The Paper Dragon (9 page)

"That's right," Stern said.

"That's what her agent told us," Selig agreed.

"Aren't you fellows cold out here?" Stern asked.

"No," Arthur said. "And on Friday, you told me she wanted to do it, and it was now a matter of negotiation."

"That's right."

"This is Monday," Arthur said.

"You know Hester."

"No, I don't know Hester."

"She's not sure now."

"If she was sure Friday…"

"We don't even know if she was sure Friday. We only know what her agent told us."

"Her agent said she wanted to do the play, isn't that right?"

"And that she was ready to negotiate."

"That's right."

"Well, has an offer been made?"

"She's getting a thousand a week at Lincoln Center, that's whether she's in any of the plays or not. If we even
hope
to spring her, we've got to offer at least fifteen hundred."

"Well, how much
did
you offer?"

"It hasn't come to that yet."

"Look, would someone please talk straight?" Arthur said.

"We've always talked straight with you, Arthur," Selig answered.

"
Was
an offer made?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because she still has to talk to the people at Lincoln Center about getting sprung."

"Won't they let her go?"

"We think they will, but it's a matter of sitting down with these people and discussing it."

"Well, when is she going to do that?"

"As soon as she's sure she wants to do your play."

"That's right," Stern said.

"Let me try to get this straight," Arthur said. "
Does
she want to do my play?"

"It would seem so."

"When will we know?"

"I'll call her agent again, if you want me to," Selig said. "Is that what you'd like?"

"Yes."

"I don't think we should push this," Stern said.

"Why not?"

"Because if we can get Hester Miers to take this part, we'll raise all the money for the play immediately. That's why."

"I thought we
had
all the money already," Arthur said.

"This show will cost eighty thousand dollars," Stern said.

"Have we got all the money, or haven't we?"

"No, Arthur," Selig said. "We have
not
got all the money."

"You told me…"

"That's right," Stern said.

"You told me all the money was in. You said…"

"That's right, but a few of our people have dropped out."

"Well, even if a few of them have dropped out, that doesn't mean…"

"One of our people was a man who'd promised us a very large sum of money. He's decided to put it into a musical instead."

"How much do we still need?"

"We still need sixty thousand dollars," Selig said flatly.

"That means we've hardly got
any
of it," Arthur said.

"If we sign Hester, we'll get all of it," Stern said.

"Then for God's sake sign her!"

"She's not sure she wants to do it."

"Call her agent. I want to know."

"Mitzi will say what she said over the weekend," Stern said. "Hester's not sure."

"If you want me to call her, I will," Selig said. "I'll do whatever you want me to do, Arthur. After all, this is
your
play."

"That's right," Stern said, "but calling Mitzi won't do a bit of good."

"If Arthur wants me to call her, I will."

"Is that what you want, Arthur?"

"I want this play to go on," Arthur said fiercely.

"We all do."

"That's right. But calling Mitzi isn't going to help. She'll say she hasn't been able to reach Hester."

"Look…"

"This is the theater, Arthur. These people are sensitive individuals who—"

"Sensitive, my ass!" Arthur said. "My play is in danger of collapsing, and you're telling me some twenty-two-year-old kid has the power…"

"She's twenty-five, and she's very talented, and your play is
not
in danger of collapsing."

"I won't let this happen," Arthur said, and there was such an ominous note in his voice that the alley went immediately still. "Call Mitzi. Tell her we have to know, and we have to know right away."

"Don't push this," Stern warned.

"Oscar, if 
I
don't push this, perhaps you'd like to tell me just who will."

"We all want the play to go on. We love this play."

"You've loved it for eleven months now, your option expires in January.

"That's right."

"Yes, that's right, and January is next month."

"We can always talk about an extension," Stern said. "
If
we get Hester."

"If we get Hester," Arthur repeated.

"That's right,
if
we get Hester. If we get Hester, we get the money, it's as simple as that. Once we get the money, we can talk extension. If you're willing to grant it, we can go into rehearsal as soon as we finish casting these minor parts. Probably in time for a spring opening."

Arthur nodded. "And if we
don't
get Hester?"

"Let's see what she has to say, okay?"

"Okay, call Mitzi," Arthur said.

"It'll have to wait till tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Because she's in Philadelphia," Selig said. "One of her clients, Boris Whatsisname, opens in Philadelphia tonight. She's got to be there to hold his hand."

"Well, why can't you call her there? Philadelphia's only—"

"I don't want to bother her with something like this when she's got an opening. Be sensible, Arthur. It's not going to pay to get impatient here."

"All right."

"All right, Arthur?"

"I said all right."

"I'll call her in the morning, first thing."

"All right."

"And then I'll get to you."

"I'll be in court. The cross starts tomorrow."

"You call me when you're free then, all right?"

"All right," Arthur said.

Sidney looked at his watch the moment he entered the vestibule of her building. It was a quarter to four, and she had promised to wait until at least five, but he was afraid now that she had grown impatient and left earlier. The nameplate over her bell was lettered in delicate black script,
Charlotte Brown
, and it annoyed him just as it always did. He knew her as Chickie Brown, and the formal black script — especially since it had been clipped from her business card — conjured an image of a person about whom he knew very little, Charlotte Brown, who was part owner of a travel agency on Madison Avenue, where she arranged vacations to Haiti or Istanbul for fat matrons. Scowling at the nameplate, he pressed the button below it, and hoped there would be an answering buzz. He gripped the knob on the inner vestibule door with his right hand, put his briefcase down on the floor, patted his hair into place with his free left hand, and waited. Sighing, he walked back to the row of mailboxes, rang the bell a second time, returned to grip the doorknob again, waited, went back to the bell a third time, waited again, and had to ring yet another time before she answered. Her buzz sparked an intense and immediate anger within him, how
dare
she keep him waiting so long? The anger mounted as he pushed open the frosted-glass door and stepped into the hallway. Did a man have to ring a bell four times before he was admitted to a building? An attorney? Angrily, he climbed the steps to her third-floor apartment. Angrily, he knocked on the door.

"Sidney?" she called.

"Yes," he said. "It's me." For a moment, he thought his anger had caused him to forget his briefcase in the vestibule below, and then he realized that he was holding it tightly in his sweating left hand. The door opened.

"Hello," he said brusquely.

"Hello, luv," she answered warmly.

She was wearing dark green slacks and a white silk blouse. A string of green beads circled her throat. Her long hair was piled carelessly on top of her head, held there haphazardly with a green ribbon, bright russet strands falling onto her cheek and forehead, trailing down the back of her neck.

"Come in," she said, "come in," and walked barefooted toward the plush-covered chair near the window, where her cat lap supine on the arm, his tail switching nervously. She passed her extended forefinger along the length of the cat's back, and then lowered the shade against the gathering dusk. The cat's name was Shah, and Sidney despised him.

Chickie turned from the window with a pleased smile on her face, as though she had been contemplating his arrival all day, and was now enormously satisfied by his presence. She touched the cat again in passing. He lifted his head to accept her hand, and then the tail switched again, and he turned to look at Sidney with a malevolent jungle stare.

One day, you little son of a bitch, Sidney thought, I will be in this apartment alone with you, and I will drown you in the tub.

"What kind of a cat is he?" he asked Chickie.

"A nice cat," she answered.

"I meant the breed."

"Persian."

"Is that why you call him Shah?"

"No."

"Then why?"

"Because he's a nice cat. Aren't you a nice cat, Shah sweetie?" she asked, and she dropped to her knees before the chair and put her face close to the animal's. "Aren't you a lovey-cat, Shah honey?"

"Please, you'll make me vomit," Sidney said.

"I think Sidney has had a hard day in the mines," she said to the cat, and then rose and grinned and said, "Would you like a drink, Sidney? Would that help?"

"I had a very easy day," Sidney said, glaring at the cat. "I just don't happen to like your cat."

"Sidney!" she said. "I thought you
loved
Shah."

"No, I
don't
love Shah."

"I thought you did."

"No, I do not. Point of fact, I do not love
any
cat in the world,
least
of all Shah. Don't ever leave me alone in the apartment with him, or I'll drown him in the tub."

"Do you hear that, Shah?" she said playfully. "Watch out for Sidney because he'll drown you in the tub."

The cat made an ominous sound from somewhere back in his throat. "That's right, you heard her," Sidney said, and Shah made the same ominous sound again.

"He understands you," Chickie said.

"I hope he does. Why do you keep him around?"

"He was a gift."

"From whom?"

"A man."

"Who?"

"Before I knew you."

"I didn't ask you
when
, I asked you
who
."

"An Indian."

"From India?"

"Yes, of course. Did you think I meant a Mohican or something?"

"I never know what you mean, exactly," he said, and sighed.

"Don't you want to know
why
he gave me the cat?"

"No."

"All right, then I won't tell you."

"Why did he give you the cat?" Sidney asked.

"Why do you think he gave me the cat?"

"Because he knew you loved cats."

"No. That is, he knew I loved cats, yes, but that's not why he gave me a present. The cat was a present, Sidney."

"Why did he give you a present?" Sidney asked, and sighed again.

"You think it's because I went to bed with him, don't you?" Chickie said.

"Did you go to bed with him?" he asked wearily.

"Sidney, what a question to ask!"

"Well, then why
did
he give you the filthy little animal?"

"You're angry now."

"No, I'm not angry now. But sometimes I get awfully goddamn tired of these Burns and Allen routines."

"I didn't mean to make you angry," she said. "I'm sorry." She rose quickly, lowered her eyes, and padded to the bar. "I'll make you that drink," she said.

"Thank you."

The room was silent. It could have been a shuttered room in Panama, there was that kind of afternoon hush to it, the waning light against a drawn shade, the silk-tasseled lower edge, a contained lushness, the green plush chair with the gray cat purring on its arm, the moss green of the velvet curtains and the burnt sienna walls, the scent of snuffed-out candles and perfume.

He had felt in Panama, a centuries-old decadence that clung to every archway and twisted street, a miasma of evil, a certain knowledge that anything ever devised by humans had been done in this city, and he had been excited by it. Now, watching Chickie as she moved barefooted over the rug, the drink in one hand, he felt the beginning of that same kind of excitement, a welcome loss of control that he experienced whenever he was near her, a heady confusion that threatened to submerge him.

She handed him the drink. "What is it?" she asked.

"I had to ring four times," he said.

"What?"

"Downstairs."

"Is that what's bothering you?"

"Yes," he said, and accepted the drink.

"I'm sorry, Sidney, but you'll remember—"

"It's all right."

"You'll remember that I advised you not to come in the first place. I have to leave in a very few minutes…"

"Where are you going?"

"To the agency. I told you that on the phone, Sidney, and I told you I'd be very rushed."

"Why are you going to the agency?"

"I have work to do."

"I thought…"

"I have work to do, Sidney."

"All right, I'll pick you up later for dinner," he said.

"No, I can't have dinner with you tonight."

"Why not?"

"I'm having dinner with Ruth. We have a trip to work out. I told you all about it."

"No, you didn't."

"A very important trip that may materialize," she said, nodding.

"That
may
materialize?" he said. "I don't understand."

"Ruth and I have to work out this trip together," she explained very slowly, "that may be materializing."

"A trip to where?"

"Europe."

"For whom?"

"For a client, of course."

"But what do you mean it
may
be materializing?"

"Well, it isn't certain yet."

"When will it be certain?"

"Very soon, I would imagine. Your hair sticks up in the back, did you know that?"

"Yes. Can't Ruth handle it alone? There's something I wanted to—"

"No, she can't. Do you want a refill, Sidney?"

"No. Why can't she?"

"Because it would be a very long trip, Sidney. 
If
it materializes. It would be for the entire winter, you see."

"I see."

"Until the fifteenth of June."

"I see."

"Which is why it's so terribly complicated. Are you sure you don't want a refill?"

"No, thanks. Maybe I can see you later then. There's something—"

"I'll be busy all night."

He stared at her for a moment, and then said, "Chickie, are you lying to me?"

"What?"

"Are you lying?"

"About what, for God's sake?"

"About this trip, about tonight, about…"

"Sidney, I'm a very bad liar. I wouldn't even attempt lying to you."

"I think you're lying to me right this minute," he said.

"Now stop it, Sidney," she warned. "You may have had a difficult day, but let's not start hurling silly accusations around, shall we not?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I h-h-have had a d-d-difficult day, I'm sorry."

"That's all right, Sidney, and don't start stammering."

"I'm sorry."

"What you need is another drink," she said, and took his glass. "And then I've got to get dressed." She put two ice cubes into his glass and poured more bourbon over them. She handed the glass to Sidney and then said, "Shall I take Shah out of the room? Would you like me to do that?"

"Yes, I'd appreciate it."

"I will then. Come, Shah," she said, "come, pussycat. Sidney doesn't like you because of the Indian, isn't that true, Sidney? Come, Shah, sweetie."

She lifted the cat into her arms, cradling him against her breasts. "Drink," she said to Sidney, and then suddenly stopped alongside his chair. "Drink," she repeated in a whisper. A strange little smile twisted her mouth. She stared at him another moment, smiling, and then turned her back to him abruptly and went down the hall to her bedroom.

He sat alone in the darkening room, sipping his drink.

He supposed he would ask her when she returned, though he would have much preferred doing it over dinner. He did not relish the thought of postponing it again, however. He had been on the verge of asking her for the past week, and each time he had lost his courage, or become angry with her, and each time he had postponed it. He had the feeling he could put it off indefinitely if he allowed himself to, and he did not want that to happen. No, he would ask her when she returned, even though he was still a little angry with her.

He had to watch the anger, that was the important thing. Oh yes, there were other things as well — he talked with his hands a lot, he had got that from his father; and the stammering, of course, but that was only when he go excited; and his inability to extricate himself sometimes from a very complicated sentence, three years of Latin at Harvard, a lot of good it had done him. But the anger was the most important thing, that was the thing he had to control most of all because he knew that if he ever really let loose the way his mother… well.

Well, she was dead, poor soul, nor had it been very pleasant the way she went, lingering, lingering, he had gone to that hospital room every day of the week for six months, at a time when he had just begun the partnership with Carl and really should have been devoting all of his energies to building the practice. Well, what are you supposed to do when your mother is dying of cancer, not visit her? leave her to the vultures? God forbid. And the anger, her immense and enormous anger persisting to the very end, the imperious gestures to the special nurses day and night, oh the drain on his father, the shouted epithets, thank God most of them were in Yiddish and the nurses didn't understand them, except that one Miss Leventhal who said to him in all seriousness and with an injured look on her very Jewish face, "Your mother is a nasty old lady, Mr. Brackman" — with the poor woman ready to die any minute, ahhh.

The anger.

He had never understood the anger. He only knew that it terrified him whenever it exploded, and he suspected it terrified his father as well, who always seemed equally as helpless to cope with it. His mother had been a tall slender woman with a straight back and wide shoulders, dark green eyes, masses of brown hair piled onto the top of her head, a pretty woman he supposed in retrospect, though he had never considered her such as a child. They lived on East Houston Street, and his father sold shoes for a living, shoes that were either factory seconds or returns to retail stores. He did a lot of business with Bowery bums when they were sober enough to worry about winter coming and bare feet instead of their next drink or smoke. He had always admired the way his father handled the bums, with a sort of gentleness that did not deny their humanity, the one and only thing left to them. Except once when a drunken wino came into the store and insulted Sidney's mother, and his father took the man out onto the sidewalk and punched him twice in the face, very quickly, sock, sock, and the man fell down bleeding from his nose, Sidney remembered how strong his father had been that day. The wino came back with a breadknife later, God knows where he had got it, probably from the soup kitchen near Delancey, and his father met him in the doorway of the store, holding a length of lead pipe in his right hand and saying, "All right, so come on, brave one, use your knife." His mother called the police, and it all ended pretty routinely, except for his mother's later anger.

The anger exploded suddenly, the way it always did, they were sitting in the kitchen upstairs, the second floor over the store, and his mother began berating Sidney's father for what Sidney thought had been his really courageous behavior and suddenly she went off, click, it was always like that, click, as though a switch were thrown somewhere inside her head, short-circuiting all the machinery, click, and the anger exploded. She got very red in the face, she looked Irish when she did, and her green eyes got darker, and she would bunch her slender hands into tight compact fists and stalk the kitchen, back and forth, the torrent of words spilling from her mouth in steady fury, not even making sense sometimes, repeating over and over again events long past, building a paranoid case, well, no not paranoid, building a case against the world, reliving each injustice she had ever suffered at the hands of the goyim, at the hands of childhood friends, at the hands of his father's family, at the hands of her ungrateful whelp of a son, nothing whatever to do with the drunken wino (or whoever or whatever it happened to be), the supposed original cause of her anger. "No justice," she would scream, "there's no justice," and the flow of words would continue as she paced the kitchen before the old washtub, and Sidney's father would go to her and try to console her, "Come, Sarah, come, darling," and she would throw off his imploring hands while Sidney sat at the oilcloth-covered table in terror, thinking his mother was crazy or worse, well not crazy, "She's excited," his father would say, "she's just excited."