Sweet Smell of Success

by Ernest Lehman

  “Sammy,” I said, “I’ve got to talk to you after the rehearsal. We’ve got to discuss this thing about Lester again.”

  He walked faster. “I had all the talk I wanna hear about him. Anyway, I’m driving up to Scarsdale tonight to the house.”

  “For what?”

  “To get away from all this, that’s for what. I wanna relax, take it easy, get a good night’s sleep, be on my toes for tomorrow.”

  “Then I’ll go with you,” I said.

  “You will if I ask you. I don’t hear me asking you.”

  I glanced at him sharply. It didn’t sound right: Sammy away from Broadway on the eve of triumph, Sammy not taking the fast-striding parade down the Stem just as the theater-crowds broke, not making the loud entrance at Toots’s, the stop-off at Twenty-One, the late watch at Lindy’s … Sammy not milking the last drop of glory.

  “Who’s the broad you got waiting for you, Sammy?”

  His head jerked around and he didn’t smile the smile or give out with the sly cackle. “One of these days you’re gonna talk yourself right outta my life. I’m warning you, Al.” His voice was hoarse. “I’m getting sick and tired—”

  I stopped dead on the curb and cut him off. “You go on ahead.”

  “What is this? You’re not coming to the dress?”

  “There’s something I have to do. I’ll try to make it as soon as I can.”

  He stared at me, his face twitching. “Don’t hurry.”

  “You won’t need me.” There was bitterness in my voice. “After all, you didn’t need me this afternoon when it came to cutting the script.”

  But who was I angry at? And for what? Who told me to become a gagwriter? Who told me to want big money? Who told me to want more of everything than there were jokes in my head to provide?

  He hurled the cigar into the street and walked away from me.

  He didn’t need me. He didn’t need anyone.

  As long as he had Lester. Or a stone wall to smash his fist into.

  The Paramount clock above Times Square said 8:19.

  It might just as well have said midnight.

  V

  I went to my hotel. I called Lester. He wasn’t home. I called Sardi’s, Shor’s, Moore’s, the Stage Delicatessen and Hanson’s Drugstore. He wasn’t there either. And if he had been, I don’t know what I would have said to him anyway—except possibly “please.”

  I lay on my bed, blowing smoke at the ceiling, remembering all I had put into the big push toward success—the days, the nights, the struggle with words; the breath holding until they got the joke and exploded into laughter; the stormy rages of Sammy when the well ran dry; the good dumb luck of becoming head writer on a large staff— the head man doesn’t have to know how to crack the joke as long as he can crack the whip; then the big chance, tomorrow night’s mammoth job, and Sammy’s demand that I write the sketches, which were too important to trust to the others.

  When a man is through, he is supposed to know it and quit. When he doesn’t have it any more, the rules call for him to throw in the towel, or the sponge, or the typewriter, or whatever happens to be the symbol of the pursuit that has defeated him. I was through then; I knew it; and I would not quit. I was through now; I knew it; and still I would not quit. I wanted to be able to keep on going—a dynamo without a motor, a joke-writer without humor—knowing that in show business you can get by without talent as long as you can keep them from finding you out.

  I swung my legs off the bed and went to the window.

  Outside, the theater district was bright with the lure of lighted tungsten, spelling out words of promise and enticement. The lights had to glow more brightly these nights; the words had to be chosen with greater care. The people weren’t coming down here any more in the great stampede for pleasure the way they used to. They were staying home. They were escaping their drab living rooms without even leaving them.

  I wondered how long it would be before the monstrous magic box would darken these lights of Broadway for ever. I thought of other lights, other cities … State Street, Chicago … the sprawling, twinkling mazdas of Hollywood, not far from the darkening studios … the neon brilliance of Miami Beach … Collins Avenue … Lincoln Road …

  Miami Beach …

  Miami Beach!

  Of course!

  I snuffed out the cigarette.

  Why not?

  It was a chance. What could I lose?

  I went to the phone on the night table, feeling a sudden surge of excitement. I called the desk. “This is Mr. Preston. I want to put in a long distance call to the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach. Got it?”

  I hung up and went to the dresser and poured myself a half tumbler of scotch, letting the whiskey heat up my optimism even more.

  If I could get her to return, if I could somehow convince her that she had made a terrible mistake … get her assurance that she’d fly back north on the next plane. That was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Not a monologue, not a couple of stolen scripts, but her, Julie Hogarth. If I could tell Lester that she was returning to him, wouldn’t that be enough? Was there anything better I could do for him than that?

  I poured myself another drink with shaking hands.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Here’s your call, Mr. Preston.”

  “Right.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I cleared my throat. “Hello?”

  Faintly, the voice was saying, “Eden Roc. Good evening.”

  Too loudly, too eagerly, I said, “Mrs. Lester Hogarth, please.”

  “One moment.”

  I waited.

  A voice came on. A man’s voice. “Desk. Lyons speaking.”

  “Look, this is New York calling. I asked for Mrs. Lester Hogarth.”

  “Oh, is this the same gentleman who called a while ago?” “No, no. Can I speak—?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but Mrs. Hogarth is not with us here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s right, sir. She checked out yesterday.”

  “Then where can I reach her? It’s urgent.”

  “Hold on one moment, sir.” Not there. Checked out. The guy took his time coming back. Then, “All we have for her here is a post office box to forward her mail. Box four-eight-three-one, Main Post Office …”

  “Is that Miami or Miami Beach?”

  “No, sir, New York City.”

  I hung up slowly. My brain was fuzzy. Too much scotch. A hard day, not enough food, too much scotch …

  New York City.

  I began to pace the carpeting, trying to latch on to something, trying to make sense out of the disorder in my head. I looked at my watch. Sammy was in the middle of the dress rehearsal now. But why worry about Sammy? Why think about Sammy? Why now? What was I trying to come up with? Thinking back … over the day … voices … words … Lester … Sammy … Otis Elwell …

  Not Miami Beach.

  New York City!

  It was crazy. But so was everything else. What was crazier than a man being on the brink of a one-hundred-grand-a-year success at the very same time that he had run out of talent? Everything was crazy, but you had to play it out as though it all could happen.

  You had to play your hunches as though they made sense.

  I called the garage and told them to get my car over in a hurry. I went into the bathroom and doused my face with cold water. I fixed my hair, pulled my tie straight, threw on my jacket, grabbed my hat and coat and headed for the elevator. The elevator man gave me a funny look.

  The hell with the elevator man. I was in a hurry, that was all.

  My car was waiting outside. I jumped into it and fought my way through the snarling wolf-pack of cabs, shot west on Fifty-seventh, then onto the West Side Highway and I was in the clear. The night air was fresh and cold. The car liked it, and purred along at sixty.

  I turned on the radio. I needed something there in the car with me. Dance music … recordings … at the bottom of the dial. I didn’t wan
t to have to think. There was too much to think about. Better just to listen to Bing … and Frankie … and an old Tommy Dorsey platter. Tommy Dorsey … gone forever … like so many others … like Davey Farber …

  I turned to another station.

  Better not to think. Better just to listen.

  The Henry Hudson Parkway was almost deserted. I ate it up at sixty-five. Who bothers to venture out at night when the magic box is aglow?

  The music was soothing. Radio wasn’t washed up yet. Radio would always be with us as long as guys wanted music in their ears while they made love, or lay on a beach in the sun, or drove through the night on lonely roads trying not to think about where they were going or why they were going or what they would discover when they finally got there.

  I cut off at Scarsdale.

  It was off by itself, up on the hill, past the clump of protecting trees at the end of the wide-swinging arc of the graveled driveway—a mansion with too many rooms, for occasional weekends and hot feverish nights when the girl was as desperate as Sammy but the risk was too great in a city of husbands and a million prying eyes.

  I shut off the motor and got out quietly. The blood was pounding in me as I went up the flagstone walk to the porch. No lights in the windows. No bright lights in the windows. A few, but very dim. In the living room. To scare off prowlers.

  Like myself.

  I stood on the porch, remembering another night … the sound of Valma Stevens’ pearl necklace shattering and bouncing in a hundred different directions in the silence that followed the wounded cry … the blood at the corner of her mouth, like smeared lipstick … Sammy’s face as he stood there rubbing his fist …

  What had they always seen in him? What did they still see in him? The loveliest, the softest, the most vulnerable of them … impaling themselves on his ruthless, contemptuous hunger …The things I didn’t know about women …

  I pushed the button. Far off, inside, I heard the chimes. I waited. But nobody came.

  I rang again. And waited.

  “Who is it?” The voice was muffled behind the thick oak door.

  “Hey, Kelly!” I called out.

  “Who’s there?” He sounded frightened.

  “Al Preston. Open the door.”

  “He ain’t here.”

  I pounded on the wood. “I know that. Will you open up?”

  Silence for a moment, while the wheels went around in the battered head. Then finally the inner chain rattled and the door swung back a few inches. I jammed my foot in the opening. “It’s okay,” I said, pushing in with my shoulder.

  “Hey wait a minute …”

  I shoved and the door gave, and I was inside.

  Kelly peered at me, his fight-scarred face blotchy with confusion and worry. The punchy eyes shifted in their sockets as he wet his lips with a nervous tongue. “The boss say nobody supposed to come in. He ain’t here and he tell me nobody—”

  “Okay, okay.” I was looking around. From some where, I heard the soft music of a dance band. The living room … “Mr. Hogarth will be here in a little while,” I said. “It’s all right, Kelly. He’s coming right after the rehearsal.”

  He examined my face, watching me as I stared in the direction of the music. “The boss … he … he tol’ you?”

  I gave him the broad wink. “He tells me everything.”

  An idiot-laugh bubbled from the puffy lips. “Got a cigarette on ya?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Gimme the whole pack.”

  “Sure, pal.”

  He winked and shuffled off to the kitchen, still giggling.

  Sammy didn’t have to pay Kelly a lot of money. He enjoyed his work too much. He liked the smell of them, and the fright on their pretty faces, and sometimes from the kitchen he could hear them sobbing, or the sound of Sammy’s voice, rising in frustrated rage.

  I moved toward the sound of the soft music, my hat and coat still on.

  The jade lamp was on in the living room. That was all. And at first I didn’t see anything but the gleaming green magic-eye of the console. Then I looked to the sofa, to the white hand reaching out to the glass on the low-slung coffee table, and when the glass was set down again, the pale clear liquid had disappeared and there was only the tiny white onion, like one of the pearls of a shattered necklace.

  She lay there, facing away from the entrance, unaware of my presence … waiting for him in the half-lit silence of the enormous living room with nothing but the sound of soft music and the aroma of gin and vermouth to keep her company. And suddenly, she heard my footfall.

  “Sammy?” Thickly, with the unpracticed tongue of too many unfamiliar martinis from the empty mixer. “That you?”

  I looked her over slowly, trying to make sense of it all—the high-heeled suedes that would lift her voluptuous body to his groping desire, the firmly molded legs in the sheer nylons, the black sheath of her dress, crushed beneath her reclining form, shoulders bare and gleaming in the half-light save where the raven hair lay, shoulder length now, no longer up in the chaste coiffure of a chignon. I was Sammy, standing there and seeing her as Sammy saw her—as any man who was a man and still alive would instantly see her …

  It made sense. It had always made sense.

  Only Lester could have failed to see the inevitability of it.

  “Sammy?” She turned her head.

  “Hello, Julie,” I said quietly.

  VI

  “Al!” Her hand dug into the arm of the sofa and she pulled herself, struggling, to her feet, swaying slightly as she stared at me. “Al …” She looked past me. “Where …?”

  “He’s not here,” I said, switching on the lights.

  “But what … what’re you doing here? What … do you want? Kelly!” She started moving unsteadily to the archway. “Kelly!”

  I grabbed her arm and swung her around. “Come here. Now sit down. I just want to talk to you.”

  “Get out of here,” she moaned, falling back into the club chair. “Please. Go ’way. Oh God. I’m so tired. Go ’way. Mix me a drink.”

  I threw my hat and coat on the sofa. “How long have you been here?”

  “Sammy,” she cried weakly.

  “How long?”

  She shook her head and the shiny black hair fell into her eyes. “What day is it? What time is it? What do you want? Let me alone …”

  I took her by the shoulders and shook her up. “It’s Thursday night. Come on now, when did you get here?”

  “This morning,” she mumbled. “Kelly met me at the airport. Why did Sammy tell you, Al? Why? He promised. ‘Nobody’ll know, Julie. Don’t be afraid. You jus’ take the next plane and fly back, go up to the house. Stay there. Plenty of food in the refrigerator. Kelly won’t bother you. Soon as I can get away I’ll come up. We talk it over. Jus’ talk it over, ‘n then you go back to Miami, do what you want. Jus’ talk it over.’ Al!” She looked up at me, and I saw the torture in her eyes. “I swear to God that’s what he said. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “Give me a drink.”

  “Look, Julie—”

  “Give me a drink!”

  I stepped to the sideboard and put some cubes in a glass and filled it with soda and went back to her and she was weeping silently. “Here,” I said.

  “Don’t want it. Go ’way.”

  “Where are your things?”

  “What things?”

  “Your clothes. Your suitcase. Whatever you came here with.” I looked at my watch. Almost ten o’clock.

  She gazed up at me, the tears streaming down her face. “What’re you going to do?”

  “Where are they?”

  “The bedroom,” she moaned. “Al … oh God … my mascara …”

  “Here.” I gave her a handkerchief.

  “You believe me?” She dabbed at her eyes.

  “Yes. Now go on up and pack your things and—”

  “Well, I’m lying,” she sobbed. “It’s not true.
Every thing’s a lie. Five whole years are a lie. Must be a lie. My idea, calling him from Florida. Not his, my idea. Telling myself jus’ want to put in a word for Les … plead with Sammy … maybe he’ll listen to me … give Les a chance so I can go back to him, and love him the way I used to love him. Could’ve said no, Al, but I didn’t. Sammy tells me to take the next plane, fly up here, see him, talk it over. Could’ve said no, but I said yes. I must’ve wanted to come, don’t you see?”

  “It wasn’t your idea, it was his!” I shouted. “You wanted to talk to him on the phone but he got you to come up here!”

  She struggled to her feet and came toward me, crying, “All day I’ve been here waiting for him, enough time to think, enough time to go ‘way, but I’m still here waiting for him, wanting him to come. Telling myself all these years I can’t feel anything but disgust for Sammy … love Lester … sweet, gentle Lester … not Sammy … not that horrible … Look at me, Al!” she cried out. “Waiting for him and wanting him to come … ”

  “So badly, so desperately eager,” I said, letting her come into my arms and weep all over me, “that you have to render yourself unconscious with alcohol before you can even bear to think of it.”

  “… Hating him, afraid of him, always hating him for being there, part of my life, part of Lester’s, always grinning at me, looking at me with those eyes and knowing why I hated him. Afraid of him. Afraid of myself.” She dug her face into my chest as though she could hide there and get away from whatever had been torturing her. “Oh God, Al, how can a woman bear to live knowing there are times when she can feel something that isn’t disgust for a man like Sammy. Times when she … oh, Al …”

  She, too, like all the others? What kind of flame was it that made moths of the best of them?

  “Pleaded with Les,” she was crying. “‘Leave Sammy,’ I told him. ‘Get away from him. Far away from him.’ Not jus’ for Les. Thinking of me too. Sammy knows everything. He watches me, sees me turning away. Knows that some day … he knew I’d come. Had to happen sometime. He knew …”

  And knowing, he’d do everything in his power to hasten the day. Leave it to Sammy to want to tear off the richest piece of fruit on the tree, to want to strike the final, ultimate blow. His brother’s wife. The cherished possession of his brother Lester, All-American slob. It was too wonderful, too much even for Sammy to bear without the unnerving stabs of secret guilt, leading to fear, leading to wild and redoubled anger at the symbol of it.