“Not everyone scorns the flesh pots as you do.”
“Oh, no,” he trickled. “Oh, no, Mike.” He was under her skin where he wanted to be. “I don’t scorn flesh pots, my sweet. To think you could put that connotation on my rejection of Viv Spender’s offers. I who was a starving genius so few years ago. I merely wait for a man of wit. Hardly Spender.”
He was deliberately trying for insult. But he meant it. That came as shock, hideous shock. Tears stung hotly behind her eyes. It was thus the younger artists saw Vivien Spender, a man of money-bags, not of artistry. She had known, not that anyone would dare tell her. But she had known in him, known and held her peace, known and refused to know. Her head was bent, her tears withheld. She said, “I wish you’d get out and let me work.”
“Mike!” His eyebrows were pained. “This is not the diplomacy of New Essany productions.”
“And this isn’t New Essany productions. It’s my room on the Chief.”
He sighed, “I’ll go.” But again he didn’t move. He merely stirred languidly. “First tell me what gives with Kitten? Second, tell me why the first Mrs. Spender who died accidentally is only mentioned accidentally? And lastly”—his eyes hardened beneath his lids—“what grandiose, if brief, plans does Viv have for Gratia Shawn?”
The barricade had been forced down. Because she was weary of the burden that weighted her shoulders alone. Because she wanted the release of talk. Because she wanted to be rid of him and knew this was the only way. But she would tell him only what he knew.
She was businesslike, she might have read from a report. “Kitten is going to take Viv to court if he doesn’t let her play Clavdia Chauchat. She’ll throw the book at him. She has dates, place names, witnesses. Certain laws were violated, one certain law drafted to protect girls who don’t know better, but only used by girls who know too well. Girls like Kitten Agnew. He’ll fight, and he won’t lose. He doesn’t know how to lose. I’ve tried to warn Kitten to drop it; he’s making her a generous offer for release.”
“Viv Spender, like his protégée Kitten, hasn’t a generous fingernail,” he mused.
“Have it your way. Neither of them will give an inch. Maybe you could talk to Kitten. She doesn’t hear what I say.”
He shrugged. “I don’t believe Kitten would refuse a generous offer. If she knows he won’t give in on Chauchat, she’ll take the money rather than a long-drawn-out suit which she could lose.”
Mike stated, “I’m not inventing. Her terms are Clavdia Chauchat or the new Mrs. Spender.”
He closed down his eyelids. She had given him titillation. This was delicious shock. But he didn’t forget. He slitted a glance. “And secondly—”
She was groping for it.
“The first Mrs. Spender.”
She said sharply, “We don’t talk about Althea Spender because it’s a sad memory for Viv. Even you should realize that.”
“Yes. Quite obvious.” His smile was insulting. “A sad secret memory.” He unfolded himself slowly.
“As for your last question—” she began.
He didn’t want it answered. She realized suddenly, with curious surprise. He didn’t want Gratia touched by the fixed situation; if she were, he didn’t want to know.
Because she feared and hated this man, Mike was relentless. “Viv will star her.”
She heard the feather of his sigh. She said harshly, “She’ll sleep on plenty of salt pillows before she sees her name in lights. What difference does it make to you?”
It couldn’t matter to him, not to Leslie Augustin who’d had every sort of beauty flung at him. It couldn’t be he’d gone soft over a girl he’d never seen until this day, a girl beautiful and gentle, yes, but as remote as Betelgeuse. Why then did he stand there, his quips silenced, tonguetied as a lovesick swain? If it had happened, if Gratia had in some fashion bewitched Augustin, she had forged a weapon for Mike’s hands. A weapon Mike might need to silence this adder tongue, to guerdon Viv.
“The new Clavdia,” she said ironically.
His lips were bitter on the echo line. “The new Clavdia.”
—6—
The night was rushing by on fearful black wings. The stars were desert bright, sharp as tiger tooth. The sound of wind and sound of the train lashed at them where they stood outside the dim windows of the observation car. The wind pulled back her Valkyrie hair, lifted her face. In the dark her eyes were dark and her mouth trembled. She flattened herself against him and her body trembled like her mouth.
He didn’t touch her. “You want danger.”
“No. No.” She was whispering above the fury. “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
When she answered, he heard only by the shape of her lips. “Of death.”
She’d broken at last; she had said it. And she was shaken after she’d said it. He put his hands under her elbows, clutched to steady her. He said, “There are worse things.”
“Oh, no.”
He couldn’t make her understand that. She’d not been educated beyond simple words. To her the most bitter cup was to be cut away from life. To lose this amber hair, this crimson mouth, this molten flesh; to receive in its place the cold ash of oblivion.
He repeated, “There’re worse things. There’s wishing you could die. There’s wishing you could close your eyes and your memory forever.”
She pressed closer into him. “Forever. What is forever? Do you go on and on—until you can’t stand it any longer—and then you go on and on—”
He stopped her sharply. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t think it. You don’t know what’s beyond.”
“We learned at Sunday School—golden harps and angels—I wish that were it. Marble halls. Nobody believes that now.”
He’d thought about it too. When he faced death daily, yearly. He knew now she wasn’t inventing her fear. “Nobody’s ever known,” he said. “It’s too big for us. We couldn’t be told.”
“Heaven,” she was talking to herself. Like a child, a frantic child. “I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t believe in hell. What will happen to me?”
He could only answer her out of his own terrible knowledge. “I believe in hell. I’ve watched men in hell. Men and women. Even children. I’ve watched the devils torture them. I watched and I made a lot of money and I won a medal.” The hurt was clawing him. She’d made him think about it.
She wasn’t listening. “Where will I go? What will happen to me?”
That was all she cared about, what would happen to her. Revulsion pressed up into his throat. He swallowed it. She wasn’t any different from anyone else. Me was first with everyone. Why make it out it wasn’t?
But she’d made him remember. “Sure I believe in hell. Injustice, that’s hell. Uselessness, wanting to do and not being able to, that’s hell. Starving—I’ve watched men starve. And women. And children. Starving because they didn’t grow food.” Helpless fury sickened him. “I don’t know why they didn’t grow it; maybe they couldn’t, maybe they didn’t have a chance. Maybe they didn’t want to, weren’t smart enough to want to. So they’ve got to starve because the growers didn’t grow the food to feed the hungry. They grew it to trade for yen. They’d let it rot before they gave it away. But listen to this, if they gave it away, they’d starve next season. Because they wouldn’t have enough yen to make more food grow. That’s the way it is. All mixed up. That’s hell.”
Her eyes were fearful and he knew the look she’d seen on his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Famine. In the East.”
“I’ve read about it.”
“I wrote about it.” Famine and War. War breeding destruction. The Horsemen of Chaos waiting their time. Madness. Hell. Once he hadn’t believed in hell. Once he hadn’t believed in a personal demoniac deity. But he’d seen men possessed. He knew powers of evil flogged the earth and powers of good weren’t strong enough to exorcise them. The powers of good, what had happened to them? Where was heaven? If there was hell,
there must be heaven. There must be the balance.
He said bitterly, “We have to die to get to heaven.”
She began to tremble again. “I’m afraid to die. I don’t want to die.”
His harsh laugh startled her. “You don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. All God’s chillun don’t want to die. They want to live in hell. That’s the joke of it. That’s why if you keep quiet you can hear the Devil laughing. Everyone’s begging to go on being tortured. But it won’t do any good. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die.” He set her away. “The trouble is we’re sober, Kitten. We need a drink.”
She said sadly, “Everyone’s gone to bed. We can’t go to my room, Gratia’s gone to bed. Les has gone to bed in your room.”
He put his arm around her, “I brought a bottle. Sit down and we’ll pour a drink. That’s the only medicine for the gremlins in the dome.” He took Les’s brandy bottle from his pocket. “Here you are, baby.”
She took a swallow and sat down in the canvas chair.
“That won’t drown them. That just tantalizes them.” He drank long, took a gulp of air, drank again. The burning was good. He could finish this one and the haze would ripple across memory. He remembered then. He’d brought her out here to find out about her. He put away the bottle. She was sitting there shivering.
He sat down beside her. “Why have you death in your mind?” It didn’t belong there. She was on top of the heap. That had come across at dinner.
She looked at him for a long moment. The wind and the darkness and fear had stripped her face. She said, “Viv Spender is going to kill me.”
Viv Spender. The name that had upcropped all day, ever since he ran into Les Augustin in the club car after lunch. “He’s the big guy you talked to after dinner. You introduced me.”
She was pathetically eager to talk now. “He made me. I wasn’t anything. He took me out of a dump and he made me a great star. I didn’t have anything. Not even looks. He trained me, the way you’d train a dog.” She might have been reading lines. “I didn’t trust him. I knew what he’d done to other girls he’d discovered and made great—and thrown away. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me.”
“It hasn’t happened.”
“It can’t happen. I protected myself too well. The only thing he can do is”—she whispered it—“kill me.”
To blast her out of it, he scoffed. “Are you always this morbid?”
She spoke between her teeth. “You’re like everyone else. You think because he’s so important that he wouldn’t dare risk it. There won’t be any risk. No one will know.” He barely caught the whisper. “It will be like the way he killed his wife.”
Because he didn’t know what to say, he took another drink. She could be nuts. She could be morbid. She could be speaking the truth. “So Spender killed his wife? What did he do that for?”
“It was the only way he could get rid of her.”
“And you think he’ll do the same to you? Because it’s the only way he can get rid of you?”
She nodded dumbly.
“I’d be easier to get rid of, if I were you.”
“No.” The line of her jaw was stubborn. “I won’t let him do to me what he did to the others.”
“You’d rather be dead.”
“No!” It was sharp. “If I stay out of his way, if I’m with you, he can’t kill me, can he?”
“I don’t know.” He drank again. This was a new approach to the old game. Crazy like a fox, she was. He didn’t want her. Liquor was better for forgetting. He’d tried everything; only liquor worked. “Why does he want to get rid of you?”
She said, “Because he’s found someone new. Gratia Shawn.”
The bottle was empty. Gratia Shawn. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to close his eyes, to rush with the wind and percussion into oblivion. Gratia Shawn. Because she was good, the powers of evil were stalking her. He should have known. He had known. It was the reason he had refused to let her remain alone this afternoon, unprotected. Her innocence had not beheld the face of evil; she had no knowledge with which to recognize that face. It was why he must protect Kitten the ungood from evil; in protecting her, he would learn the pattern, he would save Gratia Shawn. He closed his eyes.
She said suddenly, “I’m cold.”
He opened his eyes slowly, seeing her through their blur. She looked very young huddled there. He put out his hand, touched her blown hair. “Aramantha,” he said. “Aramantha, braid no more that shining hair.”
He didn’t know why he’d said that. Something to do with Les, mocking at Les with quotations. A game they’d played. He didn’t know how long his eyes had been closed. He only knew the fear had come over her again, she was trembling with it. He pulled her out of the chair.
“You are cold.” He took her hand. “Let’s go to bed.”
FOUR
DEBORAH CRANDALL SAID TO FRED CRANDALL, HER husband of exactly twenty-fours hours, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
He saw her shining face. “Beautiful,” he said.
—2—
Mrs. Shellabarger said to Mr. Shellabarger, “Isn’t it exciting being on the same train with so many movie people?”
Mr. Shellabarger said, “I never could shave on a train without cutting myself.”
—3—
James Cobbett stood on the brick walk in the Albuquerque sunshine. C and E were out early. He hadn’t expected C to be up so soon; you wouldn’t expect it of honeymooners. They were a happy-looking couple, walking now on the brick walk. Healthy-looking too, as if they played tennis and swam every day. They probably did and the inactivity of the train cramped them. He liked a game of tennis himself. Not that he had much chance at it, but summers between trips he’d get in a few games on the public courts.
He’d expected E to be out at Albuquerque. Old folks didn’t sleep so well, usually cranky mornings. The old man acted as if he’d rather be having his coffee than getting this breath of fresh air. They’d want their compartment made up right away.
C and E were all he’d have to do before noon. And maybe F. The sleazy little man in F had been quiet enough yesterday but that didn’t mean he’d be that way today. Probably just the opposite, asserting his rights. Anybody as full of wrongs as F would be just as full of rights. He grimaced to himself. Pretty smart, must remember that one for Mary. A wife was a good thing for a man to have; kept you from being lonesome on the road, knowing you were going back to someone who appreciated your foolishment.
He was a little surprised to see the lady in the green glasses coming up the walk. She belonged to Mr. Spender’s world, not with the early risers. She came from the Western Union cart; she’d been sending wires. She didn’t look as if she’d slept much, beneath the green glasses her eyes were hollow.
His celebrities had been pretty quiet last night on the whole. He’d been surprised to make up Miss Agnew’s room early. It wasn’t she asked it; it was the other girl, the quiet one. The one who looked like a companion. Miss Agnew and the drunk had left the car when Augustin wanted his compartment made up. That was long before midnight. He hadn’t seen them return.
He’d made up Spender’s room at midnight but the man’s light was on far later than that. Pringle’s light had been on late too. He’d had to listen to Pringle while he made up the compartment. The man had stood there in the doorway, calling him Jim, and professing brotherhood. Cobbett didn’t want personal brotherhood with Pringle, and no one, not even his wife, called him other than James. He’d been right again on a first view; he’d recognized Pringle for what he was. There was no surprise in Pringle; he followed the age old pattern of a man in the travail of failure. By brothering Cobbett, he abased himself and at the same time raised himself to esteem. This man is lesser than I am; I raise myself by considering him. It would never occur to a Sidney Pringle that a man’s pigmentation did not make him a mean creature. That all men were human and as such differed one from another; and as such were the same
, one to another.
To Pringle, James Cobbett wasn’t a man, he was a mass, a problem. To James Cobbett, Pringle was a man and a man he wouldn’t care to invite to his home. Cobbett hall pride in himself, he didn’t consider a man equal to him unless he were equal in dignity and pride. Mary called him a snob. Well, he’d admit it. He was a snob. It hadn’t anything to do with what a man did or what a man possessed; it was what he was. Cobbett was a snob about the I am, He is.
The way I see it, Mary…Explaining in the night where the dark made words easy. There wouldn’t be any problems of race or religion if you could make men see the I am, He is. You’d take a man on what he was.
And where would the Pringles be in James Cobbett’s scheme of things? Well, maybe Pringle wouldn’t be such a miserable specimen if he didn’t have to compete in worldly ways for his place among men. If you could ease him up, he might turn out to be a nice little fellow. A nice little fellow in a world where a little fellow was just as wanted as a big fellow. The Pringles of the world could all be happy together. They wouldn’t have to try to squeeze in where they weren’t wanted if they were just as important being small as big. The trouble was that men were always trying to solve problems on an economic, political and emotional basis. Until they utilized reason, nothing would be solved. And sadly, he admitted, you must have rational men to employ reason.
You think too much, Cobbett. Why don’t you be like Rufe and the others, live for your wages and the layover? Do your thinking ready-made out of other men’s brains and bellies. You won’t live long enough to see the age of reason and all its decencies.
The chant riffled down the line. “Bo—ard.” The woman in green glasses, Spender’s secretary, stepped up into this car. She was out of sight before Cobbett had closed the vestibule trap. He didn’t think Mr. Spender would be calling her this early. Probably gone into her own car.
The neat elderly man and his neat gray wife were standing in their compartment, the door open, as he passed. The man said, “Would you make up our compartment, porter? We’re going in to breakfast.”
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