I Could Go on Singing

by John D. MacDonald

“In this case there are a few little problems. Emotional, psychological, you name it. I keep frictions down. Friction costs money. In this case, it seems to me best that you handle it, go over it with her, prepare recommendations which will guide the director.”

  “Who is the lucky girl?”

  There had been an odd flicker in Wegler’s eyes, immediately explained when he said, “Jenny Bowman.”

  Jason Brown had found himself standing, trembling, his voice uncertain. “Now wait a moment!”

  “Don’t jump around. This is a quiet talk between friends. A professional talk, Jason. How many years ago was it? You and Jenny were very close. Six? Seven?”

  Jason sat down. “Seven years ago,” he said in a dull voice.

  “You wrote the screenplay, worked along on the shooting, Jenny starred. A solid little picture. Nothing exceptional. It made a dollar.” Wegler’s voice softened. “In this business so many tensions, erosions of ego. Take Jenny’s two marriages, for example. They ended in hate and despair. But after you were close, you and she parted in friendship, warmth, perhaps gratitude. Who can say? But a good relationship, a civilized way for things to end. Even, we might say, an adult way.”

  “How would you know that?”

  Wegler shrugged. “Somebody said she speaks well of you.”

  “Did you know this … I mean did you have this in mind when you phoned me in Santa Barbara three weeks ago?”

  “How could I help it, dear boy? You were hired to work on a script starring Jenny Bowman. The association was inevitable. I was aware that she trusts you, and trusts your judgment. I remember something about your prying her loose from a financial adviser who was robbing her blind.”

  “You’re too well-informed for this to be entirely casual, Mr. Wegler.”

  “What happened between you and Jenny?”

  After a thoughtful pause, Jason said, “I’ll tell you only because it will give you the reason why I’m not the one to go see her about this script. She was vulnerable. She was on the rebound from that first miserable marriage and that scabrous divorce, and her nerves were raw. She was sick unto death of public personalities, and she thought she saw in me a … a kind of strength and stability and quietness that she thought she wanted. She didn’t see me as I am. She saw what she thought she needed, and so I tried to be what I thought she needed. At best, it was an impersonation. She wanted to lean on somebody, and I was perfectly willing, like a damned fool, to tell her what she should do with her life. When the picture was in the can, we went down to Acapulco for a few days. We planned to be married. We both belived it would work out. We nearly got married in Mexico, Sid. But we decided to wait until she finished some television things in New York and a short personal appearance tour. I went with her to New York, but I had to come back here when she went on tour. What happened to us was that we were both wrong about each other. She bought my imitation of strength and certainty and control. And what I didn’t realize about her was that I had met her when she was as low as she ever gets. The emotional strain and the working strain had worn her down to a shadow of her normal self. But never having known her when she was up, I couldn’t see it. She was trying to hide from the world and from herself, and I thought that was the normal Jenny Bowman. But she started to recover in Mexico, and she was more like her normal self in New York, and by the time she had finished the tour, she was herself again, all that fabulous incredible energy, all that outgoing warmth and joy and confidence, loving the people milling around her every minute. I soon realized that I could only be peripheral in her life, an appendage, a Mr. Jenny Bowman. She wasn’t looking for my strength any more, and when she stopped looking, the imitation collapsed and she saw me as I am, a sort of uncertain guy, mildly neurotic I guess, often confused, too emotional about some things and not emotional enough about others. But I do know I helped her when she needed it most. I was there at the right time, and the imitation was good enough, I guess. But when we were together again, we knew we weren’t the same two people any more. One of the sources of her strength, Sid, maybe the key source, is that she had a strongly developed sense of the ludicrous. In her blackest moments, she gets a hearty, healing reaction to absurdity. And she was the one who made the opening when we were both trying to break it up, in such a way we could both save face and not hurt each other. Across a table she gave me a mocking and wonderful look out of those huge dark brown eyes and said, ‘Darling, what were the names of those two types who went to Acapulco? You’d think we’d at least hear from them once in a while. The last I heard they were going to get married, but somehow I never quite believed it. Did you?’ It was a masterful escape, Sid, for both of us, and out of that special kind of wild wisdom she has, she provided it. Yes, we parted friends. And it’s too easy to look at it, perhaps, as one of those ordinary little affairs that pop up like out of a toaster every time any movie is made, and get chilled out when it’s over. But it wasn’t like that, Sid. She marked me. You see, I fell in love with the Jenny Bowman that was trying to hide from a world that hadn’t been using her very well. And when she stopped trying to hide, that woman was gone, the one I loved. But it is a real and valuable memory and I don’t have many of those, and I am not going to mess it up by getting back into her life—or allowing her back into mine—in any way, shape or form. I married Joyce on the rebound from Jenny Bowman. And when Joyce rolled her car into the sea, Jenny was singing in Chicago. She flew out to the funeral. That was the only time I have seen her since. And she didn’t say a word then. She just hugged me very hard for about three seconds, and looked at me and went away, and that meant a hell of a lot more than anything anyone else did during that whole horrible week. She has a capacity for friendship. I’m probably boring you with too much of all this, Sid, but what I want to get across is that it wasn’t trivial. And it isn’t … usable. If you’ve taken me on because you think I can talk her into something easier than some of your other boys, then you made a bad guess.”

  Wegler was silent for three full minutes, swiveled around, looking out his windows. He turned back slowly. “It is a warm and touching story and again, Jason, you force me to say that I value you for your integrity. I value you highly. It hurts me to have to use people in the ways I have to use them. It makes me feel shabby, believe me.”

  “But I tell you I …”

  Wegler raised a hand. “Please. Let me pick one remark out of your fine account, Jason. ‘But I do know I helped her when she needed it most.’ It does you credit. It is an honorable way to feel. She came to you in your hour of heartbreak. Can you do less for her? If she needs you now?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I can assume, can I not, that when you and Jenny were in love, you did not keep important secrets from each other?”

  “I kept none from her. I can’t vouch for her, of course.”

  “But she told you she had a child?”

  “Whatever she told me, Sid, was in confidence.”

  “I see that she did tell you. A few of us, a very few of us, believe me, in the industry know about this. She was a valuable property even then, you understand. Thirteen years ago. That’s how old the boy is now. We hushed it up perfectly. An old scandal, Jason. Dead and buried you would say. But a boy lives. He grows. Her only issue. And the years add importance to such a thing.” Suddenly he slapped the script so loudly that Jason Brown jumped. “Do you think she can do this part?”

  “Y-Yes.”

  “Do you think she should do this part?”

  “Yes, I do, but …”

  “Let me finish. Please. In all these years of tours, she has never entered England. Why not? The boy is there. His father is there. Old wounds. Jenny Bowman is just beginning a tour. That is her business. We keep her on a sustaining contract, small money, plux X dollars per picture plus percentage, and a minimum of one every two years. She owes us this picture. We want her for it. The arrangement was that she would come back here after the tour and we would get into it. George Kogan arranged this
tour. Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Israel. Presenting Jenny Bowman. Fine. A month ago I heard a rumor she would open the tour in London. I was astonished, Jason. I was apprehensive. To ease my mind I called certain contacts in New York. I thought that perhaps it was some inescapable booking arrangement. But no. I found that the London engagement was at the insistence of Jenny Bowman. And I found that she has been more than normally difficult of late. Moody. Too gay or too depressed. I am a pessimistic man, Jason. If there is any way for things to go wrong, they very probably will. It is the rule I follow. Suppose, in her emotional state, she wants to see the boy, and the boy’s father after all these years. The British press is merciless. It is savage. It rends and destroys. It could destroy her. Would you say she is in potential trouble, Jason Brown?”

  “Yes. But …”

  “It is a nervous habit with you, Jason, to say yes and then say but. There is affection between you. She trusts you. And you know no good can come of stirring up something which happened over thirteen years ago. She is vulnerable now. With you to steady her, and the script to remind her of what she might lose …”

  “And what the studio might lose, Sid.”

  “Careers have survived strange things, but thus far no one has tested the survival aspects of public knowledge of a bastard child.”

  “But the father adopted him, didn’t he?”

  “It would be placed in the worst possible light by the press.”

  Jason thought for a moment. “So you hired me on the remote chance I might be able to yank your chestnuts out of the fire, Sid. If I can, it is cheap insurance. You’ve been complimenting me on my integrity. Don’t you think I have too much integrity to use an old and valued relationship like that, to go meddle in her life to save the studio a property?”

  Wegler shrugged and smiled. “Jason, I could try to be subtle with you, but you have been in the business too long. This is a simple thing, is it not? You have been hired to work on a script. There is a way I want you to work on that script. You can refuse. There is a clause in the contract covering such eventualities, and it is covered in the studio agreement with the Screenwriters’ Guild.”

  The trap had snapped so loudly Jason was startled by the sound of the sharp teeth. He saw himself unemployed and virtually unemployable. He looked blankly at Sidney Wegler and said hollowly, “Why you son of a bitch!”

  Wegler shook his head sadly. “As I told you, things like this make me feel shabby. This is Friday. She opens in London Sunday night. Transportation is being arranged for you, Jason. All expenses of course. Our man in London is Tommy Bird. Use him, but don’t trust him. I would go myself, but of course Jenny despises me. A word of advice, Jason. Think of it as something you are doing for her. It will make you much happier.”

  “Does Jenny know I’m coming?”

  “Be a surprise.”

  Now, on the jet six miles above the black Atlantic, Jason Brown knew he most certainly would be a surprise to Jenny Bowman. And he vowed that he would take Wegler’s advice at its face value. Do it for Jenny. And if what seemed best for Jenny Bowman seemed to run counter to what was best for Sidney Wegler, then no one need ever know in what gentle direction he had urged her, if indeed he could exert any influence over her at all. Jenny Bowman, with the bit in her teeth, was a fearsome thing indeed.

  He thought of her and felt a little residual quiver of old longing in the pit of his stomach. He remembered what a friend had said of her once. He said Jenny had yare. The word had needed much explanation. It is something a boat has when it turns out to have that little indefinable something the marine architects never built into it. A special rakish style to its buoyance, that wondrous hell-with-you flavor that the very true and very special boats have.

  The handsome stewardess brought him his third drink and gave him the menu for the Air France midnight snack. Something bland, he thought. Traditional offering to the sneaky Goddess of Ulcer. She had not made herself apparent in some time, but he had the dreary expectation that this trip would bring her out of hiding.

  (In Acapulco, on the morning beach, they had eaten the hot boiled shrimp and stuffed the shells into the sand, drunk the icy Dos Equis, swum, touched, smiled, looked deep into each others eyes, then hurried to the little rented car to clatter up the long hill to the cabana at the Americana, and she had laughed aloud on the way up, at joy anticipated, at the good tastes of food and heat and love.)

  two

  Time moved five hours and the clock moved ten, and Jason Brown smiled a crinkled good-by at the stewardess and came down the boarding steps, fusty with sleep, his legs uncertain with stiffness, light topcoat slung over one shoulder, a rather shapeless felt hat on the back of his head. He came down to a welcome solidity of concrete, a misty, watery sunshine, the guile and calculated confusions of France, mildly cursing the efficiency of Wegler’s people who had arranged this trip. He found the area for passengers in transit, not subject to French customs, recovered his single suitcase, found his reservations on the London shuttle flight in order, checked his bag through and had forty minutes to kill. He killed it with some extraordinarily bad coffee, with exercising an implacable resistance against all the efforts—from the exceptionally clever to the clumsily grotesque—of the French to remove from his person any available number of dollars, and with composing and sending a cable to Bonny, styled to make her laugh. At four years old she seemed far more willing to accept the knowledge of having an aunt instead of a mother than she was to comprehend that all the daddies seemed to go off to work except hers. He imagined it would please her to be able to tell her small friends that now, for a change, as a special bonus added to the three weeks of his having gone to the studio each working day, her daddy was on a business trip.

  Tommy Bird met the London plane. He was a pouched, balding, fidgety man with tan, nervous eyes, a man a little too elegantly dressed, a man whose eyes would wander to look at something off behind you when he was talking most earnestly. He helped Jason Brown through the swift, grave politenesses of customs and led him off to a shiny gray Humber driven by one of his younger associates in the London office.

  Tommy Bird was one of the immutable characteristics of a very volatile industry. The arranger—the meeter and greeter, the local promotion man, the beater of many drums, adjusting his beat to the relative importance of the mission. Jason sensed that, as a writer, he was being given a very muted drumbeat, but the essence of the art was to make the recipient feel that mountains were being moved in his honor.

  “Got you in the Dorchester, Mr. Brown. Made sure they’ll do right by you, room and service and all. Good location. Park Lane. Here’s a card with the office numbers. Mount Street. Not too far from you. Anything you want, anything at all, you just pick up the phone and we’ll bust a leg to see you get it.”

  “I suppose you people have been busy with Jenny Bowman?”

  “Actually, no. I mean this concert tour thing is separate. Not that we aren’t willing and anxious, you understand. A great star. But she’s got her own team along, of course. You here to see her?”

  “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Out in the field, what you get used to, they don’t tell you a thing.”

  “Just to check over some portions of a script with her.”

  “Something about Dawn?”

  “The Longest Dawn.”

  “That’s it. I remember a thing in the Reporter. That’s what she does next for us.”

  Jason Brown looked out the window at the nondescript jumble of the southern part of the city. “Things look a little different,” he said.

  “When were you here last?”

  “Almost five years ago.”

  “It’s jumping. Turnpikes, buildings going up, neon, teenage gangs, race riots. Civilization finally got here, Jason. Okay if I call you Jason?”

  “Please do, Tommy.”

  “You want I should get hold of Jenny’s manager and set anything up for you, Jason?”

  “No thanks. I know George K
ogan. I can manage.”

  “She opens a charity thing at the Palladium tonight.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “They could have sold the house three times. And try to get a ticket to the opening, the regular opening. Honest to God, Jason, the years go by and that broad just gets more tremendous. Her and the people, like some big love feast. Over thirty years in the business I’ve got, and she hits that first note and it’s like ice water running down my back. Jolie used to do that to me, too. She’s the most since him. The stateside end of this tour has been a smash, hey?”

  “S.R.O. from one end of the country to the other.”

  “What a property!” Tommy Bird said with a wistful sigh.

  As soon as he was checked into the Dorchester, he thanked Tommy Bird and his young associate and sent them on their way. He had forgotten the pleasure of being checked in by hotel people who seemed to take a genuine pleasure in serving him and making him welcome. He refused assistance in unpacking. The tall windows of his sedate room looked out across Hyde Park. He unpacked, took a hot bath, put on a dark suit suitable for the evening, sent the suit he had traveled in to be pressed, and went down and had a late and rather heavy lunch in a quiet corner of a big hushed dining room. He knew there was no point in trying to establish contact with Jenny prior to a performance.

  After the leisurely lunch, he put on his topcoat as protection against the increasing chill of the afternoon, and took a long walk through the relative emptiness of the West End on a Sunday afternoon, Piccadilly, Bond Street, St. James Square, Regent Street. London gave him a feeling of pleasant anonymity, of a measured and timeless courtesy, a feeling that if he had been able to walk on his hands, he would attract very little additional attention. It is, he thought, an older and more complex culture, larded with a certain smugness, shot through with little social nuances and distinctions we never catch, vastly more tolerant of eccentricity. A society of contradictions as strange as our own. They bowdlerize their novels, yet print daily papers exploiting the more feral and rancid aspects of sex with a smirking boldness unknown in all the rest of the western world. And he could guess what they would do to Jenny Bowman, given the slightest opening. She thought herself inured to a bad press. She had earned one from time to time. And the bigger you get, the smaller the incident required. But she would be utterly, incredulously vulnerable to what the British press would do to her.