The Celebrity

by Laura Z. Hobson

  “Let’s. I adore talking about money.”

  “Just the movie money, because Thorn would yell that he didn’t have a thing to do with the B.S.B. selection, and he didn’t. But on the movie, this year gives me thirty thousand for my first payment, plus ten thousand for my month out there, and an agent’s commission on that would be four thousand dollars. Even somebody who can’t bear the word ‘commission’ might take a present that shows our gratitude. It would have to be a Big present, not a box of candy or a new watch, or I’d feel like a piker. Say a Buick Roadmaster, convertible. That costs about thirty-four hundred, fully equipped, radio, heater, white wall tires, the works.”

  “How do you know what it costs?”

  “I phoned from a booth in Grand Central.”

  “Thorn wouldn’t touch it.”

  “But you will, being a good tough honest girl that isn’t as complex a creature as your husband.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m not offering it to him. It’s all yours. You can take him for a ride in it, unless—” He paused. He was enjoying Cindy’s face. “Unless you’d rather pass up a car and choose a trip to the Coast, all expenses paid. If he won’t go, you come alone with us and meet all those people he’s so crazy about and then come home and describe them to him—one by one and very, very carefully.”

  She stared at him and then shouted, “You angel, you clever angel.”

  “Wait, I’m not through. You’re going to get dressed and we’re going downtown. I phoned him too and made a date for just me. But you’re going in first, to tell him all this privately, and if he still says no, I’ll have news for him.”

  “What news? Oh, I love this, I just simply love this.”

  “That I can’t permit him to try to sell Partial Eclipse or any other of my works by long-distance phone because I think an agent should be right in Hollywood when things are hot.”

  “You can’t. He’s buzzing with plans.”

  “I also will have to inform him that I will not allow him to handle my mail, my phone calls, or anything else—”

  “It’s blackmail,” she said admiringly.

  “And, on the other hand, that I do need an official representative now, and that if he won’t be official, I’ll get myself some agent who will. This agent will collect proper and full commissions on anything sold from this moment on, whether it’s anything further on The Good World, like English rights or digest rights or cheap reprints or something else, or whether it’s on any of my old books or any new book or story or popular song I may write in the future.”

  “It’s murder,” she said more admiringly still.

  At about the time that Gregory and Cindy were emerging from the Wall Street station of the subway and beginning the four-block walk to Thorn’s office, a small dome of faceted glass glowed red on the Digby and Brown switchboard, where the excellent Janet still presided. With an upward sweep of her hand, as if she were plucking a long-stemmed jonquil from yielding earth, Janet pulled a metal-tipped cord out of the. horizontal ledge before her and plugged it into the socket below the bright dome. Simultaneously the thumb of her other hand flicked an inclined switch upright and her lips said, “Digbybrown. Gaftanoon.”

  In the earpieces at the ends of two curved wires fitted to the crown of her head, a voice answered, “Good afternoon yourself, Janet. Is Mr. Barnard in?”

  “Why, Mr. Johns, first names and all.”

  “I always call my favorite girls by their first name, you ought to know that. Is he?”

  “I’ll see. I think he’s gone to Philadelphia to work with that author of his. They’re not all like your brother—nobody has to wet-nurse him.”

  She clicked off and Thorn idly wondered why he bothered to turn it on for switchboard girls. He always did, at numbers he had to call frequently, and this sassy Janet had a way of talking back that amused him. Someday he might do something nice, like a box of candy sent in for no reason at all. Just his business card and the word “Thanks,” and his initials. No, he thought, if he were going to do it—a phrase leaped to mind and he smiled. “Blessings on you, little Jan.” That’s what he would write. Would she get it? It might be better to wait until summer when she was tan.

  “He’s left already, Mr. Johns,” Janet said. “Anybody else do?”

  “The President of the firm might, in a pinch.”

  Janet giggled. “Mr. Digby is in with Mr. Brown. Just a sec.”

  “When do you go on vacation, Janet?”

  But she had already clicked off. In spite of his awful night, he had been in good spirits all morning, and if his suggestion were well received, he would be in better. He had said some savage things to Cindy but it might be a good thing to have a row that blasted the air clear once and for all. Like most normal women, she wanted her husband to be the boss, and it took an occasional knockdown battle to remind her that he was.

  The thought had comforted him, and he had fallen on his work with a will. He may have neglected getting new insurance accounts for a week or two back there in February, but he had made up for lost time ever since the sale. It was amazing how many people preferred to do business with somebody they had read about. Why, even at the Premium Club lunches, he was being introduced now as “our most famous member.”

  He had been thinking about that, and jotting down some properly offhand phrases for tomorrow’s meeting when, out of the blue, had come the thing with Diana. He hadn’t planned to say it; if he had stopped to think, he never would have. For all her soft exclamations of surprise and pride, she still could be more distant and aloof than any girl he had ever seen. To say to her, without the usual excuse of working again afterward—simply to look at her as she came in, and say, “I’m low today, Diana, would you have dinner with me tonight?” had quite literally never occurred to him. But to hear himself saying it, and then to see her lids drop quickly in that enchanting way and hear her murmur an assent—

  Right after that had come the call from Jim Hathaway. Jim had just been elected National Public Relations Counselor of his World Government Committee, and was fairly chortling over the honor. He had said all kinds of extravagant things about owing part of it to Thorn for having brought him to The Good World, and had ended by inviting him to the next meeting of his group. “It’s on the fifth. Rex Stout and Oscar Hammerstein will be there, and Kip Fadiman, and Norman Cousins—too bad Gregory will be on the train, but we’ll ask him when he gets back.”

  “Mr. Johns,” Janet said in his ear, “Mr. Digby’s back in his office. You can have him now.”

  Thorn came to with a start and remembered the phone in his hand. Conversational spice, he had been thinking; nobody could call it name-dropping. Rex Stout and Oscar Hammerstein and—

  “Good morning to you,” Luther Digby said.

  Thorn wished they would establish a consistent company policy as to whether ten after twelve was morning or afternoon. “Good morning. I have a suggestion I’d like to make, if you won’t think I’m butting in.”

  “Another suggestion like splitting up our twenty-two thousand over five years?”

  “You’re not going into that again?”

  “No, no, I’m only kidding. You know Gregory’s interests come first with us—always have and always will. What’s on your mind?”

  Thornton Johns had come to detest Luther Digby. The absolute gall, he thought now, still harping on his fifteen per cent. The fool would rather let Gregory pay out most of the movie money in taxes, just so it suited the firm’s convenience to get their cut in one lump sum.

  “Gregory’s old books,” Thorn said. “I want to talk it over with Ed Barnard too, but he’s not in. Shouldn’t they be reissued in new editions, now that he’ll have a national audience who never heard of them?”

  “I was thinking of just exactly that yesterday,” Luther Digby said. “Isn’t that a funny coincidence?”

  “Very.”

  There was a pause. Then Thorn said, “It’s nice we see eye to eye on it. Maybe just as the m
ovie is released would be a good time for the first one, if The Good World is slowing down by then, and perhaps at six-month intervals after that. I’ve read every one of them again, and they’re wonderful.”

  “I’ve been doing that very thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “That is, I’m halfway through Partial Eclipse. It brought back old times too—you knew it was I who gave him his first contract, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sure he must have told me.”

  “I’ve always felt he was my special charge around here. That’s why I put in all that spadework with Zanuck and Goldwyn, phoning and sending galleys straight to them. Lucky thing I did, wasn’t it?”

  “Very,” Thorn said again.

  “Might never have been any active bidding at all if Imperial Century hadn’t had some stiff competition.”

  Digby went on about everybody pulling together and Thorn was seized by a paroxysm of coughing. “Cigarette,” he sputtered, and used the time to get control of himself. The little credit-grabber! The only real competition had come from R.K.O. and two independent producers; Hathaway had cursed because the approach to Zanuck had been all fouled up. This Digby—you were supposed to be urbane and friendly in business, but who could be, with this little horning-in cheapskate, who made you think of the bug-eyed little man on the covers of Esquire? Since a selling trip to Chicago and Kansas City and St. Louis, Digby had put on an imperious air, as if he were J. Pierpont Morgan and U.S. Steel rolled into one. Whatever Barnard and Alan Brown thought of him in the office, Digby had status in the world outside and it was impossible not to resent that. Yes, status. A publisher automatically had position in the eyes of most people, while the ablest of insurance men had to fight for even a passing recognition. Passing. The roughest word in the language.

  “I swallowed some smoke from my cigarette,” Thorn said to the phone. “Now about this idea of new editions, what would you say to a conference, when Barnard gets back?”

  “Good. Good. I’ll set it up for tomorrow or day after. I’ll have a preliminary talk with Alan and Jack, and acquaint them with our thinking on it.”

  Our, Thorn thought, and permitted a chuckle to escape him, “Fine,” he said. “Well, so long then.”

  “So long. Ah—I’ve wondered if—” Digby’s voice trailed away.

  “If what?”

  “If—that is, will you continue acting as Gregory’s agent on, well, in the future? Or does he think now that it might be wiser—?”

  Thorn smiled and let Digby struggle. So the little man was worrying already whether the next contract would slice the firm in on extra rights. Did he think a man learned nothing from success?

  “Wiser and more businesslike—” Digby went on, and halted again.

  “I hope to continue as my brother’s agent for the rest of my life,” Thornton Johns said slowly. “Just as you, I’m sure, hope to continue as his publisher for the rest of yours.”

  That was neat, Thorn told himself as he hung up, just the right touch. It was turning into an exciting morning in all sorts of ways. He stared at the phone, made a decision, buzzed for Diana, and said, “Get Digby and Brown right back, will you?” Mornings were like that; if they started to go exciting on you, they kept popping of their own accord.

  “It’s me again, Janet,” he said crisply. “I want Jack McIntyre too, and then Alan Brown.”

  “F’reaven’s sake, are you going right around the office or something?”

  “Just about. When do you take your vacation, Janet?”

  “My what?”

  “You heard me. V-a-c-a—”

  “Why, July, August, whenever they let me, but—”

  “Just wanted to know.” There was a tap at his door and he called, “Come in.” Oscar Hammerstein and Rex—

  “Here’s Mr. McIntyre now,” Janet said at his ear.

  “No, hold it, wait a minute. Jack, I’ll have to call you later.” He hung up and automatically rose to his feet. Diana was ushering Cindy into the room. In ten years Cindy had not come downtown to see him more than half a dozen times, and then never without phoning first.

  Thorn glanced from her to Diana and, idiotically, felt himself blushing. Diana withdrew.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GREGORY AND ABBY JOHNS’ arrival in California was slightly marred by two natural phenomena. It was pouring rain, and Gregory had a cold.

  The rain had begun at the edge of the desert and from San Bernardino on, through Pasadena, through the orange groves bordering the roadbed for the last miles into Los Angeles, it emptied out of the close gray sky with unremitting ardor. The porter told them that water was good for vegetation, that the end of the rainy season was at hand, and that they would see the most glorious sunshine in the world before they returned East. But they were both sorry that their first impressions of California should be so untraditional.

  Gregory’s cold, he kept saying, was nothing much. It had begun after their eight-hour stopover in Chicago, between the arrival of the luxurious Century and the departure of the luxurious Super Chief. In their private drawing room, which could have accommodated four people handsomely, Gregory airily ascribed the ache in his back and legs to their relentless day-long pursuit of landmarks and museums, but Abby sent for aspirins, bicarbonate, and hot lemonade, just the same. Not wishing to rob her of these rare wifely pleasures, Gregory swallowed everything, only to sneeze six times and settle down to his first illness since his thirtieth birthday. The prospect of being bedridden in such luxurious surroundings delighted him; he saw it not only as a heaven-sent excuse to avoid the camaraderie of the lounge car but as a virtual command to satisfy one of his curiosities and order an extravagant dinner served in their room.

  Heretofore the most ambitious traveling either of them had ever experienced had been their trips to the Cape to visit Abby’s parents when Hat was small. These had been accomplished in day coaches smelling of plush and pickles, or in an upper and lower berth, with the baby tucked in beside Abby for half the night and then hoisted up to Gregory for his turn. This time, as they left New York (nearly the whole family east of Wyoming had gathered at Grand Central to see them off) Abby had gone into raptures about their drawing room. She had exclaimed over the color scheme, the movable armchairs, the washbasin and clothes closet and tiny bathroom. She had worked the air-conditioning and radiator and fan, discovered how to empty the streamlined ashtrays, pulled down the window shade, and turned on the blue, night light in the ceiling. When Gregory coldly asked, “No icebox?” she had laughed hysterically and hugged him and laughed again.

  Gregory had enjoyed himself too, despite his cold, but his largest happiness began after Chicago and had nothing to do with fans, thermostats, and plumbing. It came because, for the first time in many weeks, he was able to do sustained work. Propped against three pillows, and comfortable in his new dressing gown, he spent part of two nights and all of one day writing, and when, on the last morning, he finally packed away his pencils and yellow pads, he had eight acceptable new pages.

  Which is to say he had written enough to fill thirty or forty unacceptable ones. This seeming imbalance between Total Effort and Total Achievement occurred during the first half of every one of Gregory Johns’ novels (though it was rarely in evidence when he wrote anything else) and sprang from his conviction that no paragraph came even close to what he wanted it to be until he had tried it four or five different ways. Sometimes he would struggle for an hour with one sentence in the paragraph; often he would tear up an entire page and begin afresh, only to enter mortal combat with each substitute sentence. His passages of brief, sharp dialogue first appeared as lengthy, snail-paced exchanges between people who spoke in perfectly rounded periods; his spare, precise descriptive touches, to which critics gave their praise, had to be; carved away from massive blocks of verbiage.

  Gregory Johns knew that some authors wrote entire books without pausing to read back or do over; he knew that others could abandon an obstinate passage or scene temporarily an
d go on to the next, but the first kind of author he would not, and the second he could not for the life of him, emulate. As for him, he had to do battle with each sentence, with each, phrase, until he had won unconditional surrender.

  So it was that, when he carefully packed away his eight dearly won pages—which he would later call his first draft—Gregory Johns was suffused by the warm glow of accomplishment. Unlike the author who writes to sublimate sorrow, or to make an ex-employer sorry he fired him, or to take a purely coincidental revenge on an ex-wife or ex-husband—unlike any of these, Gregory Johns wrote because he was happy writing. Not happier, not happiest, but a simple uncomparative happy.

  And Abby was happy with him. As she sat watching him put away his manuscript and pads, the only part of his packing he didn’t dump on her, she was thinking it was lucky she wasn’t a woman who resented her husband’s work or felt it a rival. Quite the opposite. With them it was always best when Gregory was working hardest, and that meant not on a newspaper article, not on a review, not on a story, but on a novel. Hours might go by without an exchange of words, but then the pause would come, the talk, the closeness.

  She glanced at Gregory; he was fidgeting with his wallet. He looked rested and well, except that he had occasional bouts of coughing. He had read his eight pages aloud at two in the morning—they were so scribbled over she had been unable to decipher them herself—and she had thought them quite fine. Now she realized she had an odd personal sense of gratitude toward them, as if they had added depth to her happiness during the trip. Unaccountably, she felt her face flush, and she thought, Well, really! And thought instantly, It’s the sense of privacy we’ve had in this place, never having to worry about Hat in the next room. And thought again, Well, really, making up excuses!

  She turned toward the window and watched the neat-clumpy trees slipping past. From the air these endless groves could look like nothing more than green meadows, their orange globes of fruit unseen and unsuspected. “I wonder how their flight was,” she said.