The voice stopped suddenly and so did I. Four or five girls, standing in smocks behind easels, turned to look at me. I don’t remember even seeing them.
The only thing I did see was a nude model standing on a small platform at the front of the class. I stood there with my jaw hanging. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked girl. I didn’t know whether to go or stay and if I did know I doubt that I would have been able to do either; I was frozen to the spot.
“Close the door and sit down, Stephen, you’re creating a draft,” my Aunt Prue’s voice came sarcastically from the front of the room next to the model. “Class will be over in a few minutes.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The night was warm and filled with good things. I rolled over on my back and looked up at Nancy. She was sitting against the headboard of the bed, her knees drawn up against her chest. In the dim light I could see the light and dark of her flesh where the bikini had covered her from the sun. The reefer glowed for a moment and I could see the somber introspection on her face.
“Don’t be greedy,” I said. “Share the wealth.” I took the reefer from her fingers and dragged on it. The good things came even better.
She took it back from me. I held the smoke inside me as long as I could, then I let it out slowly and rolled over, burying my face in her soft fur. I breathed deeply of the woman smell of her.
“That does it for me,” I said. “More than all the pot put together.”
She twisted my hair in her hands and turned my face up to her. She looked at me for a long time. I don’t know what she tried to see there, but when she let me go, the same somber look was still on her face.
“You’re not there, Nancy,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
For a moment, she was still, then she got out of bed. I could see her tiny brown nipples puckering as the cool air from the open window hit her breasts. “I never told you I was married, did I?” she asked hesitantly.
“No,” I answered, sitting up in bed.
“I should have.”
“Why?”
“Then things would have been different,” she said.
“How?”
“This might not have happened.”
I thought that over for a moment. I didn’t understand her. The good things were still there. “Then I’m glad you didn’t tell me.”
“He’s coming back tomorrow,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“My husband. His ship’s putting in at New London and I’m going down there to meet him.”
“Oh,” I said. Then, “When are you coming back?”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m not coming back. He’s been transferred to shore duty. We’re going to Pensacola.”
I was silent.
She misunderstood my silence. “I didn’t want to tell you like this,” she said. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I was going to leave without saying anything, but I couldn’t do that either. I’m sorry, Steve.”
I took the cigarette from her and puffed at it. It was down close to my lips and I could feel the heat from its glowing tip against my lips. She took it from my mouth and ground it out in an ashtray. She drew my head between her breasts. I put up my hands and squeezed them close to my cheeks. Slowly I moved my head from side to side, running my tongue from nipple to nipple.
“I’m sorry, Steve,” she said again, holding me tightly.
“Don’t be,” I said. “Everything is good.”
“It is good, isn’t it?” she said, a strange note in her voice. She pushed me backward on the bed and I climbed up into her.
I could feel the moist heat of her pouring over me as she went wild. She bucked frantically, making sounds like an animal in the night. I had all I could do to stay inside her. She climaxed suddenly. She screamed, “Don!”
She froze.
“I don’t care what you call me,” I said, fiercely thrusting myself into her. “Just don’t stop fucking!”
“You son of a bitch!” she said, sucking me into her. “That’s all you want.”
I rolled over on top of her and jammed her until this time her climax carried me with her, the marrow from my bones pouring into her like the roaring surf of the ocean outside. “Steve! Steve!” Her fingernails raked my back.
I caught her hands and held them down. We lay there gasping for breath. “You got the name right this time.”
She stared at me balefully. A moment later we were both roaring with laughter.
***
There was a light coming from Aunt Prue’s office when I came into the main house. I glanced at my wristwatch. It was after midnight. I started quietly up the stairs.
“Stephen.”
I turned on the stairway and looked down at her. “Yes, Aunt Prue?”
She looked up at me. “Are you all right?”
I nodded. “Yes, Aunt Prue.”
She stood there hesitantly a moment, then she turned back into the room. “Good night, Steve.”
“Good night, Aunt Prue,” I said and went on up to my room.
A few minutes later there was a soft knock at my door. “Yes?” I asked.
“It’s Aunt Prue. May I come in?”
“It’s open,” I said. “Come in.”
“I don’t know how to talk to you about—” Her voice trailed away as she looked at me.
I looked down at myself to see what she was staring at. There were long red scratches down my shoulders and chest. I grabbed my shirt from the chair and put it on.
“She did that?” Her voice was angry.
“Before I answer, Aunt Prue, tell me who you’re mad at?”
She looked at me for a moment, then she smiled ruefully. “Myself, I guess. I kept thinking of you as a little boy. I didn’t realize you were almost grown up.” She sat down on the edge of my bed. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake in bringing you here.”
“I knew about girls before I came here, Aunt Prue.”
“There’s all kinds of knowledge,” she said. “Not all girls are like Nancy.”
I didn’t answer.
“I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you,” she said awkwardly. “But I didn’t know quite how to begin.”
I sat down on the chair opposite her. “Yes, Aunt Prue.”
“You know there are things you have to look out for,” she said, her eyes not quite meeting mine. “Girls can have babies and there are diseases that—” She stopped when she saw the glint of laughter in my eyes. “What am I talking about?” she said confusedly. “You know all about those things.”
“Yes, Aunt Prue,” I said solemnly.
“Then why didn’t you stop me?”
“I didn’t know how,” I confessed. I smiled. “Nobody ever spoke to me about things like that before.”
She looked at me steadily. “I think you ought to get a summer job. It’s not good for you to be hanging around here all the time with nothing to do.”
“That’s an idea,” I said. It was dull lying around on the beach all day.
“I spoke to Mr. Lefferts. He said he can use you down at the radio station afternoons. It won’t pay much, but it’s something to do.”
And that was how it all began. Before the summer was over I was running programming and sales for Lefferts. And by the time I went back to school I knew what I wanted to be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The television set came on with a blast of sound and woke me up. I stared at it stupidly. Channel 7. I got up and turned it to Sinclair. I called downstairs for orange juice and coffee, then got under a hot shower until the aches in my bones went away. When I came out, the orange juice, coffee, and morning paper were on the breakfast table. Barbara was still sound asleep when I left for work. Those three sleeping pills had finally caught up with her.
I was in early, but Fogarty was there before me. I dumped the papers I had taken home on her desk. She gave me the appointment schedule for the day. I made only one change. I moved Winant of engineering up to nine o’clock and
made him the first appointment of the morning.
He was a tall, pipe-smoking man whose eyes looked out at me from behind steel-rimmed glasses. “Good morning, Mr. Gaunt,” he said, placing a paper on my desk.
I picked it up. It was his resignation just as I had asked the day before. I looked at him.
“I thought since I was coming up here,” he said easily, “I would deliver it in person.”
I grinned at him. “Thank you.”
Fogarty came in with my coffee. There was a cup on the tray for him.
“Hold all calls,” I said as she left. I sipped my coffee and looked at him. “Mr. Winant, how do we stand in relation to color?”
“We’ve made all the surveys,” he said.
“And?”
“We’re waiting.”
“For what?” I asked.
“To see how it’s accepted,” he said, uncomfortably. “NBC—”
“I’m not interested in NBC,” I snapped. “I’m interested in Sinclair. Why are we waiting?”
“I’m an engineer,” he said finally. “I don’t make policy.”
I smiled at him. “Now we’re beginning to understand each other.”
He was bewildered.
I made it easy for him. “If I tell you the policy is color now, how fast can we get it on the air?”
He began to look interested. “I can have the whole network in color by next September.”
“Can you give me New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles by New Year’s?”
“That’s not much time.”
“I know that.”
He thought for a moment, tapping his pipe with his finger. He looked up at me. “If I get the go-ahead now, I can do it.”
“Do it,” I said. “You got the go-ahead.”
He rose to his feet, relieved. “You’ve got yourself color. Do you want to know what it will cost?”
“If I wanted to know I would have asked,” I said. “You just send up the estimate. I’ll okay it.”
He started for the door. I called him back, holding up his resignation. “Just one thing, Mr. Winant.”
“Yes, Mr. Gaunt?”
“You said I would have it by New Year’s, right?”
“New York, Chicago, L.A., right?”
“Okay. You deliver. I tear this up.”
He stood there a moment, then he smiled. “It’s as good as torn up right now, Mr. Gaunt.”
I watched the door close behind him. I had a feeling he would deliver. Slowly I tore it in half, then put the two pieces in an envelope and wrote his name across it. I called Fogarty into the office and had her send it down to him.
It was time I began to build my own team. And he was as good a man to start with as any.
It was almost one o’clock when Jack called. “I just put down the phone to my coast office. They got the deal wrapped up. When can you get out there to sign?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Great.” He laughed. “How’s that for service? WAM!”
“Yeah, WAM,” I said.
“World Artists Management,” he said with satisfaction.
“Stop bragging,” I said. “Now I’m looking for insurance.”
“Come on, Steve. You got to be joking. With those pictures all you need is—”
I cut him off. “A lead-in show. Something that will hook them before they get trapped by the other nets.” I thought for a moment. “Any big star around that’s willing to do an hour a week?”
“You’re out of your skull,” he said. “Anybody good is already signed.”
“WAM! Go find me one.” I put down the telephone.
Almost immediately, the phone signaled again. “Miss Sinclair on the wire,” Fogarty said.
I hit the button. “Barbara.”
“I love you,” she said.
“You’re nuts,” I laughed.
“No, I mean it. I love you,” she said earnestly. “You’re there. Like you’re solid. Always there.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Great!” she answered. “I’m having a ball.”
“What are you doing?”
“Right now I’m having breakfast in your bed. I hope you don’t mind crumbs. And I had them roll in the TV and I’m watching it.”
I was curious. “What are you watching?”
“An old Jana Reynolds movie. God, she could really sing.”
“Yeah,” I said. Absently I hit the remote on my desk. Sinclair TV came on. A quiz show. I hit the other button. The next set came on. The Lone Ranger. Par for midday. “What channel?”
“Don’t tell Daddy,” she laughed. “ABC.”
I hit the button twice and Jana Reynolds came on just in time to be cut by the commercial. I turned off the sound.
“I like it here,” she said. “One of the waiters even called me Mrs. Gaunt. I may never go home.”
“Sure,” I said, watching the screen.
“What time are you coming home?”
“Why?”
“I ordered a special dinner for us,” she said. “Caviar, Chateaubriand, pommes soufflés, Dom Perignon, candlelight, the works.” She giggled. “I even ordered a fantastic negligee from one of the shops in the hotel.”
“You sound very domestic,” I said, my eyes still on the screen. The commercial went on, forever. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“None at all. As a matter of fact, I think I boosted your prestige a hundred percent in this place.”
“At room service prices, baby, I could live without it.”
“Put it on your expense account,” she said. “Tell Daddy that you’re entertaining someone very special to the network. A big stockholder. After all, mother left me fifteen percent of Sinclair Broadcasting.”
“You twisted my arm. Now get off the line, I’ve got to get back to work.”
“I love you,” she said, and the phone clicked off.
I put down the receiver as Jana Reynolds came back on. The movie was about fifteen years old and she was in her prime then, about twenty-five years old but still playing nineteen and making you believe it. Too bad she couldn’t go on playing nineteen forever.
But time caught up with her. Time, and three bad marriages, and booze, and drugs, and near suicides. It’s like at a certain point someone turned off the juice. You got too much talent, baby, now take some of the shit. And she got it all.
Films were out. They passed her by. There were other nineteen-year-olds now. But somehow in spite of everything, her voice held up. Occasionally, she did concerts and nightclubs. The public still loved her and would come out in droves to see her in person, but then something would happen and the whole thing would blow in a front-page blast of headlines. She was bombed and wouldn’t show up or if she did, she was falling down and in no condition to perform. But the headlines were there. They were always there. She was still a star. Even her discharge in bankruptcy was front page.
I stared up at the screen. She was still a star. I was reaching for the phone even before the thought crystallized in my head. A star. Wasn’t that just what I was asking Jack to find for me?
“Now I know you’re crazy!” he yelled.
“Who’s her agent?”
“She hasn’t any,” he answered. “There isn’t one that would touch her. She’s involved in lawsuits with everyone she’s ever had.”
“What’s the packaging fee on a hundred-thousand-dollar show every week?”
“Ten grand per,” he answered promptly.
“For ten thousand dollars a week you won’t handle her?”
There was a pause. “I’m your boy,” he said. “For ten thousand a week I’d handle Adolf Hitler.”
Spoken like a true agent. If nothing else, he was dependable. I never got to that dinner Barbara had planned for us. Instead, that night, I was on a plane to the coast.
CHAPTER NINE
It was three months later when I ducked into the alley behind the theater on Vine Street where the show would be broadcast. It was five minute
s to five, Pacific Standard Time. In five minutes it would be eight o’clock in New York and we would be on the air.
Inside was a madhouse. Tension was crackling like the whip in a jockey’s hand on the home stretch. I cut behind several men who were moving scenery and made my way to the wings. There were men and wires and cameras everywhere. The stage manager was whispering into his chest mike to the director up in the booth.
I peeked out into the theater. It was jammed. The curtain was still down, but they watched the stage with an air of expectancy.
The call came while I was still peering at the house. “Three minutes to airtime. Places everybody.” I turned back.
The stagehands who had been adjusting the set came running off. The wing cameras rolled into place and set.
The director came out of the booth for a final check. He nodded, but I don’t think he even saw me.
He came to a dead stop. “Where’s Jana?”
The stage manager stared at him. He half turned, then turned back to him. “She was here a minute ago.”
“You fool!” the director screamed in a shrill voice. “She’s not here now. Get her!”
A stagehand stopped. “I just saw her go back into her dressing room.”
“Get her! Get her!” The director was hysterical now.
“Two minutes to airtime,” the overhead speakers blared.
The stage manager pulled off his headset, dropping it on the floor, ran toward her dressing room. Several of the grips followed him. I was right behind them.
The stage manager was knocking on the door. “Two minutes to airtime, Miss Reynolds.”
There was no answer.
He knocked again. “Two minutes—”
I pushed my way through the crowd in front of the door. “Open it,” I snapped.
He tried the door. He turned toward me, a sick look on his face. “I—I can’t. It’s locked.”
I pushed him out of the way. I put my foot against the door and kicked it off its lock. I followed the door into the room.
She stood there, staring at me, a bottle in one hand, a glassful of liquor in the other. “Get out!” she screamed. “I’m not going on!”
The Inheritors Page 6