"That's the only reason he called me," Norman said incredulously. "He needed the hundred."
"How is it I still have my bracelet?" said Henny.
The next night, about half-past eight, a special delivery letter came from Cohn, swarming with stamps. It contained a hundred-dollar bill and a note scribbled in pencil:
Henny and Norm-Iris sends her love, and says tell Henny Hassim has those six Hong Kong chairs. This sounds like a spy code and we may all end up in the brig. I've thought it over. I bet Balzac really was a fairy. Sheldon's going to he famous, and you're very lucky people. Bach to Little Dog in the morning.
Glub glub- Bob.
6
A week passed. Each day Lester's secretary told Paperman that Mr. Atlas was due back in New York the following day. Norman kept trying to telephone him at the Capitol Hotel in Butte, but he was never in, and Paperman's urgent requests that he return the calls went unanswered. In desperation, at the end of the week, Norman talked to the hotel operator. "Oh, Mr. Paperman. Oh dear. Yes, Mr. Atlas is still here. He most certainly is," said the girl in a flirting Western lilt. "But he is the hardest man to reach, isn't he?" She uttered a deep, lewd giggle, which made Norman visualize naked orgies that Lester was probably having with her in odd hours. He pleaded with her to have Atlas call him back, and she promised to do her "bayest." Lester didn't call.
A pleasant distraction that same night was a party for Sir Laurence Olivier at Dan Freed's penthouse. Freed, the most successful producer on Broadway, a little sharp dark man with a creased face, a crew haircut, and doggedly collegiate clothes, had been a rival of Norman's in the publicity business long ago. They were still friendly, but Freed now tended to invite the Papermans only to his second-class parties. This bid Was a clear sign of Norman's new status as a temporary celebrity. In dressing for the occasion he forgot his worry over the oncoming check from Amerigo. He owned an elegant Italian dinner jacket, and wearing good clothes always cheered Norman up.
He and Henny usually went late to such affairs, for a star like Olivier Wouldn't arrive until an hour after the last curtain. When the Paper-mans walked into the long cavernous living room looking out on the park, the noise, the eye-stinging smoke, the crush showed that they Were right on time. The smoke was worse than usual because a sleety gale was blowing outside. Here on the twentieth floor, the wind shrieked at the casements, and the opening of a single window would have torn dresses off women. Dan Freed darted at Norman out of the fog and the din, and Mrs. Freed flung herself at Henny, kissing the air as she came.
"Here they are!" Freed bawled over the talk, the piano-playing, and the wind. Everybody in the room turned, looked, and began to applaud. The Freeds led them to the buffet table near the rattling windows, laden with meats and salads. A big white cake, iced with a picture of a man under a palm tree cuddling a brown girl, was the centerpiece; and arched in pink sugar over the picture was
Norm the Beachcomber.
The "Olivier party" was a hoax; it was a surprise farewell party for the Papermans. The guests were mainly his Broadway friends, but the stars of Freed's three current shows were also there. Norman instantly grasped that Dan Freed was exploiting his passing notoriety for a fresh little promotion of the plays. He fell in with this graciously, making a brief speech with suitable jokes, to great laughter. Champagne foamed all around; Olivier did come by for a few moments; the whole stunt was a merry success. Three different publicity men came to Norman as the patty bubbled along, and offered to buy his client list and his good will whenever he was ready to sell it.
Besides the Papermans, the one person who attracted unusual attention at the party was-of all people-Freed's production manager, a man named Lionel. Lionel had a long green-gray face, forgettable little features, pale hair, an unknown last name, and a patient beast-of-burden demeanor. Usually people acted as though Lionel were not present (whether he was or not) until something needed doing, from fetching a sandwich to retyping a contract; whereupon the cry was "Lionel!" and then "Oh, there you are," if he happened to be standing there. He had a gift for choosing clothes that made him almost invisible, but these were not necessarily drab. Tonight, for instance, Lionel wore a bright green suit; but it was almost the exact color of Mrs. Freed's wallpaper, so he more or less blended into the background. Nevertheless he was a center of attraction. Lionel had once visited Amerigo. Everybody was pumping him, but they could not draw out of him an unkind word about the island. It was, according to Lionel, nothing but Paradise on earth, the happy isle, the place where he himself would retire one day. The climate was fabulous, the natives were fantastic, the scenery was smashing, the beaches were the end, Gull Reef was cloud nine, and so forth. Because he was so very nondescript, no one could suspect him of trying to upstage the Papermans; it wasn't in his blood, if he had blood. They believed Lionel, and by the time the party ended Norman had received assurances from uncounted people-surely thirty or forty-that they were going to take their winter vacations at the Gull Reef Club.
Next morning, Norman once again telegraphed Atlas, with a note of panicky urgency. A reply came from Western Union, an unexpected one: Atlas had left the hotel. Norman called Atlas's New York secretary. She said it was absurd, Lester was in Butte, she had talked to him at the Capitol Hotel that very morning. So once more he telephoned the switchboard girl at the hotel in Butte. "Oh, Mr. Paperman. Oh dear, oh yes," she said. "Mr. Atlas said if you called again to give you a message. He had to dash to St. Louis. He'll call you from there."
"St. Louis? Where in St. Louis?"
"He didn't say. Honestly, isn't he a sketch?" and she laughed throatily and reminiscently. Paperman slammed down the telephone in a rage.
There was another farewell gathering that night: old friends, mostly with radical pasts, all now sober, respectable, and middle-aged. One had written some farce hits, another directed films, a third composed popular songs. The rest were businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, or they filled interstices of the amusement world as Norman did. Assembled with their wives in the composer's Fifth Avenue apartment, they passed an evening of joking and alcohol, of wallowing in old music sung around the piano; and-as the hour grew late-there were even some tears, assuaged by the serving of a large Virginia ham and a massive Dutch cheese, with rolls, coffee, and cakes. Afterward, when they clustered at the piano again, and the couples with smaller children had left, the composer at the keyboard looked up slyly; and then with whispering touches on the keys, he played Joe Hill. Probably nobody else felt quite the warm thrill that coursed through Norman Paperman.
During this evening, nearly every person there told Norman or Henny, usually in a private moment, that they were doing a marvelous, enviable thing. The Russians at the time were firing off new awesome bombs in Siberia, and the mood in New York was jittery, but there was more than that behind the wistfulness of their friends. All these people were at an age when their lives were defined, their hopes circumscribed. Nothing was in prospect but plodding the old tracks until heart disease, cancer, or one of the less predictable trap-doors opened under their feet. To them, the Papermans had broken out of Death Row into green April fields, and in one way or another they all said so.
It was a very late and very boozy party, and the telephone jangled him awake much too early next morning. The manager of his bank was calling. Norman had told him to telephone the moment the check came in from Amerigo. The check had arrived; five thousand dollars, payable to Mrs. Amelia Ball. The balance in the Paperman account was four hundred and seven dollars. What, the manager inquired, was Mr. Paperman's pleasure? Norman promised to talk to him again before noon. He spent two hours in bleary frantic attempts to locate Atlas, but Lester had vanished into St. Louis as other men get swallowed by the Arctic.
Then he tried to argue again with Henny about selling the apartment. The building had become a cooperative several years earlier, and Norman had paid in seven thousand dollars to buy his flat. He had friends who, he knew, would pay ten thousand for it now, if he pick
ed up the telephone and offered it to them. But on this point Henny was obstinate.
Their original plan had been to sublease it for at least a year, until they were sure that the Caribbean move was a success; and she would not budge from this. When he pressed her, she turned ugly, and snarled that they were not selling the apartment now, that was all-"and if you don't like it, mine host," she concluded, "screw you." Norman might have won this argument; Henny's worst noises were often made just before she yielded; but deep down, he realized that she was being prudent. Supposing something went wrong? Supposing, for instance, Atlas backed out? At this point it was beginning to seem all too likely.
But the check had to be covered. Norman was in a vise. Bitter and beaten, he at last began telephoning the competitors who, at Freed's party, had offered to buy his client list.
At half-past five that evening, as Norman sat alone in his office behind a closed door, downing his third martini to ease the raw ache at his heart, Atlas called. He had meant to phone from St. Louis, he said, but then he had decided to rush back to New York. Here he was, at Norman's disposal. What was on his mind? Why all the calls and wires? He had been tied up on the largest deal of his life, the Montana thing, so Norman would have to forgive him if he had been a little remiss. "Tell you what," he rasped, "why don't I take you and Henny to dinner at Sardi's and we'll talk? I want to look in on Larry anyway."
Norman declined frostily, and told Atlas of his embarrassment with the check, and the way he had solved it. He had disposed of his list and his good will, the product of a life's toil, at a distress price of seventy-five hundred dollars, to an odious little newcomer in publicity named Spencer Warwick.
"Say, you did all right," Atlas said. "Good will isn't worth a fart in your racket. That Warwick must be a cluck."
"I think my client list was worth something."
"What's the matter, Norm? You sound peeved. Listen, I can still give you the five thousand. I can give it to you in bills tonight; what's five thousand? Hell, you could have asked my secretary and she'd have written you a check for five thousand. I guess this means we go ahead."
"Does it? It'll take another fifty thousand dollars to close this deal, Lester."
"I know the figures, Norm. When do we go down there and close?
How about Tuesday? No, Tuesday I've got a meeting in St. Louis. Wednesday. Let's go Wednesday."
Norman said, catching his breath, and with much more cordiality, "You mean next week? Six days from now?"
"What's to wait for? There's no title search or anything, it's just a lease. Give me the name of that lawyer down there."
"Lester, I have to know this-are you prepared to put up the entire fifty thousand dollars? I have nothing to invest. The little money I've got left, Henny will need until-"
"I said I'd handle the money end, didn't I? I'm going to take care of the fifty, and you're also going to get back the five you paid. I operate on my word, Norm. What's the lawyer's name?" Norman told him. "Fine. My office'll set up the whole thing, and get the plane tickets for you, me, and Henny. We're going down to Amerigo on Wednesday, and Thursday you start in the hotel business. Norm, I've got to make four million if this Montana thing works out. It's fabulous. That's why I've been a little tied up. All capital gain. This is doing it the girl's way, with no risks or anything. I'll tell you all about it Tuesday. No, Wednesday. Wednesday. Tuesday I've got to be in St. Louis. Bye."
It was surprising how many and how tenacious Norman's Manhattan roots were. Parting from his barber-to take an absurdly small thing-was quite hard. The little Italian, in a dingy Lexington Avenue shop patronized by famous actors, had been cutting his hair for seventeen years. Every ten days he went at it with anxious artistry. Whenever Norman returned from abroad with his hair mangled by strange hands, Frank would shed real tears of anger. The news that Norman was moving to the Caribbean shocked him. He turned pale, and his eyes filled. He was inconsolable until Norman swore that business trips would bring him back at least once every month or so. Then Frank with red eyes and unsteady hands pulled himself together and gave Norman his last haircut.
This kind of scene recurred with Norman's haberdasher, with his family doctor, with his heart specialist, with his dentist, with his allergy specialist (he had a tendency to asthma and hay fever), with his bookseller, with the blind man at the newsstand, with his shoemaker (Norman wore custom-made shoes), with his tailor, and with the head waiters of restaurants. Each thread twanged sadly as he broke it. There were more farewell parties too; evenings of adieus, drinking, old songs, tears, jokes, and congratulations. The Papermans were as thoroughly and spectacularly said goodbye to, in these last whirling days, as though they were being shot off to the moon.
On Sunday night, coming home from a party, Henny complained of a stomach pain. They blamed it on a midnight snack of shrimp curry. Next morning she was better; by afternoon the pain came back, worse. She went to the family doctor, who examined her skeptically and said that in her circumstances he, too, would be having a bellyache. She had told him of their plan; which was that she would fly to Amerigo with Norman, see to the construction and decorating of the new rooms, return to New York to dispose of the apartment and settle Hazel somehow, and then go back to the Caribbean for good. He gave her pills for her nerves. These put her in an amiable grinning stupor, and banished the pain. But on Wednesday evening, a few hours before they had to leave, Henny's pain came back. She quite agreed that it must be psychosomatic. She took an extra dosage of pills, and fell into a fit of sleepy giggles. It was a night of rain and lashing winds, and Norman called the airline, half-hoping for a postponement until the morning. Oh, no, came the report, the flight was going; and the plane in which Lester was returning from St. Louis was also on time. So to Idle wild they went.
They heard Atlas roaring somewhere around a far turn of a corridor in the terminal, quite a while before they saw him. He came steam-rolling through the wet ill-humored crowd in a tweedy cape and a plaid hat, evidently modeled on the costume of Henry Higgins in the opening scene of My Fair Lady, ridiculous beyond words on his whale shape. He was drunk, merry, and unwearied, though his eyes were completely bloodshot and the flesh under his eyes hung in frightening blue bags. Got to make five, Norm," he said, in a voice scraping like an overplayed record. "Five and a half, if I don't break two legs and an arm. What a fantastic deal." He herded the Papermans straight to a bar. But Henny wouldn't drink. She sat withdrawn and pale while Atlas, downing a double bourbon, grated on about his wonderful deal, the taking over of a copper-mining company with gigantic assets in land. His battle for stock control, he said, was already about won.
All at once, when Lester paused for breath, Henny said, "Norm, you go on down to that island. I'm going home."
"What!" both men said at once.
Arguments glanced off her. She was going home, she said, gathering up her things, and she was going home now. She would come to Amerigo in a few days, probably. Right now she was going home. Her opaque look of pain changed only once. Paperman said, after trying jokes, logic, and cajolery on her, "Well, okay, let's all turn in our tickets, then. I'm not going without you."
Henny said, smiling most peculiarly, "Norm, you have to go. Don't you understand? You've got to make a living, mine host."
7
It was fiercely hot in Collins' small inner office. Sunlight beat through slits of the green blinds in blazing white bars. The noisy fan rustled documents on the desk as it swept back and forth, its puffs briefly cooling Norman's perspiring brow. They had arrived late, and still wore their New York clothing. Norman had had nothing for breakfast but a very old doughnut bolted at the Amerigo airport without coffee. He felt awful, and he could not understand Lester's cool, chipper bearing. Lester sat erect in the leather chair in a double-breasted blue serge suit, glancing at documents, his eyes bright and fairly clear behind his glasses, no sweat visible on his face.
Soon he turned on the little gray-headed Negro banker. "That service charge is ri
diculous."
"It is our standard charge, Mistair Ot-loss."
"Well, we'll change the standard for this transaction." Lester flipped a page of the document, reading intently, his pince-nez glasses glittering, his mouth contracted. One fat hand slowly, evenly tapped the desk as he read. "Let me see the promissory notes." Collins at once passed a sheaf of slim blue papers to him.
The lawyer was in a hard little chair on his right hand, the banker on his left. Lester sat in Collins' own leather chair, at the desk. Norman and Mrs. Ball were in armchairs in front of the desk, side by side. The
Englishwoman wore a sleeveless blue silk dress, a rather high paint job, and a continuous, helpless little smile.
Norman didn't know what a service charge was. He was still reading the contract, trying to puzzle out the terms of this deal. At last it was in his hands, a smudged, blurry carbon copy of solid legal jargon on six long onion-skin legal sheets. He was going to get a check for five thousand dollars, as Atlas had said; a sentence on the fourth page specified this. Mrs. Ball was going to get fifteen thousand dollars, and there were long paragraphs about some promissory notes. But he could not penetrate the lawyers' prose to the facts. He had to count on Lester to spell these out for him-now, or later.
Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival Page 12
