The Celebrity (23 page)

It was the first time this question had ever occurred to Thornton Johns; it burned and twisted within him; he looked at Daphne Herrick and loathed her. Jill Goodwyn came up to him, and for one preposterous second he almost loathed her too.

“You look low,” Jill said softly.

“I’ll be back,” he answered and marched over to Daphne and her actor. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said coldly, “but you mistook me for my brother, Gregory Johns. I shall tell him what you said; it will delight him, I am sure.” He bowed formally, turned, and said to Jill just behind him, “I
am
low. Talk to me.”

“About?” she said as he moved off with her.

“About anything.”

Jill could catch a man’s mood as quickly as the next divorcee. She gave him a look of guileless compassion. “About my planning a trip—don’t change expression, Cindy’s looking at us and she’s pretty tight—my planning a trip to New York in June?”

“In June?”

“A business trip. Have we any business to transact in New York that we never got around to out here?”

All at once Thorn was his own man again. If Gregory chose to spend his life as far removed from Jill Goodwyn and Daphne and Bette as any smelly occupant of a balcony seat—why, that was Gregory’s affair. “New York in June,” he said. “You giving up chain-smoking?”

Jill laughed. “I might. But remember, only for business.”

“Like that extra policy you keep harping on?”

“Could be.”

He slipped her arm through his and steered her toward the open terrace doors.

Just as they were stepping through, there was a commotion behind them. Above the din, Cindy shouted, “Damn it, I’m going home.”

The buzz and hum and motion in the room barely had time to become localized before Thornton had Cindy outside and in the Buick. All the way home he told her, expertly, just what he thought of people who made cheap scenes that would set the town clacking. But all the while, he was thanking his luck that it had been no worse. Slapping faces, tearing hair, smashing glasses—these went too far, but a bit of piquant gossip couldn’t really hurt anybody too much.

As usual, his estimate proved correct. Within three days, the piquant bit of gossip had taken its normal rank with his lectures, his frequent appearances in the papers, his spectacular double play from Metro to Paramount, and his matchless talent for making important people feel freshly important.

Ultimately all these disparate elements coalesced into a solid recognition of Thornton Johns as a luminary in the shifting sky of greatness over Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and Pacific Palisades. In two dozen famous houses, which is to say in the only houses that mattered, it became increasingly certain that when the talk ran thin on such matters as last week’s Academy choices, or reports from those who had “caught” the Boston tryout of
South Pacific
(“It will be as big as
Oklahoma!
”) and the usual professional chatter about casting, box-office ratings, and scene-stealings by stinkers who probably were Communists—when this talk petered out, it was replaced by the subject of Thornton Johns.

He was praised and criticized, extolled and castigated, claimed and disowned. He was and he was not using his brother’s talent as a substitute for any of his own; he did or did not have anything except good looks and the gift of gab; he was dreadful to that attractive wife of his or perfectly marvelous even to stay married to such a loud-mouthed managing aggressive ambitious bitch; he was and he was not sleeping with Jill Goodwyn, who after all
would
fall for such calf-eyed adoration even from a sick grocer, darling, after being walked out on by three husbands and eight lovers in rapid succession.

There are certain people who can keep a hostile discussion focused upon them, in their absence, for a full five minutes; others who can keep it for ten; still others, more rarely endowed, for a full hour. Thornton Johns, when at last the time came for him to head East, had by no means achieved the full run on this clocking mechanism, but he was no five-minute sprint either.

In short, in Hollywood and its environs at least, Thornton Johns had become A Somebody, A Name, A Celebrity.

I
N THE END,
G
REGORY
and Abby drove back. A certain succinct statement of Hat’s had made this possible, a statement Gregory cherished, though privately, since Abby could not, or would not, share the delight it gave him.

When the long-distance call to Martin Heights had finally gone through, it was supposedly a three-way conference, with Abby in the living room and himself on the bedroom extension. However, until the close of the discussion was in sight, he had cravenly let Abby carry most of the load alone. He had thoroughly admired the restraint and tact with which she had probed for evidence, to allay or support her worst, fears, though he had secretly deprecated her lack of faith in their daughter’s natural good sense and in their own upbringing. At last it had dawned upon Hat where her mother’s skillful questioning was really leading, and in that tone of barely concealed contempt so characteristic of loving daughters of seventeen Hat had finally met it head on.

“Oh, Mother! You’re trying to cross-examine me about are we having an affair!”

“Why, Hat, I—”

“Honestly,” Hat interrupted crisply, “nobody I know would do anything so
corny
!”

Gregory had laughed into the telephone. This, it turned out, had been an error; afterwards Abby laid him out more roundly than she had done for years. And when, after a long talk that same evening with Mary Zatke, Abby had canceled her air reservation, Gregory had disgraced himself once more.

“I knew nobody else was going to drive that car home. I saw the fire in your eye when Cindy made her offer.”

The only thing Abby had approved of in his entire performance was that he had gone stern all over with Hat about her attendance at classes. “I’ve never threatened anything in my life, Hat,” he had said, “but if you get low grades at Hunter, there will be no Vassar for another full year from next October. You are going to stay put until you leave with a decent record behind you. Get it?”

Hat had got it and during their remaining days in Hollywood, two further letters from her convinced them that scholastic redemption had begun. Gregory magnified this one virtue into all virtues, succeeding so well that most of Abby’s original eagerness for their return by car was restored.

They drove off an hour after Gregory’s last afternoon at the studio. April had brought a sharp rise in temperature to all of Southern California, and Thorn had relayed advice from many experienced motorists that they drive mostly at night until they were beyond the heat of the desert. This advice suited Gregory’s impatience to be off on their adventure; they decided that, despite their afternoon start, they could do nearly three hundred miles for the first lap, to a town near the Arizona line. Without consulting them, Thorn telephoned ahead for reservations in an air-conditioned motor court there. “You’ll appreciate it,” he said with authority. “Even at night, that desert can boil.”

It was two in the morning when they arrived. As long as they had been in motion, the heat had not been too intense, but whenever they stopped they were both grateful for Thorn’s farsighted efficiency. As they drove through the dark silent streets of the small city, there was no one about to direct them to their motor court; only on the railroad sidings was there sign or sound of life: locomotives being switched, freight cars being coupled and uncoupled, lanterns being waved in mysterious night signals. When they finally found their motel on the far side of the town, everything was in darkness save for a single bulb glowing above a sign at the entrance. The sign said “No Vacancy.”

“There must be a night bell,” Gregory said.

Uneasiness attacked Abby. The place looked white and clean and inviting, but it looked dead. After prolonged ringing, a man in a T shirt and pajama trousers opened the door marked “Office.” There was no welcome on his face and when Gregory spoke of reservations and gave his name, the man looked belligerent.

“We held the room till twelve,” he said.

“But you were told we’d get here late,” Gregory protested.

“If there’s a deposit mailed in, or wired in, we hold. Otherwise we let go after twelve. I can’t afford to get stuck with it, can I?”

“Why the hell do you take a phone reservation without saying that?”

The man looked aggrieved, and cut across any further discussion by telling them where there was another motor court they might try. Then he said, “Next time, mister, just remember one thing. Everybody who calls up is supposed to be a big shot in Hollywood. We can’t go by
that.
You’ll get fixed up all right at this other place. They only charge six dollars.”

Gregory turned on his heel.

The other place was atop the railroad tracks, or so it seemed to Abby. It was not air-conditioned; their box of a room smelled of dust and clattered with noise. As they undressed, Gregory said they must never stay on the road so late again, but Abby was too tired to answer him. They sat on the edges of their beds, testing the mattresses, and Gregory said, “Not too bad,” lay down, and stretched elaborately. A moment later he kicked off the top sheet and fell asleep.

Abby tried to imitate him and could not. The air lay upon her like paste; and in five minutes her nightgown was gluey; the freight cars outside the window might have been crashing together under her pillow. Eight dollars mailed or wired in, would have assured them the cool quiet of the other place; it was dreadful to be deprived of a night’s rest for so small a reason. If Thorn and Cindy were traveling with them, Thorn would have found out about deposits in plenty of time.

So petty a thought shocked Abby. She rose and went to the washbasin to slosh cool water on her face; the stringy little towel made her think longingly of their beautiful rooms in Beverly Hills. She dropped the towel hastily, and went to the door, opened it, and stood just inside the doorway, waiting for cooler air to strike her face. It did not do so. Leaving the door ajar, she returned to her bed and closed her eyes with determination. It really was outrageous of Thorn to have been so careless.

Outrageous, Abby thought. Outrage. The heat isn’t what’s keeping me awake. I can’t sleep because I’m so angry.

At Thorn?

Or at this come-down from what we’ve grown used to?

Or at that man treating us to cheap sarcasm about pretending to be big shots in Hollywood?

Abby’s eyes flew open and she sat up. Her last sentence echoed in her mind, and she looked quickly at Gregory as if he might have heard it. We
are
big shots in Hollywood—is that what she had felt in rebuttal? Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Johns don’t need to pretend anything?

No, Abby thought violently,
no.
I didn’t feel that. I couldn’t. Here I’ve been laughing at the frightened little scrabblings for importance you find everywhere—I
couldn’t
have gone in for it myself!

And towels and mattresses don’t matter that much to me; I don’t set any value by those trappings of smart hotels for rich people, I don’t, I don’t. It was lovely to have them for a while, a new experience, part of our adventure, but that’s not what life is all about, that isn’t what makes you happy or unhappy.

She fell back against her pillow; the bedspring creaked rustily and she heard Gregory shift his position. No wonder Gregory could sleep, heat or no heat; nothing had been churning inside Gregory about what was due him, what was fitting to his position. Finding the reservation canceled had made him angry, but on a different level. He was sore over arrangements gone wrong at two in the morning, over being sent off to look for a substitute room. But no outraged dignity, no outraged sense of power, no I am Gregory Johns, I am the author of
The Good World, I
am accustomed to the best.

Nothing like that had ever occurred to Gregory in his whole life and nothing like it ever would. What protected him from the hundred traps set by sudden fame and fortune? What guided him so surely? Upbringing, family example? Thorn had had the same. His sisters had had the same.

She had had the same too.

Abby drew a deep breath. Until tonight, she hadn’t been trapped either. Marriage to Gregory had shaped her attitudes and desires so closely to his that she hadn’t had to exercise any more care than he to stay clear, but this time she had suddenly stumbled off the path they had both found most natural and agreeable.

Well, it was a funny kind of trap; if you did stumble into it, you could turn right around and walk out of it the minute you felt like it. Abby turned over on her side. The minute you felt like it, the minute anybody felt like it. There was comfort in that. Trap. A queer word, onomatopoetic, snapping down on you. Trap. Trappings. The trappings of fame. A blurry image of Thorn and Cindy in evening dress began to form in her mind, but it gave way to a picture of Hat in her cashmere sweater. She wished Hat were right here so they could talk for a long time; she could imagine Hat running down the steps next week to welcome them home.

The next minute Abby was asleep.

The twentieth of April fell on a Wednesday, and two nights before, at Ed Barnard’s invitation, Gregory Johns had dinner alone with his editor. It was good to get away from the recurring Pat-and-Hat debate at home which had gone on intermittently for over a week, and even if Ed had not sounded so commanding, Gregory would have started for town with alacrity.

“I want to brief you about publication day,” Ed had said.

“You never briefed me on the others.”

“This one will be different.”

But the ominous note had disappeared when Gregory joined him at a small restaurant in the East Thirties. Ed showed no sign of getting to his briefing; he was in one of his we-have-all-night moods and it suited Gregory to have it so. Ed was avid for a full and unexpurgated account of Hollywood, and Gregory happily obliged, omitting only the topic of Hat. This omission came hard, since it forced him to withhold not only her cherished pronouncement, but also any mention of Patrick King’s several visits since their return.