The Celebrity (8 page)

“Can you blame me for not sleeping?”

“It’s just too marvelous—how proud and happy you must be! Oh, Deeny, I am too. Imagine having your own child—” She could not go on.

The breathless admiration in Fan’s voice sent strong shivers of joy through Geraldine. Telling her couldn’t have been avoided, she decided firmly; somehow things had taken a turn which had led inevitably on, with no turning back, with no side path to duck into. It was, almost, like fate. Nobody could fight against fate.

And since this was true, there was no reason to hold back any of the rest of it. She suggested going somewhere for coffee and then she told Fan the entire story, starting with their arrival at Thorn’s and ending with the way she and Gerald had watched the sun come up. It was wonderful to have somebody stare at you and hang on each separate word; your fatigue and chills vanished; you felt new, reborn. “Oh, let
me,
” Geraldine cried when the counterman brought the punched tab-ticket; she wished it were for more than twenty cents. When she and Fan finally parted, they each said the same thing: “I’ll call you soon.”

Geraldine went straight to the A. and P., marched up to the meat counter, and ordered briskly, as though she had never laid eyes on the butcher before. “Fine day, Mrs. Johns,” Bill said, “and you’re looking fine too.” Almost coldly she answered, “I was just told I was looking rather ill.” Bill stared at her but she ignored him.
That
was what had started it, she suddenly thought, that remark of Fan’s about her looking all worn out and ill. She had had to answer that, hadn’t she? And anyway, everybody had the right to one confidante, and Gerald need never know.

Considerably cheered by these reasonable reflections, Geraldine paid for the chops and started toward the vegetable and fruit counters, but a few feet away, she halted. Edith Markham was there, in front of the oranges and grapefruit. Edith was almost as close a friend as Fan, but it might be wiser not to stop even to say hello. Casually, yet soundlessly, she moved backwards, away from the counters. Edith turned around.

“You look so
well,
Deeny.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I had the most marvelous news last night.”

“What kind of news?”

Geraldine thought, Oh, dear.

The effect on Edith Markham was just as electric as it had been on Fanny Heston. Geraldine again felt her spirit expanding, filling with new sap and juice, like a tree in the spring sun, and as she talked, a delicious vision appeared to her mind’s eye, of other friends even now doing their marketing and destined by fate to cross her path on the way home.

Shortly past noon of that same day, the cash register of the Johns Pharmacy at the corner of Main and Church had already rung up a larger daily total of dollars and cents than had ever been amassed in the entire history of the store, with the single exception of the day the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918 had hit the town. Such a purchasing of tooth paste and aspirin and shaving creams had never been known, of cold cream and cleansing tissues and soaps and nail polish, of baby talc and cough lozenges and bicarbonate of soda, and virtually everything else that could be had without a prescription.

The heavy plate-glass door was scarcely still, and each separate customer, the moment her purchase had been made—her, because it so happened that all the customers were female—each and every one had congratulations to offer and questions to ask. Was it really possible for a book club to pay two hundred thousand dollars? Was it really going to be a Betty Grable picture? Was it true that Gregory was flying out to Hollywood to write on the picture himself for ten thousand dollars every week? And was Abby going out with him, or was she going to let him attend all those parties with movie stars alone, as if he were a bachelor?

If Gerald Johns had had a moment of confusion over the first of these smiling purchases and questions, the moment was short-lived. As was his habit, he had glanced at his watch while a Mrs. George Simmons was offering her happy felicitations; it was half past ten. That meant that today Geraldine had begun her marketing at about nine. He thanked Mrs. Simmons heartily and thought without rancor, Well, I might have known. Aloud he said, smiling as he did so, “Did you run into Geraldine?”

“No, I haven’t seen her yet, but I’ll call her the minute I get home. Perhaps you two could come to dinner soon and—”

“We’d love to. But how did you hear it? I’m just interested.”

“From Beth Martins, you know, lives up on the hill?”

“Yes, I know.”

“And she’s a sister-in-law, or maybe sister, I forget, I’m so excited, of the Pecks, and Linda Peck told her.”

“Linda Peck?” He searched his memory. He couldn’t quite place the Pecks. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just wondered.”

“Why, is it a secret?”

“Lord, no.” He paused and added, “Not any more.”

“I thought not. Why ever should it be, anything so wonderful?”

“Why indeed.”

The moment Mrs. Simmons departed, Gerald Johns, never one to cry over spilled milk, beans, or apple carts, called out, imperatively, “Say, Hiram.” From the back of the store where Hiram Spriggins, his assistant, was unloading the remaining cartons a deep bass “Yes?” answered him. “Better leave the cartons for tomorrow; we’re in for a busy day.”

For Thornton Johns, it was already a busy day. He had waked before the alarm went off, to find Cindy propped against her pillows, smoking a cigarette, and smiling at him.

This was unusual. Everything about it was unusual. Cindy never awoke until after he had left for the office, Cindy never smoked before breakfast, and Cindy, until she had had her black coffee, never smiled at anybody.

Now, however, she said, lovingly, “Good morning, darling, did you sleep well?”

“Mmm,” Thorn said, and then remembered. He had not slept well. Long after Cindy had gone to sleep, he had lain awake thinking, and even after he slept he had apparently been hurrying somewhere. Now he sat up in bed, stretching. “Not really. I was making plans all night.”

“What sort of plans? Thorny, do you really think there’ll be a movie sale?”

“No. That’s one of the things I thought over after you went to sleep. I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I finally pinned Gregory down to telling me more about the book. He does write the damnedest stuff.”

“Oh, Thorn. I had my heart set—” She stubbed out her cigarette but at once lighted a new one. “You’re
not
going to give up in advance, are you? The book club must think it will appeal to people, so why not the movies?”

He shrugged. “I can’t say ‘why,’ I just have a hunch they’ll think it’s too mental, not enough action, all that. Gregory does too.”

“Even so, the book club—”

“Its name is B.S.B.” He was surprised to sound so testy, but Cindy did not appear to notice.

“Yes. As I was saying, B.S.B. thinks—”

“Look,” he said reasonably. “Would
you
go to a movie about electing the first President of the World?”

“There’s lots in it beside world government, Gregory said.”

“And about armies demobilizing? And nations giving up the right to make war, and agreeing to live under world law, and a world constitution? Can you see yourself standing in line at Radio City to see that?”

“Oh, Thorn.” She looked at him beseechingly. “It has a love story too.”

“Not what the movies call a love story,” he said. “Of course they’d probably jazz up that part of it, but fantasy just isn’t right for pictures.”

“That old one about Mr. Jordan was fantasy, you know with, I think, Cary Grant going to Heaven after an airplane smash.”

“It wasn’t Cary Grant; it was Bob Montgomery.”

“Anyway,” she said triumphantly. “And what about
The Bishop’s Wife,
and let’s see—”

He got out of bed. “Cindy, I’m going to read it myself. After that, I might have certain ideas. I told you I lay awake making plans.”

“About trying to sell it to the movies?”

He frowned. “What were we talking about, if not the movies?” He closed his eyes. The down-slanting folds at their corners felt stiff and thickened. He blinked rapidly, several times, and said, “Hangover.”

“Won’t the publishers try?”

“They have a fifteen per cent cut in any movie money. Of course they’ll try.”

“I thought you didn’t remember if they had a cut or not.”

“I remembered perfectly.”

“But suppose it was
you
who sold it, not the publishers?”

“If God sold it, they’d still get their fifteen.” He began to dress, thinking, If I go on with the idea and it does work, she’ll be sure she put me up to it. And if it flops—

He went to the bathroom to shave. If only he had some good contacts in Hollywood. Or if he knew more about how these things were done by professional agents, what approaches were used, what prices asked. He thought again, as he had done so many times during the night, of seeking out Jim Hathaway once more. For a moment his brush paused in mid-air, dripping lather; then he slapped it to his face in discouragement. This was
not
something he could do without telling Gregory, like that other visit to Hathaway, and if he asked permission, Gregory would flatly refuse, saying he wouldn’t be “pushy” about his own book. Even the suggestion about dropping in on his publishers this morning had met with resistance—could anyone in his right mind think
that
would be pushy? Was Gregory going to be extra-mulish now about things that everybody else would take as a matter of course?

Thornton Johns reflected, as so many others had done before him, that he would never understand authors. Admire them, yes, observe them, study them, discuss them, sometimes envy them—yes and again yes, but understand them, never. Even his own blood brother could baffle him a hundred times a year. If he, Thorn, asked, for authorization to take any bold steps about a movie sale, Gregory would have forty reasons for sitting back unless a movie company initiated the courting. But that old fox in Chicago would not be so coy.

Lather, forgotten and unattended, quickly cakes, and now Thornton Johns found his nose twitching. He began to shave with nervous rapidity. It was a shame about Hathaway. The firm of Storm, Goldberg, Miller and Hathaway were specialists in the affairs of radio, movie, and theater actors, producers, playwrights, novelists, and directors. They knew every studio in Hollywood and could arrange—

The hell with it. There was plenty for him to do in the next few days and that was all he wanted anyway. He would never stand in his brother’s way for the long pull; perhaps this very morning when Gregory phoned he’d start him thinking about the need to sign on one of the best Hollywood agents while the news was hot. If the suggestion didn’t issue from him, it would most certainly be forthcoming from Digby. Thorn nicked his jawbone and cursed.

Cindy pushed open the bathroom door. “Thorny, if you
did
help with a movie sale, would you get—” She hesitated. He stopped shaving and looked at her in the mirror.

“Get what?”

“Any commission? Or I mean, any part of the commission?”

“Cindy!”

“I only thought that with a movie—”

“You don’t take commissions from your own brother.” He rinsed the razor vigorously under the tap.

“Don’t be so superior,” Cindy said. Then, placatingly, “I’m sorry, Thorn. You did say you’d be giving lots of time to things now, and it just seemed perfectly ordinary business, even on the book-club money—”

“It’s not.”

She left and he was suddenly impatient to get to the office, refresh himself on other points in the contracts, and get going. Women were grasping creatures, at times nearly immoral; Cindy probably would have thought it only fair if he had deducted an agent’s commission of a hundred and ten dollars from the eleven hundred that Gregory’s last book had earned him for two years of work! Well, he had never made money on his own brother and he never would, no matter what it came to. Ten per cent of fifty-two thousand was—

He still wouldn’t.

There is, as everybody knows, a large satisfaction in the public renunciation of profit to which one has neither a legal nor moral right; that satisfaction now flooded Thornton’s heart. In this splendid mood, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror and suddenly felt sheepish. He finished dressing quickly, went to the dining room, and said, “Skip it, sweetie, I was being a touch touchy.”

“For a change?” she said.

But there was no ill humor in her eyes and when he left for the office, he felt sunny and even-tempered and filled with anticipation once more. By the time Diana came in, he was nearly through with Gregory’s contracts and waiting to make his first call.

Diana proved him an accurate prophet. “Your
own
brother, Mr. Johns!” Her eyes were round; her voice was awed. Questions bubbled from her beautiful mouth; he answered them graciously, despite an inevitable preoccupation with the notes he was making on his memo pad all the while she spoke. He told her which calls he would make, and in what order, and when she finally left the office, she went, or so it seemed, on tiptoe. A wave of pleasure laved his heart and when at last he telephoned the Treasurer of Digby and Brown, his tone was very nearly affectionate.

So was Jack McIntyre’s. Never before had McIntyre evinced such affability. In the past, when Thorn had sought explanations or information, McIntyre had always seemed impatient to answer and have, done, but as they discussed the tax laws which would force Gregory to accept, and pay taxes on, the whole fifty-two thousand in this year instead of permitting a “spread” over several years, McIntyre was leisurely, even loquacious. He seemed to find such talk enjoyable too and it was Thorn this time who had to maneuver the conversation to a close. “I’m expecting a call from Gregory any minute,” he said regretfully.

“Ed Barnard wired him to be sure to come in,” McIntyre said. “Let me switch you over. Ed will want to hear about his reaction to all this.”

“Oh, no,” Thorn said hastily. “Gregory ought to talk to him himself, first.” But McIntyre was already jiggling the hook and saying, “Put Mr. Johns through to Ed Barnard, please,” and almost at once Barnard said, “Hello, Mr. Johns, is Gregory with you?”