What is said of accounting departments — that Receivables is more diligent than Payables — has always seemed to me to require examination. Because of what, exactly?
Cash. And the flowing of it, naturally.
Believe me, I know a lot about not having a lot of cash, having spent it all on my friends and their ever-flowing pastimes.
In my early submission days I submitted with considerable frequency and no particular selectivity. The publications that paid in cash were numerous, being largely the kind that did not last long enough to develop a cheque-issuing protocol.
One handed in copy at the door. One received, shortly thereafter, a sum in notes.
I spent it the same afternoon — diligently, in the sense that I applied it promptly and without hesitation to whatever the afternoon required.
Care and concern always came after.
The same could not be said of cheques. Well, it could be said,
I suppose, but would it be truthful? What is truth? What is...
Anyway, a cheque arrived in an envelope.
The envelope required opening.
The cheque required endorsing — and transporting to a bank,
which required a journey,
which required a reason to make that particular journey
on that particular day rather than some other.
It's all very tiring.
The reason was, in my experience, slow to arrive.
I would sit. The cheque would sit. I developed a mild affection for the cheque,
as one does for familiar objects — for things that have been on one's desk long enough to seem like furniture. Like my elbows. More cheques would arrive and they would become friends.
But I would never name those cheques bearing my name.
Several editors, I am told, because they told me,
enquired after their payments.
I had not, in most of these cases, failed to receive payment.
I had merely failed to confirm it. But that cannot be confirmed.
There is a distinction. Or the perception of a distinction.
Sometimes it's so distinctly indistinct,
It's difficult to discern the difference.
