Melville Goodwin, USA

by John P. Marquand

  “Please, Sidney,” he said, “don’t turn the knife in the wound. For the last forty-eight hours I feel as though I have been impaled on steel.”

  “I’m sorry if you’ve suffered, Gilbert,” I said, “but then perhaps we have both suffered.”

  “Sidney,” Gilbert said, “before we leave this room I want everything to be as it was formerly between us. Why did you ever mistrust me—of all people, Sidney?”

  Since I had worked my way into the driver’s seat, there was no reason for any further turning of knives in wounds.

  “Perhaps I was wrong, Gilbert,” I said. “I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have mistrusted you.”

  “That’s a very lovely thing for you to say,” Gilbert Frary said. “I’m the one who should be sorry, Sidney. I should have understood your integrity. I should never have suggested even whimsically that you should speak commercials.”

  “That’s all right now, Gilbert,” I said. “As long as I know that the sponsor is satisfied with the program, that clears everything. I’m sorry I had to go over your head, but then, you were out on the Coast.”

  “I cannot see why you are so suspicious,” Gilbert said. “That is all that hurts me, Sidney. Suspicion does not coincide with friendship.”

  “That’s quite all right, Gilbert,” I told him. “Let’s put it this way. Let’s say that I lost faith in myself, but it’s all right now. It helps me to know that George thinks I’m a valuable piece of property in the face of competitive bidding. As long as he agrees with my ideas, everything’s all right. There’s no reason for him or you to worry about the White Wall Rubber Company.”

  Gilbert Frary sighed.

  “But it hurts me to think of your thinking of it, Sidney,” he said, “after the long way we have gone together. It isn’t like you, Sidney.”

  “It was probably a great mistake, Gilbert,” I said, “but it’s perfectly all right now.”

  “All I want,” Gilbert said, “all I’ve ever wanted, is to have you basically and absolutely happy, Sidney, from every point of view. I cannot blame you wholly. There is no reason why you should ever have known the thought I have expended on you. The program has been a part of my life. Forgive me for having interfered.”

  “That’s all right, Gilbert,” I said, “and you won’t have to bother about it so much now.” I was being gentle with him, though perhaps there was no reason for gentleness under the circumstances, but then, everything was all right now.

  “George said a great many lovely things about you,” Gilbert said, “but then, why shouldn’t he? And I said some lovely things about you, too, to George. All George and I want, all we have ever wanted, is to keep you happy. Sidney, basically what was it that you said to George?”

  I could thank Melville Goodwin for my answer, and I felt very grateful to Melville Goodwin.

  “I told him let’s cut out the horsefeathers,” I said, “and if he didn’t like me, I had another job, and in the future I’d like to deal with him more closely personally. No reflection on you, Gilbert.”

  “I always knew,” Gilbert Frary said, “that George would think you were a lovely person if he really sat around a table with you.”

  We both knew exactly where we were with each other, although I knew that neither of us would put it into words. Gilbert still looked at me sadly, but there was a quality of respect in his sadness which he had never displayed before. He must have been ashamed that he had not foreseen the possibility that I would go straight over his head to the sponsor, but it was too late for him to do anything about it now.

  “It’s a pity you never wanted me to talk to George,” I said.

  “But, Sidney,” Gilbert answered, “I’ve always thought of you as an artist, to be protected. I always thought that you basically disliked business and did not understand it as an artist. I know differently now.”

  Yes, he certainly knew differently now, but I felt no thrill of victory, because I did basically dislike business, and now we had reached the business side of the conference. Gilbert’s glance sharpened, a contrast to his previous careworn look.

  “Now, Sidney,” he said, “after this misunderstanding, what is it that will make you happy? Let us sit down and talk this over frankly as we always have, Sidney.”

  We each sat down in a Francis I chair and watched each other very carefully, but before we could get down to facts, the door of the sanctuary opened. It was Miss Hamilton, Gilbert Frary’s secretary, who looked very much like my own Miss Maynard, except that Miss Hamilton was a brunette. Miss Hamilton had made a mistake in opening the door without knocking or, in fact, in opening the door at all, and Gilbert needed to be cross with someone, as he could not be cross with me.

  “Netta, darling,” he said to Miss Hamilton, “on top of everything else, must you interrupt me? I said I must not be disturbed.”

  There was venom in his voice, and I was sorry for Miss Hamilton.

  “It’s for Mr. Skelton,” Miss Hamilton said. “Miss Maynard has brought an army officer in to see Mr. Skelton, and he’s outside now. He would have come in himself if I hadn’t. I’m frightfully sorry, Mr. Frary.”

  “Who?” Gilbert Frary asked. “What officer?”

  “His name is General Gooch,” Miss Hamilton said. “He says he comes from the General Staff in Washington.”

  “You’ll have to tell him I’m in an important conference,” I began, but I knew that no civilian conference was important to General Gooch. I knew it before I had finished speaking, because General Gooch himself had entered Gilbert Frary’s sanctum.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he said. General Gooch was in his uniform, wearing the sunburst of the General Staff. He looked at the tapestry behind Gilbert’s refectory table, then he looked at Gilbert and finally at me. “I’ve got a plane waiting and the boss wants to see you in Washington before six o’clock.”

  “What boss?” I asked.

  “God damn it,” General Gooch said, “the Chief’s office, and we’ve got to step on it, Sid.”

  “Why didn’t you telephone me?” I asked.

  “I’ve been trying all morning,” General Gooch said. “They wouldn’t put me through.”

  I could not blame Gilbert Frary for the way he looked. It was a new experience to him, as it was to me, and General Gooch had obviously forgotten that the war was over.

  “Do you know Mr. Frary, General Gooch?” I said, to remind him that the war was over.

  “How do you do? I’m sorry to interrupt you gentlemen in this way,” General Gooch said, “but there’s been a God-damned lot of horsefeathering around here, and I know Mr. Skelton will understand.”

  It was that beautiful complacency of the army, and it touched me that General Gooch considered me as a part of it and knew that I would understand.

  “What’s the matter, Goochy?” I asked. It was perfectly all right at this point to call him Goochy.

  “It’s all fouled the hell up,” General Gooch said. “It’s about you-know-who, our mutual friend, and I suggested to the boss he’d better see you. It’s highly delicate and highly personal. I hope this gentleman will excuse us.”

  He looked at Gilbert Frary as if he were waiting for him to withdraw.

  “Listen, Goochy,” I said, “I can’t do that. I have to broadcast at seven o’clock.”

  “Oh, Jesus—” General Gooch began, but I stopped him.

  “Now wait a minute,” I said. “I’ll go down with you afterwards. You’ll have to go back to that room of mine and telephone. I’ll leave here with you at seven-fifteen, and that’s the best I can do.”

  General Gooch and I stood there for a second, each trying to stare the other down, and I wanted to ask him another question, but it was not the time or place.

  “All right,” General Gooch said, “I’ll do what I can with it. Come on, sister.” He nodded to Miss Hamilton, and they both left the inner sanctum.

  It was almost as though the ceiling had fallen to put an end to our discussion, and it w
as too much to expect that either Gilbert Frary or I should be able to adjust ourselves to it casually.

  “Sidney,” Gilbert Frary asked me, “who is that man?”

  “He’s an acquaintance of mine,” I said. “Don’t bother about him now. He’s gone, Gilbert.”

  “I don’t see how he ever succeeded in arriving here,” Gilbert said.

  “I guess he just barged in,” I said. “Never mind it now.”

  “But he says he has a plane waiting,” Gilbert Frary said.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I don’t understand it either, but never mind it, Gilbert.”

  “When I first met you I never dreamed that you had important military connections,” Gilbert Frary said.

  “That’s all right,” I said, “I never knew it either.”

  “Can you tell me why they want you?” Gilbert Frary asked.

  “No,” I said, “but it isn’t anything personal, Gilbert. It’s something that has happened to somebody else.”

  “I wish we could use it,” Gilbert Frary said.… “Some pictures of you boarding the plane. Don’t you think it would help the program build-up?”

  “No,” I said. “This is very private, Gilbert.”

  Gilbert Frary sighed.

  “You have so many lovely connections, Sidney,” he said, “that sometimes I have to pinch myself to be sure that I’m awake.”

  “That’s right,” I said, “I have a few connections.”

  Perhaps it was just as well in the future for Gilbert to think of me as an enigmatic character, and he had certainly pinched himself since I had seen Burtheimer in Chicago.

  “I wish you would sound more friendly,” Gilbert said. “It hurts me, Sidney, if we are not on a warm, confidential basis.”

  “I’m being friendly,” I said.

  Gilbert sighed again, but we both knew where we were.

  “Where were we in our conversation,” he asked, “before this interruption?”

  “You wanted to make me happy,” I said.

  “That’s what hurts me,” Gilbert Frary said. “Since the very beginning of our association, Sidney, I have always been working for your happiness. If I have been overzealous or unintelligent, it was enthusiasm, Sidney, not lack of integrity.”

  “You mean,” I asked him, “you’ve been thinking of me selflessly day and night?”

  “Yes,” Gilbert answered, “absolutely, without a trace of ambiguity, Sidney.”

  There were polite ways of handling such a problem, as long as we both knew where we were and understood that there was iron beneath the velvet glove.

  “I always love to admit it when I’m wrong,” I said. “I never should have thought you were trying to run out on me. Can you forgive my suspicious nature, Gilbert?”

  “Sidney,” Gilbert said, “I love you for saying that. It’s so absolutely like you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. “Now let’s see how I can be happy.”

  “But that is all I want,” Gilbert said. “Sidney, just name anything.”

  It was time to get tough, but there was still the velvet glove.

  “While this contract lasts,” I said, “I’ll negotiate all program problems personally with the sponsor instead of going through you. Perhaps we’d better put it in writing, Gilbert.”

  “Sidney,” Gilbert began, “this is so unnecessary. Between friends, a gentlemanly agreement.”

  “A gentlemanly agreement between friends in writing,” I said.

  Gilbert had an air of noble resignation.

  “George and I only want to have you happy. What else, Sidney?” he asked.

  The time had come to lay it on the line.

  “The next thing,” I said. “You throw this Alan Featherbee the hell out of this shop.”

  Gilbert laughed. It was a tragic, broken laugh.

  “Excuse me, Sidney,” he said, “but this is so completely ludicrous. To think that this individual should have been the basis of our trouble. Why didn’t you speak to me about him earlier? I only ask you, why?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m speaking about him now.”

  Gilbert spoke gently and soothingly.

  “If it gives you a moment’s mental ease, Sidney,” he said. “And what else?”

  “I want loyalty from the bottom up”—I was grateful to Mel Goodwin for this, too. “I want you to fire Art Hertz and let me get my own writer.”

  “I love it when you speak frankly, Sidney,” Gilbert said. “You see so much more clearly than I do. Of course that man has been intriguing between us. We won’t let him spoil our friendship, will we? Subconsciously I’ve always distrusted Art Hertz.”

  “And while we’re on the subject, Miss Maynard had better go, too,” I said.

  Gilbert thought for a moment and then he smiled brightly.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what we’ll do,” he said. “I’ll take Miss Maynard and you can have Miss Hamilton. You’ll love Miss Hamilton.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want to love Miss Hamilton. I only want to love you, Gilbert.”

  “All I can ask is that single monosyllabic question,” Gilbert said. “Why? Why didn’t you take up all of this with me long ago, Sidney?”

  I arose from my Francis I chair. The interview was over, and I shook hands with Gilbert, but I felt no personal triumph.

  “It was all a great mistake,” I said. “I hadn’t realized how valuable they thought I was in Chicago—but I love you, Gilbert.” Love would always be different in the show business from other forms of love.

  That hypocritical scene had given me a position and a security that I did not personally admire or covet, and if it had not been for Helen and Camilla, I knew that I would never have exerted myself. I was right back in the old groove again. My voice was with me still, and brains were unnecessary again, but at least I had shown a flash of latent business instinct, and things would be simpler now. I had gained in what Gilbert Frary would have called stature.

  Melville Goodwin was beside me invisibly when I left Gilbert Frary’s office and walked down the corridor past the gray and gold ushers. His methods of procedure had been a galvanizing force to me in that unpleasant interview, and I was indebted to him for a new sense of security. I could even understand what had made me casual and unambitious in the past. Instinctively I had disliked security. I knew this now that I had attained it. I was finally tied down and hemmed in, because this was what my wife wanted, and perhaps security was what any woman most wanted. It was different with Melville Goodwin. I had seen him at the moment when he had attained his own security, and there had been no surrender. I might tell myself that he lacked my sensitiveness or the sort of imagination that instilled fear, but still I envied him with every step I took down that soundproofed, air-conditioned corridor. I still wished to escape from everything around me, but it was too late now. I was a piece of property now, and we had even talked of television in Chicago. Some day soon it would not only be my voice but my face, and those damned double-breasted suits, and my personal charm of manner, that would be a part of the property. George had come across with a lot of good ideas back there in Chicago. I could not escape from any of it because I was not the man that Melville Goodwin was. I had not the requisite self-belief.

  Back in my own office I was conscious of Miss Maynard’s avid curiosity, but there was no reason to discuss the future with her. Miss Maynard had bet on the wrong horse, and so had Art Hertz, and she would know what the score was in a very little while. It would all be out on the studio grapevine that there had been a shake-up and that Mr. Frary was not feeling very well.

  “That general,” she said—“I mean General Gooch—is waiting for you inside, and he’s had me put through two telephone calls to Washington. I hope it’s what you wanted, Mr. Skelton. Miss Hamilton told me it was what you wanted.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Thanks, Miss Maynard.”

  She watched me anxiously, striving to read the future. There was no reason to feel sorry for Miss May
nard. She would be assigned elsewhere in the studio.

  “I’m frightfully sorry about his bursting in on you and Mr. Frary while you were in conference,” Miss Maynard said. “I never dreamed he would do such a thing and neither did Miss Hamilton.”

  “I don’t see how you could have stopped him,” I told her.

  “Mr. Hertz has been asking for you,” Miss Maynard said. “He wants to know when you would care to see the script.”

  “Tell him in half an hour,” I told her.

  I wanted to put those inevitable details away from me as far as possible, and I was glad that I could escape from them vicariously through the antics of Melville Goodwin. General Gooch was in my office looking sourly at the blown-up photographs around the wall, and it occurred to me that I would not have to tolerate those pictures any longer. I could remove the whole lot of them, and I could have Helen redecorate the whole place, and Gilbert Frary would not have a word to say about it.

  “Say, Sid,” General Gooch said, “is that you riding on that elephant?”

  “That was a tiger hunt in India,” I told him.

  “Jesus,” General Gooch said, “I didn’t know you rated elephants. Mel never told me about these pictures.”

  I told him that Melville Goodwin had never been here. I tried to explain to him that the photographs were not my fault or my idea. They were my problem, I told him, but what was his problem?

  “That’s me on the elephant,” I said, “but what are you doing in here looking at it, Goochy?”

  “This place looks as though there might be some liquor around,” General Gooch said. “I could do with a shot of bourbon if it’s all the same to you. Jesus, what a day, boy, what a day!”

  When Miss Maynard brought the ice and glasses, his reactions were similar to those of Robert Goodwin.

  “That’s really a very nicely stacked up gal,” General Gooch said, “Boy, I need this drink.”

  He drank his whisky neat. He did not need the ice and water. He explained that he had picked up the habit when he was stationed at Bliss. It was a great place, Bliss. During prohibition all you had to do was to cross the bridge into Mexico and you could get anything you wanted, because everything was wide open in Juárez. I could not understand why a description of Juárez was necessary at the moment, but it did not seem advisable to interrupt him, although I began to be afraid that he might be reminded of some good stories about Juárez.