The Celebrity (27 page)

Not too much capital would be needed for the Hathaway-Johns Agency, and since Thorn had none, it would have to be Hathaway capital complete. It was a good risk. They would need a specialist to head up a magazine fiction department, and later another expert for a radio and television department, but on everything else Thorn and he could start tomorrow.

Hathaway shifted his pad to his right knee and thought of the authors and playwrights whom he always called “my clients,” and not “our clients.” His pencil became more purposeful.

Gregory Johns $3,000.00

Maude Denkin 3,000.00

Nell Abbott 1,500.00

The list grew rapidly, and almost touched the bottom of the page; the important matter of a balanced sunburn was forgotten. About thirty names and nearly one hundred thousand dollars in annual legal fees! To most of the thirty, the firm was just a background anyway; to most of them he, Jim Hathaway, was “my lawyer,” not Storm, Goldberg, Miller, and Hathaway. Nobody liked to leave a lawyer who had been intimate with his tax returns and royalties and contracts for years, and any author who could get agency representation, legal counsel, and tax work in the same office would hop to it pretty quickly.

As for new clients, Hathaway-Johns would be perfection. Plenty of youngsters began to write because they itched for fame; unconsciously they would gravitate to Thorn. It wasn’t wise for a lawyer to be too much of a cafe-society figure, but in another few months at most, Thorn would be as frequently mentioned by Winchell and Sullivan and Walker and Earl Wilson as he was now by Leonard Lyons. And by Christmas, when
The Good World
was on every marquee in the land, Thornton Johns would be all the celebrity any firm could use.

Several mornings later, in a classroom at Columbia University, Thornton Johns, Junior, was asked by his English professor why he had not yet turned in his term paper on Shakespeare.

“He was reading his uncle’s book again,” a voice replied from the back row.

A manly snicker swept the room, and young Thorn writhed. Along with his father’s crew cut, he had inherited his mother’s florid complexion, and in embarrassment or anger he went carrot all over. As the professor rebuked the class, his thin old voice sternly demanding silence and order, Thornton Junior grew bitter at the perfidy of his fellow students.
They
had kept at him and his brother Fred for inside stuff about the book;
they
had licked their lips over every word of Hollywood;
they
had asked what Jill Goodwyn was like off the screen. And now their jealousy was making him and Fred absolute outcasts. If any of Columbia’s twenty-two thousand students weren’t cracking wise behind their backs, he’d like to know who it was.

It was a terrible thing to stand out from the crowd; the reward was great, the penalty greater. “For within this hollow crown”—Shakespeare knew, as Shakespeare knew everything. “’Tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perked up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow.”

It was grief; it was sorrow; but there was no sense cringing. Neither Fred nor he had made that mistake. And if Mr. Hathaway’s new plan went through, why, the whole of Columbia and Barnard could go jump in the Hudson. If it went through, Uncle Gregory wouldn’t be the only author hobnobbing with the family; trips to Hollywood would become annual affairs, and if you were a ’50 man, you could maybe get to go along next year as a graduation present.

The period had come to an end and Thorn Junior returned to more immediate problems. Looking neither right nor left, he made his way up to the front of the room. “Professor, could I talk to you?”

“Perhaps you’d better, Johns.”

“I left a note in your office, asking could I take some extra time to polish up my paper. Didn’t you see it?”

“No.”

“It was last week, and I thought silence meant assent. Consent.”

The professor said, “I see.”

“I’ll turn it in tomorrow, sir. I’ve been doing a lot of extra collateral reading in preparation,” young Thorn went on. “There was a fascinating essay, in
Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Corneille,
I think it was. It wasn’t on the assigned list, but I read it anyway, and I was tempted to crib whole parts of it.”

The professor smiled. Johns was an engaging student, always was, and willing to work. Perhaps a little forbearance was called for during this attack of swell-headedness. The modern educator had to be a psychiatrist as well as a teacher, and in a country where every stenographer and bank clerk had visions of becoming famous, or working for somebody famous, or meeting somebody famous and gaining importance by telling about it at every opportunity—in such a culture, perhaps young Johns was not to be blamed for his Prince of Wales psychosis.

The professor was pleased at his own largeness of spirit and smiled once more. Thorn Junior sensed the softening attitude. “Speaking of cribbing, sir,” he said, “reminds me of a family anecdote about my Uncle Gregory and Ralph Henry Barbour—”

At the end, the professor laughed aloud, and as they walked out of the room together, strolling along in leisure like old friends, the old man said, “You know, Johns, twenty years ago your uncle was a student of mine. He took this very course, and my course in the nineteenth-century English novel. Did he ever tell you that?”

“Why, sir, I—”

“I was just talking about that at a faculty meeting yesterday,” the professor said, in his eyes an unmistakable glint of satisfaction, “and to some of my personal friends last night.”

Young Thorn remained silent. He thought, I bet the old duffer lugs Uncle Gregory in, every chance he gets. But forbearance rather than blame filled his heart.

At this same moment, young Thorn’s father was very much in the thoughts of the estimable switchboard operator at Digby and Brown. Janet reached into a five-pound box of candy Thorn had just sent her, set her teeth firmly into a caramel raisin nougat, and prayed that no call would come in for ten seconds. Her prayer was not answered. She said, “Gaftoon, Dig—” and gave up further conversational effort except “Uh-uh.” She didn’t care what she sounded like today. The whole office had got a five-dollar raise, and for the first time in four years she felt rich. Besides, Mr. Johns, that wonderful fascinating man—

She reached again for the box of candy but withdrew her hand and picked up the card beside it instead. “Blessings on you, little Jan—” It was so mysterious; it put her in mind of something but she couldn’t say just what. He had never called her Jan; only her boyfriend called her Jan and he’d been calling her that for six years, so it didn’t have this feeling of meaning something
special.

Boyfriend indeed. The run-around artist, that’s what Dick was, always breaking dates at the last minute, acting as if she was nobody and would come running the instant he got good and ready. And half the time here recently, even when he was good and ready, he’d just drop in around nine to listen to the radio with her so he wouldn’t have to part with a dime!

A dome flashed red and she swallowed the last of the caramel raisin nougat.

“Gafta—well, Mr. Muncy, why don’t you close up down there and give the printing presses a rest?”

“I’ll do that. Will you buy me a lunch, if I’m broke?”

She put him through to Sales and adjusted her earpieces. Kidding around with a Big Executive at Brentano’s! Getting presents from somebody like Thornton Johns!

She glanced at her watch. It was nearly one. Vigorously she spun the dial and, as she asked for Dick MacMulligan, she tossed her head haughtily at the elongated horn suspended before her nose.

“I’m awful sorry,” she began, “but I have to stand you up for lunch.”

“You what?”

“I just can’t make it today.”

“Well, I like that. I was just starting out. Got a better date?”

“Hold it a minute.” Cut-offs riled him, but she couldn’t help it. She took her time on the incoming call and pulled out three dead cords before she flicked herself back. “I’m not going out, that’s all,” she said.

“Did your relief drop dead or what?”

“Hold it a minute.” He’s real sore, she thought, trembling happily. The magazines were always saying you should
feel
and
act
glamorous, but you had to wait until your life really
got
glamorous. She clicked Dick’s key open. “Suppose I do have another date?” she said. “Matter of fact, just now, one of the biggest executives at Brentano’s
was
asking me could I lunch with him soon.”

A moment later, her earpieces were conveying to her astounded ears an invitation for dinner that very evening, and a thousand closed philosophies suddenly opened to her.

“O.K.,” she said. “But listen, I don’t want to just hang around after, see?”

“Who wants to hang around?”

“There’s a picture with Betty Grable at the Roxy,” she said. “We can go there.”

Not even by circuitous routes did news of Janet’s swift change of social theory and Mrs. Digby’s swift change of hair get through to Gregory Johns, but he had not been hungering for matters to occupy his mind.

He was glutted. He was also swamped. He no longer told Abby that “next week it will quiet down.” It never quieted down. He kept vaguely planning rebellion at some future date but he was as yet too amiable to abandon vagueness; his adrenal gland maintained a beneficent adjustment and refused to spurt forth the juices of anger and action.

Thus, one sweltering morning, he was busily answering letters from readers and telephone calls from everybody. Abby was out searching for a new apartment.

In the heat wave that had begun early in June and now promised to break all records, Gregory had urged her not to go but she had simply looked at him without answering. Ever since their return from the West, she had kept at the search. “All they want to show is houses,” she had said. “Great big fifteen-room houses. Do real estate brokers read the bestseller lists too?”

Gregory opened the door to the front hall, hoping for a breeze, and returned to his desk. The bell from the downstairs lobby rang twice, the mailman’s signal for the eleven o’clock delivery. Gregory went down to the box and returned with another handful. Letters from readers he would permit nobody but himself or Abby to answer. They were sent first, at Thorn’s insistence, downtown to his office so that proper records could be kept of all names and addresses, but despite Thorn’s arguments, every last one was then forwarded out to Martin Heights.

Gregory began to read the newest batch; he never could resist an unread letter in favor of finishing what he was doing. After the first page of the first one, the telephone rang. He did not leave his desk for it; a week after publication day, it had been placed on a small table within reach of his long arm.

“It’s Harry,” his brother-in-law said. “Of Harry Brinton Ink.”

“What do you mean, ‘Ink’?”

“No longer of R. H. Macy Ink—that’s what I mean.”

“You pulled out for good?” Gregory listened with pleasure. Harry had become his favorite brother-in-law; Harry’s rush to success was so free of self-delusion.

“By God, Gregory, every time your book goes another edition, Gloria wants something else. I’ve been taking on one more account, and one more, and one more, and suddenly I thought, What the hell, I’m free-lancing up to my ears, why do it at night and weekends?”

“That’s great, Harry, just great.”

“Did I get a bang out of resigning! And out of telling Gloria. I even owned up how glad I am she hounded me to take the first step.”

“She knew it all along, didn’t she?”

Harry laughed. “Mind your own business. She phoned me just now. As of tomorrow, we’ve got not only a British governess, but also a French maid.”

Gregory said, “Next comes a Danish cook and an Italian gardener and you’re a whole new Marshall Plan.”

“Give her time, give her time. But for God’s sake, don’t write anything new for a while!”

“Not for a while,” Gregory said and returned to the letters. Abby answered the general ones, those Thorn had dubbed the it’s-wonderful-you’re-wonderful ones, but to anybody raising points about world government as an idea, Gregory replied himself. Often, he had to write a long, careful reply, but he never resented or begrudged time and energy spent this way. It was heartening to find such deep earnest agreement, such a passion of longing that there might yet be time to strengthen the United Nations, to change the Charter so that world law and powers to enforce that law might at last be achieved. People everywhere believed it the only solution, not just illustrious people like Churchill and Bevin and Douglas of the Supreme Court, not just a quarter of Congress and a fifth of the Senate, but men and women everywhere, in every State of the Union, in every walk of life.

It made him happy to read their letters, to write his answers. It was perhaps as deep a reward as any other single reward for having written his book.

He read the rest of the new mail, picked up his pen, and went on with the letter he had been writing. “Of course Communists hate—” The telephone rang again and he tried to ignore it. What would life be like without Thorn taking ninety per cent of the calls? Whatever one felt about Thorn, he did spare him most of the load. In the two months since publication day, the quantity of business mail had quadrupled, and the character of it had changed. Thorn showed him only a fraction of it—would he sponsor this movement, endorse that demand on Congress, sign his name to this public protest, be guest of honor at that function, send a check here, there, the other? “We understand from Mr. Thornton Johns that you never speak, but the use of your name and your presence on the dais would mean so much to the success of this important occasion.”

But it was the telephone that made consecutive thought or consecutive work impossible. What would happen next week when the new phone book came out with his number listed? Up to now only those people who by-passed Thorn, Digby and Brown, and the U. S. Post Office, and who had the idea of calling Information could get his number. Only those strangers, he amended. The family and a hundred other people had it anyway.