The Celebrity (26 page)

THE PROUD MOMENT COMES . . .

Book Clubs in America are sometimes attacked by thoughtless men. The ideal of making books available to millions—so runs the charge—is too often offset by the dissemination of ignoble work aimed at ignoble tastes.

Best Selling Books, Inc., has chosen to bear in silence its share of this sly attack. Knowing the dedicated, the uncompromising search made each month by its six renowned judges, and knowing that sooner or later the proud moment comes when a book so fine—

Thornton Johns tossed the proof at the brand-new basket marked “Clips” and turned eagerly to the letters. Before May first there must have been fifty lecture invitations to Gregory, even though major lecturing dropped sharply in the summer. Now requests for next fall were pouring in, as well as for sporadic dates during July and August with garden clubs and special functions of one kind or another. What a pity, what a waste! It had become peculiarly poignant to him to think of all those eager groups, not so much the political ones asking for a speech on world government, but the other groups, little literary clubs just like Hollywood’s “Friends of Books.” The first kind, the World Federalist Chapters all over the; country—
^:
who could have guessed there were so many?—could take care of their own speeches, but the second kind appealed to everything in him. To them, it almost killed him when he wrote back in that stern unbending negative.

Thornton Johns leaned back in his chair. For a long time he sat without moving, his mind drifting back to “the terrible woman named Martin,” to the press table, to the kiss blown so thoughtlessly, so uncalculatingly, at Jill.

Unwittingly, his hand strayed to the batch of mail before him. If only he didn’t have to sound so cold and inhumane when he wrote; if a friendly tone, an understanding sympathy could go into the refusals.

“And so,” he could hear himself dictating to Diana, “though it does look as though my client and brother, Gregory Johns, will not change in attitude toward invitations to speak, there is always the possibility that at some later date he could be persuaded to. If you happen to be near my office, and feel in the mood to risk a waste of your time—”

Sooner or later it would be bound to happen. Sooner or later somebody named Martin or Jones or Smith would have her own emergency. Sooner or later she would come, in person, from White Plains, or East Orange, or Mamaroneck, to plead that he use his influence with his brother. If nothing but some good talk and an exchange of anecdotes resulted—

Suddenly a brightness was in the room, and, ignoring the buzzer before him, he shouted, “Diana.”

By late May, Hat had become an inveterate browser in bookstores. She would wander about, picking up first one, then another, current novel, occasionally even glancing through a copy of
The Good World.
Often Patrick King accompanied her.

Parental limitations were still in effect on evening dates during the school weeks but Hat often found Pat waiting for her when she came out of her last class. He was fascinated with her game; he said he loved to see the displays and the number of copies piled up; he remembered every store they had already been in and kept her from repeat visits. It was he who urged her, one warm afternoon, to try the large Doubleday store on Fifth Avenue, pointing out that they’d see more sales being made.

“Fifth printing,” Hat exclaimed a few minutes later, as she turned to the copyright page of
The Good World.
“I didn’t know they had run another.”

A clerk came up and spoke with bright, nonurgent politeness. “Did you want a copy? It’s our biggest—”

Patrick King laughed. “She
has
a copy,” he said. “Her father wrote it.”

The clerk said, “Oh.”

Hat said, “Now, Pat, you shouldn’t—”

“Well, Miss Johns! You ought to be very proud of your father.”

“I am,” Hat said, with a gracious inclination of her head.

“It’s coming out as a movie at Christmas,” Patrick King said. “Did you know that?”

“Yes indeed.” He turned back to Hat. “Do you suppose your father would come in and autograph a few copies for us, Miss Johns? So many of our special customers want an autographed copy if they’re going to buy
any
book.”

“I could ask Daddy,” Hat said helpfully.

The conversation was not carried on in hushed voices; Hat was aware that several real customers were hearing it, one sidling up to listen, another looking her up and down with respect. Hat thanked her stars she was wearing her new cashmere sweater from Saks, and when they were outside again, she squeezed Pat’s arm in delight. “Wasn’t that
fun?
”

“It just popped out, Hat, telling him who you were.”

“I realized it was an accident. I
do
wish Daddy would go in, and I’d go with him.” Her voice became aggrieved. “Everybody else has autographing parties at Brentano’s or even at the Ritz—I can’t see why my father has to go and say it’s being a salesman for your own wares. He’s so
queer.
”

“Your father,” Patrick King said, “is the most wonderful man I have ever met. It is a privilege to have him like me.”

Hat went on quickly. “It isn’t as if he thinks autographs are wrong or anything. Look at the ones he does at home for Gran’pa and Gran’ma’s friends, and all the aunts and uncles and the people in their offices or stores. The whole family keeps driving out with stacks.”

“I hope he didn’t think I had a nerve, taking out those eight copies. It does help, if you send something around to a casting director.”

Hat made vague sounds of reassurance, and he added, “I’m no name-dropper, but show business
is
crammed with gossips and somehow they all know I know Gregory Johns.”

“Can you imagine what it’ll be like, once the movie’s out?”

He stared at her as if a glory were unrolling before him. “It must be wonderful, having a famous father.”

“If Daddy would get
normal,
it would be.”

Well, Hat comforted herself, perhaps Daddy would see the light later on. He was peculiar about feature interviews in the papers too, except for one skinny column in each of the Sunday book sections. “But why?” she had asked him. “If they’re all right, why can’t you let all the others, and
Life
and
Look
and all?” He had laughed. “‘The author in pajamas,’” he had said, “that’s
Life’s
idea about what you do on a book. Or, ‘The author collapses after a hectic day at the Boston Book Fair.’ Or, ‘The author with his lovely wife and daughter.’” He had looked at her apologetically after the last one. “I’m sorry, Hat, but you see, Breit on the
Times
and Hutchens on the
Trib
are interested in books and writers, not in pajamas.”

Sometimes, Hat thought helplessly, parents are creeps. They won’t be in
Life
magazine, they won’t take you tonight clubs where you could see all the celebrities, they could be celebrities themselves and they throw it away. Why should her two cousins, Fred and Thorn Junior, be getting more fun out of everything these days than she was, and as for Uncle Thorn and Aunt Cindy, going out every night to the most glamorous places—

Pat noticed her doleful face and suggested a soda for her and a martini for him—a combination of orders possible only at Schrafft’s. She glanced up at him and her spirits rose. How handsome he was, how well dressed, how much a man of the world! Whatever Dad and Mother thought they were doing by being modern and letting her have him to the house all the time, hoping she’d get sick of him if they didn’t pull a Montague and Capulet on her, they weren’t either of them fooling
her.
Anybody like Patrick King was just beyond parents, that was all. But the girls at Vassar would know, the minute they laid eyes on him and wished he was theirs.

Hat looked happily about her. They were at Rockefeller Center; the clean sharp buildings, the flying flags, filled her with exhilaration, as the visit to Doubleday’s had done. “It’s just two blocks to Brentano’s,” Hat said. “What say we drop in there first and look around?”

Scarcely two blocks from Brentano’s, in a beauty parlor on Madison Avenue, Mrs. Luther Digby was having her gray hair dyed. “I’m shaky,” she told the hairdresser, “I really am. Look at my hand.” She held it out, palm down, fingers extended.

“Every lady is afraid the first time.”

“After all these years of saying I never would!”

“Every lady says it for years until—”

“It isn’t that I want to look younger,” she said. “I just got so tired of seeing myself in the mirror.”

“Of course,” he said soothingly. “All the ladies say it’s a lift, more than a new hat.” He thought, Why this talk always, not to look younger?

“You’re absolutely sure it will come out like the sample you did?”

“Just like the sample. Every lady worries; it always comes out the same as the sample.”

“And not red at all? Just ash blond? My husband—”

“Not even one little tinge of red. Your husband was right to suggest you should try it.”

“I can’t understand him. He was always against
anything
like that.”

“All the husbands are against. And then!”

She couldn’t understand anything about Luther any more, she thought miserably, as the thud thud of wet cotton wrapped around a stick patted her skull. He hadn’t suggested it; he had practically ordered her to. And to get some new clothes, and to fix up the house. They would be doing a lot more entertaining, he had said, and he was sick of the way they lived, and settling down like two old people. He was going to a gym every day now; why couldn’t she go to one of those places they rolled around on the floor? And maybe it
was
chic these days to get rid of gray hair. Times change, he had said, in that lordly way he said everything now, times change.

He
had changed. He was trying to get himself invited to address that Writers’ Conference they held every summer in Vermont, and he hadn’t said a word about taking her with him. He never stayed home any more in the evenings; he always said it was business, but there was a wild swaggery look on him sometimes—

“Now we rinse and look,” the hairdresser said. “I keep it light, light, light, to start. We can go darker later. It will be beautiful. You will see.”

He pressed her head back against the metal drainboard. Her neck felt as if it would crack, and a spray of furious water tore at her temple. It was nice to have money for new clothes and new furniture and new hair, but she couldn’t seem to be happy about any of it. If the truth were known, she was always shaky these days. I’m going to hate my hair, Mrs. Digby thought suddenly. I’ve always hated dyed hair. He doesn’t want an old wife any more, that’s what it all means. He goes strutting off every day—a lump stood hard and insoluble in Mrs. Digby’s throat. What she really hated, she thought, lowering her voice even in her own mind, was that horrible book.

Turning first to the best-seller list in the
Times,
James Whitcomb Hathaway began on the Sunday papers. What a book, he thought, what a client to have. He turned next to the best-seller list in the
Herald Tribune
and was equally pleased. Thorn kept him posted beforehand, calling him as soon as the advance sections were received at Digby and Brown. But it was good to see things in print anyway.

Hathaway had taken the papers outdoors with him to a terrace chair on the lawn of his country house in Connecticut. He had also furnished himself with pencils and a long pad of foolscap, and he was wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks. It was hot for the end of May and this year he meant to start his sun-bathing early.

Lolling back in his chair, Hathaway soon discovered that there was no other news that interested him and gave himself up to private matters. In the motionless air, the abandoned papers lay on the grass without fluttering, and even after many minutes, the pad propped upon his knee was blank of writing.

The family was not downstairs yet; he and Frances had been out late last night with Thorn and Cindy at a party given by his client, the famous playwright, Maude Denkin. That eccentric old lady apparently never went anywhere but when she gave a party she could invite Ethel Merman or Tallulah Bankhead or Jimmy Durante and God knows what other great stars, and be sure that most of them would come. He had had a strong motive for taking Thorn along last night, and the result was what he had expected. Thorn had always had a flair for getting on with people; Hollywood and his fling at lecturing and now the success of
The Good World
had developed that flair into nothing less than genius. Especially if the people were famous.

Hathaway stretched and shifted his forgotten pad from right knee to left so he would burn more evenly. As always after too little, sleep, he had waked early, his body tired but his mind clearer than usual, as if he had not laid thinking aside at all.

There was no doubt about it. The time had come to talk over his new idea, with Thorn.

The Hathaway-Johns Agency, Incorporated. It was a nice name; there was a resounding syllabic conformation to it. Turned around the other way, people might misread Johns for John, which would do neither Thorn nor him any good. Thorn would see that.

James Whitcomb Hathaway shifted to a more vertical position. His pencil began to move on his pad. H.J., it wrote. H.J. HHHH$$$$$$$. Thorn and he together could carve out hunks of the literary agency world; he had begun to think of it after his big row with Farley Storm and Ephraim Goldberg, even before Thorn had managed the
Horn of Plenty
sale alone. The whole development of Thorn in these last months had been beautiful to see, beautiful in a clinical sense, as incisions and sutures and grafts could be beautiful to a surgeon. It was doubtful whether Thorn ever once stopped to ask himself why he did what he did, why he said what he said, where he got his flawless timing. The two charge accounts! Undoubtedly Thorn could have arranged them as soon as he had begun to be a regular and frequent patron, but he had waited until
after
publication day to decide he’d like to sign checks at “21” and the Stork.