“Can she make it?”
“I don’t know. She can try. That’s what’s most important for her. She’s willing to try now. I have a car here. I’ll take her in. Will you come along?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Jenny came through the curtains. She had fixed her hair and freshened her lipstick, but she looked white and listless. “Ready,” she said in a toneless voice.
They went back toward the entrance. The man in the white coat appeared. Jason quickly gave him the theater number and the dressing room extension, and asked him to give the message to George Kogan. He went out and hurried down the steps as David Donne was helping Jenny into the car. He went around and got in beside the chauffeur.
“Palladium, Hodson,” Donne said crisply. “And quickly, please.”
The man was expert. He swung the car through the traffic with a hypnotic rhythm that made it all seem quite leisurely, catching the signals, gliding toward holes that opened up in the traffic pattern and closed again once they were through. Jason could hear them murmur to each other in the back seat, but he could not distinguish the words. Once he looked back for a moment and saw them sitting close, saw the moving lights on her small pallid face, on the shadowy hollows of her eyes.
Jason had thought it would be at least eight thirty before they could reach the theater, but it was just eight fifteen when he directed the driver into the lane and down to the stage door.
The stage door attendant said, with enormous relief, “Miss Bowman!”
She went along the corridor. Donne stopped Jason with a touch on his arm. “I can’t stay,” he said. “But I’ll be back by the time it’s over. Watch over her, Brown.”
“Yes.…”
The grave face twisted in a sudden spasm. “My God, the things we do to her! The things we ask of her!”
“You better stay until we’re sure she can do it.”
“I can do that. Of course. And … I shall be around a bit. Just until she’s all right again. As all right as she can be.”
Jason ran and caught up with Jenny at the mouth of the dressing room corridor. George Kogan was with her. Jason could hear the cadence clapping in the background, that universal signal of impatience and irritation.
George’s face was like a stone. “… little ray of hope when I got the message. But look at you! There are twenty-five hundred people out there who paid money to see Jenny Bowman and you are going to disappoint all those people. Now that might not mean anything to you any more, but I still have a certain reverence for audiences, and it means a great deal to me. And if now it doesn’t mean anything to you any more, then I am profoundly and genuinely sorry for you, Jenny.”
She made a frail sound of despair and fled from him. George turned on Jason, accusingly. “What the hell made you think I could let her go on? She’s sick and she’s drunk and she’s lame and she’s crying. It would take an hour to straighten her out, and they won’t wait that long. I’ve got to go out there and tell them that our Jenny is …”
At that moment the cadence clapping changed into a great bursting roar of welcome. George froze. His eyes went wide. “My God, has she …” He turned and raced through the backstage jungle to the corner of the stage, with Jason following him.
Jenny was out of reach, limping across the stage to the standing mike, wearing her street clothes, hair tousled, looking like a guilty, untidy urchin.
“Lights down!” George bawled over the uproar. “Get a spot on her. Get the walk-around mike ready.” He turned to Jason and made a face. “Catastrophe. Disaster.”
Jenny reached the mike. She clicked it with a fingernail. She wobbled slightly and looked owlishly at the audience as the stage and house lights went down and the spot caught her. “Hi!” she said. She slipped the fur off and held it up and stared at it. “You like this thing?” The audience did not know how to react or what to make of her. The scattered laughter sounded nervous.
“Once upon a time maybe it was a big black happy rabbit …” She tossed it behind her into the darkness. “Oh well. Does anybody want to forgive me for being late?”
There was answering applause, shouts of forgiveness.
“Good!” she said. “I love you.” She gestured toward the wings with her thumb. “Nobody back there is ready to forgive me yet.” She looked at the orchestra. “And Larry there looks dreadfully confused. He didn’t get to play the overture. That always baffles him. Frankly, I’ve had a helluva time, and now it’s time to go to work. We haven’t got much organization, but we’ve got a lot of songs.”
There was a shock wave of applause, and people began to yell individual requests. George gripped Jason’s arm hard. “By God, she’s got them! Somehow, she’s got them.”
“I’ll sing ’em all!” Jenny yelled. “I’ll sing every one! I’ll stay all night! I don’t think I ever want to go home!”
As applause continued she went and talked to Larry. The spot followed her. Someone handed her the walk-around mike out of the darkness. She gave the downbeat and the band gave her the opening to “Hello, Bluebird.” Jason recognized the skill behind that selection. It was one where she could use her tipsiness to maximum effect, utilizing it and conquering it at the same time. At first her timing was off, just slightly. But then it improved and strengthened and Jason sensed George Kogan relaxing, sighing. Jason turned and saw Ida and Gabe and Lois Marney. He turned just in time to see David Donne turn and leave.
Jenny finished the song to a great warmth of applause. She nodded to Larry, and then went into her demanding number, “I Could Go on Singing …”
Jason turned and moved back to where Lois stood. He took her by the arm. “Come with me,” he said.
“But I want to …”
“Come along.” He took her back through the backstage area, down the steps, through the main corridor to the dressing room corridor and into the dressing room. He closed the door. But they could still hear that voice.
“Jason, you act so strange!”
He took hold of her arms. She tried to wrench free, but he held her. “Do you know what that is out there?”
“You’re hurting me!”
“Do you know what that is? Can you understand what that is? It isn’t any lousy little compromise based on survival.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know whether you can hear me. But I have to try this. There isn’t anything else to do. I’ll have to go back now. And let Wegler pat me on the head like a good dog. So I don’t have much time. I have to do it this way.”
“Do what?”
“It isn’t survival. It’s a kind of marvelous endurance, Lois. What you have to do is take the risks. You have to take them all. And they turn into joy or they turn into heartbreak. But above all, you live with your risks.”
“I don’t know what you …”
“I’m a risk. I’m a lousy risk for you. I’m not a strong man. There’s no shine on the armor and the white horse has a bad limp. I’m jumpy and nervous and the things I do don’t turn out too well, but I have to take the risk of living. You’re no tower of strength. You’re sweet and scared and unsure of yourself. We’re not going to find any adolescent dream of utter bliss and perfection. We’ll hurt each other. People always do. But by God we’ll have the rest of it too. All the plus. I want you for keeps. For permanent. With no guarantee except love.”
Her eyes stopped shifting in shyness and panic and steadied on his, a gray and thoughtful gaze. “It couldn’t work. Nothing works for me, Jason.”
“So let’s prove you right, or prove you wrong. All you do is say yes. It’s a very small word. Say yes, or spend all your years wondering why you didn’t. Why you couldn’t.”
Her eyes went wide. He held her. The level mouth softened. And then the eyes took on a heaviness. And the mouth said yes. Without a sound it formed the shape of yes, once and then again, and he took her into his arms and felt the warm strong shuddering of her body, heard the catch of her breath in something lik
e a sob.
He heard the distant slamming surf-sound of applause and, as it dwindled, the music again, and then that throbbing clarity of the voice of Jenny Bowman singing “Alone Together.” He held his scared and hearty yes-saying woman, and stroked her shining hair and kissed her temple and thought, with great smugness, with a fatuous acceptance of the corniness of it—that will be our song. And thought it extraordinarily sad that with all Jenny’s songs and all her singing and all the warmth and wanting of her, she gave her songs to lovers and kept not one for herself.
THE END
of an Original Gold Medal Novel by
JOHN D. MACDONALD
About the Author
John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.
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