Max (39 page)

‘And you're a genius,' Max said generously.

‘Oh, no, no. It was your idea, Max. Although I must say that the stars in the sky are my notion. There are eight hundred tiny sockets set into the ceiling. When it's all complete and the ceiling is a much deeper shade of blue, then as you turn the sunset rheostat down, you can also control the starlight with a second rheostat. I didn't just set in the sockets at random. We followed a midsummer star map, midsummer being the time most people look at the sky. Just consider it, Miss O'Donnell,' he said to Della, ‘here you are, sitting in the theatre and waiting for the moving picture to begin –'

‘The organ's playing,' Max interrupted. ‘The fifth biggest pipe organ in New York.'

‘Oh, yes,' Abel agreed, ‘the organ playing, and now the light in the theatre begins to fade. You look up, and suddenly you're not in a theatre anymore but in a walled palace, and beyond the walls you see the last rays of the setting sun. There, look,' pointing to the ceiling as he turned down the rheostat. ‘And across the ceiling, when we get the lights in, the summer night sky appears, just faint bits of light at first, but then twinkling brighter in all the major constellations, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the North Star –'

Della's eyes were wet. ‘It will be the most beautiful place on earth.'

‘I hope so,' Max said.

Driving back to Twenty-third Street, Della curled up against Max. When he touched her face, her cheeks were as hot as fire and wet with tears, and when Max wanted to know why she was crying, Della said, ‘It was so beautiful, Max. It was just so absolutely beautiful, except that Sally was there, and she didn't want me to see it.'

‘Sally. No, she wasn't there.'

‘Up behind the wall. She was looking over the wall.'

Max carried her up the stairs to her flat. He didn't know where his strength came from, but he managed, just as he managed to undress her and put her to bed with a quilt and a heavy blanket over her. He thanked God that he had insisted, the year before, that she have a telephone installed, and when he left her to call the doctor, she was huddled under the covers, shivering.

Dr Traub was a small, fat man who mumbled. He examined Della and mumbled that it was pneumonia. Then he mumbled that she ought to go to the hospital.

‘I want the best, the best there is,' Max said.

Dr Traub was already on the telephone; when he finished, he told Max that he had ordered the ambulance.

‘The best hospital –'

‘All right, Mr Britsky. Don't be nervous. I'm sending her to Mt Sinai. That's my hospital. It's as good as any hospital.'

‘Look,' Max said, ‘money is no object. You can hire the best doctors in the world. I want her cured.'

‘Money won't help. She has pneumonia. We'll do the best we can. Tell me, Mr Britsky, this is a relative? She don't look Jewish.'

‘This is my secretary and business associate.'

Dr Traub nodded and said no more. Since he was the Britsky family doctor, there was no need for him to pursue his inquiries. ‘When the ambulance comes,' he said, ‘we'll wrap her in a blanket. You can bring it back. You're going to the hospital?'

Max nodded.

‘Do you know where it is?'

‘On a Hundredth Street and Fifth?'

‘That's right.'

After the ambulance arrived and Della had been carried away. Max went downstairs to where his car was waiting. Shecky Blum had made the transition from carriage to limousine seven years ago, and by now he felt comfortable and superior in the driver's seat of Max's new Buick. When he reached Mt Sinai Hospital, he asked Max, ‘What do I do now?'

‘You don't do a damn thing. You sit right here.'

‘Mrs Britsky wanted the car this afternoon.'

‘I told you what to do. You sit here!'

Dr Traub met him in the corridor. ‘You have a very sick lady there, Mr Britsky. We're doing our best, except that for pneumonia the best is practically nothing.'

‘I want to see her.'

‘Sure, sure. In a minute,' Dr Traub said. ‘Tell me first, she's not Jewish, is she?'

‘What the hell is the difference?'

‘The difference is, Mr Britsky, that I got to talk frankly. Has she got a family? Also, is she a Catholic?'

‘Goddamn it –'

Dr Traub stopped mumbling. ‘Hold on! Just hold on, Mr Britsky! I'm saying something very important. If that woman is a Catholic, she must have a priest. This is a Jewish hospital, so we don't have a priest in attendance, but if Miss O'Donnell should die without the last rites, that could be a terrible thing in the eyes of her family. That's why I say her family must be notified and we must have a priest – if she's Catholic'

‘She's Catholic, but she's not going to die! You hear me, Doc, she is not going to die.'

‘That's in the hands of God, and with pneumonia He doesn't do too well. Maybe she has a fifty percent chance of pulling out of this, and I wouldn't even bet on that. I'm being very blunt, but her temperature is already one hundred and five degrees. Dr Solomon is with her now, and he's our best man with lung infections, but I don't know what he can do.'

‘Can I please see her now?'

‘All right. But don't delay what I told you.'

Max's mind was a jumble of confused thoughts and tearing sensations, facing what he felt for Della O'Donnell and yet unable to face it, tempted to get down on his knees and plead with her to live and not to desert him, yet unable to do anything but stand by the bed with the tears running down his cheeks, the two doctors watching him curiously before they stepped out of the room.

Della opened her eyes and saw him and whispered something. He bent close to hear it. ‘Please don't cry,' Della said, and the effort to speak brought on a fit of coughing, a froth of dark brown sputum coming out of her mouth. A nurse came into the room and wiped Della's face.

‘Where are the doctors?' Max demanded. ‘Why ain't they here?'

‘They can't help,' the nurse said. She had a basin of cold water and she wet cloths, using them to cool Della. ‘We're doing what we can.'

Della's eyes were closed now. She appeared to be breathing a little more easily. Max left the room and went to the floor desk and picked up the telephone. When a nurse tried to stop him, explaining that visitors had to use the telephone in the main lobby, he took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket, threw it at her, and said, ‘I'm using this phone, lady.'

He called Tammany Hall, to be informed that Boss Charles Murphy was at City Hall, where the mayor was handing the keys to the city to the new President-elect, Mr Woodrow Wilson.

‘Well, you damn well get over there and find him!' Max shouted. ‘You tell him that this is Max Britsky, and I'm up at Mt Sinai Hospital up on One Hundredth Street, and that it's a matter of life and death that he get up here and bring a priest with him!'

‘A what?'

‘A priest, goddamn you! A priest!'

It was nine o'clock that night before Murphy reached Mt Sinai, and by then Della had passed through delirium and had sunk into a coma. Max came out of her room to greet Murphy, and Murphy introduced the tall, heavyset man he had brought with him as Bishop Brady.

‘We need a priest,' Max said.

‘Sure, I'm a priest,' the bishop told him.

Overcome with emotion, Max spoke with effort: ‘I think she's near the end.'

‘Then we'll waste no time,' the bishop said, leading the way into the room. Dr Solomon was there, bending over the bed. He straightened up, nodded at Brady, and said, ‘Quickly, please.'

The bishop administered the last rites. Shivering, bent over, his faced twisted with grief, Max watched and listened. When the doctor drew the sheet over Della's face, Murphy put his arm around Max's shoulders and led him from the room.

Bishop Brady joined them in the visitors' waiting room. Past visiting hours, the three men had the room to themselves. Murphy took a flask out of his pocket and handed it to Max. ‘Take a good shot. You need it.'

Max drank and handed back the flask.

‘Sorry I couldn't come earlier. Max, but there I was with the President. You can't just walk out. Still, we got here in time, poor child.'

‘May her soul be blessed,' Brady said. ‘I knew her only moments, but I could see the mark of goodness and innocence upon her face. God will forgive her and receive her,'

Max had never wept before, and he hardly realised now that tears were still sliding down his cheeks. He wondered what Della had to be forgiven for. In the six years that she had been his secretary and his mistress, he had never heard a word of anger or seen an act of petulance or hostility.

‘She has no family, poor child,' Murphy said, ‘only me and my wife.'

‘I'll take care of it,' Max said. ‘Whatever the funeral costs, whatever you need.'

Brady was watching Max with interest. ‘You must have loved the woman with all your heart,' he said.

I never told her that, Max thought. I never told her that I loved her. Why didn't I tell her? He rubbed his eyes and felt the wetness of his cheeks, went into his pocket for a handkerchief and found two tickets there. He looked at them curiously, then handed them to Murphy. ‘Tomorrow night – maybe you can use them. George M. Cohan's new show,
Broadway Jones
. She liked George M. Cohan.' He stood up suddenly. ‘Oh, shit! What a stupid, fucked-up, senseless world!'

[
E I G H T
]

 

Natalie Love, who had been born Alexa Vasovich twenty-three years before, stretched lazily, yawned, and smiled at Max. When she smiled like that, she reminded him of Della O'Donnell, and when anything reminded him of Della, a stab of pain went through him. There were other ways in which Alexa reminded him of Della. She had the same fair skin, blue eyes, and rounded limbs. Her hair was different, corn silk, and she was not quite as plump as Della had been, which prompted Max to remind her not to gain any more weight.

‘Max, I'm not fat, am I?' She kicked off the covers and displayed her naked and very lovely figure.

‘Cover yourself. I don't want you catching cold.'

‘Always worrying about someone catching cold.'

‘Never mind.' He lit his cigar. ‘Cover yourself.'

‘It's warm as toast in here.'

‘Never mind. Cover yourself.'

‘All right.' She sighed. ‘Now what do you think my papa would have said? All them years he worked down by the docks, breaking his back for a lousy six, seven dollars a week until he killed himself under a chain that broke his back, and here's his little Alexa, a movie star making three hundred dollars a week. And fucking Mr Max Britsky,' she added.

‘Alexa, I don't like to hear that kind of language from a lady.'

‘Fucking?'

‘That's right.'

‘But you say it all the time.'

‘For a man it's all right. Not for a lady. I never knew about your father. What was he, a stevedore?'

‘What else for a Polack? The docks or the slaughterhouses. He hated the slaughterhouses.' She stared at Max thoughtfully. ‘You like me, Max, really, truly?'

‘What do you think I made you a star for – for kicks? Two years ago, when we were shooting
Slave Girl
, I seen this kid with the yellow hair, and I ask Hook Mason who's that pretty little kid? He tells me it's some dumb Polack he's hired on for three dollars a day. I don't like that. I don't like it when someone says dumb Polack or stupid Hunky or lousy Mick, because that same son of a bitch is going to turn around the next minute and call me a lousy Jew bastard, and that's going to make me beat the shit out of him. The truth is, I'm getting too old for street fighting. So I said to Mason, one more crack like that and you can go to Philadelphia and make pictures for National. So Mason starts licking my ass and telling me he didn't know I was interested in you.'

‘And you were, weren't you, Max?'

‘No. Good God, Alexa, I never seen you before. Sure, I got interested. I made you a star, didn't I? I pay you three hundred dollars a week. And I like you. What I pay you has nothing to do with me screwing you. I never went to bed in my life with a woman I didn't care for. I got nothing but contempt for men who do that.'

‘I heard that Biograph pays Mary Pickford eight hundred dollars a week –'

‘What else did you hear?' Max interrupted, ‘I hear the angels sing better than the chorus at the Metropolitan Opera House. You're learning, cookie, but you ain't no Mary Pickford. Not yet, and believe me, you're a lot luckier to be with Britsky Productions than with Biograph. They never made a picture could compare with ours.'

‘Max, I'm not going with Biograph. You know that.'

‘I know it and my lawyer knows it.'

Alexa began to cry.

‘Why are you crying? What did I say?'