The Celebrity (33 page)

It was in her bag now. If Maude Denkin wasn’t on one side of her and Nell Abbott on the other, each gulping with emotion one moment and laughing the next—if she were alone, she would take it out and look at it right now in the dim light that swam up from the screen.

Cindy closed her eyes and saw it anyway.

THORNTON AND LUCINDA JOHNS

HOPE THAT IN 1950

YOU WILL INDEED FIND IT

A GOOD WORLD

Again, as it had that morning, a rare joy filled Cindy’s heart. It
was
clever and witty; it was sophisticated and smart. The decoration on the cover might be something like a little spinning globe, garlanded with holly; she hadn’t fully thought that part out, but the notion rather appealed to her. The Goodhues’ etched town house loomed before her and momentarily blotted out her garlanded globe, but she refused to let dissatisfaction, nibble away at her pleasure. Maybe by this time next year? Or the year after next? After all, if Thorn kept having one triumph after another, it was perfectly possible. Not on Fifth Avenue, of course. The side streets were really considered smarter.

In the third week of the Palladium run, Ed Barnard asked Gregory to see the film with him there. “It’ll be different from the previews,” Ed said. “We’ll get the feel of a regulation audience. We could go to the four o’clock show and then have an early dinner.”

Gregory had already seen it twice in the theater, and with the same motive, but since his visits to the Palladium had been the seventh and eighth times he had seen
The Good World,
he could not bring himself to confess them, even to Ed. The loges were sold out, so they sat in the orchestra, and Gregory reflected that only on the fifth or sixth viewing had he begun to see approximately what everybody else was seeing. Until his inner clamor had really died away, the emotions generated from the screen had been overlaid, threaded through, tangled with fifty separate private emotions. Apparently Ed, too, had found it impossible, the first time, to be simply “one of the audience.”

At dinner, Ed discussed this phenomenon at length, and praised the picture almost without reservation. “It’s lost some of the subtlety of the book, of course, and they’ve glamoured it up a little too much in places, but everything basic was kept. It’s really a beautiful job in building up suspense and human drama.” He waited for Gregory to say something, but Gregory only nodded. After a moment, Ed said, “Are you ready to tell me about the new manuscript?”

“Not for a few weeks more. I think you might like this one.

“There’s always that chance.” Only infrequently did Ed Barnard feel like prodding Gregory to talk before he chose to; this was one of the times. He held his impulse in check, and as silence continued, he began to wonder whether Gregory would tell him what he felt about Thorn’s current lecturing. He decided to wait about that too. At the office, clippings about Thorn’s lectures were beginning to pile up; last August there had been dozens of more enticing ones from the gossip columns, about Thorn and Jill Goodwyn at the Stork, Thorn and, Jill Goodwyn at the Copacabana, Thorn and Jill Goodwyn at Le Persiflage, suddenly booming as a new favorite with the Gourmet Set. Haskell’s Clipping Service, in its zealous coverage—
WE SPOT IT EVEN IF IT’S SIXPOINT
—could not have included these under the Digby and Brown contract-but for the fact that no columnist ever spoke of Thorn, without lugging in his relationship to the author of—

“What are you so amused about?” Gregory, asked.

Ed looked bland. It was a matter for regret that he could not emulate Haskell’s and manage to include Thornton and Miss Goodwyn in the official area of his concern. Those tabloid pictures of Thorn bidding farewell to Jill Goodwyn at La Guardia had certainly, said more than a thousand words. “Thorn keeps asking me about the new book,” Gregory-said. “I keep telling him even
you
aren’t in on it yet.”

“He doesn’t regard that as a convincing point, does he?”

“You’re wrong. You and Alan Brown are the whole firm to him. He says, the ladies heckle him about the next one; in the question periods after his lectures.”

“You do know he’s lecturing again. That’s fine.”

Gregory told him about the letter to Wyoming. “Abby heard him at White Plains last week. She says he’s not going in for so much horseplay and that there’s nothing to bridle at, take umbrage at, or raise hell about.”

“Have you ever heard him?”

“No, but I’m going to sneak in on one soon.”

Ed grinned widely. “As a female impersonator? I’ll sneak in with you.”

“We’ll wait until there’s a mixed audience.” Gregory fished around in his pocket, drew out some old envelopes, and searched through them. “He’s giving one this week sometime; it’s an evening date and it
is
a mixed audience. My mother wants me. to go with them. All my sisters and their husbands are going; and Cindy and some of her guests.”

“How does Cindy like—er—Thorn’s lecturing?”

Gregory looked up, saw the sly smile, and laughed. “Abby says Cindy has forgiven Thorn about Jill Goodwyn, if that’s what you mean, and it is Abby guesses that Jill was a small price for Cindy to pay, to acquaint
Daily News
readers with Thorn’s name and handsome features. I think my wife’s gone a little catty.” He went on with the notes scribbled on his envelopes. He glanced at his watch. “Maybe it’s tonight. Would you drive out with me if it were?”

“Sure would.”

‘“The Thursday Lit Club,’” he read aloud. “What’s today?”

“Tuesday.”

“Hell. I’m just in the mood.”

“You’ll be in the mood Thursday night too. Where does the Thursday Lit Club have its being?”

“Roslyn.”

“I’ll drive my car out Thursday night and pick you and Abby up.”

“Let’s get there early, so we can sit away from my mother. In spite of her assurances, I’m afraid she’d just manage to let the whole audience know—well, anyway, let’s get there early.”

But on Thursday night it rained, and Ed found traffic over the bridge bumper-to-bumper slow. By the time he stopped by at Martin Heights for Gregory and Abby, he was already twenty minutes late, and the eighteen miles to Roslyn delayed them more. When they arrived at the lecture hall, every parking space in a five-block radius was occupied. Walking back to the hall drenched them, and they stopped only for a second before the large poster,
Thornton Johns Speaks Tonight
on “MY BROTHER, GREGORY JOHNS.” The man in the ticket office had his back to the barred window and was talking sharply to an attendant behind him.

“They forgot these autograph cards,” the man said. “And this pen. You get them up on the platform when it starts to break up. The Bureau says they mob this one.” The ticket-teller turned forward again.

“Three please,” Ed said.

“Sorry, sold out.”

“But just a minute. This lady and gentleman with me—”

“Standing room is all gone too.” He pulled open his cash drawer and Began busily to count bills.

“Just a second,” Ed began angrily. He felt a tug at his sleeve, and he turned. Abby looked disappointed, but Gregory, his thumb raised and jerking backward and away, was convulsed with laughter.

The man behind the wicket looked up from his money and surveyed Gregory Johns coldly. “What’s the big joke, Mac?”

T
HE TABLOID PICTURES OF
Thornton Johns bidding bon voyage to Jill Goodwyn—those pictures which had nearly tripped Cindy into a scene and
had
tripped Ed Barnard into a cliché—had slowly assumed a symbolic importance in Thorn’s mind. Two New York papers had devoted over half a page of space to something involving him. Not something involving Gregory’s book, or Gregory’s movie, or a lecture about Gregory’s book and movie, but something solely involving
him.

Any milestone of success, Thornton Johns supposed, gave a man a heady feeling, and breaking into the New York press on your own was certainly a milestone. Two or three million people had seen those papers, had seen his pictures, had read his name in large type beneath them. In each paper the picture was superb, too revealing of his emotion, perhaps, at saying good-bye, but not to be condemned on that score. The great airplane in the background, the movable stairs leading upward, Jill on the lowest step and leaning over the banister for one last word with him—it was a magnificent shot. If it had been posed by the greatest director at Paramount or Imperial or Metro, it couldn’t have been better. The cameras had caught them both in profile; their smiles had been gay but their eyes had plainly said, “This hurts.”

It did Thorn good to leaf idly through his press portfolio every once in a while and come suddenly upon the pictures again, and on a certain bright morning in mid-October, that is what he was doing. It promised to be a difficult day; Luther Digby was in a swivet over something and wanted him up there at once, and Thorn was in a bit of a swivet himself. For some time now he’d been in a dilemma and a dilemma was no place for him to be.

Instinct told him to ignore Digby
and
dilemma for another little while, and Thorn obeyed. The portfolio was still open before him and he thought of Jill. Nearly six weeks had gone by since she had left, but at times he still found it hard to believe that what had happened actually had happened. Soft, feminine, appealing Jill—

Thornton Johns’ Heart seemed to balloon out until it occupied his entire rib-cage. He and Jill hadn’t hurt anybody after all, and he wouldn’t have missed that week before the Waldorf for a million dollars. What a way to say it: “The week before the Waldorf;” Once everything had dated from the B.S.B. selection, from the date of the first movie sale, the arrival in Hollywood, publication day. But now he had his own calendar of red-letter days.

That week before the Waldorf was Jill’s last in the East; she had seemed terribly aware that her visit was drawing to a close. He had not been egotist enough to think she was saddened at leaving him; but one night they had gone out driving and in. the. car he had sensed something almost desperate about her. Many times before, she had been reckless about things she said, but he had always turned them off. Scandal would do her no good, he had repeatedly told her, with the moralists buzzing all over Hollywood and the country at large; if she wouldn’t think of her name, her career, her happiness, he had to think or her. The car that evening, she had confessed she was frightened about returning to the Coast; just below the edge of all the glitter out there ran the bottomless chasm of her loneliness.

“The thought of it,” she had said, “makes me feel so
old.
”

“Old! You’re
young,
Jill, in all the ways that count.”

The moment came back so vividly that Thorn tightened his hands on the outer edges of his portfolio as if it were the steering wheel of his car. “The ways that count to a man.”

Jill was again moving to the left on the wide seat, toward him, putting a hand on his arm. “What did you mean about the small type, Thorn? All these weeks, I’ve waited for you to tell me.”

Without answering, he pulled the car off the road. She expected him to if he drove stolidly on, she would-be offended. He turned and took her into his arms. Jill Goodwyn, he thought, I’m kissing one of the greatest stars in the world.

“Take me home,” she whispered after a few minutes. “I want us to be in a room, behind a closed door, where we can really talk.”

In silence he started the motor. Scandal was ugly;
she
might not be afraid of it, but it would hurt Cindy, and the boys. Zoring Smith wouldn’t like it either.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Jill said when they neared the Queensborough Bridge.

“I’m afraid to say anything.”

“Afraid? Why?”

“God, Jill, I don’t want to be sensible either, but you’re such a little thing. I have-to think of you. I’m going to take you to the hotel now and go off till I—” He hesitated. His voice was tight. “Till I can manage myself better.”

They drove across the bridge, both of them looking straight through the windshield. As they turned into the traffic of Second Avenue, Jill spoke softly.

“Thorn, we never did get around to talking about business. I didn’t say it, that time, only for the gag. I know I ought to be saving more—I do need your advice. Most awfully.”

For one moment he had been angry. He was not for sale, no matter how delicate the negotiating. Then he was horrified. As if she could be crass enough! He took her hand in his and crushed it with his fingers. Cindy never could know…

Again Thorn’s right hand clenched, but on leather and paper, and he remembered he was at his desk, still holding his press portfolio. He glanced at his watch, knew he’d be late for Digby, and did not move. He was locked into memory; every time he thought of Jill, he lost his freedom for a little while. For several days, Jill’s savings plan had not come up again, and not once had he permitted himself to remind her of it. Then she had telephoned her insurance man in Hollywood and demanded accurate figures within an hour.

The over-all picture had shocked Thorn. “He must be a fool, Jill; you said he was and he must be. If you do retire, in ten years, and split your two hundred thousand endowment over ten more years, you’d have only twenty thousand a year. If you split it over twenty years, you’d have only ten thousand a year. The way you live? Why, the man’s a criminal as well as a fool. Does he think that ten years from now you’re going to give up your house, your clothes, your servants, and crawl into a little apartment hotel? I could twist his neck.”

It had frightened her and she had begun to ask questions. But again his pride had held him back from overselling. After she had finally confided her age, he had been more reluctant than ever to urge her too far; at age forty-seven, premiums came high. But the instant she had made her own decision, he had called the company, told them Who-and-How-Much, and arranged her medical examinations for the next day. Before he had seen her off at La Guardia, the papers were signed.

Altogether Jill had been a marvelous experience. A man’s first quarter-of-a-million-dollar policy was a rejuvenating—