“Come, it’s the twentieth century.”
“Oh, I know, it’s a ridiculous prejudice. Conditioning. I just don’t think I could go it, dear.”
“Sure, honey. Have something else. Although from what little I know of those queer laws, isn’t it just as bad to eat anything at all here? Nothing’s kosher.”
“Well, you’re right, at that. I couldn’t be less consistent. Does it—is lobster really good?”
“Why, it’s the most exquisite food there is.”
Marjorie said, “Somehow it doesn’t seem as bad as ham, does it? I don’t think I could eat ham if you put a pistol to my head.”
“Well, ham’s the symbol, the universal joke about Jews. Pride makes you take a stand on that point, and actually I think you’re right. I’m just a sybarite. Next to lobster, there’s nothing I love like good Polish ham. Anyhow, what’ll it be—want to try the chicken curry? They have a marvelous Indian sauce here—”
“Oh, what the devil. You’re perfectly right, even the chicken isn’t kosher. What’s the difference? I’ll try a lobster.”
But when it came she gazed askance as its scarlet feelers and hairs, its numerous jointed legs, its dead eyes on stalks, its ragged pincers. “Noel, it’s—doesn’t it look like a big red dead bug?”
“Why sure. Crustaceans and arachnids are about the same thing, as a matter of fact.” He was expertly lifting out the tail meat with a fork. “Good, though. Sweeter than the roses in May.”
She took up her fork gingerly, watching how he went at it. “Well, I never thought I’d live to eat a big old water bug.”
“Why, honey, there’s all kinds of Biblical precedent for that. Didn’t the prophets all live on locusts, or something?”
“I guess so. I wonder if locusts turn this ghastly red when you cook them. These things are so red.” The tail was coming out of the shell easily. She cut it, and, following his example, dipped a piece in the little bowl of melted butter, sighed, and put it in her mouth. It tasted very much like ordinary fresh fish, except that it was sweetish, and took more chewing. Not wanting to spoil the occasion, she widened her eyes and said, “Mm, exquisite.”
Noel said, “Observe that no forked lightnings have come through the window to destroy you.”
“Well, I didn’t expect that, really. Those Bible laws were just for hot countries in the old days.” She took another bite. It was quite pleasant, especially with all the butter on it. “I wonder, though, if it would taste so good if there were no law against it.”
He laughed, pouring the wine. “Very likely not. They say hunger is the best cook, but they’re wrong. Prohibition is. There isn’t a living Christian who can enjoy ham and eggs the way a renegade Jew like me does.”
“Don’t call yourself that.”
“I’m kidding, you know. It’s all a question of upbringing. I’ve had nothing to renege from. In my home we always ate everything—pork, oysters—”
“Really? That’s a little surprising.”
“Why?”
“Your folks are so active in Jewish causes.”
“Marjorie, my father’s a politician. He’d be active in Moslem causes, if his district had enough Arabs in it.”
Marjorie had finished the three or four bites of white fishy meat that made up the lobster’s tail. Still very hungry, she stared at the creature, wondering what else there was to eat on it. It seemed quite whole and impregnable. She said, eying Noel’s lobster, “What is that part you’re eating now? It looks perfectly revolting.”
“This green soft stuff? Why, that’s the liver of the beast. It’s the best part of it.”
“Is it edible, really? I’d say it was poisonous.”
“Well, a lot of people are fool enough not to eat it because of its looks. But I assure you it’s marvelous. Try it.”
Marjorie dug her fork into the green mass. It squashily yielded, oozing a thin fluid. “No, no.” She dropped the fork. “I’m not that sophisticated, not yet.” She hurriedly drank off her wine; then, following his example, she applied a little device like a nutcracker to one of the lobster’s claws. It did not yield. She squeezed with both hands. There was an echoing crack, and the claw flew across the table into Noel’s lap.
“I’ll crack them for you,” Noel said to the blushing girl.
“Honestly, the damned creatures are like a Chinese puzzle, Noel. They’re not worth the bother.”
“Practice and patience, my dear.” He deftly extracted two morsels of meat from the claws, laid them on her plate, and poured more wine. “What do you think of this wine? Isn’t it good?”
“Lovely, as always.”
“Let’s go see the new French movie at the Fifty-fifth after this.”
“Sure. Aren’t you writing any songs, or anything? You seem to have nothing but free time these days.”
“Ah, well, I can always write songs when I’m a little creakier. As a matter of fact I did a new first-act finale for Princess Jones the other night, and I like it. Have to play it for you.”
“How are you getting along at Paramount?”
“Oh, fine, fine. Not rising as meteorically as I’d hoped. But then, what fair prospect ever looks so fair once you’re in it? It’s all right.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Sam and I not seeing eye to eye again, the old thing.”
“Well, you’d better stop disagreeing with him. He’s the boss.”
Noel looked annoyed. “Suppose he’s wrong and I’m right, just once? It’s conceivable. I’d match IQ’s with him for a thousand dollars.”
“He has the experience, Noel, don’t forget that.”
“Darling, experience nine times out of ten is merely stupidity hardened into habit.—Well, the hell with Sam. Let’s enjoy ourselves. I like his money, I’ll say that for him…. What’s the trouble now?”
Marjorie was glaring and poking at the lobster. “I’m famished. And I don’t know how to get at this miserable thing.”
“Look, you haven’t even touched the legs. They’re loaded with meat.” He held the body of his lobster, and pulled a leg out with a little twist. A chunk of white meat clung to the scarlet stump. “See?” He gnawed the meat.
“Well, that seems simple.” Marjorie did exactly the same thing, she thought. But instead of the leg pulling loose, the whole center of the lobster came lifting out of the shell, and there she was, holding an oval white thing with many trembling red legs, for all the world like a spider six inches across, warm and horridly alive. With a grunt of disgust she threw it splashing into the melted butter.
“I quit,” Marjorie said. “I’ll order ham next time. Damn red bug.”
Noel choked with laughter over his wine.
His dissatisfaction with the Paramount job was the one discordant note of this happy time. She heard it again in the weeks that followed, more frequently and louder. Sometimes Noel would be deep in gloom when they met, and it would take an hour or more of drinking and banter to bring him to his usual gaiety.
In his first weeks at Paramount Noel had shrugged off his work as a trivial necessary evil, and had refused to talk about it with Marjorie, but by the end of March he was discussing it freely and at length. It relieved him to set Marjorie laughing with his caricature of Rothmore. He marvelously simulated a stooped heavy old man with half-closed eyes, talking through thick tired lips while biting on a cigar. There were two main sources of trouble. Sam Rothmore thought Noel’s taste in stories for the screen was too literary and high-flown, and he was displeased by his irregular hours, though the disapproval took no stronger form than crude sarcasm. It seemed to Marjorie, even though Noel was describing the arguments, that Sam Rothmore was right at least part of the time. Noel looked black when she ventured to say so. On the whole, naturally, she sided with Noel. There seemed little doubt that Sam Rothmore, beneath his surface of weary benevolence, was just a brutal businessman, and that his taste in movies reflected the juvenile vulgarity of Hollywood at its worst. All the more, then,
did she want to give him his due in the petty instances when he seemed right.
But Noel, usually so graceful and so amusingly self-critical, was peculiarly obdurate in this. He persisted in coming late to the office and leaving early, and would not admit there was anything wrong in it. “I’m beginning to regard myself as a test case,” he said to Marjorie, “a milestone in the education of Sam Rothmore, and the whole Hollywood machine.”
“Don’t try to change the world, Noel. Paramount’s a business. Businesses have to run on a system.”
“True, dear, and exceedingly profound, but this is a unique business. It employs creative talent and original insight. Therefore, time and motion studies become slightly absurd. As for instance, working in the office with me is one Morris Mead, also an assistant story editor, a good fellow, a drudge, been there fifteen years. I’ve been there a month. I’m reading four stories to his one, and writing four reports to his one, and Sam concedes that my reports are clearer, better, and more useful. Morris arrives at nine and leaves at five. So much for system.”
One rainy evening late in March Noel took her to the opening night of a musical comedy. When they came into the lobby for a smoke after the first act, Marjorie saw familiar signs of depression in Noel; he was avoiding her glance, and repeatedly rubbing one hand over his eyes. His tone remained level and light. “It’s a sure hit. I know the boys who wrote it. They’ve been doing the summer shows at Camp Paradise for years. Maybe one of these decades I’ll write a show.”
“You’ll have a show on Broadway one of these months, and it’ll be a lot better than this one.”
He smiled at her. “Keep saying those things.”
A woman at his elbow said, “Noel! Of course it’s Noel! Isn’t it?”
Surprise came over his face, then he smiled. “Why, hello, Muriel. How are you? You look wonderful, as always.”
The woman said, “Good Lord, how many years is it now?” Her dress was a billowing swath of rust-colored taffeta and she wore many diamonds. She had a tiny nose, a sharp chin, and pinched cheeks, and her black hair seemed varnished in place. She held a cigarette high in two straight fingers.
“Don’t start reckoning them up,” Noel said. “You won’t enjoy the second act. How are you? And the kids, and the hubby?”
“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.”