The Inheritors (6 page)

I grinned. “That’ll be nice for a change.”

The waiter came back with the doubles. I began to speak but Jack held up his hand. Quickly, he drained one glass and was halfway into the other before he put it down. “Okay, now you can talk,” he said.

“What about my package?”

“It wasn’t easy,” he said.

I was silent. That meant exactly nothing. It was agent talk for expensive.

“I got about thirty-six for you. About five from each of the majors, the rest from independents.”

“How many good ones?”

“Average four out of six and the other two aren’t too bad. At least they’re not real dogs.” He finished his drink. “I wanted one for one, but they wouldn’t go for it.”

I nodded. He had done well. Usually the picture companies hung you up for four lemons for each really good feature they gave you.

“Now, hold on to your seat,” he said. “They’ll cost you four hundred thousand dollars each and you’ve got exactly twenty-four hours to commit or there’s no deal. And they want the money now because they want to take it into this year’s figures.”

I stared at him. The price was exactly double the going rate for films up to now, but I knew that was the only reason they would let them go. They were in a bind too. They had to make this year’s figures look good or there would be screams from the stockholders. And they were more afraid of their stockholders just now than they were of the theater owners who had forced them into an agreement to withhold the post-1948 pictures from television. Their stockholders could cost them their jobs, while the exhibitors still had to come to them for product.

“Okay,” I said. “Buy them.”

He stared at me. “You know what you’re doing? That’s over fourteen million dollars.”

“I said buy them.”

“Don’t you even want to know what pictures they are, what stars are in them—”

My tone was abrupt. “You’re the expert, Jack. I trust your judgment. You said you didn’t want to take advantage of me.”

“But it’s your job. If the pictures are no good—”

I broke in again. This time my voice was cold. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jack. It’s not my job. If the pictures are bombs, it’s your agency that’s on the line. My job allows for mistakes but if you stiff me, WAM never sells another show to Sinclair. And there goes your agency because all the business you get from the other networks isn’t enough to pay the rent on one floor of your offices.”

His face was pale, and faint beads of perspiration came out on his forehead. He finished his second drink, sipping it slowly without taking his eyes off me. After a moment he spoke. “They’re good pictures.”

I let up on him. “Then what are you worried about?” I smiled. “Relax and let’s get our dinner. I’m starved.”

But, oddly enough, he didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.

***

It was after eleven o’clock when I let myself into the apartment. I wasn’t at all tired. I opened the attaché case and spread the papers on the dining room table.

By the time I finished with them and fell into bed, it was after one o’clock. My eyes burned and they smarted when I closed them, but in less than a moment I spun out. I couldn’t have been sleeping more than a half hour when the door chime began to ring.

At first it seemed an echo in my head and I tried to turn it off. At last I opened my eyes. It took me a moment to get used to the darkness. The chime sounded louder now that I was awake. I struggled out of bed and went through the apartment to the front door and opened it.

She wore a fur coat wrapped tightly around her. She clutched a small purse in her hand and her blue eyes looked up at me, wide, dark and afraid.

I stood there for a moment, then I stepped back and she threw herself into my arms. She was shivering and crying. I closed the door.

“You didn’t tell me you moved,” she sobbed.

I held her.

“I went to your old apartment first. The doorman told me where you had gone.” She looked up into my face, her eyes wet with tears. “Are you very angry with me, Steve?”

I shook my head.

The words tumbled out of her. “I couldn’t stand it there anymore. I was alone. So alone. I kept thinking about what you said. About other friends. For the first time I knew something. I don’t have any other friends. Not really. Just fun and games friends. That’s all.

“I drank half a bottle of whiskey. It just tasted lousy. I tried turning on. I smoked three sticks. Nothing happened. Then I decided to go to sleep. I took a Nembutal. By the time I got out of bed to take the fourth pill, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep.

“I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror and all I could see was my mother. I was going to wind up just like her. They would come in in the morning and I would be lying there. Then I got frightened.

“I tried calling you, but they kept telling me that the number was disconnected. By that time I was in a panic. I had no place else to go, so I came looking for you.”

She brushed at her eyes with her hand. Her coat opened and I saw she had nothing on but her nightgown. “Let me stay here just for tonight. I’ll leave in the morning. Please.”

“You’re here,” I said. “Let’s go to bed.”

I took her into the bedroom. “Go wash your face. Your eye makeup’s all over it.”

Obediently she went into the bathroom; I killed the lights and climbed into bed. I could hear the sound of the water splashing in the sink. A moment later the bathroom door opened and the light spilled into the room from the doorway behind her.

“Do I look all right now?” she asked.

I couldn’t see her face, it was in the shadow, but I could see her silhouette through the gown. I laughed to myself. What I could see looked all right. “You’re fine.”

She hit the light and came into bed. I made room for her. “No, Steve,” she said. “I want you to hold me.”

I put out an arm and drew her head down to my shoulder. She was quiet for a minute, then she sat up suddenly. With a quick motion, she pulled the nightgown over her head, then she snuggled back against me.

“That’s better,” she murmured. “I want to feel your flesh against me.” She turned again and drew my hand to her breasts.

I could feel the firm strength in them and hard nipples puckering gently in my fingers. The heat began to rise in me. Now it was I who could not sleep. I moved restlessly.

She took my penis in her hand and soothed it gently. “I’m sorry, Steve,” she whispered. “We can’t fuck for a week.”

“I know,” I said gruffly. “Let’s try to sleep.”

Her hand was still. I closed my eyes. After a few minutes she spoke again. “Kiss me good-night, Steve.”

I kissed her gently, her lips pressed back lightly. She closed her eyes and her voice was barely a whisper. “Steve.”

“Yes?”

“Promise me something.”

“What?”

“First promise.” She was like a child.

I lay back on the pillow. “Okay. I promise.”

“In the morning you won’t look at my cunt. They shaved it and it looks funny.”

I laughed quietly. “For Christ’s sake, go to sleep.”

I could have saved my breath. She was already asleep. Her hand relaxed and fell away from me. I looked at her. She seemed so young and vulnerable in the dark. I closed my eyes.

But the warmth and smell of her was of a woman and there was no rest for me. Finally I got out of bed. She didn’t even stir. I went into the living room.

When I did fall asleep it was in front of the late show on television.

CHAPTER SIX

I was sixteen years old and in my junior year at prep school when my parents died. It was one of those senseless accidents that happened during the war. Because of the blackout regulations along the eastern seaboard, all automobile headlights had the upper half painted black so their beams would not be seen from the sky. When the other automobile crested the hill and the headlights shone right into my father’s eyes, he turned to the right just a little to avoid crashing into him. That was just enough.

The big Packard went off the road, down a sheer drop of three hundred feet, bounced twice on the rocks, turning over, and settled under twenty-eight feet of water.

“You’ve got to be brave,” Mr. Blake, the attorney, said to me as I sat dry-eyed in his office after the funeral. “It was quick and merciful. They never even knew what happened.”

I glanced over at my Aunt Prudence who sat in front of the desk on the opposite corner. She was nothing like her name. A long time ago she had moved from New Bedford to Cape Ann. My father rarely spoke about his younger sister, but I had heard all the stories.

About how she had fallen in love with an artist and had followed him to Paris only to be deserted by him when he went back to his wife. Then other affairs, each whispered about, until one day she returned to New Bedford.

My father didn’t know she was in town until she came into his office at the bank. She had a little five-year-old boy with her. He clung to her skirts nervously.

“Hello, John,” she said.

“Prudence,” my father said stiffly.

She looked down at the little boy. “
Dit bon jour au monsieur
,
Pierre
,” she said.

“
Bon jour
,” the little boy said shyly.

“He speaks only French,” Aunt Prudence said.

“Who is he?” my father asked, staring at him.

“He’s my son,” she said. “I adopted him.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” my father asked.

“I don’t give a damn what you believe,” she said. “I only came for my money.”

My father knew what she was talking about. But there was still that New England streak in him. Women were not to be trusted, even with their own inheritance. “The money is supposed to remain with the bank until you are thirty years old, according to the terms of Father’s will.”

“I was thirty last month,” she said.

He finally looked from the boy to her. “So you are,” he said, a note of surprise in his voice. “So you are.”

He picked up the telephone and asked for the trust-account records. “Times have been difficult,” he said. “But I have managed to keep your estate intact, even increase it a little despite the fact you kept taking out all the earnings as fast as they accrued.”

“That was the one thing I was sure you would do, John.”

He began to feel slightly more confident with her. “The wise thing to do would be to leave it here. The earnings come to about thirty-five hundred a year. You could live very nicely on that.”

“I suppose I could,” she said. “But I have no intention of doing that.”

“What are you going to do with the money?”

“I’ve already done it,” she said. “I’ve bought a small inn on Cape Ann. I’ve got it all figured out. The inn runs itself and I can continue painting. Pierre and I can have a very nice life there.”

My father tried to talk her out of it. She shut him up.

“I want to make a home for Pierre,” she said. “Do you think I can do that here?”

Aunt Prudence went to Cape Ann. A few years later we heard from a mutual friend who had seen her that the little boy had died.

“It’s just as well,” my father nodded. “He didn’t look very strong to me. Anyway he spoke nothing but French.”

“Was he my cousin?” I asked. I was about six years old at the time.

“No,” my father said sharply.

“But if he was Auntie Prue’s little boy—”

“He wasn’t her little boy,” my father snapped. “She just adopted him because he had no home and no parents. Your Aunt Prue felt sorry for him, that’s all.”

That conversation must have made more of an impression on me than I had realized. I remembered it as I sat looking at her at the other end of Mr. Blake’s desk. Now it was my turn. I wondered if she was sorry for me.

“Stephen.” I turned from her to Mr. Blake.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re no longer a child, but you’re not yet a man, legally that is,” he said. “But I think you should have something to say about yourself. Your father was not a rich man; he left you well provided for. There’s enough money left to see you through school and college, even get you started in a profession should you choose. But there is the problem of where you will live.

“Your parents appointed me the executor of their estate, but did not provide a legal guardian for you. Under the law, the court must appoint one until you are of age.”

My aunt and I turned to look at each other at exactly that moment. I could feel myself being drawn into her. I didn’t wonder any longer how she felt about me. I knew.

“Mr. Blake,” I said, still looking at her. “Couldn’t my Aunt Prue—I mean, isn’t it all right for Aunt Prue to be—”

There was a moment’s silence, then we both turned to look at him. He was smiling. “I was hoping you would say that, Stephen. There shouldn’t be any problem at all. Your aunt is your closest living relative.”

Aunt Prue got out of her chair and came over to me. She took my hand and I could see the tears in her eyes. “I, too, was hoping that was what you would say, Stephen.”

Then, suddenly, I was in her arms and I was crying and her hand was stroking my hair gently. “There, Stephen, there. It will be all right now.”

A month later when I came down from school for summer vacation, I went straight to Aunt Prue. It was late in the afternoon and the warmth of the day was still hovering over the station. A few other passengers got off, but they soon left the platform and I was standing alone. I picked up my valise and trudged toward the small wooden station, wondering if my aunt had received my telegram.

Just as I reached the station door a battered Plymouth coupe pulled up and a young girl got out. She looked up at me for a moment; puzzled, then she spoke. “Stephen Gaunt?”

I stared down at her. There were smudges of paint on her face and her long sun-bleached brown hair hung down over the blue denim work shirt she tucked carelessly into a faded pair of men’s levis. “Yes,” I said.

She smiled in relief. “I’m Nancy Vickers,” she said. “Your aunt sent me down to pick you up. She couldn’t come because she’s right in the middle of a class. Throw your bag in the backseat.”

She got into the car and I followed her. Expertly she shifted gears. She looked at me and smiled again. “You surprised me,” she said.