The Celebrity (9 page)

“No, but he’ll be in to see you later on.”

“How did he take the news?”

“Well, you know Gregory.”

“Was he calm or excited or what?”

“I’ll let him tell you himself.”

“But are you sure he’ll be in? I wired him at seven-thirty this morning and haven’t even had a call so far.”

“At seven-thirty?”

Barnard laughed. “Luther Digby started routing all of us out of bed at six, which was five in Chicago—” He laughed again. “You really think Gregory will come in?”

“I made him promise he would. He tried to call you last night as soon as he got the telegram. He was at my house when he heard about all this.” A strange elation twanged Thornton Johns’ nerves: he was in the know; he could report, hand out information, say authoritatively what Gregory had done and would do. When he hung up and began on his next calls, he felt that this was already the happiest day in his life.

By ten-thirty, the magic phrase “fifty-two thousand dollars,” and the, doubly magic one, of “a hundred and four, thousand,” had been formed by his lips, larynx, palate, and glottis over a dozen times. And each time, a resounding confidence, rang through him, allied to the elation he had felt before, but extending to another dimension, as if the delegated right to shape these golden vowels and consonants carried strength and authority and power with it.

Thornton Johns was so sensible a man that he was more than a little aware of this absurdity, yet he could not halt the swift upsurge within him. Sums like these were not the vocal property of nobodies, except in fragile and unvoiced daydreams. He was not daydreaming: He had been given, as it were, due power of attorney over these treasures and so it was not unseemly that he should hear himself speaking like a man of substance. Particularly, he reflected, when other people spoke to him as if he were.

And if he spoke like one, and were treated like one, then why not act like one? Would a major executive in any business firm consult everybody in sight before taking the initial steps toward what might be a large triumph? Why had he been so sure that he could not call Hathaway without first getting Gregory’s permission? Could Gregory conceivably
regret
a movie sale? The added money? The vaster fame?
The Good World
on every marquee, on everybody’s lips?

He pushed the buzzer and Diana appeared. “My next call—”

“The Chicago one?”

“No, that will have to wait.” He gave orders and then sat back deep in his chair. He was relaxed, easy in every fiber. How odd that was, when he was using every nerve and all his brains and energy! This was the sort of life he was meant for and he would not give over too easily. If he spent, say, a hundred dollars on any other hobby, who could complain or charge him with extravagance? He smiled at the telephone, and his fingers began on their arpeggio, but lazily. Through the open door to the anteroom where Diana sat, he could hear her making her explanations to Hathaway’s secretary, and ending, “Will you put him on, please? This is urgent.” He drew the instrument to him expectantly and when she signaled him, he said blandly, “Hello, Mr. Hathaway. If Roy Tribble didn’t sleep all morning, I’d have got him to reintroduce us. It’s been a long time.”

“Let him sleep. We’re reintroduced.”

But it sounded uncertain and Thorn said, “During the war, it was. I consulted you about the option clauses in a book contract.”

“A book? My secretary said, ‘Roy Tribble’s insurance broker.’”

Thorn laughed. “I am. The author of the book was my brother, Gregory Johns.”

“Yes, I
do
remember now. You were acting as his agent—”

“And still am. This is about his new book—
and
a possible movie deal.”

“I see.”

“And I got to wondering if you might advise me, on a sort of provisional basis.”

“Provisional? We don’t accept contingent arrangements.”

Thorn said, “His new novel has just been taken by B.S.B. for April.”

“B.S.B.?” There was a pause and Thorn said nothing. “They still pay over a hundred thousand, don’t they?”

“A hundred and four. Look, Mr. Hathaway, why don’t we meet and talk my idea over anyway?”

“Well, we might. Any time you and your brother can make it, give me a ring.”

“It would just be me,” Thorn said casually. “Like last time.”

“Not your brother?”

“Not to start with. He’s pretty busy just now. O.K.?”

They made a date for drinks at five that afternoon. Thorn turned away from the phone and thought exultingly, It’s going to work, see if it doesn’t. Again he summoned Diana.

“I’m wiring Digby, instead of calling him,” he said. “Check his office and see if he’s staying in Chicago for tonight and if they say yes, send him this, fast rate: ‘Discussing movie possibilities today will phone this evening please start no Hollywood action without consulting me first since I am still acting as my brother’s agent thanks.’” He looked at Diana. “Punctuate that and sign it G. Thornton Johns and add our address.”

“Yes, Mr. Johns,” she said in her soft voice. She started out.

“Oh, and Diana.”

She turned around.

“Yes, Mr. Johns?”

“I’m working late tonight,” he said, hardly knowing, before he heard his words, what they were to be. “And I hope you can stand by.”

“Of course.” The old caressing note was in it, the old assurance that he was her one concern. But this time there was an urgency beneath the tone, as if she realized well how demanding life on a certain plane could be. “I have a date, but I’ll break it and get a sandwich at the drugstore.”

“No,” he said, and paused. When had he decided to do this? He glanced up at her. Her eyes still held something of their rounded awe, and he spoke gently, as if he were sorry that she should be so transparent, so easily understood. “I’ll have to have some sort of food too,” he said. “We’ll grab a quick dinner together, if you’d rather.”

“Oh, I
would,
Mr. Johns,” she said.

O
F THE CONSIDERABLE NUMBER
of people who were already privy to the news about Gregory Johns’ novel, the only one who was not by now actively up and doing was the author himself. Gregory Johns was still asleep.

This was due not to sloth but to exhaustion, for he and Abby had talked until five, at which time, finding his mind ridiculously alert, he had been guilty of hypocrisy. “If we’d each shut up for exactly sixty seconds,” he had said, “we’d be dead to the world.” It had worked for Abby; he would have hated to have it succeed for him. He had waited for her breathing to assume a proper tempo, and then had departed for the only unoccupied room in the house—the kitchen—where he could enjoy the sense, if not the physical fact, of mobility. He had begun to walk happily: six fair paces from door to sink; sharp turn and four short ones from sink to stove; sharp turn and seven good long ones on the hypotenuse of his triangle back to the door—enough to give his thoughts unlimited range.

Variety was missing but he did not care. Scraps of talk between Hat, Abby, and himself scurried across his mind. It had all been an unabashed materialism: What does this mean for us? What changes will it bring? What improvements? Until Hat had been shipped off to bed at three, he had told, himself stoutly (and had afterwards told Abby) that girls of seventeen were not frequently notable for the loftiness of their interests, but he and Abby, when finally they were alone, had found themselves still grooved in the rut of practical considerations, and unable to haul themselves out of it.

To this phenomenon Gregory Johns now prepared to give his full attention. He lighted a cigarette; it burned his tongue and he decided on a glass of milk instead. The handle of the Frigidaire against his palm instantly brought back Hat’s first—perhaps only—suggestion about getting something somebody else in the family wanted. To wit, a new icebox.

“But now that we’ll soon be moving out,” Abby had answered, frowning, “there’s no
sense
buying one for this place.”

Remembering, Gregory thought, Conflict already, the yes and no, the plus and minus. For years Abby had wanted only to rush forth, and buy a gleaming ample magnificence of an icebox, but now, with the means to do it had come simultaneous reasons for not doing it. Only in the dry and frosty vacuum of impossibility could one yearn without hindrance; the moment attainment was at hand, the damp mildew of logic began its sly attack. Poor Abby.

But not poor Hat. From the moment they had left Thorn’s house, Hat had begun a cool, collected presentation of what she saw as the changing picture of her life and destiny. It was as though she had been privately rehearsing for years the demands she would make if anything like a reasonable opportunity ever came her way and as though, after its unexpected knock, she proposed to waste not another minute. That she wanted pretty new clothes was no revelation, nor that she dreamed of a college life not based on free tuition and a lack of dormitory fees. But nothing about his daughter had prepared him for the blueprinted clarity with which she had greeted his offer to let her abandon Hunter College of the City of New York, in favor of any other of her heart’s choosing.

For a few minutes Hat had remained the child he had always known. Gregory Johns closed his eyes; he was again. seeing her, ecstatic rush to him and then to her mother., “Oh, I’m so thankful to both of you, and so proud of Daddy, and so happy I just can’t bear it.”

Abby looked away and he cleared his throat ,and managed to sound very businesslike indeed. “Well, then! Better start in right away, and find out about Radcliffe or Vassar or Bryn Mawr—”

“Find out?’’

“Maybe Wellesley or Smith,” Abby said.

Hat stared at them. “But Vassar is what I want. I might as we’ll stay at Hunter, unless it can be Vassar.”

There was rather a discussion following that, during which Hat remained uninterested in all the colleges of the United States save one. Then Abby steered them to the less parlous subject of new clothes. “In Macy’s Sunday ad—”

“Macy’s? Oh, Mother,”

“Why, Hat, you always loved Macy’s and Lord and Taylor.”

Hat said nothing.

“Where do you want to go?” Abby asked.

“Saks Fifth Avenue. Oh, Mother, I don’t mean to sound snooty and expensive—”

“You do though, dear.” It was said gently.

“For my
date
things is all I mean, and maybe some tweeds and a couple of real cashmere sweaters instead of just regular wool—”

“Do you know what a real cashmere sweater costs?”

“A terrible lot. I guess I’d better get only one, to start with.”

“How much
does
it cost?” Gregory put in, and Abby said, too quietly, “Twenty-five dollars, unless Hat prefers a hand knit cashmere. “That might cost forty or fifty.”

Gregory Johns looked at his daughter with the nearest approach to awe that he had ever felt for her. When had she been learning about these things? For how long? And how perilously near the surface must have been her opinion of a nefarious past in which a sweater cost five dollars!

Sudden wealth, he found himself thinking, was a remarkable developer for the unprinted negatives of character. If only it were less immediate—if the emerging picture were not so clear while the hypo solution still dripped from it! He glanced at Abby and thought he saw her swallowing.

But Hat went on exuberantly to other matters. Perhaps a notion that something was amiss had struck her, for it was here that she introduced the subject of the icebox for her mother. Since the landlord wouldn’t spend one cent for improvements while rent control lasted, they’d better do it themselves. “Let’s go out tomorrow, the minute I get home from school, and pick it out.”

“Good idea,” Gregory said heartily.

“Now wait, you two,” Abby said, as relieved as he to be forgetting Vassar and Saks Fifth Avenue and hand-knit cashmere. “We’re not buying iceboxes or hunting apartments until we know what’ll be left after taxes.”

“But whatever the taxes are,” he said mildly, “we certainly can afford one icebox. What would it cost, anyway?”

“Mother,” Hat said. “Fifty-two thousand dollars would buy quite a few iceboxes.”

It was here that Abby frowned and stated the yes and no, the plus and minus. But before anybody spoke again, she went to the desk, took out the family checkbook, flipped over pages, and pointed. “As of this minute,” she said, “we have thirty-four dollars and twelve cents in the bank. That’s what they call fluid assets.”

In common with most long-married husbands, Gregory Johns had moments when he did not actively adore his wife, but this was not one of them. He instantly knew that she had been the one member of his entire family who had never once, during the whole evening and all the hours since—never once overlooked the clean immediate fact of that thirty-four-dollars-and-twelve-cents in favor of fifty-two glittering but distant thousands.

“I wonder when they’ll pay me,” he said slowly.

“When will the book club pay Digby and Brown?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

There was a marked pause. Then Abby said, “You have about ninety dollars coming next month from last October’s royalty statement.” She turned to Hat and explained that prevailing publishing practice was to send out royalty reports in April and in October, but that the sum due on each report did not have to be paid until six months later.

“The fifty-two thousand,” Gregory said, even more slowly than before, “will show up on the April first statement, but they
could
hold every dime of it until next fall.”

Recalling that melancholy conversation, Gregory Johns laughed aloud. The handle of the Frigidaire still pressed against his palm; the contents of its crowded interior were still revealed to him. The threatening growl which issued forth whenever more than a minute elapsed between the opening and closing of its door now became audible, and hastily he reached into the problem-maker. From the right of the centrally suspended freezing unit he removed two small cans of orange juice, one bottle of water, one long thin rectangle of butter, three covered porcelain containers, stacked one atop the other, and a small square box of frozen and dehydrated lima beans. Only then had he access to the white bottle in the far corner.