by Max Shulman
Naturally he blamed his wife for his entrapment. “You!” he would cry, pointing a quivering finger. “You had to have the fancy houses, the fancy pools, the fancy cars, the fancy kids! You, you, you!”
“In your hat,” Polly would reply mildly and leave the room. In twenty years of marriage she had learned the futility of arguing with Ira when the blackness was upon him. There was nothing to do but wait until rationality returned—often a matter of months.
But on those rare occasions when sweet reason informed Ira, he knew well that the blame was not Polly’s but his. In 1949 Ira had been a director in the New York theater, not an important one, and certainly not a rich one, but a busy one. He staged a cycle of Bertolt Brecht plays that year, one of which was seen by an M-G-M executive who happened to be junketing in New York. The M-G-M man understood fewer than ten words of the play; nevertheless he hated to go back to Hollywood without some kind of souvenir, so he signed Ira to a contract.
Ira lasted six months at M-G-M, during which time he gave several producers sweaty palms by proposing to make movies of Erewhon, Varieties of Religious Experience, and the Alger Hiss case. Finally they loaned him to Monogram to direct a Bowery Boys picture. Following that, Ira and M-G-M parted company with honest tears of joy on both sides.
Television beckoned. It was a lusty youngster then, not afraid to experiment, and Ira made a quick reputation. But while he was making a reputation as a director, he was making another kind of reputation too. Eyes in high places were observing him, not because of his directorial talents—after all, any damn fool in puttees can direct—but because Ira could definitely nice. Volatile he was, blunt, hyperthyroid, given to swarthy outbursts, but everyone trusted him on sight. So the silken trap was set.
Undreamed-of sums of money were gently urged on Ira. Fabled homes were opened to him; living legends invited him to golf. Blinking with enchantment, Ira was eased off the sound stages, issued a black suit, and installed in a small but well-appointed office on the executive floor. A period of training followed—training for what, Ira did not quite understand—and then he was given a bigger office. Then he was given still a bigger office and still a bigger office and still a bigger office, until today his office measured thirty by thirty and he was West Coast vice-president of the Star Spangled Broadcasting Network.
Ira buttoned his black vest, slipped on his black jacket, and touched, ever so gingerly, the nose that Flint Granite had splatted. That is what was left now—not enchantment, but a sore nose.
He walked to his desk and pressed the intercom button. “Miss Goldberg, I suppose Scarpitta is still there?”
“Where then should he be?” said Miss Goldberg.
“Send him in,” said Ira without joy.
Scarpitta, a fifty-year-old man weighing 103 pounds, was not actually crying when he entered. His lower lip was fluttering, his tiny shoulders were heaving, but his eyes were, as yet, dry.
“You lied to me,” he said without preliminary.
“Yes, Mr. Scarpitta,” said Ira.
Scarpitta clutched Ira’s lapels. “Look, I know I run a lousy little ad agency. Young and Rubicam I’m not. BBD&O I’m not. I’m a crappy little agency with crappy little clients nobody else will touch—laxatives, deodorants, depilatories, false teeth stickum. I know all this.… But still and all, I’ve got feelings. I’m a human person. Attention must be paid!”
The tears were rolling now, drop after steady drop.
“You promised me!” he wept. “And I promised the Jolly-bowel people. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told them, ‘Ira Shapian personally gave me his word you could buy three sixty-second spots for Jollybowel on the After Midnight Movie.’ … Mr. Shapian, you should have seen their faces! Like kids on Christmas morning!”
Ira gently disengaged Scarpitta’s hands from his lapels. “Please, sir, compose yourself,” he urged.
Scarpitta manfully stemmed his tears. “All right. So what happened with Jollybowel?”
“New York said no.”
“But you checked with New York before you promised me, and they said yes. Why all of a sudden no?” he asked. “And, oh, what a foolish question,” he continued without pausing. “Somebody offered Clendennon more money for those three spots. Who?”
“U.S. Steel,” Ira confessed.
“Great!” said Scarpitta bitterly. “Got to be lots of people buying ingots at one o’clock in the morning.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ira.
“You’re always sorry,” said Scarpitta. “You’re always lying and you’re always sorry.”
“True,” sighed Ira.
“But I ain’t mad,” Scarpitta assured him. “I got my job—trying to get my crappy products on tv—and you got your jot—telling lies.”
“True,” repeated Ira.
“Only my job is harder on account of I can’t get my crappy products on any network, not even in the middle of the night when nobody’s watching. And, believe me, my crappy clients brood about it. I mean it’s like a stigma! They’re getting a whole inferiority complex, these clients, and you know what happens when people feel inferior? They look for somebody even more inferior to take it out on. Me, for instance … Mr. Shapian, please help me before I get the ax. I’m a married man with kids.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Ira.
“Can you get me two minutes for Gamy-Gone?”
“I’ll try.”
“How about No-Klack?”
“I’ll try.”
The intercom buzzed, and Ira flicked the switch.
“Mrs. Shapian calling,” said Miss Goldberg.
“I’ll call her back,” said Ira.
“You’ll talk,” said Miss Goldberg firmly. “She says it’s altogether an emergency.”
“I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” said Scarpitta hurriedly. “But just one thing: can I tell my deodorant people and denture people you promised me some air time?”
“I can’t make any such promise, Mr. Scarpitta.”
“So lie to me,” Scarpitta implored. “I always believe you.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Scarpitta,” said Ira.
Scarpitta slank, crying softly, to the door. Ira was perilously close to tears himself as he watched the tiny, hunched figure make his exit. To give the finger to a man like Flint Granite was, of course, reprehensible, but at least Flint was six feet, eight inches tall, and could bash your nose. How much more despicable, thought Ira, to diddle a poor defenseless schnook like Scarpitta. Was three thousand a week worth it? Was five thousand? Was ten thousand?
“What’s the matter?” said Miss Goldberg through the intercom. “You don’t want to pick up the phone? You don’t care your wife’s got an emergency, the house is maybe burning, God forbid?”
Ira roused himself and snatched up the phone. “Polly? What’s the trouble?”
“It’s the twins,” said Polly.
“Ask a foolish question,” muttered Ira. “All right, what now?”
“Promise you won’t holler.”
“Why should I holler? Does a man holler when he’s blessed with a couple of sons like mine? Why, it’s like having John Stuart Mill in duplicate.”
“Never mind the sarcasm. I’m keeping my temper, and I’m a lot madder at those two louts than you are.”
“Possibly that’s because you know what they did, and I do not. Will you tell me already?”
“Okay, okay. Now, follow me carefully. Today is the last day to qualify for the annual surfboard derby. The Athletic Commission is holding the final trials at Long Beach this afternoon.”
“Just a minute. I’m making notes.”
“Shut up and listen. The twins must get out to Long Beach and qualify or else they won’t be eligible for the derby.… Now, Ira, you know I never bother you at the office, but this is really a crisis. Those big dumb kids of ours will simply curl up and die unless they get into that surfboard thing.”
“So what’s the problem? They’ve got a car. Let ’em drive out to Long Beach and qualify.”
>
“Well, that’s the point. They don’t have a car.”
“Oh, yes, they do, and I got the bills to prove it.”
“What I’m trying to tell you—”
“And very badly.”
“Yes, very badly. Anyhow, what I’m trying to tell you—oh, boy, are you going to holler!—is that last night they were lifting their car on the pier at Santa Monica and they dropped it in the ocean.”
“They dropped it in the ocean?” hollered Ira so loud that all the Emmies on his shelf trembled.
“See?” said Polly. “What did I tell you?”
“Sorry. Lost my head. Please go on.”
“Thank you. Now, I’d let the twins use my car, only I’m going to be a Gray Lady this afternoon.”
“Maybe sooner,” said Ira. “How about the butler? Couldn’t he drive them to the beach?”
“He’s at a Black Muslim meeting.”
“I have a distinct feeling I’m going out of my mind,” said Ira.
“So my idea is this: if you could get away from the office for an hour or so—”
“I cannot get away from the office for an hour or so,” said Ira, “but I have a brilliant idea of my own. Remember those English bicycles we bought the twins a few years ago, the ones that have been gathering rust in the garage since the day they were delivered?”
“Smashing idea, Ira—bicycles down Highway 101 with an eight-foot surfboard under their arms and their girl friends, also eight feet, sitting on the handlebars.”
“Polly,” said Ira wearily, “could we say good-bye now? Please? Huh?”
“I think perhaps we better,” said Polly, clipping her words carefully.
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Ira replaced the phone. He looked at his watch and decided to allow himself a groan of ten seconds. But Miss Goldberg buzzed before he was halfway through.
“Mr. Clendennon returning your call,” she said through the intercom.
Ira’s hand darted savagely toward the phone. “Just the man I want to talk to!” he said to himself. “Boy, will I burn that sneaky sonofabitch! Boy, will I tell that lying rat fink!”
Suddenly, just an inch away from the phone, Ira’s hand stopped—stopped and then wilted. The anger drained from Ira’s face; the erectness dribbled out of his spine. What, exactly, was he going to say to Clendennon? That he was sneaky and a sonofabitch and a liar and a rat and a fink? But Ira had told him all of this before, and a great deal more besides. It all rolled off Clendennon, or under him, or over him, or around him. It never got inside him.
There were only two words Ira could use that would pierce Clendennon—two short words: “I quit.”
And the time was ideal to say those two little words: in just a few weeks Ira’s seven-year contract would lapse, and the network had already let him know he would be offered a new one.
But was Ira prepared to say those two fateful words? He ran a quick trial balance.
On the debit side were Flint Granite and Scarpitta, and all the Flint Granites and Scarpittas who had preceded them. There was the crowd of friends Ira had lost, the debris of trusts he had betrayed, the mass of lies he had told, the dungheap of self-loathing he had accumulated. There was a wife gone testy and a pair of sons gone lamebrained.
Ira looked at the credit page of the ledger. There he saw one large, loud, unbankable entry: $3,000 per week.
But, Ira asked himself, did a man need three thousand a week? Did he need houses and pools in Bel Air and Palm Springs? Did he need a Black Muslim chauffeur and a Japanese gardener? Did he need three expensive automobiles (actually, only two now; one lay on the bottom of the Pacific)? Did he need a Chagall and a Rouault and porcelain caps on his front teeth?
As for the porcelain jackets, these seemed to be an abiding part of Ira’s life no matter how he opted. The rest, however, could surely go. Ira could shuck his black suit and resume his career as a director. He was, of course, a little rusty, so he would have to work for short money at first. But so what? He would still make enough to live in modest comfort. He could move his family to a little bungalow in the Valley. Polly could do the housework, Ira could help out around the yard, and the twins could get a newspaper route. Ira could drive a Corvair, buy his suits at Robert Hall, close his account at Chasen’s, switch from J & B to Imperial, give up cigars, and wear stretch socks.
Ira slammed both hands on his desk disgustedly. Come on, Ira baby, he thought, stop playing with yourself. A little house in the Valley indeed! Stretch socks indeed! Why such halfway measures? Why not go whole hog? Why not move into a cave and live on roots and berries? Maybe he could trap an occasional muskrat for meat and fur. Maybe Polly could pick up a little cash money hustling in front of the post office on Saturday nights. Maybe the twins could sell their brains to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
You are hooked, Ira baby, he thought. Face the facts, he told himself, face the bitter undeniable facts. If he quit his job and went back to directing, what would he direct? The Virginian? McHale’s Navy? Donna Reed? Is this how he would rebel against the system, by grinding out the same sausages, only for less money?
As for quitting television to direct feature pictures, who wanted him? As for returning to Broadway, who needed him?
No, Ira baby, he thought with a plummeting heart, you are stuck in television, and if a man has to spend his life in the vast wasteland, he might as well get top dollar for it. Sybaritism was not the issue; it was a matter of plain logic.
“Miss Goldberg,” said Ira to the intercom, “tell Clendennon I don’t want to talk to him.”
“What are you crazy?” asked Miss Goldberg with authentic curiosity.
“Tell him,” said Ira and switched off the box.
He leaned back in his executive chair. Yes, he thought approvingly, I did the right thing. But in something under one second, the approval was replaced by a new blast of self-condemnation. Like hell I did the right thing, Ira snarled at himself. I chickened, that’s what I did. For the umpteenth time, I chickened. I’ve got no character, no principles, no values, no guts. I can’t do one goddam thing right—not at work, not at home. I’ve let my kids turn Cro-Magnon and my wife grow peckish—all because I was too bloody busy to be a proper father and husband. Busy doing what? Busy telling lies. I’ve butchered whatever talent I ever had. I’ve sold my birthright for a mess of Chasen’s pottage. I am trussed, plucked, and packaged. I am theirs. My life is a stench. Nothing I do is any damn good; nothing I ever have done was any damn good—nothing, nothing, nothing.
Wait! thought Ira, sitting upright suddenly. Once upon a time, he was remembering, something good had come his way—one indubitable good—the single, unquestionable, unerodable, untamishable, timeproof good of his entire life, and he had need to dwell on it now.
He threw the intercom switch. “Miss Goldberg, I don’t want any phone calls. I don’t want anybody coming into the office—you especially. I am not to be disturbed, is that clear?”
“Well, pardon me for living!” huffed Miss Goldberg.
Ira closed the switch again. He rose and drew the blinds. He locked the door. Then he sat down, pulled the desk lamp close for better illumination. He took a wallet out of his inside breast pocket. He found a flap in the wallet so cunningly hidden that only Ira and the manufacturer knew its location. From this secret crevice he removed a yellowing newspaper clipping. He spread the clipping on the desk, directly under the lamp.
The clipping showed a photograph of a tall, slender, handsome woman holding a bouquet of flowers and smiling directly into the camera. Under the photograph was a short caption: “Mrs. Barbara Fuller—better known to her many friends as Boo—opens the annual Owens Mill Peony Festival.”
Ira looked at the picture. First he looked intently, closely. Then he looked lingeringly, sweetly. He looked and he was healed. His face was young. His eyes were bright with undead dreams.
Chapter 3
The Owenses of Owens Mill disembarked from t
heir helicopter in the clearing before the hunting lodge, ran inside with many a laugh and cheer, and fell joyfully upon the food and spirits there arrayed. For three hours they ate and drank and gamed, and then the mood for singing seized them in its playful spell. Mrs. Barbara Ogilvie Owens, better known to her many friends as Boo, therefore moved to the piano to take her accustomed position as accompanist.
Boo moved gracefully; she sat erectly on the piano bench. The years had not sprung her fluent carriage nor thickened her willowy waist. Her breasts were high, her throat was smooth, her back was straight, her belly was flat, her legs were long, strong, and marvelously articulated. A whisper of gray in the tips of her ash-blond hair, a faint tracing of lines beside the patrician mouth, were time’s only discernible testimony. Yet she looked her age. No man mistook her for twenty, or even thirty; but neither did any man fail to feel a pleasant itch upon regarding her.
As Boo arranged the sheet music, Virgil Tatum sat down beside her. “Would you like me to turn pages for you?” he asked.
“I don’t believe so, thank you,” she replied pleasantly.
“In that case, would you like to marry me?” said Virgil.
“Tell you what,” said Boo. “You can turn pages.”
“Ah, good! Then you’re not angry at me?”
“For what?”
“For this unseemly haste, of course,” he said. “I mean proposing marriage when your late husband has been gone scarcely eighteen years.”
“On second thought, you can’t turn pages,” said Boo, shoving him hard with her lean, trim buttocks.
Virgil sat firm. “Boo, dear Boo,” he said earnestly, “all these years without a man! What are you trying to prove?”
“Virgil, dear Virgil,” she mocked. “What are you trying to prove? How many times have I offered to take you to my beach house for a mad weekend of sinful pleasure?”