“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.”
Chapter 26. SAM ROTHMORE
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.”
Marjorie felt the gooseflesh rise as he sang it. The song was built on the notion of the moon seen as a wistful old bachelor peering down at the lovers on the street, following them to their apartment, staring in at the bedroom window, envying them their joy. The suggestiveness of the lyric was masked by the last touch, the wedding ring of the girl glittering in the moonlight, as she pulled down the shade to shut out lonely Old Moon Face.
She threw her arms around Noel’s neck. “Bless you, it is a hit.”
“I know it is,” Noel said. “I’m dickering for a villa on the Riviera. The melody’s really got something, hasn’t it?”
He began to play it again. The door to the outer office opened and Sam Rothmore came in, complete as Marjorie had pictured him to the cigar in his teeth. His clothes were dark, correct, elegant, his pink wrinkled hands were manicured, and there was a touch of majesty in his bearing despite the stoop, or perhaps because of it. “What’s all the music-making?” he said in the throaty voice that Noel had caricatured so well.
Noel jumped up. “Sam, the envelope’s been delivered. Assemblyman Morton’s secretary was—”
Rothmore nodded. “I talked to Morton on the phone an hour ago. Thanks.” He was looking at Marjorie. “Hello, I’m Rothmore. And you’re Marjorie Morgenstern, and you’re a friend of this low-life.”
“I hope I’m not intruding—”
“Not a bit. You’re a breath of fresh air in the old factory. Well, how’d you like the plane ride?”
“Marvelous. I just wanted to go on flying forever.”
His glance flickered ironically to Noel, and back to her, and she noticed the terrible blue shadows under his eyes. “Well, go ahead, Noel, finish what you were playing.”
“It’s a new song he just wrote,” Marjorie said. “I think it’s superb.??
?
“Oh, you wrote a new song? Interesting. Have you read any movie properties lately?”
Noel said, in a manner curiously mingling fear and arrogance, “Sam, I turned in three reports before I left. Your secretary has them, and I told you—”
“I read your reports.”
“Oh. Are they all right?”
“Let’s hear your song.” He sat heavily in an armchair and looked at Noel. “Well, play the song.”
“Are you really interested?” Noel stood awkwardly beside the piano stool.
“I like to know all about my staff’s talents. Go ahead. What’s the title?”
Noel told him. Rothmore nodded slowly, leaning on an elbow in the armchair. Noel played and his employer sat slumped, holding the cigar, his eyes on the wall. Marjorie noticed that he breathed through his mouth in shallow little gulps. When the song was over, he said after a moment, “It’s all right.”
“I think it’ll be a hit. A hell of a hit,” Noel said.
“So do I,” Marjorie said.
Rothmore sighed. “What got you started writing songs again? Aren’t we keeping you busy?”
“Sam, the thing just popped into my head and I wrote it out. At five this morning, if you want to know. On my own time.”
Rothmore glanced at his wristwatch. “I guess I’ll have a scotch and soda. Usually it makes me sleepy in the daytime, but I had too much coffee for lunch.” He started to get up, but Noel sprang to the bar. “I’ll get it, Sam.” Rothmore sank back in his chair, saying, “Make drinks for everybody.” He turned to Marjorie. “See? That’s what we do to ourselves. We keep tightening up our nerves with tobacco and coffee, then loosening them with alcohol. We do it all our lives. Then we blame God when we die young.”
“I’d rather die ten years younger and smoke and drink all I please,” Noel said, clinking glass and ice.
“You’re talking through your hat. Wait till you’re clipping the last few coupons like me.”
“I’m glad you like Old Moon Face, Sam.”
Rothmore shrugged. “It’s a good song. So what?”
“So lots and lots of money,” Noel said. “Acres of cash.”
“Grow up,” Rothmore said. “How much money does a hit song make, five thousand dollars? Ten is a lot.”
“Why, some of them make a hundred thousand.”
Rothmore screwed up his face and thrust the cigar in his teeth, and Marjorie could hardly keep herself from laughing, he so exactly resembled Noel’s imitation of him. “What are you talking about, the freaks? Bananas and Silver Threads? Are you figuring on writing a freak? Why don’t you just buy yourself a sweepstakes ticket? It’s less work, and a much surer thing. What did you make on It’s Raining Kisses? Eighty-five hundred?”
Noel narrowed his eyes at Rothmore, handing him a drink. “To a hair. Been checking with my publisher?”
“I know the business, a little bit. Once I owned a piece of a publishing house. Songwriting’s for kids. Set aside your handful of geniuses, your Gershwins, Porters, Berlins, Rodgers, and there’s nothing in it. Get yourself a small producer’s job and you can hire and fire songwriters, good ones, all day like messenger boys.”
“What does that prove? A creative man doesn’t care which chairwarmer is hiring or firing him,” Noel said. “It’s just the stupid bookkeeping of his career, which any fool can do.”
“That sounds good,” Rothmore said, “except that all the songwriters out there are breaking their necks, trying to warm chairs and do some stupid bookkeeping. Scribbling isn’t all there is to creation. That’s lesson number one of this business. Though I can see that you choke over it.” Rothmore pushed himself painfully out of his chair. “Well, we’re boring Marjorie.”
“No, no,” the girl said, curled on the couch, watching the two men.
Rothmore’s look, resting on her, became kindly. He drank off his highball. “Let me take both of you to dinner tonight.”
Noel glanced at Marjorie, who said, “Don’t we have tickets for a show?”
“Never mind tickets,” Rothmore said. “If you have any, change them for another night.”
Noel said to the girl, “You don’t argue with Sam. Thanks, Sam, it’ll be grand.”
Rothmore walked slowly out, leaving behind a gray haze of rich-smelling cigar smoke.
She knew from the gossip columns that it was the most expensive restaurant in New York. The furnishings were old-fashioned, even dowdy, but the food was unbelievable, and the wines better than any Noel had ever ordered. It was food such as Marjorie had read about in French novels; she had never believed that such marvels of the cooking art really existed. The caviar, the soup, the steaks, were all sauced and seasoned to a creamy perfection of taste that was almost humiliating; she felt a bit like a barbarian encountering civilization. So numbed was she by the pleasant assault on her senses that she began following the argument between Noel and Rothmore only when their voices rose. Noel apparently wanted the company to buy an obscure Italian novel, twenty years old, which could be had for fifteen hundred dollars. Rothmore said it wasn’t worth fifteen cents to the company. “It’s for Europeans. It’s adultery among the poor, and the foreign poor at that, and she dies. What do you want to do, empty the theatres?”
Noel said, “You assume the American people are too dumb to recognize a good thing. It’s an anti-democratic notion, did you ever stop to think of that? They’re not too dumb to elect the right president. Or so we all believe.”
“Why, you fool, do you think we opened our doors yesterday? We don’t have to assume a damn thing. We know. Will you ever get it through your head that a movie house is a candy store? The people are not dumb at all. They’re a hell of a lot too smart for the likes of you. You try to sell them bread and spinach in your candy store, and they’ll go to the candy store around the corner. You get the reputation for being a stupid bastard, and after a while your store closes. Look, Noel, the Europeans keep making the kind of pictures you like. In their own countries, the people line up for our pictures, and their art plays to half-empty houses. The people have decided what movies should be, not us. That’s the democracy you’re talking about. We’ll make anything they want. You can’t ram what you like down their throats. You’re not in Russia.”
“You’re just hiding behind a false analogy,” Noel said. “A movie house isn’t a candy store at all, it’s more like a library. You’ve filled the library with pap and prurience, catering to the lowest instincts of the people, instead of meeting your cultural responsibility—”
“Cultural responsibility.” Rothmore buried his head in his hands. “Oh God.” He looked at Marjorie. “Don’t give ’em what they want. Hell, no. They got low instincts. Give ’em what’s good for them—what you think is good for them. That’s your red-hot democrat talking. Isn’t that the whole damned communist idea, Noel? Stick a gun in their ribs, and make ’em eat strawberries and cream?”
“Oh, sure, see my whiskers and my bomb? The old story, epithets when you have no arguments.”
“No arguments?” Rothmore turned to Marjorie. “I’m glad I had no children. If I’d had a son, he’d have turned out like this specimen. That’s all the colleges seem to be producing these days, either rah-rah morons or this kind of souped-up snob who despises the American people—”
“A beautiful instance,” Noel said, “of the abusive non sequitur. If you don’t like Paramount movies, you’re a traitor to your country.”
“All right, do you think the American people are a lot of goddamn fools, Noel, or don’t you? And try to be honest for a change instead of cute. Maybe it’s important.”
Noel paused, his face more serious than usual, then said slowly, “The answer is yes, but no bigger fools than any other people. God made humanity with an average IQ of 100, Sam, and you’ll admit that’s about twenty points too low—”
“What the hell do you know about God, and what the hell is an IQ?” Rothmore rasped. “Do you think an IQ is something real, like a nose? It??
?s a goddamn number dreamed up by goddamn psychologists, and all it proves is that farmers aren’t as smart as psychologists. If the farmers had enough time to waste to make up an IQ system, the psychologists would all come out morons and the farmers geniuses. Because they’d give a big credit for being able to grab a cow’s teat right, and nothing at all for counting the number of triangles in some goddamn meaningless diagram.”
“You’re an anti-intellectual from way back, Sam, that’s no news.”
Rothmore turned belligerently to Marjorie. “And I’m the epithet man! Marjorie, who’s right?”
“Oh, Lord, leave me out of it. This rice pudding is sublime, Mr. Rothmore. I’ve never tasted anything so good.”
“Put down the spoon and talk. Let’s see what kind of girl he’s got.”
“Well”—she glanced sidelong at Noel—”I’ve always thought the way Noel does about—I mean, I prefer the foreign movies, to be honest, Mr. Rothmore. But I must say you put things in a little different light. If the people—after all, maybe they’ve decided that they want heavy stuff in books, and light stuff on movie screens—candy, as you put it. That’s what I never thought of.” She said to Noel, who was regarding her very sourly, “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Candy isn’t good for you, and all that, but people eat tons of it, they like it. He says the Europeans keep making serious movies, and their own people keep going for the American candy. Maybe that means the movie as an art form is really candy making. That’s what never occurred to me before.”
Rothmore beamed on her, taking small gulps of air. “Bless your little heart. You at least listen to the old bastard.” He said to Noel, “She’s one in a thousand. Marry her.”
Noel said, “Why, because she’s taken in by a trivial sophistry that you don’t even believe yourself? Do you call that a triumph? She’s twenty-one years old.”
“She’s smarter than you are, my boy.” Rothmore chuckled, deep in his chest. “If you only knew.” With a gloating grin, he lit a cigar.