Max (29 page)

‘And he doesn't do a damned thing?' Max exclaimed indignantly.

‘What can he do?' Sally said. ‘The law is with Mr Kent.'

‘But life wreaks its vengeance on the cruel, alcoholic Mr Kent. He is struck down by a team of dray horses and he dies. But Manfred knows nothing of this. His life is empty. His parents return from Europe. Meanwhile, Jenny is once again the sole support of her crippled mother, selling her pencils on the street. And there, again, Manfred sees her. He faces her, begs her to come with him. She refuses. His world is one thing; hers is another. The two cannot mix. But Manfred follows her home. He then sends his lawyer to her, to inform her that a distant relative has died, leaving her a bequest of ten thousand dollars. She accepts the check tearfully. Her mother is sick, her condition worsening, but now Jenny can send her to the hospital. But her mother dies in spite of all efforts to save her. The only mourner at the cemetery, apparently, is Jenny, who stands alone at the grave as her mother is buried.'

Sally held up a card: ‘Alone. All alone in the world. What will I do?'

‘And as she stands there,' Freedman read, ‘Manfred appears from where he stood behind a tree. Manfred goes to her. She turns to face him. Manfred speaks.'

Sally held up the last of her cards: ‘No. You have never been alone. I was always beside you. I always will be.'

‘And that's it,' Sally said.

They were touched and moved, and they applauded with a round of enthusiastic hand-clapping. The only one of Max's associates who had a college education was Fred Feldman, and his barely touched on literature or drama. Sally's own normal school training had not included judgmental comparisons of dramatic works, and neither she nor Freedman was particularly gifted in playwriting. They had no tradition against which to measure their work; and out of their moment in history, they all shared a sentimental unwillingness to face the facts of their own existence. The reality of life around them – the filth, the misery, the social cruelty, the hopelessness of so many, the poverty and hunger that they had seen and faced throughout their lives – created no artistic reflection. Their ability to sense sentiment was drowned in sentimentality, out of which came their approval and applause. Sally was so pleased that tears welled into her eyes, and Bert Bellamy said, ‘Max, you're absolutely right. Something like this – well, we open in every theatre at the same time. We'll turn them away.'

Fred Feldman thought the wealthy parents had been neglected. ‘We ought to see them meet Jenny,' he said.

But for Max, it was a question of time above everything else. ‘We got to move,' he told them. ‘I got theatres sitting empty. Maybe it works or maybe we go down the hole. Either way, we got to move.'

Two days later, Max went into his office and found Etta Goodman sitting behind his desk, reading the scenario that Sally and Freedman had written. ‘Don't move,' he said to her. ‘Just go on sitting there. Only you should have told me you were taking over so we could have an office party to celebrate it.'

‘Max, I'm not taking over. I just saw this sitting on the desk, and so I sat down here.'

‘You stick your nose into everything that's on my desk?'

‘Only some things.' She came around the desk and kissed his cheek. ‘I like it.'

‘What?'

‘
Jennifer, Child of the Street
, only that's a stupid name.'

‘Suddenly you're an expert on names.'

‘It sounds fishy.'

‘Suppose you let us worry about the name. Now get your ass out of here so I can get some work done.'

But instead of leaving the room, Etta moved away from Max until she stopped by his desk, all the while staring at him, and then said almost explosively, ‘You going to make this into a moving picture?'

‘That's right.'

‘It's wonderful.'

‘Thanks for your permission. Now beat it.'

She didn't move. ‘Max, all these years you been having sex with me, like I'm a piece of furniture here, and I never asked for nothing and I never got nothing –'

‘You got a job! You got paid!'

‘What do you mean, I got paid!' she burst out. ‘I'm no whore. You pay me for having a job here. Maybe I'm not smart, but I try to do whatever work you give me. I do my best. But being a lay – that's free! Sally's got the whole world – the house on Sixty-sixth Street, your kids, a car to drive her around, clothes, jewels, fur coats – and I got
bubkas
. I take care of you, I get fucked by you, I run out to get you coffee and sandwiches, and when you're working late, who goes over to Rosenstein's to tell them what to make you for supper and to bring it to you? Me, me, me, and for what? For what?' She burst into tears, and tears in a woman was something Max could hardly abide. He went to her and put his arms around her.

‘Listen, kid. Let me tell you something about that house on Sixty-sixth Street. I sleep there, period. That's all. And the two kids I got, I see them for a few minutes if I'm lucky, and then it's hands off. They got a goddamn German nurse who talks to them in German, because my wife is raising them to be a couple of stinking uptown German Jews. So there it is. Big deal, yes?'

‘But what have I got?'

‘You got a good job and you got me.'

‘And in the end, what will I be? A used-up, dried-up old maid.'

‘No, no, no.' Max reassured her. ‘We'll find you a husband.'

‘What the hell do you mean, you'll find me a husband?' she exclaimed, pulling back from him.

‘You shouldn't be an old maid.'

‘I don't want no husband. I love you.'

‘All right, all right. So go dry your eyes and clean up your face.'

‘No!'

‘What the devil has gotten into you, Etta?'

She leaned over the desk and picked up the scenario, thrusting it at Max. ‘This.'

‘This? What the hell are you talking about?'

‘You're going to make a big moving picture out of this, right?'

‘Right.'

‘So you're going to need someone to play the part of Jennifer, an actress.'

‘That's right.'

‘I want it. I want to play the part of Jennifer.'

‘What!'

‘Exactly,' Etta said, dropping the script on the desk and suddenly becoming very calm.

‘Etta, Etta, this is something I'm spending thousands of dollars on so it should be something. I need an actress.'

‘I'm an actress.'

‘Since when?'

‘Since two years I been taking classes on Second Avenue over Moshe's dairy restaurant with teachers like Mr Adler and Mr Emmelman. So maybe I'll never be a Sarah Bernhardt, but I can act enough for your moving picture if you only give me a chance.'

‘You're crazy.'

‘So I'm crazy. Max, why don't you take a look at me?

You been sleeping with me for years, but you never look at me.'

He looked at her then and realised that what she said was quite true. He had never really looked at her the way one might look at a woman one had never seen before. She was a bit taller than he could have testified to had he been asked, more slender. Perhaps because Sally's breasts were so small, Etta's full breasts had always given him the impression of a person plumper than she was. Her brown hair was thick and rich, her brows straight, her eyes large and dark, her nose small and straight, and her lips full over a rounded chin. ‘Mr Fritz Emmelman, my dramatic teacher, thinks I'm beautiful,' Etta said.

‘Yeah, sure, you're a good-looking kid. Sure. Did I ever say you were a dog? But actress –' Max shook his head. ‘Nah. You're nuts. Forget it.'

‘I'm not going to forget it, Max,' Etta said, her face tightening. ‘You know what I think –'

‘I don't want to know what you think. I want you to stop being a pain in the ass and get out of here.'

‘You know, Max, I always used to be afraid of you because I said to myself, if I did something you didn't like, you'd stop loving me and you'd fire me. Well, you know something, I got to realise you don't love me, and it's just convenient for you to have someone in the office to screw whenever you get horny, and you're not going to fire me anyway. And you know why? Because if you fire me, I can go straight to the classy Mrs Sally Britsky and tell her, “You know what, your husband, Max, has been screwing me for years, even the night before your wedding, not to mention a week later –”'

‘You wouldn't?'

‘Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't,' Etta said archly.

‘You're not that kind of a bitch. We got too much going between us, Etta, When did I ever threaten to fire you?'

‘Maybe this is the first time, but you see, Max, I'm going to tell you what I think whether you want to know about it or not. I think that most girls never get a chance, and sometimes you get one chance in a whole lifetime, and for me this is it. I want that part in your moving picture, and if I don't get it, I don't care what happens.'

‘But it's not up to me alone,' Max protested. ‘There's this guy, Freedman, who's directing it, and there's Sally, and Sam Snyder –'

‘Come on, Max, don't kid me. Nobody around here pees without you say it's all right.'

‘Yeah. Well, I don't know. Maybe.'

The casting of Etta as Jennifer was done forthrightly, with no tricks, once Max had decided that he had one of two choices: either to give in to her request or hire someone to kill her. Since the second alternative was impossible, not only because he held Etta in great affection, but because he was incapable of doing away with a puppy dog, much less a human being, he decided to give her the part. Once he made this decision, he did not beat about the bush but called Freedman into his office and put it to him straightforwardly.

‘You're kidding,' Freedman said bewilderedly.

‘I'm not kidding, Gerald, and I'm not being funny. I want Etta Goodman to be in this picture playing the part of Jennifer.'

‘But she's not an actress.'

‘Who says so?'

‘Where has she studied? Where has she played?'

‘You know something, Gerald,' Max said, ‘you and me, maybe we'll have a long and profitable association, maybe not. You got more brains than I have and you got education and culture, but one thing you got to learn, or right now we're finished.'

Freedman waited.

‘A very simple fact. I'm the boss. I take the risk, I put up the money, it's my neck stuck out. You know what's making this picture if it ever gets made, not you and Sally and the actors and Snyder and his crew, but me. You know why it's me? It's me because I want it to be made, and if I didn't want it to be made and put up the money and kick everyone's ass around, it wouldn't get made. And if you think that's a lot of horseshit, just answer me why we're sitting here in the United States of America, with nickelodeons all over the place from California to Kansas to Philadelphia, and there ain't nobody except Max Britsky who gets the idea that maybe instead of the brainless shit that they show in every one of these nickelodeons, there can be a real story maybe an hour and a half long.'

Since Freedman had not been at the meeting where Sally had broached the idea, and since Sally then and later took no credit, he did not feel that he could challenge Max's statement. Certainly, it contained the unarguable fact of power.

‘And about Miss Goodman,' Max went on, ‘she can't act? Maybe yes, maybe no. That's up to you. You'll get her to act. She's a pretty young lady. Her father,' Max added, ‘is a dear friend. I promised him. It's a promise I can't get out of, so I got to deliver.' Max made a mental note to find out whether Etta's father was alive or dead.

‘I wish you weren't caught in this,' Freedman said understandingly, half believing him.

‘But I am, so that's that. Only one thing. Etta Goodman is as glamorous a name as Max Britsky. We got to call her something else. So give me something sounds like the lady is maybe another Duse.'

‘Another Duse?'

‘That's right.'

Half jokingly and unaware that he was making film history, Freedman answered, ‘Feona Amour.'

‘Feona Amour. What the hell kind of a name is that? Feona? I never met no Feona.'

‘Well, Feona is English or Welsh – I know it's a name you find in the British Isles – and Amour – well, that's French for love. I just threw both names out. I wasn't being very serious. You know, I haven't met Miss Goodman. Possibly it would be better if I met her, and then I could suggest a name.'

‘No. Tell you something, I like it. I like the sound. Feona Amour. That's it. She is Feona Amour.'

Thus Etta was named and placed among the immortals, but that was only the beginning of the confusion that surrounded the making of
The Waif
. It was not Freedman but Bert Bellamy who let drop to Sally that Feona Amour was the same Etta Goodman who had been Max's personal assistant, a comfortable euphemism suggested by a slight twitch in Bert's lips. When Sally demanded an explanation from Freedman, he dissembled and informed her that Max had a debt to Etta's father. What resulted was the first rage Sally had ever given in to, screaming at Max, ‘It's not what you did at the office, but to take my work and give it to her! That is foul, filthy and foul!'

Here was a side of Sally Max had never seen before. Could this be the same shy, gentle, soft-spoken woman he had known and married?

‘You loathsome son of a bitch!' she cried.

He had never dreamed that she knew the words. Women didn't swear – unless of course they were floozies.

‘You've been sleeping with her,' Sally hissed.

‘I swear to God I haven't! Sally, on my mother's name, I swear!'

‘Your mother!'

‘Sally –'

She stalked out of the room into her own private workroom, which adjoined the bedroom. When Max found the courage to follow her a few minutes later, he found her engaged in methodically tearing each copy of the scenario to shreds.