TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME

by John Dunning

  “I don’t think he’ll talk to me either, Pauline. I’m not high on his list of drinking buddies. But if they’ll let me in, I’ll try.”

  He pushed back his chair. “Come on, I’ll buy you some dinner. I just remembered, I haven’t eaten all day.”

  He took her to the Searchlight, the best place in town, where Harford sometimes ate alone at a private table off in a far corner. Over candlelight and wine she told him of her early days on the London stage and nothing more was said about Griffin or Flack. By ten o’clock he was home again. In the full dark of the night Holly was everywhere. He saw her face no matter where he looked and heard her constantly walking as the house creaked in the wind. Only hard work would give him peace, and he plunged again into his Hitler script and had a draft finished at midnight. Rewrote from scratch and got a fine polish on it to end the day. Two done, two to go. His last act of the night renewed his purpose and let him rest. He gathered his Dark Silver mimeos and burned them with the originals in the fireplace. Had a sharp twinge of loss and felt especially bad for Becky and for Blake. Then, exhausted, he dropped into the empty bed and fell immediately into a deep hard sleep.

  ( ( ( 6 ) ) )

  HE stood in the shower the next morning thinking about his dreams. Pushing at the pieces. Searching for meaning, certain it was there.

  His breakfast was an orange. It was enough . . . any more and he risked getting sleepy, and this was a morning when his mind needed to be sharp.

  He gathered his work together, locked the house, and headed up the beach. Gone were the throngs of people: the sand was white and uncluttered for a Monday morning, the boardwalk strangely deserted, the square and the street beyond it as still as a photograph. He didn’t stop at his rooming house: he pushed on into town, past the street of swing and out along the shore road north. The Harford building loomed up on his left: he could see the Packard parked in its place, bright and shiny as it had first caught his attention the day he arrived. This morning Kidd’s car was parked beside it, but no sign of any other activity and no one visible on the roof. It was still early, not yet eight o’clock: the staff would begin coming in soon, but for now Harford and Kidd were alone in the big empty building, hatching their plans.

  Then as he came past the facade, he saw the sheriff ’s deputy standing at the north wall. Barricades had been put up, with signs warning people to stay away. It was a crime scene now, and suddenly next Wednesday seemed very far away.

  He turned into the dunes. There was nothing to do about it. His only alternative was to cut and run, and where would he go?

  “I need to see Kidd,” he said to Becky. “When do you expect him?”

  “Maybe later this morning. He’s over with the man, worrying about opening week.”

  “It came up on us too fast. Kidd’s been busy putting out brush fires.”

  “Yeah, he knows it, too. He was hoping to have something strong and newsworthy, but that ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Who knows what might happen?”

  She looked at him almost breathlessly. She had heard that tone before.

  “I think we can go with the prison camp stuff.”

  She took in the breath, like a plunge into cold water. “I don’t know whether I hope you’re kidding or serious.”

  “I’ve got two finished scripts for you. The Boer script is the third, and I think I can have the fourth finished by the end of the day. That gives me a couple of days to get the fifth worked out. But I want Kidd to read these two and let me know.”

  He gave her the scripts. “This is going to be a producer’s nightmare. Five shows in five days. You’ll need lots more voices than we’ve got here.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get them.” She nodded. “I’ll get them.”

  “Rick Gary can help you. He knows everybody in New York.”

  “Zylla’s the one I worry about. Wait’ll I tell him I need five musical scores by next week.”

  “He’ll be fine, he thrives on work. But we’ll have to get cracking. Get him into it as soon as Kidd gives us the okay.”

  He walked up through the quiet building and let himself into his office. For a time he sat still, looking at all the little things she had done for him, thinking of the life he might have had here if things had been different. Then he pushed away the sentiment and was back with his boys in Andersonville.

  He had decided to abandon the idea of a split show. That would make it far more difficult and he didn’t have time for the finer points of theme. No one but himself would know the difference.

  He had already done much of it, and now he needed only to expand it and write the closing scene, then do a quick rewrite. He had been working for an hour when his phone rang. “It’s me,” said Becky, just above a whisper. “I’m over at the office building. Harford and Kidd are in the other room reading your scripts. I’ll tell you this, Jordan, they are bowled over by the concept. You know how Kidd is—he never shows anything. When I told him you’d have five shows in five days I thought he’d faint. I’ll be surprised if they don’t bow and worship at your lower extremities. Just my opinion, for what it’s worth.”

  At eleven, one of the salesmen from the bullpen knocked on his door. The receptionist was looking for him. He had a visitor down in the lobby.

  The sheriff.

  ( ( ( 7 ) ) )

  THEY walked out into the parking lot. The sheriff was keen eyed and wilier than he expected, but for the moment there were only a few questions.

  “I understand it was Miss O’Hara who followed Griffin into the woods.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “And you found them there because you were looking for her, not him.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were alarmed because she hadn’t shown up for work, is that right?”

  “Yes, she had been missing all night.”

  “How’d you know where to look?”

  He stopped and put his foot on the running board of the sheriff ’s car. “Maybe you remember,” he said; “she came here looking for her father.”

  “I do remember that. I didn’t place her, though, till you just mentioned it. She looked a lot different then. I believe she even suspected at one point that Mr. Harford had something to do with her old man’s disappearance.”

  “And maybe Mr. Griffin as well.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Something her father had written her. I’m not sure exactly what.”

  “But this—whatever he wrote her—made her think of Griffin?”

  “It made her wonder. And when I couldn’t find her anywhere, it made me wonder. Then I talked to Mrs. Flack and learned that Griffin was also missing. That’s what set me off.”

  “And you tracked them all that way through the woods. That’s damn good tracking, son.”

  “I was raised in the woods.”

  “Uh-huh.” The sheriff turned and spat a wad of tobacco into the sand. “Where exactly is Miss O’Hara right now?”

  “I’m not sure. She left town on Thursday. I don’t know where she went.”

  “Isn’t that kinda strange? I hear you two were close.”

  “It looks like that’s over now.” He shrugged. “We broke up. That’s how it goes, you know. You can’t tell about people.”

  “But you’re still living in her house.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I keep hoping she’ll come back. But her rent’s due on the fifteenth. If she’s not back here by then . . .”

  “Then what? . . . You’re not planning to leave town too, are you, son?”

  “Not hardly. I’ve got too much going for me here. I only meant that I’ll have to let the place go, that’s all.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I guess that makes sense. And if you do happen to hear from her, tell her I want to talk to her.”

  “Sure.”

  “And listen, I’d appreciate it if you don’t leave town without lettin’ me know. I may want to talk to you again when I get that wall dug up.”
<
br />   ( ( ( 8 ) ) )

  CALMLY he went back to work. He forced everything else from his mind. There was no sheriff, no Griffin, no Harford or Kidd. Only the job and its payoff a week from Wednesday.

  He finished his script. Sat quietly at his desk and thought about the next one.

  He thought about Bataan and what must be happening there, and in a while he saw the shape of a story. But at its heart it was the same story he had written about the Nazis. The people were different, but raw brutality as a dramatic device loses its charm quickly.

  Becky checked in. He gave her the Andersonville and she left without saying whatever she had come in to say. Always the good producer, ready to protect him when he was working, even when no words were getting written.

  No one disturbed him. He knew that somewhere Kidd would be reading his Andersonville, but this was like the other things he knew without thinking, and it didn’t matter.

  At times he sat half asleep; then he’d open his eyes, to write notes as fast as they’d come. But something was always wrong and he’d cast away what he’d written and again sit quiet, hunting for the random thought or the piece of color . . . anything to get him started in the right direction.

  His hero must be an American boy captured on Bataan. He closed his eyes and the kid he saw was Tom, and suddenly he had it, a story wrapped so completely in character that the brutality of the background faded to nothing.

  He would write an alternate story of Holly and Tom, the way it should have been. It would unfold in a Japanese concentration camp on Bataan.

  Tom would survive. As it should have been.

  He and Holly would marry, as they should have done. A whirlwind courtship in the spring of 1941, cut short by the specter of war. Tom had joined the army, not the navy, and was in uniform when they met that day, on a train in New York.

  No Jack Dulaney in this alternate world: his own role neatly omitted, the spoiler blipped out, canceled, denied existence.

  When they married, in the spring of ’41, Tom’s best friends were fellow doughboys, standing at attention in uniform. Holly’s sister, who hadn’t drowned in the lake at all, would be maid of honor.

  Three weeks after the wedding, Tom’s outfit shipped out for the Philippines, as part of MacArthur’s plan to discourage Japanese aggression. We know how well that worked now.

  All those boys. What are they going through tonight?

  Whatever it was, Tom would survive it. Her face would sustain him, this woman he had known less than a month. It would end on a note of hope, with a promise implied. The war is still there to be won, but the tide is turning, and Tom will live to see her again.

  This was enough for now. He would let it simmer overnight and work off the sentimental edges tomorrow in the writing.

  He locked his door and Becky Hart appeared, as if she’d been waiting in the hall all afternoon. “How’d it go?”

  “It’s a little rough,” he said. “I think it’ll be okay.”

  “Good. Kidd would like to see you before you leave.”

  “Well, Jordan. It’s a big scary project you’ve given us.”

  Kidd motioned him in. There was a tension in the room and it all seemed to come from Kidd’s side of the desk. As if suddenly Kidd was afraid of him.

  “This puts our beliefs to the test, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing radio must do, but I’m not kidding when I say it’s scary. We are going to get incredible heat for that Japanese script.”

  “I can cut it back if it’s too strong.”

  “No, it’s got to be strong if we’re going to do it at all. Besides, Harford would boil us in oil if we changed it.”

  A moment passed. “No, we’re in it now,” Kidd said.

  Kidd looked away, searching his desk for something. He pulled out next week’s schedule and Jordan could see that the nine o’clock hour had been cleared for each of the five weekday nights.

  “My only second thought has to do with the order of the episodes,” Kidd said. “I’d like to move the Boers up to Tuesday and do Andersonville on Wednesday. Bump the American Japs back to Thursday, and maybe that’ll give us some quick relief with your Bataan script. If we seem to be Jap lovers on Thursday, we’ll kick their asses on Friday. You see what I mean?”

  Jordan saw what he meant, and still he felt an irrational sense of loss. Now, as far as his own involvement went, his Nisei would join two others in the trash. But for his purpose—for the Boers—sooner was much better than later, even a day.

  Kidd sensed his hesitation. “If you feel strongly about the original order, we can leave it. It’s your series.”

  “No, your changes are fine. Whatever strong feelings I’ve got, I put ’em in the script.”

  Kidd asked about the closing script. Jordan promised it by Wednesday.

  “We’ve got a lot of decisions to make,” Kidd said. “I’m going to call a special staff meeting Wednesday morning. Get some idea who might be involved with which scripts. Then we’ll know who we need.”

  “I’d like Miss Hart to produce it. The whole series.”

  “Are you sure? That’s a big job you’re putting on her.”

  “I think she’s up to it. She’s certainly earned a chance.”

  “All right, if that’s what you want. What are your thoughts about directing? I know you’ll want to do them all, but I don’t see how that’s possible. You’ve still got a colored show on Friday and another next week.”

  “I can do the first two without any problem. The Boer script will be good experience, directing something that’s not mine. How about Maitland for Wednesday and Friday?”

  “I’ll tell him right away. We’ll get the scripts up to mimeo and he can have the Andersonville first thing in the morning.”

  Jordan got up to leave.

  “One last thing,” Kidd said. “I can’t let you go without saying thanks. Thank you for this wonderful thing.”

  Kidd smiled uneasily. “You have a brilliant future, Jordan.”

  “Thank you, sir. That’s good to hear.”

  ( ( ( 9 ) ) )

  HE walked alone down the beach. Passed the office building, where the diggers had begun their work. Saw the sheriff standing off to one side, smoking, talking with the man from the Beachcomber. As he walked away he felt the pinpricks of surveillance on his back. He climbed to the boardwalk, went past the pier and on past the square to the end. Stood there for a long time, leaning over the rail, staring out to sea. He was still there an hour later when Rue came upon him from somewhere off in the town.

  “Hey, stranger. Want some company?”

  He said, “Sure,” but he wasn’t sure at all.

  “You look so alone and heartbroken, Jordan. Like a man whose friends have all died on the same day.”

  He laughed. “Well, you’re alive. And still my friend, I hope.”

  She tried to put an arm over his shoulder but came up short and settled for an arm in an arm. “Once again you are the subject of wild rumors, Jordie. The word’s spreading like a fire about your big project next week.”

  “There’ll be some things in it for you, I think.”

  “That’ll be great. But I’m not here to hit you up for work. Honest—I was just out walking and here you were.”

  “Where’s Jimmy?”

  “Went home to see his mother before they take him off to war. Someplace exotic called Boise, Idaho. God knows where it is.” She sighed. “I guess we’re finished. I don’t know, I’m sure it’s all my fault. I’m such a bitch, as you pointed out.”

  “But you’re a damned pretty bitch, and under it you’ve got a good heart.”

  “Don’t let that part get around. It’ll ruin my reputation.”

  After a while she said, “We heard you and Miss O’Hara broke up too. This seems to be the month for it.”

  “People talk way too much in this town,” he said gruffly.

  “Oh, don’t be an old bear. If people gossip about you it can mean only one of two things—they either lo
ve you or hate you. We care about you, Jordan. Nobody should be alone. Especially when you don’t have to be.”

  He felt a warning alarm go off in his mind. “Listen, Rue . . .”

  She pinched his arm. “At ease, Jordan, I’m not here to pick you up. Not that I’m above it, but right now I can’t.”

  He grinned at her, relieved. “Some sudden disability?”

  “Laugh, you bastard, but this is serious. Livia’s in love with you.”

  Now he did laugh.

  “I’m not kidding. She is gone, hopeless, beyond crazy.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “All right, but don’t say I didn’t tell you. And please, don’t say I did, either. I’m betraying a huge confidence here, but I believe people should know such things.”

  “Well,” he said softly, “your secret is safe with me.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t do something about it, for Christ’s sake.”

  “What do you expect me to do? She’s never given me a hint . . .”

  “Of course not. That’s not her style. But I’m her best friend and she tells me things she’d never broadcast on the radio. You can trust me on this, Jordan. I only hope you’ve got enough sense to know what to do with it.”

  He said nothing.

  “Just drop in on her. You don’t have to fall right into bed with each other, just play it by ear. I happen to know she’ll be home tonight.”

  He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why not? Don’t you like her?”

  “Of course I like her. That’s the point.”

  “What point? Do you still think I’m making this up? I’m sure it’s hard to believe, that someone as wonderful as she is could love a moody and unpredictable fool like yourself. So she’s got a blind spot . . . so what? She is the best person I know, the absolute best. You’d be the luckiest man alive if you could get her, and look at you, you can’t even see your own good luck when it stares you in the face.”

  Suddenly she was impatient. She scribbled something on a small notepad and shoved the paper in his pocket. “There, goddammit, that’s where I live. Now you go see Livia, and if she’s not totally thrilled, you can come back and see me. You won’t get an offer like that every day, Jordan.”