Career in C Major: And Other Fiction

by James M. Cain

  “Well, what’s it all about, anyway?” says Polly. “Can you tell me that? It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. Here we’ve been here a whole week. Not one camera has been set up, not one piece of scenery, not anything, except me, and Tim, and the hip’, and this lake. Does it make sense? What’s he trying to do? Kid us?”

  “I’ll tell you what it’s about,” says Hapgood. “In the first place, it’s an animal picture. Well, they’re made in the cutting-room, but you got to have one gag. Like in ‘Congorilla’ it was the gorillas, and in ‘Chang’ it was the elephant stampede, and in ‘Bring ’Em Back Alive’ it was the snake and the tiger; you got to have a gag. So that’s where Hornison played smart. That gag, you generally got to send Martin Johnson or Frank Buck or Clyde Ellicott or somebody down to the South Seas to get it, and that costs money. That knocks out fifty grand before you even know it. So Hornison, he figured out a gag he could do right here in this lake, and do it so cheap it’s a crime. It’s the jungle ferryboat, see? I mean the hip’. And this here Kowgli—that’s Kennelly—he gets caught in a river full of crocodiles—”

  “Crocodiles!” says Polly. “First a lion, then a hip’, and now crocodiles! It’s out! It’s—”

  “The crocodiles,” says Hapgood, “they do them in a tank with a dummy soaked in horse blood. That’s another thing. Ever since this here Jo Metcalf figured how to run hot water into the tank and make the crocodiles come to life like a lot of crabs in a steam boiler, why they been hell on croc’s. So then when he gets caught by the croc’s, his old pal the hip’ comes along and saves him.”

  “Swell,” says Kennelly.

  “But get how the cheap louse saved his money and left us holding the bag. It’s good. If he could get the gag in, then he had our name on the contracts; and even if it was a grand a week, with a gag like that, it was cheap. If he couldn’t, it cost him just about what it would cost to make one screen test on his own lot. Overhead? Not a dime. That lake’s free. Camera-crews? He didn’t bring any. Guarantee? He hasn’t even read the contracts. Thirty bucks a day for the hip’, and whatever he wants to pay us. He don’t even have to stable the hip’. That secretary’s been gagging to me how the hip’ goes down under every night and stays there—”

  “We know,” says Polly.

  “We heard about it,” says Kennelly.

  “Maybe five hundred bucks, over all, not a cent more. He’s sitting pretty. The gag’s a flop, but—”

  “The gag’s not a flop,” says Polly.

  “That’s what makes it nice,” says Kennelly.

  “What do you mean, it’s not a flop?”

  “We pulled it off. We’re ready to shoot.”

  “You’re too late. That just makes it perfect.”

  “How do you know we’re too late? Can’t you call him up?”

  “I don’t even want to talk to the louse.”

  “Then I’ll talk to him,” says Kennelly. “That’s better than the three of us talking to each other.”

  “You better not let me talk to him,” says Polly, after Kennelly went inside to the phone. “I might say something we would all be sorry for.”

  She jumped and ran inside. The little country exchange out there by the lake was slow, and Kennelly hadn’t got through to the studio yet. She grabbed the receiver and slammed it on the hook. “Did you get him?”

  “No. Hey, how can I get him if—”

  “Thank God! Now listen, Tim. It’s my turn to talk.—Hap! Come in here.”

  Hap came in, and she started off. “All right,” she says. “He took us for a ride, didn’t he? Then we’re going to take him for a ride, and he’ll remember it for a while. Hap, call that girl at your office and tell her to go over and pick up those checks right away.”

  “Checks?”

  “So we’re closed out! Tell her to get the checks and contracts. So we’re closed out, and there’s no question about it.”

  “But that’s just what we’re trying to head off!”

  “Sure, and we’re all so dumb we ought to be shot. Can’t you see it? If we can ever get closed out, and get those contracts back, it’s a new deal. It’s a new deal all around, and he’ll have to pay us two thousand a week, on a ten-week guarantee—”

  “You’re crazy,” says Hapgood.

  “Am I? Crocodiles, my eye! Why, this gag is going to be famous before we’re done. That hip’ is going to carry Tim up and down the river, carry messages all over the jungle, save the monkey from the big bad tiger, get his back scratched by the pretty tick-bird—and then when he saves Tim from the crocodiles, those kids are going to stand up and cheer. I’m telling you. It’s our gag. I know what it’s worth, and after I get done, so will Hornison.”

  “She’s not crazy,” says Kennelly. “Call your office.”

  Of course it wouldn’t be Hapgood’s office if there was somebody in it. “It’s too late,” he says. “She must have gone. Say, I don’t think much of this.”

  “All right, then,” says Polly. “I’m going to spend tonight in Hollywood. The very first thing in the morning I go get the checks and contracts, and then I start in on Hornison. And what you two are going to do is stay here and see that the Bohunk doesn’t move that hip’.”

  When Polly hit the Brown Derby, that night around nine o’clock, who should be there but Hornison. He was across the room, and he didn’t see her. She figured that meant he saw her first, and it suited her all right, so she stayed where she was and ordered their seventy-five-cent Chinese dinner.

  Pretty soon Polly could hear a mumble, and she didn’t pay any attention to it till she noticed Hornison had a phone plugged in at his table and was talking into it. Then she snapped out of it and listened. “That’s right,” he was saying. “One reservation on your train to San Francisco, leaving tonight. Hold it in my name, J. P. Hornison. I’ll pick it up by eleven forty.”

  That knocked everything haywire, and meant she had to move fast. She walked down to his table like nothing had happened at all, lit one of his cigarettes, and sat down nice and friendly. “Hello,” he says. “I thought you were working.”

  “I’m going back in the morning. Just ran down to look at the bright lights.”

  “Tim with you?”

  “No, he needed sleep. He’s been working the hip’ all day.”

  Then she let him have it, and especially all the cute angles on the gag he hadn’t even thought of. She knew it was risky, because if he called off the trip, he might call off the checks too. But she figured he didn’t know what she was up to, and she could probably beat him to it at the studio in the morning before he woke up. “O. K.,” he says after a while. “I’ll run up and have a look at it.”

  “I’ll run you up in the morning.”

  “The morning? I mean tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  She thought fast some more, then figured it might even be better that way, because if they could keep Hornison out on the lake they could shoot Hapgood’s girl over, and still put the deal over. “All right,” she says. “Fine.”

  “You got your car? I left mine home.”

  “Right in the Derby park.”

  “Then drive me up.”

  They topped a hill, and the San Fernando Valley lay below, under the stars. “Gee, that’s pretty,” he says. “Hold it a minute. Pull over. Let’s look at it. You don’t see something like that often.”

  She stopped, and he looked at it. “Great, isn’t it?” he says.

  “Just lovely.”

  “You’ve got a funny look in your eye tonight, Polly. I wonder if you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Up at the lake, they think you’re in Hollywood.”

  “Yes.”

  “And down in Hollywood, they think I’m in Frisco. Does that put ideas in your head? It does in mine.”

  “I never knew you thought about me that way.”

  “I think about you that way plenty.”

  “Well—what do y
ou mean?”

  “I mean how about you and me slipping off to Santa Barbara tonight? A little stroll by the sea, a nice late supper, and then when we show up at the lake in the morning, we just happened to bump into each other and you ran me up. How’s that hit you?”

  “It’s an awful temptation,” she says.

  “Sure, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Can we stop at the lake so I can get a few things?”

  “Holy smoke, no! Listen, baby, I don’t want any trouble with that Irishman. This has got to be quiet. Get that right now.”

  “I’ll have to have some things. I’ll slip in back, quiet, so nobody’ll ever know. They’re all asleep anyway.”

  “You sure you can get away with it?”

  “Easy.”

  When they got to the lake, she cut the lights and they coasted in back. She got out and sneaked into the clubhouse. It was all dark. She was afraid to call Kennelly for fear Hornison would hear, so she felt her way to the front porch. She thought Kennelly might be there. He wasn’t, but his voice was. It was floating up from the lake, doing a nice croon number on “Home on the Range.” And mixed in with it, doing a swell barber-shop second, was a woman’s voice.

  “Home, home on the range,” sang Kennelly, “where the deer and the antelope play—”

  “Home, home, home,” sang the woman, “home, home, ho-me.”

  It was a knife in Polly’s heart, after all she had been doing for Kennelly, and she didn’t wait to hear more. She went straight back to Hornison.

  “I’m all ready,” she says. “My, isn’t it a pretty night.”

  But Hornison, he had heard the singing too. “Something funny about this,” he says. “Wait a minute.”

  He tiptoed around to the front of the clubhouse. She got in the car and sat there. The longer she sat, the madder she got. After a couple of minutes she jumped out and ran down to the canoe-landing. The singing stopped, and there wasn’t a sound. She called Kennelly. No answer. She called again. Still no answer. Then she went off the handle right. She began to bawl out Kennelly across the water, and while she was doing that, she was peeling off her clothes, anyway down to the silk. She meant to swim out there and make a free-for-all fight of it and it was Hornison that stopped her. He ran down and grabbed her as she was about to dive in.

  “Polly!” he says. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to kill him!”

  “You can’t pull stuff like that!”

  “Oh, can’t I! I’ll kill him, and I’ll kill her!”

  “Cut it out! You’re off your nut!”

  “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing there, in that attire, with Jack Hornison, at this hour of night?” It was Kennelly alone, about twenty feet offshore, in the canoe, and talking in that quiet tone of voice an actor puts on when he wants to sound like a grand duke.

  “Oh!” says Polly. “There you are!”

  “And there are you. And I’d like an explanation of it.”

  “Explanation! Where is she? Give your own explanations!”

  “One thing at a time,” says Kennelly. “Begin. Now.”

  “Can I put in a word, Tim?” says Hornison. He was getting a little nervous, because he didn’t know what Polly might pop out with. “Polly and I just drove out together, that’s all. And then she kind of got a little sore about something just now, and she was going to swim out to you. I stopped her. That’s all.”

  “Oh, thank you, Jack. That clears that up.”

  “Did you hear me?” says Polly. “Where’s that woman?”

  “What woman?” Kennelly asks.

  “The woman you were singing with.”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure. Some woman on shore.”

  “And you just sang duets with her?”

  “Why not? I didn’t know where she was, but I kind of liked it. Sure I sang duets with her. A thing like that don’t happen every night.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “Do you see any woman?”

  “No.”

  “That’s it,” says Hornison. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “All right. If you’ll put your clothes on, I’ll be coming ashore.”

  He dipped in his paddle. In about two seconds he would have won in a walk. But he didn’t quite make it. You see, Kennelly wasn’t alone in the canoe at all, and Polly would have known it if she had noticed how the bow wasn’t riding high the way it would if only one person was in it. And how that came about was that Polly wasn’t the only one that was pulling some fast work that night. Hornison’s secretary, after he called up he was going to San Francisco, saw a chance to blow herself to a day off. But she had the checks and contracts still to get rid of, so she thought she’d take a little run up to the lake and hand them over that night, and next day she would be all clear.

  So that was what she did, except that when she got there and found Kennelly singing to himself out on the porch, she kind of got to feeling romantic, and a little sorry for him besides, and that was how she happened to be out there on the lake, doing the second part with him eleven o’clock at night. She still hadn’t handed over the checks or the contracts, or even said anything about them, and that was when Hornison showed up. She knew it was Hornison up there on the porch because he lit a cigarette just after he left Polly, and she could tell it was him by the way he kept waving the match around after he got his light.

  And then she made her big mistake. She knew Hornison would raise hell about her being up there, just because he always raised hell about everything, so she did some quick whispering to Kennelly, and got him to hide her. She was pretty small, so she curled down in the bow of the canoe with the robe over her, and they were going to let Kennelly step out, accidentally on purpose let the canoe slide out in the lake, and then she would paddle off to another spot and slip home before Hornison could find out. At that, they would have got away with it, if they didn’t have some tough luck.

  What happened after that hip’ came off bottom with the canoe on his back took about half a minute, near as I can figure out, but I’ve got to take it one thing at a time, or you’ll never get it straight. First off, the air was split by the worst shriek that ever was heard this side of kingdom come. Of course, that was the secretary. When she felt that hip’ rub his snout on the canvas, she knew it wasn’t any bullfrog, and even her first yip, the State cop heard it on the main road, and that was a mile away. Her other yips, I think they heard them in China, with a war going on.

  Next off, both she and Kennelly were in the water, because the canoe slid off gunwale first, and filled before you could see it go down. Next off, all hell broke loose. The hip’, maybe he wanted to get back for what he had to stand for earlier in the day. Anyway, he began to bump Kennelly and bump the girl, and he meant business.

  “Polly!” yells Kennelly. “For God’s sake, help me get her out! He’ll kill her!”

  And Polly? What did she do? She folded up on the float, and laughed like it was the funniest thing she ever saw in her life. “Ride him, cowboy!” she yells, and kicked up her heels in the air.

  “But Polly! It’s no joke! He’s got us!”

  “Grab him by the ears! Ride him! Ha-ha, ha-ha!”

  And Hornison, what did that big-hearted guy do? Soon as he saw who was in the water, he ran down to the edge of the float and began to bawl the girl out. “I knew it was you!” he says. “I knew it was you, soon as I heard the singing. What are you doing here? Who told you to come up here?”

  “Mr. Hornison! Save me!”

  “I can’t swim; and if I could, I wouldn’t save you!”

  “Mr. Hornison! If you won’t save me, save your contracts!”

  Soon as he heard “contracts,” it seemed that Hornison could swim after all, if he really put his mind on it. He jumped in, and Polly was right after him. “Contracts” seemed to do something to her too. But it was the hip’s show, and he didn’t mean anybody to bust it up. He began to bump all of them, and it wa
s getting a little serious. Who do you think saved them? It was Hapgood. None other than Hapgood, the boy they all forgot!

  Of course, he didn’t exactly figure out anything bright. When he heard the noise, he jumped out of bed and ran down there in his pajamas, and began throwing things in, so they could grab them and be saved from drowning. He threw in a couple of spare paddles that were standing there, and some cushions, and a couple of recliners, things like that. But the iron anchor he threw in hit the hip’ between the eyes, and that ended it. The State cops got there about that time, and hauled them out, and then they all sat on the float and told each other what they thought of them. The sergeant had to give them a call …

  Well, it looked like everybody had lost. Of course after they fished her out, the girl didn’t have any checks or contracts or anything else. They were in her handbag, and they didn’t get that. So Hornison didn’t know where he was on his double-cross, and Polly didn’t know where she was on her double-cross, and Kennelly didn’t know where he was about Polly, and the girl didn’t know where she was about Hornison. All they knew was they hated each other with a hate supreme. After the others had gone back to the clubhouse, Polly polished off Kennelly. “I’m through, Tim! To think it was right in our hand—we were in the money at last, and you had to throw it away for the first girl that came along when my back was turned! I’d never be able to forget it. Good-by, Tim.”

  “You feel like a swim?”

  “So you think a little swim under the stars would fix it all up. I’m sorry. I don’t feel like a swim.”

  “When he takes a girl out in a tippy boat, a guy takes some precautions. That is, if he’s got any sense.”

  “What?”

  “Like looping a handkerchief through her handbag and slipping it over the strut. If we were to tread water a little bit, we might get our feet on that canoe.”

  “Do you think I would really tread water for it with a conceited ham that thinks every woman is nuts about him that ever looks at him?”

  “Yeah, that’s just what I think.”

  “Well, that’s just what I’m going to do. Come here, you sap! Put your arms around me and kiss me.”

  The checks and contracts were a little waterlogged, but they did the work. When they proved that he had tried to shortchange them to the tune of three hundred and seventy-five dollars a week, Hornison settled and settled quick. They got their two grand and it took nine weeks of shooting. But don’t blame me if you don’t like the picture. Me, I’m not so keen on the animal stuff.