Rich and Famous

by James Lincoln Collier

  “West Fourth Street,” I said.

  “No, you’re not from West Fourth Street. You’re from some place in the country,” the skinny one said.

  “Got any relatives in some hick town somewhere?” the round one said.

  “I’m staying with my cousin in Pawling. That’s upstate.”

  “What kind of a place is that?” the round one said.

  “Just a small town,” I said. “There are a lot of farms there.”

  “Pawling?” the skinny one said, looking worried. “Is there really such a place? It’s important that you come from a real place. Sometimes they send fan mail to the hometown and it looks bad when it comes back marked, „No Such Place.’”

  “It’s real,” I said. “I’ve been there.”

  “Naturally you’ve been there,” the round one said. “It’s your hometown. Any cows and like that? Real country-time?”

  “My cousin has a barn only there aren’t any cows in it. They use it for cars.”

  “Barns,” the skinny one said. “That sings, barns are good.”

  “What about a main street?” the round one said. “We may have to put on a homecoming parade—George Stable, The Boy Next Door returns triumphantly to the something little town where as a school boy he something, something, while imbibing the something something that has made him world famous. Some crap like that.”

  “Maybe we ought to wait until he gets world famous before we plan any parades,” the skinny one said, looking worried again.

  I wondered what Sinclair would think of me parading down the main street of his own hometown. I figured he’d commit suicide. “There’s a regular main street there.” I said. “Drugstores and banks and the railroad station.”

  “Let’s hear it for Main Street,” the round one said.

  “That railroad station might sing,” the skinny one said. “What else? What kind of things did you do when you were a kid up there? Ice skating? Sneaking apples out of Farmer Brown’s orchard? Pitching maple syrup or whatever the hell they do?”

  “Well the thing is, I didn’t actually live there, so I couldn’t—”

  “Now, George,” the skinny one said. “Let’s not confuse the issue. Pawlville is your—”

  “Pawling.”

  “Pawling is your home town, so naturally you must have lived there. I can see you playing baseball in cow pastures, or sledding down Farmer Brown’s barn, your cheeks red and a colorful scarf flying along behind you.”

  “You don’t sled down barns, dummy,” the round one said.

  “Don’t be picky. I can see you roasting corn on sticks over an open fire, and putting the hens to roost every night to earn money for your first guitar.”

  I began to giggle.

  “Don’t giggle,” the skinny one said. “This is serious. I get paid twenty-two thousand dollars a year to do this. All right, what about a family? You need a family. What’s your mother like?”

  “She’s dead. She died a long time ago.”

  “She won’t work out, then, will she?” the round one said. “What about your old man? Maybe if he was dead too, we could sell you as an orphan—that’s always good for a tug at the heart strings. Growing up with your mean aunt who took away your guitar so you had to sneak out into the woodshed and practice at night.”

  “George Stable, The Orphan Next Door doesn’t sing,” the skinny one said.

  “Anyway, my father’s alive,” I said.

  “Too bad,” the round one said. “That eliminates the orphan bit, anyway. What’s he do, your old man?”

  “He’s a comic strip artist. He draws Frankens-Teen.”

  “Too sophisticated,” the skinny one said, worriedly. “We can’t possibly have that. He’d better be a dentist.”

  “Dentists make too much dough,” the round one said. “How about he’s a street cleaner? Do they have street cleaners up there in Pawling?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “They must have street cleaners,” the skinny one said. “Otherwise how do they keep the streets clean?”

  “Come on, dummy,” the round one said. “The Boy Scouts clean it up. Right, George?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said. “I guess they don’t throw so much stuff around as we do here in New York.”

  “That’s a fair bet,” the skinny one said.

  “Boy Scouts,” the round one said. “Hmm. Maybe his old man is the Pawling scoutmaster.”

  “That’s fairly tasty,” the skinny one said. “Let’s put some butter on it.”

  “Won’t the real scoutmaster get sore?” I asked.

  “Naw,” the round one said. “We give him an autographed record if he promises to keep his mouth shut.”

  That was the way it went. In the end they made Pop a carpenter, because carpenters reflect the sturdy, independent qualities for which country people are famous. They gave me a regular mother, and invented a whole lot of stuff about pitching hay and roasting apples. By the end of it I wasn’t George Stable anymore, I was somebody else. So was Pop: I wondered what he was going to say about being a carpenter in Pawling.

  The publicity conferences were only a part of it. There were conferences on my clothes and conferences on whether I ought to work in night clubs or just in concerts and conferences on how the records would be promoted and a lot of other things. Superman was at a lot of these conferences, and a couple of times he brought up about that chat we were supposed to have over at his apartment.

  I kept stalling. I didn’t have any reason for stalling; I mean he wasn’t going to hurt me or anything. I just didn’t like being around him too much, with his blue egg-eyes always staring and those huge strong arms and shoulders he got from walking on crutches all his life. But it was hard to keep stalling. And one day, as we were coming out of a conference he said, “Hey, Georgie, what about dropping by my place tomorrow afternoon around six?”

  I blushed. “Gee, I can’t Superman,” I said. “Uncle Ned is taking us all to a drive-in that night.”

  “Okay,” he said. He stared at me with those blue egg-eyes. “What about next week?”

  There wasn’t much of a way to get out of it. “Well, I guess that would be all right,” I said. “Only I have to check with Uncle Ned first.”

  “It’s a deal, then,” he said. As far as I was concerned, though, it wasn’t a deal. I figured I could easily work up some excuse about how Uncle Ned was taking us to Danbury to the fair or something.

  They were finally beginning to worry about my songs. They’d picked two or three that I thought I might do, and they’d ordered some more from song writers, and after that I started working with Damon Damon on the music. It wasn’t as much fun as sitting around listening to guys make stuff up, but I was glad to do it because at least it was real.

  Besides, I liked Damon Damon. He was kind of flaky, but he was serious about music and he made me work pretty hard. One day in the rehearsal studio he said, “Of course, they won’t use any of these songs—they’ll throw them out and get different ones—but we may as well work on them, it will give us something to do. I consider this whole business one of the more insane episodes in what has admittedly been a reasonably ludicrous life, but at least you will be able to sing properly. What do you think of my waistcoat? It’s super, isn’t it?”

  I wasn’t feeling much like working. “Yeah, it’s nice,” I said.

  “One redeeming feature of the music business is that you can dress as you like.”

  “That’s probably true,” I said. “But you know what worries me is all this phoniness. I mean making up all that stuff about my hometown, and spending all this time trying to figure out what kind of a haircut a boy next door has. It’s pretty phony.”

  He nodded. “Quite true, dear boy,” he said. “You may as well face it, this isn’t art, this is commercial music. You’re a nice boy, George, but let’s be honest, there are thousands of kids your age in the United States who can sing and play the guitar a little. The difference between t
he ones who get their pictures on album covers and the ones who stay in Swamp Valley, Kentucky is packaging. The people inside the packages are pretty nearly interchangeable. Of course you need somebody with a little musical talent, but basically what Superman looks for is somebody who’s pleasant looking, intelligent enough to understand what’s required of him, and willing to take orders without making too much of a fuss. Oh, he doesn’t want a sheep, of course. He wants somebody with some sort of spark that will communicate to audiences. But he most emphatically doesn’t want some kid arguing with him all the time about his art.”

  Hearing all this made me feel lousy. “You mean I really am a poodle in a dog show?”

  “Oh, it’s not as bad as that, Georgie. I mean after all, you stand to gain a great deal by going along with Superman. He knows what he’s doing, mind you, dear boy. He is a very shrewd cookie indeed. And just suppose by some miracle you happen to hit big. You sweat out a few years, then you get yourself a high-price lawyer to get you out of your contract with Camelot, and you make a deal for yourself that’ll make you rich for life.”

  “It certainly makes me feel lousy to hear you say this,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Nobody’s forcing you, Georgie. It’s a question of paying the price.”

  “Why do you bother staying in the music business, then?”

  “Goodness, dear boy, everybody in the business isn’t like Sup—isn’t a gangster. It may come as a shock, but there are lots of perfectly nice people in it. To be sure, there are absolute flotillas of sharks about, ready to eat you up if they get a chance, but you’d be quite surprised at the number of people in the business who actually care about music. Some of them are quite fond of it, really.”

  “Do you like being in the music business, Damon?”

  “One learns to take the bitter with the sweet, dear boy. I know it’s absurd, but I enjoy puttering around with music. After awhile you get to know who the gangsters are and you keep clear of them as much as possible.”

  “Listen, Damon,” I said, “I heard Superman was in jail for drugs once.”

  “Oh yes, it’s a perfectly fascinating story. He was part of a huge drug ring, absolute millions of dollars involved, but they never were able to pin anything very important on him. I think he only did three years or so. It was quite a scandal in the music business, I assure you.”

  “How come he got his job back?”

  “Oh, he didn’t get the same job back, dear boy. But he came out of jail a reformed character, and gradually he got back into the business.”

  “What exactly did he do?”

  “Apparently he murdered somebody, George, but they couldn’t prove it. Gives you that prickly feeling, doesn’t it, to know that we’re working for a murderer.”

  Chapter

  When I got home that night, Uncle Ned was sitting on the porch reading his newspaper. On the porch table beside him was a letter, and I knew right away what it was, because it was one of those blue airmail letters with the red strips along the edge. As I came up onto the porch he folded his newspaper neatly, laid it carefully on the table, and picked up the letter. “Oh, George,” he said.

  “Hello, Uncle Ned,” I said, trying to be as polite as I could.

  “George, I’m worried about something. I wrote your father a letter awhile ago and it’s been returned. Apparently I had the address wrong. You don’t remember the name of the hotel your father was staying in, do you?”

  I scratched my head. “Gee, Uncle Ned, I don’t.”

  He stared at me. “You’ve written him, haven’t you? I thought I remember you doing that.”

  “I wrote him a couple of times,” I said.

  “I was sure you had.” He paused for a minute. “It’s curious that my letter should be returned and none of yours were.”

  It wasn’t curious to me, though, it was just my usual dumbness. How could I have been so stupid? “Well, gee, Uncle Ned,” I sort of stammered out, “I don’t know. I mean I have his address written down somewhere in one of my notebooks. Maybe the French post office made a mistake.”

  “Let’s see what your address book says.”

  Slowly I went upstairs and into Sinclair’s room. He was sitting at his desk working out some math problems. He stopped when I came in. “Boy, are you in trouble, George. What did you do?”

  “None of your business, Sinclair,” I said.

  “My father said, „Sinclair, George has been lying to us about his activities. I hope you haven’t been involved.’ Naturally I told him I wouldn’t lie to my own family, „You only hurt yourself when you do that.’”

  “Go jump up and bite your tail, Sinclair.” I found the piece of paper with Pop’s address written on it, and slowly I went back downstairs and out onto the porch. Uncle Ned took the piece of paper. Then from his pocket he took out the address book that sat by the telephone. He opened the book, and compared the addresses. “Quite different, aren’t they, George.”

  “Gee,” I said, scratching my head. “I wonder how that could have happened?”

  “If you look closely you can see that somebody erased the old address and put in a new one.”

  I scratched my head, but I didn’t say anything more, just stood there feeling hot and red and beginning to sweat.

  “George, I’m not even going to ask you what you’ve been doing these past three weeks. Your father will be home in a week and he can deal with it. All I can say is that I’m terribly disappointed in your behavior. It is not something we normally encounter in this family. I believe Sinclair said to me himself, „You only hurt yourself when you deceive people.’ I’m going to ask you not to leave the house or the grounds until your father comes for you. If you can’t be trusted like an adult, George, you’ll have to be kept home like a baby.”

  I went up to Sinclair’s room and lay down on my bed.

  “What did he say?” Sinclair said. “What kind of punishment did he give you?”

  “Shut up, Sinclair, or I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

  They told me I could come down for supper, but I didn’t feel like seeing any of them, so I read for awhile and then I went to bed.

  The next day everybody treated me as if I were sick or dying or something. I mean I was in real disgrace. Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Ned spoke to me in low voices, just stuff like “Please pass the butter,” but you’d think they were pronouncing the death sentence on me from their tone of voice. They way they were carrying on you’d think that nobody in the family had ever lied to anyone before. You’d have thought I’d been responsible for starting a typhoid epidemic or making a big crack in the world.

  Sinclair wasn’t so gloomy about it, though. He was just plain curious. He’d never done anything bad in his whole life and it seemed to him that I was pretty unique. It was pretty interesting to him to actually be able to associate with a criminal, although we weren’t doing much associating. I didn’t have any reason to be polite anymore, so that morning when he asked me to help him with his computer I told him to get stuffed. I thought he would go away and leave me alone when I said that, but instead he just hung around, begging me to tell him what I had done wrong. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He could ask his father if he was so damn curious.

  By lunch time I was getting pretty fed up with it all. Uncle Ned took Sinclair off water skiing, but he didn’t ask me to go. I knew he was doing it just to teach me a lesson—he hadn’t taken us water skiing for a week. It made me sore, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So I went up into Sinclair’s room and read. I’ll admit it, I had an inclination to mess up Sinclair’s room—really mess it up, heave all of his chess sets around and throw his clothes on the floor and so forth, but I didn’t. I just lay there for around a half an hour, and then I heard Aunt Cynthia’s car start up and go down the driveway.

  I was alone. I lay there for awhile trying to think of what I could do to get even with everybody. I couldn’t think of anything, though, except to start smashing stuff. I would hav
e liked to have done that, but I didn’t have the guts. I didn’t see how I could last out there for another week and I knew it was going to be worse when Pop got home. He’d really give it to me for everything I’d done, like trying to be rich and famous, but at least Pop wouldn’t treat me like I’d caused the death of some saint. He’d rant and rave and ground me until I was practically ninety, but about a week later he’d forget about it and we’d go back to normal. Of course, if I was still trying to be rich and famous the whole thing would be pretty hard to forget about. I wondered what Pop was going to do about that?

  Or what was I going to do about that? I was supposed to be in New York for some conference the next day. What could I do, just call up Woody and tell him to forget about the whole thing, Uncle Ned had grounded me and they’d have to get another Boy Next Door? And then about three months later I’d see this other Boy Next Door on television being rich and famous, and I’d just have to sit there being jealous. I thought about that for a minute, and suddenly I realized that I couldn’t take any of this stuff anymore. I got up and searched around in Sinclair’s closet until I found my suitcase. I quickly flung all of my clothes into it that I could find. A lot of them were missing. I figured that Aunt Cynthia had some of them in the laundry. Then I shoved a couple of S-F books into the suitcase, and took off out of the house and down to the railroad station. I didn’t go right to the station, though. There was about an hour until the next train into New York, and I knew that Uncle Ned and Sinclair might come home from water skiing. Once they realized that I was gone, they’d go right to the railroad station looking for me. So I went over to the next street and kind of hung around there until I heard the train whistle blowing. Then I ran back to the station, keeping a sharp lookout for Uncle Ned’s car. He wasn’t around, and I figured he was still water skiing. The train pulled in and I jumped on. And two hours later I was in New York.