Marjorie Morningstar (46 page)

“Meantime, of course, it’s a devilish nuisance,” Flamm said. “In fact, that’s the
only possible snag here. It happens that Broadway money is the tightest it’s been
in all my experience. Why, Kaufman and Hart are having trouble raising money for their
new play. Had I known—Well, we’ll just have to raise the money somehow.”

He paused, and not knowing what to say, she nodded brightly. He talked some more about
New Haven arrangements. Then he said, “Of course, if you know someone who has ten
thousand to invest in a surefire comedy and who wants to see you get ahead—the return
on a hit is a thousand cents on the dollar, you know, easily, and now that I’ve got
my Clarice I’ve got a hit for sure—”

“Golly, Mr. Flamm, I don’t know a soul with that kind of money. Ten thousand! I wish
I did.”

“Well, of course, in the theatre we usually parcel these things out—five thousand
here, five thousand there.”

She shook her head, smiling. He said, “Well, silly as it sounds, at the moment this
may make the difference between our going into rehearsal or not. Six months from now
brother Bart will give me the money, of course. In fact, I’ll gladly secure any investor
with a personal guarantee against loss, countersigned by my brother. That’s how sure
I am of this play. But you see, six months from now my cast may be dispersed, you
may be sick, I may be sick—” He mopped his eye.

“I’m sorry, I wish I did know somebody—gosh—”

“Well, actually, the plan I’ve worked out is four equal shares, twenty-five hundred
each—don’t you think your father, for instance, I’m sure he’s anxious to see you get
launched in a part like Clarice—after all, an importer—he’d probably never miss twenty-five
hundred dollars, and then there’s the fun of watching rehearsals, and all—”

At the words “your father,” a wave of sickness went over Marjorie. Staring at Flamm
and shaking her head, she put the script on his desk.

“How about a thousand dollars, then? Surely a thousand, for an importer—”

“Mr. Flamm,” she said huskily, “my father hates the theatre. He doesn’t believe in
it. My father won’t invest in your play. I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”

He mopped his eye. The friendliness and excitement were gone from his face. He said,
wearily and dryly, “Well, Marjorie, as I say, you’re a talented girl, but let’s face
it, you’re a complete newcomer. If I’m to stake my reputation on launching you, it
seems to me it’s not asking much of your father to show his confidence in you to the
extent of five hundred or a thousand dollars.”

She was blindly putting on her coat. “Goodbye, Mr. Flamm.” Her hand was on the doorknob.

He said, “I mean, for five hundred or a thousand I can’t give you Clarice, but the
maid’s part would be yours. Well, goodbye. As I say, you have talent, though it’s
raw—”

Dazed, wretched, she went home on the subway. She was lying on her bed face down,
unmindful of the way she was crumpling the red dress, when the telephone rang. “Marjorie?
Hi!” Noel’s voice had a striking lift in it. “Missed me? How about having lunch with
me at the Ritz-Carlton?”

She sat up. “The—the Ritz-Carlton? Noel, you can’t afford it—”

“Who can’t? You’re talking to a twenty-five-thousand-a-year man. Now hurry!”

“Hello!” she said. “Good Lord, look at you.”

The change in him was startling. He wore a new pin-stripe black suit, black shoes,
a white shirt with a short pinned collar, and a gray silk tie. His hair was trimmed
close, and the color in his face was remarkably fresh. “Come along, I’ve ordered the
lunch already.” The headwaiter bowed them to a conspicuously empty table in the middle
of the crowded wood-panelled room.

Marjorie was very ill at ease. All the women in the room looked bitingly smart: Paris
hats, tailored suits, elegant hair-dos were everywhere. She wore no hat, her hair
fell loosely to her shoulders (this had been an effort to look like Clarice), and
the red dress was a truly horrible blunder. She had been too prostrated by the Flamm
fiasco to think of changing when she left the house. The glances of the men were the
usual thing, but the glances of the women, which really mattered in such a place,
were disdainful and slightly amused. “I look like a streetwalker in here,” she muttered
to Noel as they sat.

“Hardly,” he said. “As it happens, several of the town’s most eminent streetwalkers
are around us, and as you see, they look quite different.”

“That headwaiter treats you like a long-lost friend.”

“I’ve been here often, dear.”

“Not since I’ve known you.”

“That’s right. It’s been a lean stretch, too. You don’t have the price.” He laughed
at her vexed look. “Gad, it’s fun to torment you. It’s true, though, that on occasion
the lady’s paid. Usually some lady I’ve gone broke for, first.”

“Don’t you find it humiliating?”

“Not in the least. I sit and calculate how many Automat meals I’m saving, by not paying
the check.”

“You’re a hoodlum. I hope you’re not counting on my paying this time.”

“
You
, dear?”

“Well, what’s going on here, then? Why the prosperous getup? Why are you looking seventeen
years old? What’s all this about twenty-five thousand a year?”

“I went to work this morning.”

“Where? What kind of job?”

“Paramount Pictures.” The waiter set two champagne cocktails on the table. “Ah, here
we are. You’ll drink to the new Noel, won’t you? He’s your creation, as much as anybody’s.”

Marjorie picked up her glass, looking at him suspiciously. “Paramount! Are you serious?”
He nodded. “As a writer? Are you going to Hollywood?”

His lips were compressed in amusement. “No, dear. You’re not losing me, don’t be tragic.
Drink up. Here’s death to the old Noel, that seedy bum, and long life to the new,
eh?”

She smiled, in a half-disbelieving way, and drank.

Noel said, “Why are you so amazed? I’ve told you about Sam Rothmore, one time or another,
haven’t I?”

“The rich old man you play chess with?”

“That’s the one. Didn’t I mention that he’s with Paramount?”

“I don’t think so—”

“Well he is. And he loves me, the sad old bastard. He must be the lonesomest man in
town. No children, and his wife’s a year-round invalid in Florida. He’s one of the
heads of the New York office. Puts on a tough-guy act, but he’s really pretty softhearted.
Practically supports the chess club I play at, and a couple of Jewish old folks’ homes
in the Bronx, that kind of thing. Fine taste in painting and music, very good Mozart
collection and—well, I’ve told you about the paintings, I’m sure. I’ve spent hundreds
of hours in his library with him, listening to music and playing chess, and drinking
the best brandy on earth. Frankly, and this is probably not nice of me, he gets to
be an awful bore after a while. I can’t say why. I guess all lonesome people are pathetic
and boring, no matter who they are. So damn grateful for your company, you know, so
reluctant to let you go. Anyway, Sam’s clapped a harness on me at last. I’m breaking
in as assistant story editor at a hundred twenty a week, and then—”

Marjorie blurted, “What? A hundred twenty a week, right off the bat?”

Noel grinned, and ran a knuckle along his upper lip. “You don’t flatter me, dear.
The idea is to shift me around through the departments for training, and eventually
land me in a sort of chief-of-staff capacity under him, if I work out. Sam’s been
suggesting this off and on for a couple of years. I used to laugh at him. I didn’t
see myself as a wage slave. But I started talking seriously about it a week or so
ago. He’s sure I’m a misguided genius, and he’s going to discover me and make me into
a major executive. He says I can be making twenty-five thousand a year or more in
a few years. I think he’s more excited about my coming to work than I am…. Well, that’s
the story. Doesn’t it please you?”

“Why, I’m breathless. Gosh, there’s no end to you, is there? Just to walk out and
get a job at a hundred twenty a week—in the middle of what everyone else calls a depression—”

“I’m getting an odd kick out of it so far, to tell you the truth. How do you like
my junior-executive costume?”

“Perfect. Brooks Brothers?”

“Feinberg’s, on Delancey Street. I’ve been outfitting myself there for years. One
size too small in the extra longs gives me a fairly acceptable fit. However, I’ll
put a real tailor to work, one of these days. Haven’t done it since
Raining Kisses
. Fun, but costly. I don’t really care whether I fling money around or squirrel it,
Margie, life’s interesting either way, but I’ve had a long squirrel siege, and I must
say I’ve been getting rather tired of it.”

Marjorie had observed Noel’s peculiar skill at managing his money. He had stretched
the thousand-dollar fee from Greech through the fall and most of the winter. He knew
an amazing number of cheap restaurants. He was good at cooking, too, much better than
she was, but lazy. He would make a vast pot of excellent spaghetti, and eat at it
for a week. “You’d just about run out, hadn’t you?”

“Oh, I could have gone along for a few more months. I’d have gotten a little thin
and irritable, maybe, like a hibernating bear. In Paris they make an art of this kind
of living. You pick it up. I swear I’d just as lief be poor as rich. It’s sport, nibbling
away at a store of money, and scheming to make it last.”

The lunch was superb: hors d’oeuvres which Noel selected from a huge wheeled cart,
veal delicately sliced and cooked with mushrooms and rice, a side dish of curiously
prepared eggplant, and a salad with eggs and anchovies which he dressed himself. The
white wine had an exquisite glowing clean taste. Marjorie forgot her self-consciousness,
eating with great relish.

Noel said, pouring wine, “Why kid ourselves, Marjorie? The best things in life cost
like the devil. Every time I poke my nose back into the upper-crust atmosphere, I
realize why people kill themselves for money. Oh, hell, there’s a case for impoverished
freedom, but—” He drank. “You know, there are some charming perquisites to this job.
Where do you suppose I go from here, this afternoon? Newark Airport. To meet Janice
Gray, if you please, and escort her to the Waldorf.”

“Janice Gray?” Marjorie did her best to keep the note of alarm out of her voice. “Well,
that should be nice. She’s beautiful.”

“Yes indeed. Usually Sam meets her. This is high policy. She’s been a bad girl at
the studio, showing up late for shooting, balking at stories, and so forth. I’m an
insult to her, you see, a mere hireling greeting her, instead of the boss.”

“Well, I hope she’ll be properly offended.” Marjorie’s appetite was suddenly gone.
She put a cigarette in her mouth, and the waiter startled her by springing at her
with a lit match.

Noel said, busily eating, “She’s a dull creature, no doubt, in person. She’s on her
third or fourth divorce, and I hear she’s utterly dissolute. Probably arrive drunk
as a goat.”

“No doubt. And you’ll probably be in bed with her before the day is out. I hope you
enjoy it.”

He put down his knife and fork and laughed at her, his eyes brilliant.

She said, “All right, laugh. You’ve always lived like a pig, and there’s no reason
for you not to go on that way. I swear I don’t care what you do. Only one thing puzzles
me. Why do you keep coming around to me? Why is it me you call up when you’ve got
the new job? And why have you taken the job? What are you trying to prove to me? I’m
just a West End Avenue girl, dumb, untalented—”

“Beautiful—”

“Not like Janice Gray—”

“Fresh, sweet, blue-eyed, a sprig of lilac in the morning sun. Darling, I shouldn’t
bait you, but I can’t help it. Why do you always bite? Janice Gray’s a revolting old
bag. When she walks in front of the camera to play a scene, I see nothing but her
agent just off camera, blotting the new clause in the contract. She’s odious.”

“Oh, sure,” Marjorie growled, but she felt better. “Well, you still haven’t answered
me. Why have you taken this job?”

Noel shrugged. “Isn’t it pleasanter to eat at the Ritz than at Mama Mantucci’s on
Eleventh Street?”

“Why, of course, but you seem to like it the other way—”

“I like life almost any way it comes—except—well, I was going to say, except the respectable
way, but I’m not sure that’s so. I’m beginning to think I might love being bourgeois,
with a difference. With an inward grin, you might say. Hell, Marjorie, I like good
things. I like the thought of being able to afford them. I like shirts that fit well,
and ties that knot attractively because the material is good, and suits made of fine
stuff instead of Feinberg’s wrought iron.” He fingered his sleeve. “I like gold cuff
links, but I’m damned if I’ll wear plated ones. I’m more and more attracted to the
notion of affording these things all over again, as I did in the
Raining Kisses
days. It was a golden time. All the good things in my wardrobe date from then. I
like ocean trips, too—first class. It’s a deep pleasure just to know I can go if I
want to. And then of course there’s that luxury of luxuries, a bourgeois wife. Love
knows no logic. Suppose I should one day be unfortunate enough to want to marry such
a creature?”

She avoided his look, and said with a great effort at lightness, “Here’s hoping you
don’t. You’d make her acutely miserable for life.”

“Possibly. Then again, if I knew exactly what I was doing, I might make her happy
as a fairy princess.”

She couldn’t help it; she faced him. His unsmiling passionate glance agitated her.
She murmured after a few seconds, “Don’t look at me like that, you fool.”

“I’ll look as I damn please.”

“Don’t, I say. Let me ask you this, what’s suddenly brought on such a radical change
of front? Have you given up your writing ambitions?”

Noel sipped at his wine, his expression thoughtful. “Not in the least. There’s been
a conspiracy of events forcing me into Sam’s office lately. That disaster with Kogel
and
Princess Jones
, for one thing. The theatre is nothing but a machine for breaking spirits, Margie—that
is, so long as you try to make a living from it. Cole Porter’s a millionaire. So’s
Coward. Light music, light verse, comedy, are products of leisure, of a debonair existence.
I’ve been living like a Chicago slum novelist. It’s all wrong. The theatre’s exactly
like a silly girl. Pursue, beg, coax, be willing and assiduous, and you get kicked
in the face. The careless confident gesture is what conquers. I fully believe now
I’ll crack Broadway the day I don’t give a damn whether I do or not. That’s reason
number one for taking Sam’s money. To break out of my stagnant poverty-stricken rut
and live well—until I crack through with
Princess Jones
, or write a new show. Maybe I’ll stay on with Sam even then. Maybe the pattern will
prove a stable one. It all depends on whether I can effectively split my time between
breadwinning and writing, over the long haul. We’ll see.”