Vonnegut family grew rapidly at the same time that I was assuming more and more of the responsibility for Kurt’s business.
    There was a period of time that I was handling all of Kurt’s money, and as fate would have it, I had invested some of his money in New York City bonds, a rather safe investment at the time. In 1975, for some unknown reason, I sold all of Kurt’s New York City bonds, and two weeks later it became known that New York City was near bankrupt. It was a stroke of luck on my part that for some reason unknown to me, I sold the bonds at precisely the right time.
    This gratuitous stroke of faith caused me to realize that it would be important for me to relieve myself of the duty of investing Kurt’s money for him. I kept enough in the bank account and paid the bills, but any extra money after that was handled by an experienced broker that I engaged for Kurt and watched over.
    As a fiduciary I was extremely careful to never take a dime belonging to Kurt. What is ironic is that at one point, poor me (poor as compared to my friend Kurt), loaned Kurt money from my account. It was not usual for me to be lending Kurt money, but for some reason I made a mistake and wrote a check on Kurt’s account that was for more than was on deposit in the account. Not wanting the check to bounce, I loaned Kurt’s account the money from my account. He paid me back.
    Kurt’s Nephew Steve and the Rest of the Gang
    Annie and I became very friendly with one of Kurt’s nephews, Steve Adams. Actually Kurt and his wife, Jane, raised Steve and two of his brothers, Jim and Kurt (Tiger), after a traumatic week in 1958 in which their father, James Carmalt Adams, was killed on September 15 in the Newark Bay rail crash when his commuter train went off the open Newark Bay Bridge in New Jersey, and their mother, Kurt’s sister, Alice, died of cancer the next day. Peter Nice, a fourth nephew, went to live with a first cousin of their father’s in Birmingham, since Jane, at the time, had her hands full with her three children, but she always regretted not also raising Peter.
    Our friendship with Steve blossomed when he was in his early twenties and he made a trip, with his guitar-playing friend Headly, to break