‘You a writer?’ Pat asked in surprise.
‘I work at it.’
‘You ought to get ‘em to give you a test.’
‘No--I like writing.’
‘What’s that you’re reading.’
She showed him.
‘Let me give you a tip,’ he said. ‘That’s not the way to get the guts out of a book.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve been here for years--I’m Pat Hobby--and I know. Give the book to four of your friends to read it. Get them to tell you what stuck in their minds. Write it down and you’ve got a picture--see?’
The girl smiled.
‘Well, that’s very--very original advice, Mr Hobby.’
‘Pat Hobby,’ he said. ‘Can I wait here a minute? Man I came to see is at lunch.’
He sat down across from her and picked up a copy of a photo magazine.
‘Oh, just let me mark that,’ she said quickly.
He looked at the page which she checked. It showed paintings being boxed and carted away to safety from an art gallery in Europe.
‘How’ll you use it?’ he said.
‘Well, I thought it would be dramatic if there was an old man around while they were packing the pictures. A poor old man, trying to get a job helping them. But they can’t use him--he’s in the way--not even good cannon fodder. They want strong young people in the world. And it turns out he’s the man who painted the pictures many years ago.’
Pat considered.
‘It’s good but I don’t get it,’ he said.
‘Oh, it’s nothing, a short short maybe.’
‘Got any good picture ideas? I’m in with all the markets here.’
‘I’m under contract.’
‘Use another name.’
Her phone rang.
‘Yes, this is Pricilla Smith,’ the girl said.
After a minute she turned to Pat.
‘Will you excuse me? This is a private call.’
He got it and walked out, and along the corridor. Finding an office with no name on it he went in and fell asleep on the couch.
II
Late that afternoon he returned to Jack Berners’ waiting rooms. He had an idea about a man who meets a girl in an office and he thinks she’s a stenographer but she turns out to be a writer. He engages her as a stenographer, though, and they start for the South Seas. It was a beginning, it was something to tell Jack, he thought--and, picturing Pricilla Smith, he refurbished some old business he hadn’t seen used for years.
He became quite excited about it--felt quite young for a moment and walked up and down the waiting room mentally rehearsing the first sequence. ‘So here we have a situation like It Happened One Night--only new. I see Hedy Lamarr--’
Oh, he knew how to talk to these boys if he could get to them, with something to say.
‘Mr Berners still busy?’ he asked for the fifth time.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Hobby. Mr Bill Costello and Mr Bach are in there.’
He thought quickly. It was half-past five. In the old days he had just busted in sometimes and sold an idea, an idea good for a couple of grand because it was just the moment when they were very tired of what they were doing at present.
He walked innocently out and to another door in the hall. He knew it led through a bathroom right in to Jack Berners’ office. Drawing a quick breath he plunged . . .
‘. . . So that’s the notion,’ he concluded after five minutes. ‘It’s just a flash--nothing really worked out, but you could give me an office and a girl and I could have something on paper for you in three days.’
Berners, Costello and Bach did not even have to look at each other. Berners spoke for them all as he said firmly and gently:
‘That’s no idea, Pat. I can’t put you on salary for that.’
‘Why don’t you work it out further by yourself,’ suggested Bill Costello. ‘And then let’s see it. We’re looking for ideas--especially about the war.’
‘A man can think better on salary,’ said Pat.
There was silence. Costello and Bach had drunk with him, played poker with him, gone to the races with him. They’d honestly be glad to see him placed.
‘The war, eh,’ he said gloomily. ‘Everything is war now, no matter how many credits a man has. Do you know what it makes me think of? It makes me think of a well-known painter in the discard. It’s war time and he’s useless--just a man in the way.’ He warmed to his conception of himself, ‘--but all the time they’re carting away his own paintings as the most valuable thing worth saving. And they won’t even let me help. That’s what it reminds me of.’
There was again silence for a moment.
‘That isn’t a bad idea,’ said Bach thoughtfully. He turned to the others. ‘You know? In itself?’
Bill Costello nodded
‘Not bad at all. And I know where we could spot it. Right at the end of the fourth sequence. We just change old Ames to a painter.’
Presently they talked money.
‘I’ll give you two weeks on it,’ said Berners to Pat. ‘At two-fifty.’
‘Two-fifty!’ objected Pat. ‘Say there was one time you paid me ten times that!’
‘That was ten years ago,’ Jack reminded him. ‘Sorry. Best we can do now.’
‘You make me feel like that old painter--’
‘Don’t oversell it,’ said Jack, rising and smiling. ‘You’re on the payroll.’
Pat went out with a quick step and confidence in his eyes. Half a grand--that would take the pressure off for a month and you could often stretch two weeks into three--sometimes four. He left the studio proudly through the front entrance, stopping at the liquor store for a half-pint to take back to his room.
By seven o’clock things were even better. Santa Anita tomorrow, if he could get an advance. And tonight--something festive ought to be done tonight. With a sudden rush of pleasure he went down to the phone in the lower hall, called the studio and asked for Miss Pricilla Smith’s number. He hadn’t met anyone so pretty for years . . .
In her apartment Pricilla Smith spoke rather firmly into the phone.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t possibly . . . No--and I’m tied up all the rest of the week.’
As she hung up, Jack Berners spoke from the couch.
‘Who was it?’
‘Oh, some man who came in the office,’ she laughed, ‘and told me never to read the story I was working on.’
‘Shall I believe you?’
‘You certainly shall. I’ll even think of his name in a minute. But first I want to tell you about an idea I had this morning. I was looking at a photo in a magazine where they were packing up some works of art in the Tate Gallery in London. And I thought--’
“BOIL SOME WATER--LOTS OF IT”
Esquire (March 1940)
Pat Hobby sat in his office in the writers’ building and looked at his morning’s work, just come back from the script department. He was on a “polish job,” about the only kind he ever got nowadays. He was to repair a messy sequence in a hurry, but the word “hurry” neither frightened nor inspired him for Pat had been in Hollywood since he was thirty--now he was forty-nine. All the work he had done this morning (except a little changing around of lines so he could claim them as his own)--all he had actually invented was a single imperative sentence, spoken by a doctor.
“Boil some water--lots of it.”
It was a good line. It had sprung into his mind full grown as soon as he had read the script. In the old silent days Pat would have used it as a spoken title and ended his dialogue worries for a space, but he needed some spoken words for other people in the scene. Nothing came.
“Boil some water,” he repeated to himself. “Lots of it.”
The word boil brought a quick glad thought of the commissary. A reverent thought too--for an old-timer like Pat, what people you sat with at lunch was more important in getting along than what you dictated in your office. This was no art, as he often said--this was
an industry.
“This is no art,” he remarked to Max Learn who was leisurely drinking at a corridor water cooler. “This is an industry.”
Max had flung him this timely bone of three weeks at three-fifty.
“Say look, Pat! Have you got anything down on paper yet?”
“Say I’ve got some stuff already that’ll make ‘em--” He named a familiar biological function with the somewhat startling assurance that it would take place in the theater.
Max tried to gauge his sincerity.
“Want to read it to me now?” he asked.
“Not yet. But it’s got the old guts if you know what I mean.”
Max was full of doubts.
“Well, go to it. And if you run into any medical snags check with the doctor over at the First Aid Station. It’s got to be right.”
The spirit of Pasteur shone firmly in Pat’s eyes.
“It will be.”
He felt good walking across the lot with Max--so good that he decided to glue himself to the producer and sit down with him at the Big Table. But Max foiled his intention by cooing “See you later” and slipping into the barber shop.
Once Pat had been a familiar figure at the Big Table; often in his golden prime he had dined in the private canteens of executives. Being of the older Hollywood he understood their jokes, their vanities, their social system with its swift fluctuations. But there were too many new faces at the Big Table now--faces that looked at him with the universal Hollywood suspicion. And at the little tables where the young writers sat they seemed to take work so seriously. As for just sitting down anywhere, even with secretaries or extras--Pat would rather catch a sandwich at the corner.
Detouring to the Red Cross Station he asked for the doctor. A girl, a nurse, answered from a wall mirror where she was hastily drawing her lips, “He’s out. What is it?”
“Oh. Then I’ll come back.”
She had finished, and now she turned--vivid and young and with a bright consoling smile.
“Miss Stacey will help you. I’m about to go to lunch.”
He was aware of an old, old feeling--left over from the time when he had had wives--a feeling that to invite this little beauty to lunch might cause trouble. But he remembered quickly that he didn’t have any wives now--they had both given up asking for alimony.
“I’m working on a medical,” he said. “I need some help.”
“A medical?”
“Writing it--idea about a doc. Listen--let me buy you lunch. I want to ask you some medical questions.”
The nurse hesitated.
“I don’t know. It’s my first day out here.”
“It’s all right,” he assured her, “studios are democratic; everybody is just ‘Joe’ or ‘Mary’--from the big shots right down to the prop boys.”
He proved it magnificently on their way to lunch by greeting a male star and getting his own name back in return. And in the commissary, where they were placed hard by the Big Table, his producer, Max Leam, looked up, did a little “takem” and winked.
The nurse--her name was Helen Earle--peered about eagerly.
“I don’t see anybody,” she said. “Except oh, there’s Ronald Colman. I didn’t know Ronald Colman looked like that.”
Pat pointed suddenly to the floor.
“And there’s Mickey Mouse!”
She jumped and Pat laughed at his joke--but Helen Earle was already staring starry-eyed at the costume extras who filled the hall with the colors of the First Empire. Pat was piqued to see her interest go out to these nonentities.
“The big shots are at this next table,” he said solemnly, wistfully, “directors and all except the biggest executives. They could have Ronald Colman pressing pants. I usually sit over there but they don’t want ladies. At lunch, that is, they don’t want ladies.”
“Oh,” said Helen Earle, polite but unimpressed. “It must be wonderful to be a writer too. It’s so very interesting.”
“It has its points,” he said . . . he had thought for years it was a dog’s life.
“What is it you want to ask me about a doctor?”
Here was toil again. Something in Pat’s mind snapped off when he thought of the story.
“Well, Max Leam--that man facing us--Max Leam and I have a script about a Doc. You know? Like a hospital picture?”
“I know.” And she added after a moment, “That’s the reason that I went in training.”
“And we’ve got to have it right because a hundred million people would check on it. So this doctor in the script he tells them to boil some water. He says, ‘Boil some water--lots of it.’ And we were wondering what the people would do then.”
“Why--they’d probably boil it,” Helen said, and then, somewhat confused by the question, “What people?”
“Well, somebody’s daughter and the man that lived there and an attorney and the man that was hurt.”
Helen tried to digest this before answering.
“--and some other guy I’m going to cut out,” he finished.
There was a pause. The waitress set down tuna fish sandwiches.
“Well, when a doctor gives orders they’re orders,” Helen decided.
“Hm.” Pat’s interest had wandered to an odd little scene at the Big Table while he inquired absently, “You married?”
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
Beside the Big Table stood an extra. A Russian Cossack with a fierce moustache. He stood resting his hand on the back of an empty chair between Director Paterson and Producer Leam.
“Is this taken?” he asked, with a thick Central European accent.
All along the Big Table faces stared suddenly at him. Until after the first look the supposition was that he must be some well-known actor. But he was not--he was dressed in one of the many-colored uniforms that dotted the room.
Someone at the table said: “That’s taken.” But the man drew out the chair and sat down.
“Got to eat somewhere,” he remarked with a grin.
A shiver went over the near-by tables. Pat Hobby stared with his mouth ajar. It was as if someone had crayoned Donald Duck into the Last Supper.
“Look at that,” he advised Helen. “What they’ll do to him! Boy!”
The flabbergasted silence at the Big Table was broken by Ned Harman, the Production Manager.
“This table is reserved,” he said.
The extra looked up from a menu.
“They told me sit anywhere.”
He beckoned a waitress--who hesitated, looking for an answer in the faces of her superiors.
“Extras don’t eat here,” said Max Leam, still politely. “This is a--”
“I got to eat,” said the Cossack doggedly. “I been standing around six hours while they shoot this stinking mess and now I got to eat.”
The silence had extended--from Pat’s angle all within range seemed to be poised in mid-air.
The extra shook his head wearily.
“I dunno who cooked it up--” he said--and Max Leam sat forward in his chair--”but it’s the lousiest tripe I ever seen shot in Hollywood.”
--At his table Pat was thinking why didn’t they do something? Knock him down, drag him away. If they were yellow themselves they could call the studio police.
“Who is that?” Helen Earle was following his eyes innocently, “Somebody I ought to know?”
He was listening attentively to Max Leam’s voice, raised in anger.
“Get up and get out of here, buddy, and get out quick!”
The extra frowned.
“Who’s telling me?” he demanded.
“You’ll see.” Max appealed to the table at large, “Where’s Cushman--where’s the Personnel man?”
“You try to move me,” said the extra, lifting the hilt of his scabbard above the level of the table, “and I’ll hang this on your ear. I know my rights.”
The dozen men at the table, representing a thousand dollars an hour in salaries, sat stunned. Far down by
the door one of the studio police caught wind of what was happening and started to elbow through the crowded room. And Big Jack Wilson, another director, was on his feet in an instant coming around the table.
But they were too late--Pat Hobby could stand no more. He had jumped up, seizing a big heavy tray from the serving stand nearby. In two springs he reached the scene of action--lifting the tray he brought it down upon the extra’s head with all the strength of his forty-nine years. The extra, who had been in the act of rising to meet Wilson’s threatened assault, got the blow full on his face and temple and as he collapsed a dozen red streaks sprang into sight through the heavy grease paint. He crashed sideways between the chairs.
Pat stood over him panting--the tray in his hand.
“The dirty rat!” he cried. “Where does he think--”
The studio policeman pushed past; Wilson pushed past--two aghast men from another table rushed up to survey the situation.
“It was a gag!” one of them shouted. “That’s Walter Herrick, the writer. It’s his picture.”
“My God!”
“He was kidding Max Leam. It was a gag I tell you!”
“Pull him out . . . Get a doctor . . . Look out, there!”
Now Helen Earle hurried over; Walter Herrick was dragged out into a cleared space on the floor and there were yells of “Who did it?--Who beaned him?”
Pat let the tray lapse to a chair, its sound unnoticed in the confusion.
He saw Helen Earle working swiftly at the man’s head with a pile of clean napkins.
“Why did they have to do this to him?” someone shouted.
Pat caught Max Leam’s eye but Max happened to look away at the moment and a sense of injustice came over Pat. He alone in this crisis, real or imaginary, had acted. He alone had played the man, while those stuffed shirts let themselves be insulted and abused. And now he would have to take the rap--because Walter Herrick was powerful and popular, a three thousand a week man who wrote hit shows in New York. How could anyone have guessed that it was a gag?
There was a doctor now. Pat saw him say something to the manageress and her shrill voice sent the waitresses scattering like leaves toward the kitchen.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 238