The Plot (7 page)

Perhaps Jamey was too old to remember what youth is, perhaps he was too dried up to retain the memory of that terrible forward propulsion, or he would have been warned. Louis was no mild donkey to follow patiently the carrot forever held six inches from his mouth, to plod indefinitely toward his reward. Perhaps Jamey was too old to know how dangerous this was.

Ethel, staring down at the manuscript in her lap, nibbled her lips. She seemed very nervous. “I can't judge it properly with you watching me, Louis. I'm going to take it to my room to read.”

“Take it anywhere you like. It was a good plot the old bastard had there.”
Dear boy, you're being fed and slept. But I want you here, why should I send you away? Jamey never stakes writers
. “He's really the nuts at plots. I wish I were.”

“How could you be?” Ethel clutched the papers fiercely. “These things don't just occur to Jamey, the plots were thrown at him like bouquets. Have you ever had a chance to move among people who make plots?”

“The people I've met are too busy making a living; they're too busy keeping the wolf from the door.” He struck his fist against his palm. “How sick I am of writing about that wolf!”

“How sick people are of reading about that wolf. They want escape, Louis.”

“Me, too,” he said, laughing at himself. “I want escape, too.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Ethel told Louis the next morning that she had known from his critical comments on Jamey's work that he could do it, but to see it worked out … She had known that he had this mysterious instinct into what Jamey would do with a situation, but …

Louis was pleased. “How did you like Constantinople? Authentic? I had to read up on Constantinople in Jamey's encyclopedia.”

“Jamey's been to Constantinople; Jamey's been everywhere. But the story is so good it frightens me, Louis!”

He said quietly, “Why does it frighten you?”

“It frightens me because it is so good, because it is so Jamey—because when he reads it he should want to help you in every way he possibly can—and I don't think he will.”

“We'll give him a chance, Ethel.”

“One thing, Louis, you wrote it in longhand. When you read it to Jamey, you don't want to stumble and ruin the effect.”

“I know. I have no typewriter.”

“You have nothing!” She spoke with vehemence, bringing up again his meager home, his drunken father, the beatings that had been his patrimony; she glanced around the beautiful room, bringing all Jamey's riches to mind, all his advantages, all the endowments besides talents that he had been given.

Louis said, “Plenty of people have plenty of nothing. Will you type it for me, Ethel?”

Ethel said she would type Louis' story, but three days later she had not done so. She was very apologetic about it. “I've been very busy, Louis. I'm in complete charge of Jamey's correspondence, you know, and so many people write him, editors, friends, fan letters, publishers. I see to all his affairs, and I have his power of attorney. I just haven't had a minute.”

“I tell you, if you're so busy, Ethel, let me pick the thing out on your machine.”

“It drives me crazy if anyone touches my typewriter. Oh, let me do it, Louis. I want to do it for you.”

But she hadn't done it the next day, either. Louis waited until Jamey was closed into his room. “Ethel, I want to talk to you.”

“Talk? Come for a walk then.”

“It's too hot, Ethel.”

“You're getting lazy, Louis. This soft life is getting you.”

“This life isn't soft for me. This isn't the kind of soft life I want.”

“I know that, I was just teasing you. If you want to talk to me, please let's get out of this house.”

It wasn't that much of a secret that she should be afraid the walls had ears. He shrugged. “Oh, all right. Why are you running, Ethel? Anyone chasing you?”

You're not, she thought. You're certainly not chasing me. She glanced back at the house, at Jamey's great window on which the louvers were tilted so that his room was darkened. Her gesture said that this was far enough; her gesture said that now Louis could safely talk.

Louis found he was whispering. “Ethel, is that story I did as good as you said it was?”

She nodded vehemently. “Better. That story was everything that Jamey ever was—plus. There's no doubt in my mind, Louis. You will be the writer Jamey would have been had he been a real man.”

“O.K. If that's so, then I don't want to show it to Jamey. I'll have to forgo the pleasure of seeing his face.”

She nodded. “I knew that would occur to you, Louis; I knew it! I knew when you thought about it and took Jamey's weakness into consideration, his vanity, his jealousy, you wouldn't want to hurt him by reading him the story. Louis, here's some slight compensation for your not seeing Jamey's face.” She plunged her hand into the bosom of her dress and pulled out a handkerchief, unfolded it, and gave Louis the telegram that had been folded into it. “Is it worth five thousand dollars not to see his face when you read him the story?”

The telegram said that
Green Book Magazine
was more than delighted to have the honor of publishing Mr. Vaughn's new story. The check for five thousand dollars would be sent, the wire read, as usual, on publication of the story.

Louis said, “Who gave you the right to do this, Ethel?”

She met his glance directly, her head up. “Your mother gave me the right to do it. Think of how you can help your mother with that money.”

Louis handed the yellow paper back to Ethel. “So that was the big idea!”

“Jamey's not-so-big idea; your story.”

“So this is what you were after!” This is it.

“No. How could I have been sure you could write such a story, Louis? This occurred to me only after I knew how good it was and was sure that when I had convinced you it was good you wouldn't want Jamey to hear it.” Her hand was trembling; the letter fluttered in her grasp. “Oh, why not, Louis? I told you they keep begging him to send them stories. He won't do it. He's got money enough and reputation enough, and he's no philanthropist, as you have discovered. He knows he can't take it with him, and he won't stir himself to leave anything for anybody else. I used to read him the letters from editors, and he'd just snicker and tell me to write them ‘no can do.' No, thank you, just not having any. Louis, I wouldn't have attempted to pass off a shoddy piece of work as Jamey's. Believe me, believe me, Louis, if this weren't better than Jamey at his best, I wouldn't have done it because it wouldn't have occurred to me. It's better and yet it's Jamey. This is it, Louis!”

He stared at the fluttering telegram, listening, it seemed, to the chittering of the paper, concentrating on it actually, so that he could not see the larger issues. (Was she being truthful in swearing that this idea had occurred to her only after she had read the story, or had it been her intention all along? If it had been her intention all along, what else did she have in mind?) Being a writer, Louis fixed his attention on these physical manifestations of Ethel's excitement—the paper chittered, her hand shook, she placed her feet so, her shoulders were bent, the pores of her skin seemed enlarged. Because she was perspiring you could see distinct lines under her eyes that would not be present, without this excitement, for another five years. “This is a woman who has brought off a coup,” Louis told himself. “She didn't know she could sell this until I had written it, she says, and that makes sense, but she knew all along that she was going to send it if it was good enough.” He did not ask himself whether this coup in itself were enough to account for the chittering paper, the perspiration, the hunched shoulder and fixed eyes. Might they not mean, he did not ask himself, that something more was coming, that this wasn't the end? He concentrated on Ethel and excluded himself from examination, didn't do his writer's duty on himself, didn't spy on himself, didn't try to discover what he felt, what his own physical manifestations proved. A vein had swollen in his forehead, a muscle clicked in his cheek. Ethel, unconscious of herself, watched Louis' face, going carefully. She kept her voice very soft.

“Let me tell you how I could manage it, Louis. I handle all Jamey's mail. I handle all business transactions.”

“No agent?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Jamey used to have an agent.”

“But he doesn't have an agent any more?” The exultation had squeezed through Ethel's guard, and Louis noted it. “Did you arrange that, too? When?” When had this started?

Where would it stop?

Ethel told herself she must be careful. She knew Louis better than Jamey did. She knew he was no donkey; he was a stallion, she thought, trembling suddenly. If he felt the touch of the spur, he would bolt. He would run away with her, throw her, trample her. It would take tremendous skill to hold him to the course. Her sense of intrigue, so long held down, surged joyfully, but she controlled any evidence of it. “I got rid of Manny because I hated him. It was settling my own score with him. He treated Lem like dirt, and I've never forgotten it. It had nothing to do with you. Jamey was sick of Manny, anyhow. Emmanuel J. Klein. He's been well paid because long, long ago when you had to sell a Vaughn story, he sold them. If Manny's a big success now, with offices in Rockefeller Center and a big staff, it is all because he knew Jamey was good a long time ago.” She smiled. “I know you're good now, Louis.”

Louis brushed off her flattery. “How did you get rid of him?”

“Well, he'd been pestering Jamey to write again. Such a great admirer, you know! When I read the last of his letters aloud to Jamey I made it a little more emphatic than it was. Jamey is always talking about greedy, well, I made Manny's letter just a little too obviously greedy for ten per cent. I simply omitted all genuine interest in reading another Vaughn, in giving the world another Vaughn, and made it more—wanting to live off another Vaughn, wanting another taste of Vaughn gravy.

“Jamey said to write Manny that he wasn't going to produce another Vaughn. I wrote Manny that Jamey wasn't going to sell another Vaughn through Manny. They had a gentlemen's agreement, not a contract. I just told Manny that since Jamey no longer considered Manny a gentleman, the agreement was off. That will burn Manny up, the little snob; when he sees this story in print, he'll be so sore at the ungrateful old devil, he won't be able to read!”

“But if he does?”

“If he does, Jamey won't. What do we care if he does? If he does, it will simply confirm Jamey's letter. Listen to me, Louis, if a jury of the most literate people in the world read your story, they would think Jamey wrote it.”

“Jamey won't think so.”

“Jamey won't read it.” Her genuine belief in his talent could not help but be beguiling; the ring of truth here reached Louis and put him off guard. Ethel, watching his face soften, began to talk of Jamey. “Jamey won't read modern literature. He thinks he is the last of the great ones; why bother with modern literature? Jamey won't read letters. Jamey won't see anyone. Jamey is stuck here in his own private desert island. All right. So be it. On his own head be it!”

Head on a platter, Louis thought, head in a hatbox.

“Are you angry with me, Louis? Don't be angry with me, be angry with a world where you have to sign Jamey's name to your fine story to get it printed! Don't be angry with me.”

Louis nodded toward the letter. “I'm angry with one thing, Ethel—I'm angry about the weeks I have to wait when I send a story to a magazine, and look at that! Four days to receive this story, to read it, to buy it, to wire you!”

“That's because of Jamey's reputation.”

“He worked for his reputation, Ethel. He earned it.”

“But this won't hurt Jamey's reputation, Louis! This story will help Jamey's reputation, although your concern with it seems rather quixotic to me. He isn't concerned with your troubles. He won't help your mother.”

Louis shrugged. “Well, this won't help her, either.” He flicked the telegram with his finger. “I'm as big a sucker for a kind word as the next one, but in case you didn't notice, this won't help my mother, either.”

“It won't?” She read the wire again. “Oh, dear, they pay on publication, don't they? Isn't that a shame,” she said, “isn't that a shame?” She drew her eyebrows together. “I could write and ask them to send the five thousand now. They would do it, but they would think it so strange that Jamey should ask for it. He never has, before. Now, should we take the chance of arousing suspicion, Louis?” She saw the corner of his mouth lift in a sad smile. “Louis, they won't keep a Vaughn story hanging around their safe. They'll publish it immediately, you'll see. The check may come any day, Louis. You must wait for it. It would be cruel to go back to your mother empty-handed when, if you just wait a little while, you could take five thousand dollars back with you.”

He was still smiling. He didn't say, “You could send it to me, Ethel. I could go to New York and you could send me the check.” He knew damned well that she wouldn't, but he didn't ask himself why she wouldn't, why it was important for her that he stay here. He was satisfied with lonely, pathetic, badly treated, humiliated, as motives. He said, “You realize, Ethel, that this is the one and only time?”

“I know, Louis.”

“Even if I wanted to, it would be no good trying to do another of Jamey's plots. Do you remember
Three Men on a Horse?
The guy who could pick winners in races? Remember that he guessed them every time while he wasn't betting himself, but when they forced him to bet on his own hunches, the magic was gone?” He told himself that by saying, “This is it, this is the one and only,” he was pulling out, pulling up short.