Return to Peyton Place (16 page)

“Oh,” said Brody, with a smile. “You know about the Pulitzer.”

“Yes,” Allison lied, praying that she was right. “I remember when you got it. Your picture was in all the papers.”

Why, it isn't hard at all, she thought in surprise. I can lie every bit as well as Paul when I put my mind to it.

“You've a good memory,” said Brody. “Most people remember the column I wrote yesterday and that's as far back as they go.” A waiter put another glass of beer in front of him and Brody picked it up. “Tell me, Miss MacKenzie,” he said, wiping a tiny mustache of foam from his top lip, “what are people in your home town going to say about your book?”

“They have already said it,” said Allison. “Mr. Jackman, my publisher, sent advance copies to a few people in town and the word circulated very quickly.”

“And what have they said?” asked Brody.

Allison's fists clenched and her eyes burned with remembered rage.

“They say that I should be run out of town,” she said and her voice quivered. “They say that my mother should sell her house and that my father should lose his job and that we should all leave Peyton Place forever.”

“And will you?” Brody asked. “Leave town, I mean.”

“Never!” cried Allison. “I was born in Peyton Place and I'm going to live there just as long as it suits me.”

Brody looked at her. “I was born in a small town in Indiana,” he said. “When people in small towns get riled up they can make things pretty unpleasant for whoever got them mad.”

“I know it,” said Allison.

Brody drained his glass and another was waiting. “Well, to get back to my first question. I used the wrong word, so I'll rephrase. Where did a girl your age learn so much about sex and sneakiness and perversion?”

“If you come from a small town you don't have to ask me that, Mr. Brody,” said Allison. “There are no secrets in a small town.”

“Then what you're saying is that Peyton Place taught you everything you know.”

“That most certainly is not what I said, Mr. Brody. I merely reminded you what small towns are like.”

Brody smiled. “Cagey, aren't you?”

“Not unless you want to think of me that way,” said Allison. “I was trying to be truthful.”

They ordered lunch then, and Brody asked her casual questions about Peyton Place and the people who lived there.

“Must be quite a town,” he said as he stood up to leave. “I'll have to go up there for a visit one of these days.”

When he had gone, Paul Morris took Allison's hand and squeezed it hard.

“You did it, sweetheart!” he said.

Allison was tired and angry. “What was the idea of telling him that I'm nineteen years old?” she demanded. “I'm twenty-three, and you know it.”

“Honey, that's publicity,” said Paul Morris, “and nine-tenths of all publicity is nothing but pretty stories someone made up sitting in an office just like mine. Look. Do you really believe all the crap you read in movie magazines about the stars? Do you really think that our sexy sirens are in their early twenties, that they attend P.T.A. meetings and get up every morning to make breakfast for their kiddies?”

“I never thought much about it one way or the other,” said Allison irritably.

“Well, start thinking, sweetheart,” said Paul. “Publicity is used to create an illusion about a place, a thing or a person. An illusion that people will believe because they want to believe it. Publicity is a means of selling merchandise and the merchandise can be a hotel room in Miami, a box of soap powder, or a human being. We're going to sell you, Allison, because if we do it well enough we will, in turn, sell copies of your book.”

Allison looked at him in horror. “I'm not something on a bargain counter!” she cried. “I'm a person. Me!”

Paul put a hand on her arm. “Honey, I know that and you know that, and everybody in the world knows that everybody else is a person. But what we are going to do with you is to make you into a very special person. One that millions of people will recognize. They'll know your name, your face and your book. In short, we are going to try to make you into a celebrity.”

Allison said, “Now that I'm of age again, I'd like a drink, please.”

“You can't have one right now. After today, people here are going to remember that you sat with Jim Brody and that you didn't drink with him. In fact, he'll probably put the fact that you don't drink in his column, so you can't turn around now and do anything to disturb the illusion.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Allison.

“Is it?” asked Paul. “Listen. We're going to sell you as a genius type. A sweet, untouched, young girl from the country who lived for years with a situation until she could not stand the sham and hypocrisy of it any longer and exploded into print with the truth. Now the public already has the idea that sweet, untouched girl geniuses don't drink, so whenever you are in a place where people might remember, you don't drink. It's as simple as that.”

“The whole thing is nothing but outrageous lies!” said Allison.

“Not really,” said Paul. “Don't things happen in Peyton Place the way they happen in your novel?”

“Of course they do,” said Allison. “But I certainly never meant to imply—”

“Look, doll. You want your book to sell, don't you?”

“Yes, but I still don't see—”

Again he cut her off. “Leave it to me,” he said. “And talk to everyone I introduce you to just the way you talked to Brody. Do what I tell you and together we'll make
Samuel's Castle
into the biggest thing that ever hit the book business.” He glanced at his watch. “Come on,” he said. “We're due over at C.B.S. in twenty minutes. You're going to be interviewed by Jane Dodge. Her show is on in the morning but she tapes all her interviews.”

“I've heard her,” said Allison. “She has the loveliest, deep voice.”

“That's right,” said Paul. “The voice of an angel and the soul of a true bitch. Come on. I hope we can get a cab.”

“With Jane,” said Paul, before they went into the studio, “don't belittle women's magazines, women's organizations or women's anything. She's a professional Woman and has made a big, profitable business out of it.”

Jane Dodge wore a large hat, long black gloves and used an ebony cigarette holder. She was so sleek and had been made up with such precision that she looked to Allison like a manufactured article.

“For Christ's sake, Jake,” Jane was yelling, as Paul led Allison over to her, “are you going to screw around all afternoon or do we get a show taped?”

“Almost ready, Jane,” said the man named Jake.

She turned to meet Allison. “Oh, hello, sweetie,” she said. “We'll be able to get going if that dumb bastard ever gets things organized.”

Her sharp, quick eyes behind green, harlequin-glasses scanned the sheet of notes Paul Morris had handed her and she mumbled under her breath.

“Nineteen. Peyton Place. Only child. First book.”

Allison stood watching her, her heart thumping.

“Ready, Jane.”

Jane Dodge watched the nervous man named Jake and at a signal from him she began to speak in the deep, soft voice that Allison remembered.

“And now, ladies,” she said into a microphone, “it gives me great pleasure to introduce all of you to a little girl I met several years ago in New England. Her name is Allison MacKenzie and she's only nineteen, but my little friend has managed to fool quite a few of us. She is the author of the sensational new best seller,
Samuel's Castle
and, girls, if you haven't had an opportunity to read this marvelous book yet, let the dishes go and run to your bookstore. Well. Good morning, Allison. How are you, dear?”

When it was over, Allison's knees were trembling and all she wanted to do was to get out of the hot, stuffy studio and into the fresh air.

“Paul, sweetie,” Jane Dodge said. “Leave a copy of that book for me, will you?”

Paul took a copy of
Samuel's Castle
from his briefcase and put it on Jane's desk.

“Thanks a lot, Jane,” he said. “It was a great interview.”

Allison could not take her eyes off the book Paul had put down.

“Haven't you read it?” she asked Jane.

Jane looked at her in astonishment and then she began to laugh.

“Sweetie,” she said, “with the rat race the way it is these days, I don't even have time to read Lenny Lyons any more.”

When Allison and Paul were outside, she turned to him.

“I know men who work in the woods who don't have the vocabulary of that woman,” she said. “And as for two-faced hypocrisy, Jane Dodge would make the women of Peyton Place look like children.”

“Could be,” said Paul cheerfully, “but thousands of women listen to her every morning. And when they listen tomorrow morning they'll hear you. And then they'll run out and buy
Samuel's Castle
because Jane told them to. Because anyone who's a friend of dear old Janie's is a friend of theirs.”

What a dirty business this is, Allison thought wearily. And I am part of it now. I have given in to it without a struggle. I want my book to be read. I want it to be a best seller. And so I do these awful things. How easy it is to become a liar and a fraud when you are able to tell yourself you're doing it with the best intentions.

Paul hailed a taxi, but Allison said she wanted to walk. Paul's last words as he drove off were, “Allison, we are going to sell one hell of a lot of books.”

Walking crosstown to meet David she felt a moment of fierce hatred for Paul. But it's not Paul, she told herself, he's only doing the job he was hired to do. And he's doing it damn well. It's me. I've become a huckster. I'm not doing the job I trained myself to do. I should be home with Mike and Constance writing my new novel.

But now it was not only the excitement of publication that kept her mind from her work, now there was also Lewis Jackman. For the first time since she met Paul at Kelly's did she think of Lewis, so caught up had she been in the hectic business of publicity. Now, walking the busy street in the bright spring weather, she remembered his voice and the touch of his hands. This is the thing that matters, she told herself, not a few lies to people who make a living out of lying. What's growing between Lewis and me, that is what matters.

As she walked toward the café where David waited for her she thought of him with a pang of guilt. But we don't choose an object for our love, she told herself. Love chooses us. Lovers can always find an excuse for the hurt they do to others, she thought. And the excuse is always love itself.

She met David at an Italian coffeehouse in the West Fifties, a dark place with guttering candles on marble-topped tables. The walls were covered with a dark red cloth that absorbed what little light there was. There were mirrors, speckled and yellowed with age, in which she saw her face, wavering and dark, as if seen through smoke. At the back, the only bright object in the place, stood a great, ornate, silver coffee machine. When the operator depressed one of its long handles, steam hissed through tightly locked coffee grounds and a delicious elixir, the very essence of coffee, dripped drop by drop from a silver faucet into a small cup.

David watched Allison as she entered and looked for him and walked toward his table. He thought she moved with a new assurance. He smiled to himself. Our little Allison is growing up, he thought. Allison dropped wearily into the chair across from David, and the waiter brought coffee and Allison recounted her day. She told David about Paul Morris, Brody and Jane Dodge.

David listened quietly, not interrupting once. Allison was too full of herself to notice how angry David had become and was startled when she finished speaking and heard David's voice tremble with anger as he said, “You're not in this business to sell books! You're supposed to be a writer, not some clown on a radio or television program. Not some idiot running off at the mouth to some fifth-rate lush of a reporter.”

“You just shut up, David!” cried Allison, doubly angry because his words echoed her own thoughts. “Maybe you don't care what happens to your books, but I care what happens to mine. What's the good of writing anything if nobody reads what you write?”

“People discover good books for themselves,” replied David. “And
Samuel's Castle
is a good book. People would have realized that in time without every paper in the country touting it as a work of pornography.”

“It isn't pornography,” cried Allison.

“
I
know it isn't,” said David. “
You
know it. But what about people who read Jim Brody's column? They're not going to see any of the beautiful things in your work. They're going to buy and read it for your graphic sex descriptions.”

“Mind your own damned business,” said Allison.

David stood up. He took a newspaper clipping from his pocket and threw it on the table. “Get the news while it's still hot, Allison. Your interview with Brody is in the late afternoon edition. He lost no time. And neither have you. You've got what you wanted, Allison—success with a capital S. It will be interesting to see what you do with it, or what
it
does to you.” He smiled bitterly. “We don't seem to have much to say to each other any more, do we?” Then he walked out. Allison sat for a moment without moving; then, she read Brody's column.

“If you want your young girl to learn the facts of life the hard way,” Brody had written, “make sure that she's brought up in a town like Peyton Place. That's what happened to the young authoress of a sensational new best seller called
Samuel's Castle.
Here is a book that pulls no punches.” The column ended with, “And what of Allison MacKenzie, the youngster who kicked over the rock of New England respectability to expose the rot underneath? She says, quite cheerfully, that business at her mother's dress shop has fallen off by 50 percent and that her father, the principal of the Peyton Place High School, will probably lose his job. But we don't think that Miss MacKenzie has much to worry about.
Samuel's Castle
should make her rich and famous.”