The Celebrity (16 page)

“Afford—” Thornton Johns rose to his full height. His eyes were blazing blue triangles; his cropped hair seemed to leap off his head. “Don’t, for God sakes, start on that again.”

“Start what?”

“You know exactly what.”

“Why, Thorny, I wasn’t even thinking about
that
” she said, raising her eyebrows. A hush fell; nobody moved. Thorn flushed; Abby stared at the floor; Gregory closed his eyes.

Behind his eyelids, he could still see the painful humiliation on his brother’s face. An odd sensation came to him, that he himself was the older, the taller, the heavier of the two, the one who could defend and protect. He despised Cindy for lashing at Thorn. She was a nag, for all her virtues, and she would never understand Thorny’s delicacy about things like this. If it had been to Cindy that the commission had been offered—

Gregory Johns gulped. If it had been to Cindy! He had talked only to Thorn, argued only with Thorn, fought only with Thorn—

Suddenly he wanted to go home. He had to go away and be quiet and begin to think all over again. He looked at Abby, signaling an appeal.

Through the silence in the room, Thorn’s breathing was still audible. “I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing,” Cindy said in a small voice, like a child’s. She looked embarrassed, regretful; unexpectedly, Gregory was sorry for her. “About the mail,” he heard himself saying, too heartily, “I guess we’ll work something out. We’re too tired, all of us, to make any sense. Thorn, I’ll drop in at the office tomorrow, and we’ll settle it. What do you say?”

“I’ll be at the office.”

The good nights were stilted, and as the door closed behind them, Gregory and Abby heard Thorn say, “Damn it, Cindy, you absolutely are becoming a—”

They moved out of earshot.

Next morning, Gregory Johns was up early. At the dot of nine he was at his bank, doing something he had never done in his entire life: cashing a check for a thousand dollars. As he left the uniformed guard at the front gate and walked toward the bus stop, he felt strangely uneasy, and though he called himself neurotic for thinking of robbery in the familiar daylight of Martin Heights, his right arm stayed close to the pocket where his wallet lay. In New York he went straight to the Air Terminal Ticket Office on East Forty-Second Street, and when he emerged, he crossed into Grand Central. By ten he was ringing the bell of Thorn’s apartment. Hulda answered his ring and he greeted her in a low voice. “Mr. Johns has left, hasn’t he?” Her nod pleased him. “And the boys?” She nodded again. “Please tell Mrs. Johns I’m here, will you?”

Almost before he had settled himself for waiting, Cindy appeared, tying the belt of a flowered dressing gown as she came. She had not stopped to put on make-up, and the pale puffiness of her face, as well as her ungirdled ampleness, made her seem older than usual. He wondered if they had stayed up as late as he and Abby, and again he found himself sorry for her. But when she spoke, it was with a flippancy that was almost pugnacious. “Hi, Gregory, are you going to tear me apart too?”

“No, I’ve got an idea I want to talk over.”

“At the break of dawn?” She sat down and said, “Would you like more coffee? I would. I’m in a frazzle.” In her strong voice, she called out, “Hulda,” and without lowering it asked, “Gregory, what’s got into Thorn, anyway?”

“How do you mean?”

“Now don’t get all wary and cautious with me,” she said crisply. “The man’s driving me mad, and you know it.” Hulda came in, and Cindy asked if there were any coffee left from breakfast. Hulda said “No,” in a flat, unhelpful way. “Well, please make some fresh. Mr. Johns would like a cup, and I’ll have one with him.” She waited until Hulda, who had made no reply whatever, was out of the room, and said, as she had said once a week for years, “I ought to give Hulda the gate, always grumpy and put upon. What kind of idea, Gregory?”

He reached into his breast pocket, drew out an envelope, and tossed it over to her. “Look at that,” he said, and sat back to watch her. He and Abby had agreed last night that the oblique approach with Cindy was bound to fail. She was too blunt, too intelligent; whether or not she would openly ridicule an artful dodge depended on her mood, but that she would spot it, in any case, was clear.

Cindy was examining the pair of airplane tickets with care. They were for a round trip between New York and California, leaving La Guardia Airport on the morning of March 6th, with the return date still open. She read them, turned them over, and then looked up inquiringly. “What made you decide to fly out?”

“They’re for you and Thorn. Can you get ready in three days?”

“For me and Thorn?” Her hand fell open and the tickets dropped to the floor. She picked them up and set them on the table beside her. “What are you talking about?”

“Partly fun and partly business. Good, hardheaded business, and you’re going to help me get it going.”

“What business?”

“Thorn could get away for a while, couldn’t he?”

“He has, other winters, but he’d never, never—” She reached out and pushed the tickets farther away from her. “Never in a million years, especially now when he thinks I’ve been bitchy enough to hint at it. Bitchy, that’s what I am, it turns out, vulgar, needling you, dropping hints, practically begging. I’m quite a tasty character, I’ve just discovered.” She threw her head back and laughed.

“He was sore, Cindy. Forget it.”

“Men kill me. They’re nothing without other people’s ideas and support, but they never let themselves know it. And here I’ve been thinking all along that I’ve been a good helpful wife to Thorn, bolstering him up, being a fine hostess for his clients and prospects, even giving him pretty useful notions of people to see and things to do. It was who urged him on about the idea of a movie sale—did you know that?”

“No, but look, Cindy, I’m sure he appreciates—”

“He was so positive fantasy was out, and I kept at him about
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
and
The Bishop’s Wife
and
Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street
until I was blue in the face. I simply wouldn’t let him give up—I even suggested talking to some qualified people, and that’s what put him on to Hathaway. He’s forgotten all that. Needless to remark.”

Gregory waited. Whenever Cindy got wound up, there was nothing else to do. He felt battered by her violence; he also felt that she was not unhappy about Thorn, only outraged, as one is over an ungrateful child.

“Let’s talk business for a bit,” he said, and she suddenly laughed and said, “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“Cindy, you’re a good tough honest girl, and it’s damn healthy.” He grinned at her. “Now listen to some arithmetic on this movie money. We’ve always talked in grand totals, but now we’re going to take just one year at a time. This year.”

“Let’s. I adore talking about money.”

“Just the movie money, because Thorn would yell that he didn’t have a thing to do with the B.S.B. selection, and he didn’t. But on the movie, this year gives me thirty thousand for my first payment, plus ten thousand for my month out there, and an agent’s commission on that would be four thousand dollars. Even somebody who can’t bear the word ‘commission’ might take a present that shows our gratitude. It would have to be a Big present, not a box of candy or a new watch, or I’d feel like a piker. Say a Buick Roadmaster, convertible. That costs about thirty-four hundred, fully equipped, radio, heater, white wall tires, the works.”

“How do you know what it costs?”

“I phoned from a booth in Grand Central.”

“Thorn wouldn’t touch it.”

“But you will, being a good tough honest girl that isn’t as complex a creature as your husband.”

“Me?”

“I’m not offering it to him. It’s all yours. You can take him for a ride in it, unless—” He paused. He was enjoying Cindy’s face. “Unless you’d rather pass up a car and choose a trip to the Coast, all expenses paid. If he won’t go, you come
alone
with us and meet all those people he’s so crazy about and then come home and describe them to him—one by one and very, very carefully.”

She stared at him and then shouted, “You angel, you clever angel.”

“Wait, I’m not through. You’re going to get dressed and we’re going downtown. I phoned him too and made a date for just me. But you’re going in first, to tell him all this privately, and if he still says no, I’ll have news for him.”

“What news? Oh, I love this, I just simply love this.”

“That I can’t permit him to try to sell
Partial Eclipse
or any other of my works by long-distance phone because I think an agent should be right in Hollywood when things are hot.”

“You
can’t.
He’s buzzing with plans.”

“I also will have to inform him that I will not allow him to handle my mail, my phone calls, or anything else—”

“It’s blackmail,” she said admiringly.

“And, on the other hand, that I
do
need an official representative now, and that if he won’t be official, I’ll get myself some agent who will. This agent will collect proper and full commissions on anything sold from this moment on, whether it’s anything further on
The Good World,
like English rights or digest rights or cheap reprints or something else, or whether it’s on any of my old books or any new book or story or popular song I may write in the future.”

“It’s murder,” she said more admiringly still.

At about the time that Gregory and Cindy were emerging from the Wall Street station of the subway and beginning the four-block walk to Thorn’s office, a small dome of faceted glass glowed red on the Digby and Brown switchboard, where the excellent Janet still presided. With an upward sweep of her hand, as if she were plucking a long-stemmed jonquil from yielding earth, Janet pulled a metal-tipped cord out of the. horizontal ledge before her and plugged it into the socket below the bright dome. Simultaneously the thumb of her other hand flicked an inclined switch upright and her lips said, “Digbybrown. Gaftanoon.”

In the earpieces at the ends of two curved wires fitted to the crown of her head, a voice answered, “Good afternoon yourself, Janet. Is Mr. Barnard in?”

“Why, Mr. Johns, first names and all.”

“I always call my favorite girls by their first name, you ought to know that. Is he?”

“I’ll see. I think he’s gone to Philadelphia to work with that author of his. They’re not all like your brother—nobody has to wet-nurse
him.
”

She clicked off and Thorn idly wondered why he bothered to turn it on for switchboard girls. He always did, at numbers he had to call frequently, and this sassy Janet had a way of talking back that amused him. Someday he might do something nice, like a box of candy sent in for no reason at all. Just his business card and the word “Thanks,” and his initials. No, he thought, if he were going to do it—a phrase leaped to mind and he smiled. “Blessings on you, little Jan.” That’s what he would write. Would she get it? It might be better to wait until summer when she
was
tan.

“He’s left already, Mr. Johns,” Janet said. “Anybody else do?”

“The President of the firm might, in a pinch.”

Janet giggled. “Mr. Digby is in with Mr. Brown. Just a sec.”

“When do you go on vacation, Janet?”

But she had already clicked off. In spite of his awful night, he had been in good spirits all morning, and if his suggestion were well received, he would be in better. He had said some savage things to Cindy but it might be a good thing to have a row that blasted the air clear once and for all. Like most normal women, she wanted her husband to be the boss, and it took an occasional knockdown battle to remind her that he was.

The thought had comforted him, and he had fallen on his work with a will. He may have neglected getting new insurance accounts for a week or two back there in February, but he had made up for lost time ever since the sale. It was amazing how many people preferred to do business with somebody they had read about. Why, even at the Premium Club lunches, he was being introduced now as “our most famous member.”

He had been thinking about that, and jotting down some properly offhand phrases for tomorrow’s meeting when, out of the blue, had come the thing with Diana. He hadn’t planned to say it; if he had stopped to think, he never would have. For all her soft exclamations of surprise and pride, she still could be more distant and aloof than any girl he had ever seen. To say to her, without the usual excuse of working again afterward—simply to look at her as she came in, and say, “I’m low today, Diana, would you have dinner with me tonight?” had quite literally never occurred to him. But to hear himself saying it, and then to see her lids drop quickly in that enchanting way and hear her murmur an assent—

Right after that had come the call from Jim Hathaway. Jim had just been elected National Public Relations Counselor of his World Government Committee, and was fairly chortling over the honor. He had said all kinds of extravagant things about owing part of it to Thorn for having brought him to
The Good World,
and had ended by inviting him to the next meeting of his group. “It’s on the fifth. Rex Stout and Oscar Hammerstein will be there, and Kip Fadiman, and Norman Cousins—too bad Gregory will be on the train, but we’ll ask him when he gets back.”

“Mr. Johns,” Janet said in his ear, “Mr. Digby’s back in his office. You can have him now.”

Thorn came to with a start and remembered the phone in his hand. Conversational spice, he had been thinking; nobody could call it name-dropping. Rex Stout and Oscar Hammerstein and—

“Good morning to you,” Luther Digby said.

Thorn wished they would establish a consistent company policy as to whether ten after twelve was morning or afternoon. “Good morning. I have a suggestion I’d like to make, if you won’t think I’m butting in.”

“Another suggestion like splitting up our twenty-two thousand over five years?”

“You’re not going into
that
again?”

“No, no, I’m only kidding. You know Gregory’s interests come first with us—always have and always will. What’s on your mind?”

Thornton Johns had come to detest Luther Digby. The absolute gall, he thought now, still harping on his fifteen per cent. The fool would rather let Gregory pay out most of the movie money in taxes, just so it suited the firm’s convenience to get their cut in one lump sum.