Marjorie Morningstar (51 page)

“We’re all just wonderful.” She peered around at the crowd. “I’ll have to tell Marty
you’re here—he’ll get a kick out of it.”

Noel said, “Marjorie Morgenstern, Mrs. Hartz.”

They nodded at each other. Mrs. Hartz with an eye-blink looked Marjorie over and turned
back to Noel. “What is your secret? Are you really Peter Pan? You just don’t change.”

“Dorian Gray.”

“I’ll bet. Well! Noel Airman. You keep turning up like a bad penny, don’t you?” She
laughed. “I’m always looking for your name in the theatre columns, Noel, and I don’t
see it.”

“Well, the truth is, I’ve become a Trappist monk, Muriel,” Noel said. “It happens
I’m in the world of vanity tonight, as an extreme penance. I was late for vespers.”

“Ha, you a monk, that’s a good one.” The woman glanced at Marjorie, laughing nervously.
“That’ll be the day. Say, maybe we can all go out and have a drink afterward. We’re
here with a crowd from Rye, but you can join us, they’re lots of fun. They’d love
to meet you.”

“Don’t you have to catch a train?”

“We drove in.” She laid her hand on his arm. “Please do look for us. It’s nice to
see you. It’s amazing. You just don’t change.” She smiled at Marjorie, and moved off
into the crush, puffing at her cigarette.

Noel said softly to Marjorie, “You gather who that was, no doubt.”

“It can’t be the Muriel you told me about. She’s over thirty-five.”

“She is Muriel, though. Muriel Weissfreid. Muriel Weissfreid of the blue velvet and
white arms. And she’s thirty-three.” He dropped his cigarette and trod on it. “Let’s
go in.”

Marjorie said when they were in their seats, “She’s really not bad-looking, you know—I
mean, for thirty-three. It’s just that you described her as such a beauty, and—well,
she’s just another one of those dressed-up mamas from the suburbs.”

He stared at her. “Just another one of those dressed-up mamas from the suburbs…”

“What’s wrong now?”

“Didn’t you feel a chill? You’ve just spoken your own epitaph.”

“Oh, shut up. I’ll die before I’ll live anywhere but in Manhattan.”

“Promise?”

“Of course. I can’t stand the suburbs.”

“You wouldn’t change your mind, and drag a husband out there after having a baby or
two, would you, because all your friends were doing it, and the grass and fresh air
were wonderful for kids?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“All right…. You noticed that glittering boulder on her finger, I suppose?”

“Well, actually, no. I kept looking at her face, trying to see what you saw in her.”

“Believe me, it was all there once, Marjorie. She had the face of an angel.” The music
started and the lights dimmed. He slouched in his seat. “I feel tired.”

When the show was over Noel cocked his head, listening to the applause. “Hit. Sure
hit.” He gathered up his overcoat. “Let’s duck, shall we, and see if we can avoid
Muriel?”

The audience was still applauding as they slipped out through a side door. The sidewalks
were wet and black, with fiery streaks reflected from the electric signs, but the
rain had stopped. They walked to the corner of Broadway, and stood undecided. “What
would you say to some deafening jazz in a small dark cellar?” Noel said.

“Anything you feel like doing.”

“All right.” He gazed around at the blazing dancing advertisements, and then up at
the sky. “Look. Over all this spectacular foolishness, there’s the black sky and the
misty moon.”

“The sky looks more like pink here,” Marjorie said, glancing up. “I never noticed
that.”

“All these people are going to die,” Noel said. “All of them. They have just a few
years, and they’ll be gone like leaves. But after the last one of them’s dead, the
crowds hurrying along this pavement under an unnoticed moon will be just as big, and
the faces will all look the same.”

“Don’t be so morbid. The light’s green for us. Let’s cross.”

Noel said as they hurried in front of the massed taxicabs, “Can you imagine the moon
as an eye, the eye of God, looking down into this lighted square in the darkness?
This must look like some great religious pageant. Hordes, hordes marching everywhere,
and over them in great letters of fire the thundering words,
Smoke Camels
.”

Marjorie said, “Everything seems silly, in view of the fact that you’re going to die,
but what do you want everybody to do, cut their throats? You’re just in a bad mood.
Muriel, or something. Take my advice and don’t think about death.”

He laced her fingers in his. “You have a way of summing up the world’s wisdom in a
couple of banal sentences. The effect isn’t to make you seem wise, but to reduce all
the philosophers to the level of twenty-one-year-old girls. How do you explain this
curious phenomenon?”

“The philosophers are a pretty sad lot, if they can’t make any better sense of the
world than I do.”

“Believe me, they don’t.”

They sat at a tiny table directly in front of four blasting Negro musicians in a club
called, for no visible reason, the Tibet Room. Noel drank off half his scotch and
soda, clinked down the glass, and said, “Would it upset you very much if we made this
our farewell night, and never saw each other again?”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“I’m absolutely serious. Listen carefully.” He spoke with peculiar clarity over the
gales of jazz. “I’m never going to amount to anything. I’m all surface. Everything
I have goes up in charm and conversation. I have a fatal lack of central organizing
energy. Furthermore, I’m past my peak. I was wittier and more energetic four years
ago. I’m very tired. At the moment I feel sorry for you, for being in my toils. There’s
such a horrible gap between you and Muriel! I’ve spanned a generation. I’m like a
vaudevillian playing the same little act forever. Give it up, Marjorie. The game isn’t
worth the candle, I assure you. Go find Dr. Max Shapiro, he won’t wait forever.—I’m
sorry, I wasn’t going to mention him again, was I?”

She put her hand on his and said loudly, with a trumpet blaring in her face, “I love
you, and you’re better than you ever were, and your peak is still to come. The songs
you wrote in your last revision of
Princess Jones
were a terrific improvement over anything you’ve ever played for me, including
It’s Raining Kisses
.”

He said, “Yes, that was a good burst, wasn’t it? It really was. Last flare of a dying
fire—”

“What do you expect Muriel to do, remain looking like your college sweetheart? It’s
an old story that women age faster than men. A woman at thirty-three is finished,
just playing out the hand. A man at thirty-one is lucky if his career is even started.
You know these things better than I do. You’ve said them. Why are you so childish
tonight? It isn’t like you at all.”

He smiled at her and clasped her hand. The music was so tumultuous he couldn’t speak
for a few seconds. Then he said, “You’re really wonderful for me. I’m an ass to suggest
parting with you. At least I can wait till you kick me out.”

“You’ll wait a long time.”

“I am low, fearfully low. Another big row with Sam, and then seeing Muriel—I don’t
know, the bottom fell out.”

After a few drinks they went to his apartment and necked more than they had at any
time since the summer. She leaned back in his arms after a while, and said with a
low laugh, “Well, you’re not quite the washed-up old man after all, are you?”

He released her and looked at her in the dim light with no great friendliness, smoothing
his mussed hair. “Why, you calculating little cat. You’re doing this to cheer me up.”

“Not at all. I liked it.”

“You liked it.” He lit a cigarette and strode around the room. “You can’t imagine,
you can’t have the faintest idea, of how completely exasperating you are. And I used
to think you were passionate. Why, you’re about as passionate as an adding machine.”

“Oh, don’t start on that again, Noel—”

He stood over her, and for a moment she thought he might hit her. Then he said, “Well,
it’s a fitting end for me, indeed. Trapped in a platonic relationship with Marjorie
Morgenstern, of 740 West End Avenue. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay.’
” He stroked her hair. “Come on, let’s have some hot dogs.”

They roasted frankfurters on long forks over embers in the littered fireplace, and
drank beer, and played symphonies on his huge phonograph, the only valuable thing
in the shabby room. Gradually he cheered up. It was past three when she left, and
he was quite himself again. He took her downstairs and put her in a cab. Kissing her
good night, he said, “You haven’t the faintest idea of how much good you do me. You’re
adrenalin. You saved my life tonight. One of these days I may repay you, darling.”

The telephone woke her. She blinked at her clock; it was half-past nine. “Hello?”
she said hoarsely.

“Are you dressed? We’re going for an airplane ride.”

“What, are you crazy, Noel? I’m fast asleep. What are you doing up so early? Airplane?
I’ve never been in an airplane—”

“Well, you’re going in one. I have to run an errand for Sam up to Albany, and I’m
going in a taxi plane. You too. We leave at eleven, so get ready.”

“Eleven? Noel, I can’t
possibly
make it. Aren’t you exhausted? I am—”

“Haven’t been to sleep. Wrote a song after you left. Best yet. Wait till you hear
it. I feel absolutely marvelous.”

She dressed in a rush, and left without telling her mother where she was going. There
was no time to argue, and she would have overridden her mother’s protests anyway.
The gay timbre of his voice had set her tingling despite the weariness weighing down
her limbs. She met him at the Paramount Building and they rode out to the airport
in Sam Rothmore’s Cadillac. Noel wore a new loose gray tweed topcoat with the collar
turned up, and carried a thick sealed brown envelope. “What’s it all about, Noel?”

“Oh, high intrigue. An assemblyman’s making a speech today about the movie admissions
tax situation. Needs these papers by one o’clock. Sam gave me no details, just asked
me if I was afraid to fly, and then handed me the envelope. Can’t use a regular messenger,
it’s all hush-hush, for some reason. I feel like the Scarlet Pimpernel.” It was incredible,
Marjorie was thinking, how this man changed with the days and the hours. Today he
was the gaunt blond god of South Wind again, full of force and dash, his eyes sparkling.
“I haven’t slept a wink, do you know? Wait till you hear
Old Moon Face
. It’s a real crack-through. I feel it in my bones. We’ll be rich. Came to me walking
around in the rain last night after you left—”

“I’m dying to hear it.”

When the airplane soared up, narrowly clearing the telephone wires, she thought she
would faint from choking joyous alarm. It was a four-seater, single-motor plane, piloted
by a morose man in a worn leather windbreaker. The windows rattled and whistled, the
wings flapped, and the sides and the seat shook as in a very old Ford. But she didn’t
care. She was terribly afraid, but even more exhilarated, and it seemed like a good
way to die if her time were at hand (which she didn’t believe). The plane thrashed
its way up the Hudson River valley, and Marjorie and Noel held hands and looked down
through empty space at towns, fields, hills, and the river, a brilliant storybook
picture in glaring sunlight. A car was waiting at the Albany airport, with an emissary
from the assemblyman. Ten minutes after they landed they were in the air again, flying
south, straight into the white blaze of the sun. Marjorie was drunk with the speed,
the scare, the sunlight, the unexpected giddy novelty of the trip. Noel was inexhaustible,
she thought. He threw off surprises and thrills like a pinwheel; it was his nature,
his pattern. She would never find a man like him again. There weren’t two in the world.
She leaned over and kissed him passionately on the mouth, straining at her safety
belt. He looked at her in astonishment, and roared in her ear, “Well, if that’s all
it takes, I’ll charter a plane and we’ll fly to Albany every day.”

They glided down over Manhattan in clear afternoon light, making a lazy circle above
the towers, the bridges, the Statue of Liberty, the steamships, the glittering harbors.
The thud of the landing gear on the turf of the airport was a gloomy sound. He said,
unstrapping his belt, “You’re coming with me to the office.”

“Nothing doing.”

“Sam’s got a piano in his inner office. Must play you
Old Moon Face
.”

“Noel, don’t mix your social and business life. I shouldn’t even have gone in the
plane—”

“You’re a hopeless prig. Sam knew I was taking you, and told me to bring you to the
office. He wants to meet you. Satisfied?”

She was awe-stricken by the Paramount offices. The panelled walls were lined with
huge ikon-like portraits of stars; and the Paramount trade-mark, which she had been
seeing on movie screens all her life, was carved, printed, or painted on the glass
doors, on the posters, on the portraits, over the archways, filling the offices with
the Arabian Nights magic of Hollywood. Noel returned the receptionist’s smiling nod,
and led Marjorie through a door marked
Private. No Entrance
, into a little blue-painted library room lined with leather-bound books, with a movable
bar in it, and a spinet piano. “Cosy, eh?”

“It doesn’t look like a business office at all.”

“That’s right. This is where the really cutthroat deals are made. The outer office
is for routine skulduggery. I’d offer you a drink, but Sam foams at anybody drinking
during working hours.”

“Well, thanks, I don’t want one. Are you sure this is all right, our being in here?”

“All Sam can do is fire me, which I rather wish he would.” He tossed his coat on a
small sofa and sat at the piano. “It’s amazing, songwriting, when you think about
it,” he said, rippling chords. “The right little combination of notes, the lucky little
pattern of words, all of it lasting no more than a minute or two, and the man who
writes it suddenly owns, in effect, an office building or an oil well. It’s like a
contest. Write the magic jingle, and win the grand prize. Well, here’s the magic jingle
of 1936, kid. Noel Airman’s
Old Moon Face
.”