Collating tonight. I drove Charlie to Chinatown to pick up food for the dinner. When we got back to his house the issue had arrived. I ate a quiet lunch, then helped set up the First Class bundles.

Charlie was on edge, partly because people kept calling to cancel, but also because the labels weren’t sticking properly to the new plastic bags used for Second Class. He blew up at Faren when she mentioned it, barking, “SHUT UP AND DO IT!” (Russ, who’d arrived early, was alarmed by this.) Maybe the labels will do better tomorrow, once they’ve set. Aside from that, everyone enjoyed the Dim Sum. I drove Russ home at the end of the evening.

That, alas, was Charlie’s management style.

I wish I could remember more about the mechanics of collating. All I can recall at this point is my dismay that night at at the address labels refusing to stick on the plastic bags. I pictured them dropping off in transit, countless magazines rattling around unaddressed and astray in post offices across the country.

Collating parties began at Locus’ first beginnings, held, I believe in the small New York apartment Charlie and his first wife shared. By my time, they were monthly parties at Charlies house/Locus offices, where music played and friends and employees were fed anything from Dim Sum to Charlie’s excellent barbecue.

Attending collating was always a sign you’d remained in Charlie’s good graces. I was not invited after I left Locus, which saddened me, but was beyond my control. Collatings were popular occasions. Charlie didn’t allow shoes in his house, and the pile of footwear near his door was always large on those nights. The food was good and everyone had a fine time. Whatever his other faults, Charlie was a good host.

The Chinatown we visited was not SF’s narrow-alleyed, shadowy tourist haven, but Oakland’s broad, sunlit, business-like Chinatown, which is uncluttered with curlicued pagoda roofs and dangling lanterns. That was where Charlie introduced me to Dim Sum shortly after I was hired. We typically brought back, among other things, pork buns, shrimp rolls, custard tarts, and cartons of luciously greasy Peking duck.