Hazel said, "Parachute jumping? You do that too?"
"We have to qualify. Demolition is our job but it shades over into reconnaissance. You can't always swim to an objective."
"Gosh, they do everything," Hazel said to Klug. She turned back to Cohn, bright-eyed. "And do you learn karate, and all that? Can you kill a man by hitting him once on the neck?" Cohn chuckled. "Well, can you? What's so funny?"
"See, I can't tell you whether I can do it, Hazel, because they don't give us live men to practice on."
Norman said, "It's that stupid old Congress again, and their peacetime economizing. Damned shortsighted."
Cohn's eyes gleamed at him. "Right. It's Congress's fault for sure."
"But you're thirty years old," Hazel said. "Isn't that too old for such strenuous stuff?"
Cohn coughed over his drink. "It sure is, Hazel. I've told my CO. that, many times, and offered to quit. He just orders me to run three extra miles, to prove I'm wrong."
The arrival of the food put an instant stop to the talk, at least for
Klug; he fell to madly on the oysters. Hazel, picking at a melon, began to press Cohn for stories of his war experiences in Israel. He tried to dodge her questions, saying that the Israeli armed forces were the most fouled-up on earth, and nothing ever happened but a lot of low comedy. To prove this he told a story of a frogman group swimming from a fishing boat into the port of Alexandria to attach limpet mines to Egyptian warships. As he narrated it, the expedition was a series of silly mishaps, culminating in the fact that of the six old Italian limpet mines which they did manage to affix to the Egyptian ships-in one case with the aid of an Egyptian sailor, who readily obeyed orders barked at him in Arabic-five had failed to go off. However, the one that did go off had sunk the largest destroyer in the Egyptian navy.
"Was that one you set?" Henny asked.
"God, no. The man who set that one is the commodore of the Israeli navy now. I couldn't get mine to stick to the ship. The magnets had rusted out or something. I thought of staying there and holding it against the side till it went off. But as I told you, this duty attracts cowards. So I missed my chance to have a street in Tel Aviv named after me. Rehov Robert Cohn."
"Let's go to Israel one day, dear," Hazel said to Klug. "I'd love to see it."
"Sociologically it's an interesting place," Klug said. He had polished off his steak and the side dishes, while Cohn talked and merely nibbled at a slice of cold salmon. Klug lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. "Of course, there's a lot of nonsense written about it. There's been development capital of about a thousand dollars per head put into Israel by the Jews. You put that much money into any other country and you'd see results just as remarkable. In India development capital figures out at about twenty-one cents a head."
"Well, you'd be right except for one thing," Cohn said. "The way Israelis do things, a thousand dollars goes about as far there as twenty-one cents does in India."
Klug smiled tolerantly. "Then how do you explain the amazing progress?"
Cohn shrugged. "I hate to say this, but I think it's a Jewish plot." Hazel stared at him, then broke into peals of laughter. "You know, he's just plain crazy," she said to Klug. "This man is crazy."
Klug looked at his watch. "Much to my regret I think we re going to have to skip dessert, dear. It won't be easy to get down to Sheridan Square."
When Hazel and Klug had gone, Cohn exchanged a quizzical glance with each of the girl's parents. "I like him," he said.
Henny said, "He's a horror."
"A mess," said Norman.
"A nothing," said Henny.
Cohn said, "What does he do? Is he really a writer?"
"He teaches English," said Henny. "He's writing a thesis about how Balzac was a fairy."
"Balzac, eh?" said Cohn. "I have a brother who teaches comparative lit at Brandeis. He wrote a dissertation about how Homer was a fairy. Is Hazel going to marry this fellow?"
Henny said, "Well, the only thing is, he has a wife."
"And a kid," Norman added.
"I see. You're in great shape with your daughter."
"Peachy," Henny said. She went off to the ladies' room.
Norman said, "How about coming home and having a brandy with us?"
"No thanks. Say, Norm, if this isn't an imposition, can you lend me a hundred dollars?"
The abrupt demand startled Paperman into making an unpleasant face. Cohn laughed. "All right, forget it. You don't know me from Joe Zilch. It's nice of you to give me a feed."
"Why, no, I'll lend you the hundred. It's just that-well, I don't have a hundred on me. I guess the restaurant will cash my check-"
"You'd be a real pal. I'll send you the dough from Kinja tomorrow. One of the guys owes me two hundred."
Norman's opinion of Cohn was taking a sharp drop, but he signaled for a waiter and wrote out a check. Cohn rattled on cheerily, "I ran into these officers off the Jerusalem, you see. I knew them in the Israeli navy. Working an ocean liner sure puts an edge on your card game."
Henny returned as Norman was taking the hundred dollars from the waiter and handing it to Cohn.
"What on earth?"
Cohn said, thrusting the loose bills into a pocket, "Norm's staking me to the fare back to Amerigo. The fact is, I have to sort of step on it to make the plane." He grinned. "Do you mind if I barrel off?"
"Why, of course not. But-"
"Well, then, see you in Kinja." Cohn stood. "Bring Hazel along. The youngsters in the team will give her a big rush. Thanks for everything, Norm. You too, Henny."
He made off, and they watched him get the old raincoat from the checkroom girl and go out.
"I'll be goddamned," said Henny.
"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 Papermans 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.
