Frolic of His Own (18 page)

—Now you bring it up though, seems he takes this money about as serious . . .

—No it's not as though he hasn't always been terribly careful about money, I mean I suppose he got rather peevish with you over fees and things like that didn't he. He's so used to being terribly meticulous, I mean he carries it loose in his trouser pocket the clean large bills folded face in down through the smaller bills all of them right side up with the soiled dollar bills on the outside, he means to spend the crumpled bills first, insofar as he means to spend any of them of course, it's all quite surreptitious but I've seen him in agonies folding a crisp new five over a soiled ten you can see what I mean. I mean I think he feels your approach to all this is a bit, a little bit casual as though you don't really take any of it terribly seriously. You see what I mean.

—See what you mean Mrs Lutz but cases like these, they can go anywhere. Try to tell him the clock's running every minute, running right now while we sit here talking but he's just not the easiest man to get things straight with, pin things down now is he.

—Oscar? My God no he can be a perfect pill but I've got to ask you, I
mean honestly Mister Basie does this whole thing make any sense to you at all? I mean you've had experience in the theatre or so he tells me and these grandiose notions he's got of this play of his, you must have read it?

—Only had the one copy no, no but he took me through some of it, said he wanted to give me the feel of it but . . .

—Well I pried it away from him first thing this morning and went out and had ten copies made, God knows why he needs ten copies.

—But see what I think of it, maybe I think it's a little old fashioned these characters getting up there and making speeches at each other you might say, awful lot of talk but if I think it's a good play, if I even think it's maybe a great play or this Livingston Kiester thinks it's a real bad play that's all just what you call irrelevant, see what we're talking about here is infringement. You take the movie. I went out and saw this movie he says they stole it for whether it's a good movie, whether it's a great movie or just trashing up history with all this blood and gore and some naked woman see we're not talking naked women here. We're talking naked theft. Fish in these waters here a little today and see if we come up with enough to file this complaint he's hell bent on, see if they'll settle. If they don't offer to settle like for damn sure they won't, they respond with their answer and motion for dismissal of all charges like for damn sure they will, they don't get a dismissal and we figure our chances, drop the whole thing or get in deeper.

—Yes well of course it's that getting in deeper that's all rather frightening, your alarm clock running my God, what can be keeping them.

—Thought I just heard a car pulling out, maybe . . .

—Because someone's got to stop and think about the money before everything goes overboard, I mean I didn't mean it to sound like Oscar has all the money in the world just now talking about his teaching, I think he's got some wild vision of a lavish settlement in this accident case you'd think he'd already won it, crowing about this petition they've just granted getting him out from under some No Fault protection whatever that means, I'm sure you've noticed that scar he's so proud of?

—Means his insurance will claim immunity under the No Fault statute and try to get it dismissed, he files a claim for what you call tort recovery probably take him a year or two just to get on the docket and by the time he walks into court with a scar like that he'll need the best negligence lawyer around.

—Well of course he's got one, a lawyer I mean not the scar but considering how he got him God knows Mister Basie, I've simply got to count on you to discourage him when you think things are going too far, I don't mean this absurd ambulance case obviously that's gone too far already but this . . .

—Just let's make sure we have one thing real clear Mrs Lutz, see we're not out looking for business, not ambulance chasers. Sam put me on this like kind of a favour to look into it, if I go and get us into some drawn out tangled up case just because the client's got money where I know we'll probably never win it I'm out on the street tomorrow. Maybe we've got something here, maybe worth a try, have to admit it all kind of intrigues me. And now Oscar here, see I've come to like Oscar.

—You actually, you like Oscar?

—Always have to like a man that's at the end of his rope, came over the table to her in a cloud of smoke and then, piercing her through it, toot! toot!

—My God why did I ever dig that thing up, you expect him to come wheeling around that blind corner from the hall on that awful tricycle he was still riding when his legs were so long that he could hardly, Oscar? I'm in here with, look out!

—Well. You finally got here.

—And he's been sitting here with the clock running since wait, will you just park over here by the windows before you knock these cups over?

—But my students, aren't they here yet?

—What on earth would your students be doing here.

—Because, Christina. Because we're going to go over these points for the complaint, Mister Basie's seen the movie now and while we go through the rest of the play he can note down the things they've stolen and . . .

—And these dense students of yours will sit here and applaud?

—They can have the chance to get a real sense of the complicated issues that were at stake in the Civil War I should have thought of it before, having them read the parts aloud and feeling they're taking part in the whole atmosphere of the . . .

—No wait. You can't mean you're going to have them read your play to us out loud? Here? Now?

—They're bright talented kids Christina, they just need to be stimulated maybe some of them have even seen the movie and can point out . . .

—You mean you're going to put on this circus while Mister Basie just sits here with the clock running? Is that why I just spent something like two hundred dollars getting all these copies made? Is there any earthly reason to have ten copies?

—Probably need more than that if we get in deeper Mrs Lutz, see but now you have copies Oscar maybe I could just take one along and then talk on the phone later?

—Oscar will you listen to him? Mister Basie's trying to tell you that you
can save time and money if he takes a copy with him and reads it himself, couldn't you have simply mailed one to him? without dragging him all the way out here? and then discussed it on the phone? Isn't that why they invented the ungodly thing in the first place? to save people from tramping around the countryside on some stupid errand that no one in his right mind would, how many of these socalled students do you expect.

—Maybe only a dozen or so, I left the message that it would help their grades and . . .

—My God. Listen, I want that two hundred dollars I spent on those copies.

—Did you get a receipt? I'll need it for tax . . .

—I did not get a receipt! Simply give me the two hundred dollars.

—All right but, later yes listen, before they get here where are my glasses, listen. This might be useful in my complaint Mister Basie listen, it's a letter of Bernard Shaw talking about making movies from plays he says here ‘set your analytical faculty, if you have any, to tabulate all the techniques involved in these extraordinary exhibitions . . . '

—Oscar, please . . .

—‘Up to a certain point it pays. Most of the studios seem to live by it. But in such studios the dramatist can find no place. They know that they can do without him.'

—Oscar for God's sake what has this got to do with . . .

—'They don't even know, poor devils, that there is such a thing as a dramatic technique. Get drama and picture making separate in your mind, or you will make ruinous mistakes' and then he says . . .

—Might come in handy later on Oscar, see all we want right now is a few clearcut causes of action, opening guns you might say like this rejection, show they had their hands on it. You found that letter?

—I . . .

—Can't you simply say no Oscar? that you had that poor woman hauling a hundred heavy boxes down all those stairs and you don't really know whether it's in any of them? One letter, you expect to find one piece of paper in this whole mess, you've saved every letter anyone ever wrote you God only knows why they bothered, there are letters all over the place. What about that bundle you had me cart in to the hospital for no earthly reason but to cart them back out here, if you can't bear to simply throw them away you've a marvelous chance to get rid of them haven't you? this socalled historical society down there begging to add them to their distinguished collection?

—Why! For some doddering old women to paw through them wheezing over their sacred past, I've got my own archive haven't I? And this
family correspondence they already claim to have should be in it too, it's mine isn't it? Ours?

—Why don't you ask your lawyer, he's sitting right here with the clock running.

—I don't have to ask anyone! It's our family correspondence, it's ours Mister Basie isn't it?

—Might have some trouble contesting who owns the actual letters but what they say, that still belongs to whoever said it, whoever wrote the letter, father, grandfather, grandmother, the rights pass right on down to the survivors. Might not be that bad an idea just to go ahead and register the copyright in your name, that way if some problem comes along you . . .

—Yes well do it then, you've got your yellow pad there write it down, can we do it?

—Just need some particulars, where they're deposited, who they . . .

—He didn't even know they existed till he heard from this preposterous historical society, he's probably lost that letter too.

—What do you mean too!

—I mean this rejection letter you're so pleased with that Mister Basie's sitting here with his clock running waiting for you to produce.

—Don't have to produce it right this second Oscar, state in the complaint they had this access and face the problem of proof when we have to, taking a little chance on these reasons they gave for rejecting it when we try to claim breach of implied contract as a cause for action but . . .

—They weren't reasons at all, nobody could have written that letter who'd really read the play it was probably just some twit of a secretary who typed up a form letter for Livingston to sign and . . .

—What Mister Basie is trying to tell you, Oscar, is that your Livingston Kiester person had to have read it if he was going to steal it, isn't that what this whole asinine business is all about?

—Well he, that's what I mean, would you believe anything he said? You can see how shifty he is just the way he's kept changing his name yes and I want that in, fraud and deceit changing his name twice to cover his tracks to put in the complaint?

—Put it in Oscar, but this intent can be real hard to prove, why somebody goes and changes his name? Smoke took shape in a ring billowing gently upward in the thin sunlight, —now you take your name, suppose you just decided that you . . .

—I've certainly got no intention of changing it yes and that's another thing, the way they're advertising this based on a true story with this cheap vulgar movie defaming my grandfather what about that.

—Can't defame the dead, Oscar.

—Well I'm not dead am I! Neither is Father, they got his decision reversed down there isn't that what they wanted? Dragging our name
through the mud what about me, what about my professional reputation if anybody thought I had anything to do with it, if . . .

—Oscar, look out the . . .

—Christina, please! Because I don't care if you can't defame the dead I want that in there, I don't care if I can't copyright my own grandfather I want that in this complaint for the very first cause of action because it is, because it will let them know immediately that they're not just dealing with some, some nuisance.

—Oscar calm down, a dirty van just pulled in out there I think it's your cast of thousands.

—Oh! Oh yes let them in, have Ilse let them in, are they coming in?

—My God.

They could all sit on the floor he thought, mainly concerned lest they waste any time, passing round copies, assigning parts, sizing up the first act's tribulations with a haste such that it might indeed have been he who had first labeled it superfluous pressing on, now, with all the urgency he'd endowed in his protagonist, to get out, to leave the South behind with all its sacred past and simpering postulates and seize reality by the throat in an office in a western Pennsylvania mining city, midsummer eighteen sixty two, Act II, Scene i.

Smoke and evidence of the colliery are visible at the large window, upstage left. At downstage left center a rather ponderous desk littered with mail and newspapers, two chairs, and the effect of being partitioned off in a large glassed enclosure from the rest of the office beyond, reached by a glass-paneled door upstage right. Outside the door, at upstage right center, is another desk, far less pretentious but more littered. Cabinets of some sort, acceptable in but hardly designed for an office, stand within the inner office downstage right.

Neatly but unostentatiously dressed, THOMAS is standing at a window left staring out, as MR BAGBY advances from upstage right toward downstage center desk. Despite a concerted effort at florid respectability, there is a seediness about BAGBY that goes beyond his overtight clothes: shrewd, pompous, ingratiating by turns, he is constantly eyeing his man and the main chance without missing any of the minor ones by the way.

B
AGBY

Why, we've one shaft sunk four hundred and thirty eight feet, and you cannot expect men to have kindly thoughts down there, whoever
they are. And now, the kind that's come in, with the need for coal what it is? There's foreigners and all manner of undesirables, with their striking and looking for trouble. They get down there in the dark together and think up some new deviltry the minute you've settled an old, you meet one demand for them and they'll think up another. There's no end to their ingratitude. No, they want a tap on the head now and again, as your uncle would say, to knock some gratitude back into them.