“Oh, Gregory, I’d love it.”
“So would I.” He grinned at her.
“I wonder how long it takes.”
“Hy and his wife did it once in four days and four nights spelling each other at the wheel. But they knocked themselves out and never saw anything but the white line and the filling stations.”
Abby shook her head disapprovingly. “Me, I’d like to take eight days and eight nights.”
“Me too. Mosey along and take all sorts of side trips.” They looked at each other solemnly. “I bet the Grand Canyon is really astonishing in the flesh.”
“People say no matter how many pictures you’ve seen beforehand, you can scarcely believe it when you’re right there on the Rim.”
Again they looked at each other. Then Gregory said, “Abby, let’s do it.”
Abby was not a wife who says, “Do what?” or “You mean, buy a car and drive home?” Instead, she gave a little jump on the bed, like a child, and said, “Oh, darling, let’s!”
“We said we’d buy a car at home, what’s the use of waiting?”
“Could we get one right away? Is there any shortage? What kind will we get? Won’t we have to buy one of those canvas water bags they hang over the radiator when they go into the desert?”
Gregory laughed. “Hold everything; let’s see. We’re through here Tuesday, April fifth, and publication day is the twentieth. We could do it easily; we could take ten days if we felt like it.”
“The train takes three and Hat certainly can go on alone for another week. Oh, Gregory, have we a road map somewhere?”
“Nothing but California. No Arizona, no New Mexico, no Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming—lord, the names themselves! I wonder what route we’d take.”
“Let’s get a map now and see. Let’s go out and find a gas station that has big maps.”
He shot out his wrist, but said, “We wouldn’t sleep anyway,” before he looked at his watch.
Abby was already getting into her dress again. “What kind of car do you think?”
“Well, I’m sort of used to the Ford.”
“A Ford would be fine. Oh, Gregory, it’s lovely we’re going to do it. I can’t wait to tell Thorn and Cindy—”
They looked at each other without saying anything. A moment went by. Then Gregory said, “They’d rather fly.” And Abby said, “I’m sure they would.”
Two days later, if Gregory and Abby Johns had been standing on their balcony, looking down and beyond the hotel’s blue-tiled swimming pool and bright deck chairs and umbrellas to the geranium-banked parking area, they would have found themselves gazing at the first automobile they had ever owned.
It had been delivered Thursday afternoon and Gregory was at the studio with Hy, but the moment Abby telephoned to say the Ford had arrived, he became useless for truly creative collaboration. A few minutes later, Hy shoved back from the desk and said, “For Pete’s sake, get out of here and go take a drive in it.”
“Nothing doing.”
“Go on. You’re worse than a starlet with her first diamond ring.”
Gregory phoned for a taxi—Thorn was over in Culver City with the Buick—and asked the driver to hurry. At the hotel, the doorman told him, needlessly, where to find Abby. Gregory met his wife on the front seat, kissed her roundly, and grabbed the ignition keys. The loud-speaker at the pool chose this moment to say it was paging Mr. Johns.
“It’s for Thorn,” Gregory said, and inserted the key. “Look at the mileage. Zero, zero, zero, zero, eight. That’s new.”
“It smells new! I’ve been sitting here smelling it.”
“Mr. Gregory Johns,” the loud-speaker bellowed, and they both groaned.
“Come on then,” Abby said, “whatever it is, you’re too ill to go, aren’t you?”
“I’m dying.”
They raced past the pool and the terrace and into the lobby. At the front desk, the assistant manager said, “This parcel just came in air special. Did you want to see it before your drive?”
“I certainly do,” Gregory said. “Thanks for catching us.”
It was medium in size, oblong, plastered with stamps, and addressed in Ed Barnard’s own handwriting. It could be only one thing. The first one from the bindery.
“Let’s go up a minute,” Gregory said.
“Several letters too,” the assistant manager said, and gave them to Abby. She glanced at them in the elevator; one was from Hat, one from Digby, and one from Mary Zatke. She slipped them into her pocket and followed Gregory down the hall. In the living room, she stood a little apart and let him tear off the wrappings of his parcel.
“Oh, it’s a beauty,” she cried.
Gregory didn’t answer. He held the book on the flat of his hand for a moment and then lifted the cover and turned some pages. They had indeed made a handsome book this time. The paper was clear and heavy, the margins wide, the binding a rough-textured linen, the color of oatmeal. He closed the book and looked at the spine.
THE
GOOD
WORLD
JOHNS
At last, he thought. For months, for years, he had known it only as ideas, as yellow pads, pencils, manuscript, galleys, known it only as phrases, sentences, scenes, chapters, known it only as hopes, fears, discouragement, and hope again, known it only as discussions with Abby, work with Ed, as hours at a desk, hours of pacing, nights of work until he was kneading his fingers to rid them of cramp. Now all that past was gathered up into twelve or sixteen ounces of paper, linen, buckram, thread, and printer’s ink, and there was this swift catch in his heart.
He remembered Abby and gave her the book. She looked at the title page, the dedication page, the opening of Chapter One. She began to read, but he did not read with her. A sample, a snatch here and there—no. He would wait until he could settle down to the one thing he had never yet done—read it without a pencil in his hand.
A line on one of the turning pages, “Owen Barlowe knew the tenacity of pain,” had caught at him, and for no reason he could name, it stayed on in his mind. He left Abby and walked into their bedroom. Abruptly, precipitantly, Gregory Johns lost all interest in the studio. He wished he need not go back tomorrow, that there weren’t another ten days before they could pack and start East. He wanted to be back in the world of Ed Barnard and publication day and a book review in his paper every morning and new work before him on his own desk; all at once the very vocabulary of picture-making bored him. We fade in, we pan to, we dissolve, to—it was foreign to him still, it would always be foreign; the camera trucks back, the angle widens, Owen Barlowe rises, Owen Barlowe walks, Owen Barlowe faces his opponent, the present tense, always the present tense, always action, speech, gesture. You could not offer the great cameras with their waving cranes, like thrusting antennae of monstrous one-eyed insects—you could not offer them a sentence which said, “Owen Barlowe knew the tenacity of pain.” Out here you were always strapped into the straitjacket of the external. The test of everything was, “Will it play?”
Well, why not? Gregory Johns asked himself harshly. It is the test for the movies. It’s the test for the theater too. The curtain rises, the curtain falls—they’re in the present tense too, and stage right, stage left, are no less alien to me than fade and cut and dissolve. What am I getting so fancy about?
He felt better at once and went back to Abby. She was still reading and he said, “Let’s see the letters.”
“Heavens, I forgot.” She fished the three letters from her pocket, gave him Luther Digby’s, and said, “Hat’s written a big one at last.”
“Fifty!” Gregory said an instant later. “Good Lord.”
She paused over the flap of her letter and looked up. Gregory was laughing. “Digby says the fifty extra copies Thorn ordered are coming parcel post and should get here in time.”
“Fifty—what for?”
“Autographs. Thorn told me he was sending for a few extra copies for me to sign before we left. A few—quote, close quote.”
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bsp; Abby didn’t find it funny. “And we pay for them?”
He nodded, and waved his letter in the air. “Digby has decided to give me ten free copies this time instead of the usual six. It shows you what a publisher can afford with fifty-two thousand dollars of book-club money.”
This time Abby smiled. “Are you going to sign all fifty?”
“Well, I could get Thorn to do them for me. Nobody out here knows my signature.” He struck a pose. “To Louella, with all admiration and love from Gregory,” he intoned. “To beautiful Jill in memory of—”
“Stop it!”
The telephone bell rang and Abby answered it. “A person-to-person call from New York City, New York,” the operator said primly. “Mr. James Hathaway for Mr. Thornton Johns. Is Mr. Thornton Johns there, please?”
Abby was helpful about where Mr. Thornton Johns could be reached, and drew Hat’s bulky letter from its envelope. In a moment she whispered, “Gregory.” He saw her face, tossed Digby’s letter aside, and reached for the page she had just finished.
“The most unbelievable thing has happened,” it began, “I’m really in love for the first time in my life. I’m not being silly and you needn’t worry, but boys like Tim Murton really are too adolescent and crummy and this is so glorious! Last week I met the older brother of a friend of Tim’s who’s just as adolescent as Tim, the friend I mean, and then in walked his older brother, and after about an hour, he dated me right under their noses. His name is Patrick King and he’s grown up and sophisticated with the most beautiful manners and you will be crazy about him when you meet him and he will be too. He went to Princeton and dances divinely and is as tall as Dad and he’s in the theater and it’s the first time in my whole life—”
It went on for six pages. Abby finished first and began at once on Mary Zatke’s. Silently, Gregory followed her example; her instinct had been correct. Mary was writing about Hat, and her first sentence was blessedly to the point.
“Hat said she was writing you,” Mary began, “but she may not say I’m chaperoning her to death. I’m being totally ‘un-understanding,’ and the door to your apartment stays open when they’re in there. Hat hates me, but you won’t—”
Mary had made some discreet inquiries and could supply certain details Hat had ignored. Hat had been fed earfuls of Hollywood reports by Thorn Junior and Fred, and she had just happened to be describing the plastic ice party to Tim and his friend, when Patrick King put in his appearance. The Bogarts and Joan Crawford and Danny Kaye and Jill Goodwyn were all tossed in airily as friends of the family, with no mention of the minor point that her own parents had never met them. Patrick King was twenty-seven, and, apart from summer stock, had been unable to get a part in any play for over a year. So fascinated had he been by Hat’s every word that she had lost her head and spilled all the arithmetic of Gregory’s picture deal, including a three-thousand-dollar weekly salary. Then Hat had remembered that she just happened to have some Winchell and Lyons and Ed Sullivan clippings in her purse.
Here, Mary had pasted a half-inch of type to the page.
Gregory Johns, whose “Good Worlds” is the current Book-of-the-Month is currently in Hollywood trying to persuade his close personal friend, Jill Goodwyn, to accept the lead in his film.
“One other thing I don’t like much,” Mary Zatke ended, “is that Hat seems to be cutting classes at Hunter pretty consistently. But that’s a different sort of worry. On your major one, I believe there’s no immediate nonsense to fear. I have now met this unemployed Adonis three times, and my hunch is that if you ever do decide to break it off until Hat gets a little perspective, you could just quietly arrange a screen test in Hollywood and watch his dust.”
By the time Gregory came to the end, Abby was reading Hat’s letter once more. He picked up only the last page of it; as before, two sentences seemed to leap out at him. He read them a second time, and once again felt a jump of alarm jar every nerve.
“Pat and Hat! Isn’t that just too neat, the way our names pair up?”
The door was flung open and Thorn came in exuberantly. At the telephone, Abby was saying, “—but what about tomorrow’s flights? Yes, I’ll wait.” She glanced up and absently said, “Hello, Thorn,” and returned to the telephone.
“By George,” Thorn said, beaming. “It looks as if Metro will go for Horn of Plenty, it really does. We even talked price this time—around fifty is all, but we better grab it, fast, because this whole town is scared limp by the slump and television and the Red cleanup—” He stopped uncertainly. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you interested?”
“Yes, sure, of course,” Gregory said. “But half an hour ago—
“I’m not quitting on Partial Eclipse either. Where’s Cindy? Good God, if Metro can lick a story about a crippled old woman—” He slapped his thigh. “I knew if I could just talk Jill into it—she has one commitment a year there. I read parts of it aloud to her—don’t mention that to Cindy—she’d misunderstand. ‘A change of pace, a dramatic role,’ I said. ‘Look what Livvie did with Snake Pit,’ I kept saying. Once Jill even switched the talk to insurance, an extra policy she said”—Thorn’s tone took on a hint of nobility—“but I switched her right back to Horn of Plenty.”
“Hello,” Abby said impatiently to the telephone, “hello? I think they’ve cut me off.”
Gregory crossed the room and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t make an actual reservation, Abby, until we get our call through to Hat or Mary.”
“We can always cancel.”
Thorn’s exuberance vanished. “What happened to Hat? Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t catch at first. I—”
Into the phone, Abby said eagerly, “Yes, I’m still here.” She jotted numbers and words down rapidly, said, “Picked up by when? Nine tonight? Yes, thanks again,” and hung up. She turned to Gregory. “I’m flying back tomorrow no matter what Hat and Mary say. I have to be there. I’d never forgive—”
“What’s wrong?” Thorn said. “Tell me, for God’s sake. Is Hat sick? Is she hurt?”
“No,” Gregory said. “She’s gone and fallen for a guy who looks pretty bad stuff—”
“Is that all?” Thorn said heartily. “She’ll be all right. She’s probably a bit haywire for the time, sure, the way my boys are.” He shook his head sadly. “Kids are gluttons for fame and publicity. They all want to be hot-shots.”
Gregory opened his mouth and then closed it. The telephone bell rang and Abby leaped for it. A moment later she said, “It’s Jim Hathaway, Thorn. Did he get you at Metro?”
“No.” He took the phone and shouted, “Hello, James, my boy. I was going to call you later on. What’s with you?”
Thorn’s face grew quiet as he listened, then pleased. “Why, the stuffed shirts,” he said once and listened again. Abby looked at her watch twice and Gregory said quietly, “Easy, darling. They said she’d be out an hour.”
“Hat may have come in.”
“We’ll try the minute Thorn’s off.”
Thorn was saying, “Now let me tell you something.” He began excitedly about Horn of Plenty and was again discussing what Jill could learn from Livvie and Snake Pit when the door opened; with skillful transition he was instantly talking price, the spread of payments, and the possible separation of rights.
Cindy had entered, followed by a pageboy bearing two large packages. “I hoped you’d be home, Abby,” she screamed happily, hardly glancing at Thorn and at Gregory. “Wait till you see the evening dresses I got. No alterations. Did you know Saks out here will let you charge to your New York account? The funniest thing happened about it. I started to give my name—”
Across the room Thorn said, “Cindy, for God’s sake, I’m on the phone.”
“—to give my name the way our Saks has it, ‘Mrs. G. T. Johns.’ The salesgirl said—right out loud and everybody heard her—she said coyly, ‘Mrs. Thornton Johns, isn’t it?’ Everybody stopped in their tracks and stared and whispered and I felt like a movie star!”
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sp; Thorn slammed up the receiver and said, “Damn it, Cindy, you’re the most self-centered—oh, skip it.” He turned excitedly to Gregory and Abby. “What do you think that was about? Jim’s contacts out here have been reporting back to him about things—you know, the lecturing and how we’re doing in general—and Jim began talking a bit too big about pulling off The Good World sale. What happened serves him right.”
Abby rose and went to the phone; Thorn raised his voice to compensate for hers.
“So, his partners began to dig out the facts about Jim signing us up on a contingent basis and charging five thousand dollars instead of three thousand this first year. Their corporate ethics were outraged; they’re returning the extra two thousand to us, and Jim is furious at being slapped down.”
“We’re rich!” Cindy shouted. “Let’s have a drink on it. Abby, get off that phone—we’re calling the bar.”
Suddenly Thorn’s face changed. He looked at Abby’s back apologetically. “God, Gregory, I plumb forgot. I was all steamed up over Metro and then Jim—”
“What about Metro?” Cindy yelled. “More good news? Abby, hurry up.”
Thorn pounded on the table and glared at his wife. “Damn it, forget the bar, can’t you? They’ve had bad news about Hat. Abby’s trying to get her on the phone.”
Cindy’s face changed too. “What bad news?” She went over to Abby, but Abby was talking to the operator, and Cindy wheeled on Gregory. “What happened to Hat?”
As Gregory explained again, she made sounds of sympathy, offering to help in any way she could, sounding worried and reassuring and worried again. As Abby hung up, Cindy rushed over and said, “It’s awful, I know just how you feel. Can I do anything? Anything at all? Oh, Abby, I would take the first plane too.”
Then Cindy stopped short, consternation in her eyes. “You can’t! Your wonderful trip—you can’t give that up.”
“We’re going to, though,” Gregory said. His voice was tired.
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