“Just what I said.” Red spots flamed in her pale cheeks. “Once is enough. I can’t stand him. How could I ever have thought he was—?”
“Now, Louisa!” His mouth went dry and as he sucked in his breath he was aware of the odor, and all at once he knew what was strange in the room.
“Vile odor … vile man,” she blurted out harshly. “He insisted on smoking one right after dinner.”
Harry went to her. “But he doesn’t—”
“He said he never enjoys a meal if it isn’t topped with a cigar— couldn’t live without them. …”
“But—”
“And the minute he saw your humidor he was at it. Not one, but two. One for after dinner and one to nauseate me in the living room …
Harry’s eyes wandered dazedly to the copper humidor on the mahogany table and then he looked at Louisa again, half-listening to the bitter rasp of her voice as she straightened the ashtrays and set each little piece on the end tables in its proper place, and he knew as he stared at her that he was seeing her as the inscrutable eyes of Arnold Gregor had seen her tonight and perhaps before, and as he, Harry Cramer, had seen her for twelve long years and would go on seeing her now for the rest of his life. …
“Harry, what are you doing?”
He didn’t answer. He just bit off the dry tip of the dark Havana filler, spat it from his tongue and brought the flaming match to the other end.
“Harry!”
Then he took off his jacket and threw it on the sofa. Dark stains of perspiration showed on his shirt.
She moved toward him. “You stop that—at once!”
He didn’t even look at her. “Shut up,” he said quietly.
“Harry!” she screamed.
He sank down in the soft green club chair and began to suck on the big cigar, filling the room with rich white clouds of heavy, acrid smoke. …
It’s the Little Things That Count
I FOUGHT THE DYING SECONAL, sinking under again and again but always struggling back, like a drowning man who would not drown, until finally I was sure I was awake, because the tooting cab horns on Lexington Avenue and the distant rumble of a subway train and the wild jangling of the telephone next to my bed were no longer part of a dream.
I brought the telephone into bed and sank back on the pillow, letting my heavy eyelids have their way against the bright morning sunshine that was slipping through the cracks of the venetian blinds. The seconal tried to creep back into my brain but I killed it off with a deep breath and finally managed to say, “Hello.”
“Sidney? Gloria.”
Oh, God, that voice.
“What time is it?” I groaned.
“You wanted me to wake you at eleven but—”
“What time is it?”
“Twenty after eleven. I’ve been—”
“Any mail?”
“Yes. Shall I read some of—?”
“Only the important ones.” I meant only the least unimportant, but Gloria would know that, because what were secretaries for if not to understand what it was you meant when you said something else? “… ‘to see that Mr. Wildbeck has a very big week—’”
“Start over.”
“It’s a wire from the Coast, from Henry Cott. ‘Sidney baby: I know I don’t have to tell you how important it is to see that Mr. Wildbeck has a very big week in New York. It’s the little things that count, tootsie, and you always were a specialist in the little things. That’s why we all love you so.’”
“Straight wire,” I said. “‘Don’t fret, my pet’ … No. Make that: ‘Relax, sweetheart. I have all kinds of goodies prepared. Best to you and Ruth and the little Cott tots.’”
“All rightie,” Gloria said. “A note from Thelma Lance. ‘Sidney: Don’t be such a damned puritan. Call me.’”
“No answer.”
I’d have to go into training first.
“Morgan Wright sent back all the Friday copy … the Wilson Mizner anecdotes, the Truman gag and the—”
“What about the plug for Wildbeck?” Fear suddenly twinged in my stomach.
“That came back, too. There’s a note attached: ‘Sorry, kiddie, but you know I don’t go for mildew.’”
I swore into the pillow.
“Switch the Mizner stuff to the present tense, make it the other night at Twenty-One and credit Gene Fowler. And on the other, take out Truman and have George S. Kaufman say it about Russell Crouse. Send them to Elwell. ‘Dear Otis: You once told me you were going to do a column on the humor of insult. These may help. Love.’ And to Morgan Wright, on the memo paper … ‘For your information, pappy, the Mizner and Truman anecdotes couldn’t have been old, because I dreamed them up myself.’”
“Now, Sidney …”
“Oh, all right. Just say: ‘Oops, sorry.’”
But some day I’d tell them. Some day when I was nearing eighty and had only a few hours to live.
“Put Milton on,” I said.
“He’s downstairs getting the afternoon papers.”
“Have him call me back.”
I put the phone back on the night-table and fumbled for a cigarette. This day was going to be no different than the others. I could tell that already, and I had practically nothing to go on—only Gloria’s rasping voice and a columnist sending back some stuff, and Milton not being in the office when I wanted him. But today the sameness would have an added meaning, because tomorrow Finn Wildbeck would be swaggering into town, with a gigantic vanity and an elaborate set of appetites to be satisfied, and I was the specialist in the little things.
I lay back on the pillow, blew smoke rings at the ceiling and began to plan my day, and I didn’t even bother to think up new lies.
First I would shock my nervous system into a state of relaxation with an ice cold shower, not changing my mind about this at the last minute. I would shave myself closely, looking myself in the eye without flinching, and then Milton would call to read me the breaks in the papers. Finn Wildbeck would be favorably mentioned in every Broadway column. So would all my lesser clients. I would put on the tan gabardine suit and it would fit me the way Arnold always claimed it did when he flattered me through the pins in his teeth. I would not go to Babe Scanlon’s restaurant for lunch.
Afterwards, I would stroll to the office leisurely, and I would be completely unaware of my digestive system. I would gaze upon the faces of my fellowmen without bitterness, and upon the legs of their women without desire. I would walk into my office with a smile on my face, and Milton would look me in the eye, and Gloria’s make-up would be on straight, and there would be nobody waiting in the anteroom to see me. There would be no calls to return, no bills lying on my desk, no more wires from Hollywood, no afternoon mail, and no messages from columnists’ secretaries wanting to know why I wasn’t contributing more items.
I let the phone ring for thirty seconds before I dared to answer it.
“Sidney?” It was Milton.
My stomach tightened. “What’s new, kid?”
“Oh, nothing much.” There was sweat on his voice. “You have a good weekend?”
“What’s in the papers?”
“I made the rounds Saturday night. Thought maybe I’d pick up some news. Caught the show at the Copa. Lewis was great. He’s got a new routine—”
“Are we in or not?” I couldn’t take it any longer.
Milton made the little sound he always made when he swallowed his Adam’s apple. It was a small gulp of terror. “Hold on,” he said. I could hear him rustling the papers, and in the background the clatter of Gloria’s typewriter. “Let’s see now. … Wright has one of those Broadway Legend columns.”
“Who wrote it?”
“It’s pretty hard to say, but Hudson Swade and his band are mentioned three times so I guess Jack Sistrom wrote it.”
“Are we in there?”
“Ummm.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“I said no.”
“Why not?”
“Gee, Sidn
ey, you know how tough Wright is.”
“Go ahead. What else?” I could hear his voice beginning to break, and it was too early in the day to start that routine.
“Penny Wallingford has a Monday’s Wash column. Three-dot stuff.”
“Who’s in?”
“Hildegarde, Julius Caesar, Petrillo, Bette Davis, Truman, Mickey Cohen, John Foster Dulles, Jayne Mansfield, Hudson Swade—”
“But not us.”
“Gee, Sidney—”
“What else?”
“Leo Bartha has an open letter to Ibn Saud, and a couple of Tattle Tales without credit. Bernie Wiswell wrote the open letter to Ibn Saud for him. I happen to know because I ran into Bernie last night. But I don’t see him getting any payoff here. He’ll whistle for it. Bartha never pays off, Sidney. You know how he—”
“I take it then we’re not in any place. Right?”
“You can’t trust those guys,” he whined. “They use your stuff and the payoffs are always in the overset or it’s always tomorrow. It’s getting so—”
“Let me speak to Gloria,” I said.
“But, Sidney—”
“Put Gloria on.” I ground my cigarette into the ashtray.
She rasped: “Are you coming in now, Sidney?”
“I want you to see that he’s in the office around three,” I said.
“All rightie. Are you—?”
“I’ll call in.” I flung the phone back on the table.
I don’t know why I had the kid around. Probably just for the tears. He was pale and thin and forever damp with anxiety, and he lived in a state of suspended aggravation. I had picked him up cheap when the market on college boys was low and kids who were bright enough to earn a sheepskin were stupid enough to smell glamour in the Broadway rat-race. In two years I had tried to show him every trick I knew, and I still kept making the mistake of thinking I had succeeded. But if it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else, someone who would have looked like him, grown prematurely bald at approximately the same rate and given me the same kind of headaches. And they weren’t headaches that could be solved with aspirin … or by lying there staring up at the ceiling, either.
I got out of bed, dropped my pajamas on the floor and walked to the bathroom. I took a shower. A warm shower. …
At ten after one I sailed through the revolving door of Babe Scanlon’s, where all good success stories go before they die of ulcers. Bunny was on at the hat-check stand, wearing the tight black crepe dress and the insolent face.
“Love of my life,” I said, taking both her hands in mine.
She pouted a mouthful of lipstick at me. “If you loved me, you’d wear a hat.”
“It’s not polite to love a girl with your hat on,” I said.
“Grandma, what big talk you have.”
I put an arm around her waist. “Got any news?”
“Not now. I’m busy.” She pulled away. “Besides, I don’t know a thing.”
She left me for a moment to sell a man his hat. When she returned I said casually, “Finn Wildbeck is coming to town tomorrow.”
“So what?”
“He’ll be looking for new talent,” I said. “Maybe I could arrange a screen test for you.”
Her eyes became fevered. “Sidney! Could you?”
“I said ‘maybe.’”
She’d be great in pictures, playing a hat-check girl.
“Golly, Sidney.”
I took out the memo pad. “Come on. What’s been going on?”
“Well …” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“I’m Clark Gable, baby. All ears.”
“Well … Cootie Klein was walking out with some man, don’t know who it was, and I heard Cootie saying to him, ‘She’s not going to hold me up for alimony,’ so I guess that means—”
“Natch,” I said, scribbling down “Klein tooting Re notes.”
“What else?”
“Let’s see … Eddie Lake is breaking up his band.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m Clark Gable, too.”
I threw a glance at her shape. “Yeah,” I said, writing down “Lake dried up.” Then I said, “More.”
“That’s all,” she said quickly, and there was something about her voice that made me look up.
“Now, Bunny baby—”
“No, really, Sidney.” She left me to extort twenty-five cents from a customer and I followed her.
“What’s up?” I grabbed her arm.
She glanced around furtively. “You won’t say who told you, will you?”
I gave her a hurt look. “Baby … this is Sidney.”
“I know but …” She bit her lip. “All right. But you didn’t hear it from me. You know Rita? The blonde, works here nights, looks like Marilyn Monroe?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, she’s … she’s in trouble.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“But you don’t understand.”
The hell I didn’t. I knew Rita.
Bunny said, “Last week Leo Bartha came in and told her he wanted to do a column on hat-check girls and would she mind being interviewed …”
My pencil suddenly went on the alert.
“… and of course she was thrilled. He asked her what time would be convenient for her to come up to his apartment and when she told me about that, I told her to say eleven o’clock in the morning. So she went up at eleven o’clock in the morning and it turns out that Mrs. Bartha was in Connecticut that day and, I mean, after all—eleven o’clock in the morning. She never dreamed, because Mr. Bartha writes such a lovely column and he’s such a quiet sort of man and he’s not very young … and eleven o’clock in the morning. She didn’t expect, that is, she always thought Mr. Bartha was such a perfect gentleman and she was so taken aback she said some terrible things to him, and Mr. Bartha got furious and ordered her out of the apartment and told her he was going to tell the boss to fire her, and now she’s so worried she can hardly think straight.”
“I see,” I said, jotting down “Call Bartha.”
“You think he’ll tell? You think he’d do a thing like that and have her fired?”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Let me.” I put the little black book back in my pocket. I was through with Bunny now. I was miles beyond her. But I lingered long enough to pat her cheek and warn her that if she didn’t watch out she’d wind up in Hollywood. Then I went to the phone booth and called the office to tell Gloria where she could reach me.
“Thelma Lance called twice,” she reported. “I told her you got her note.”
“If she calls again, tell her I’ve just left town.”
“All rightie.”
“And when Milton gets back from lunch, tell him to start working on a column about Wildbeck—for Leo Bartha.”
“Leo Bartha! But he won’t give us—”
“I’ll call in later,” I said.
I phoned the hotel where Rita lived and the guy at the switchboard said she was still asleep and not to be disturbed.
“Ring her,” I said. “This is urgent.”
“I’m sorry, mister, but she left word—”
“You said that before. She’ll lose her job if you don’t ring her.”
He thought about it for a moment and then finally he plugged her in.
“And don’t listen in,” I said.
He grunted and clicked out of the circuit. I heard Rita painfully working the phone into her bed.
“Hello, Rita?”
“Mmmm.”
“This is Sidney Falco.”
“Mmmm.”
“I’m sorry to wake you, honey. I’ll let you go right back to sleep. You don’t have to talk. Just listen. Can you hear me?”
“Mm hmm.”
“I heard about the trouble with Leo Bartha …”
She made a small sound of pain.
“… and I just wanted to tell you I’m going to fix things up for you.”
“Mmmm. How?”
“It’s simple. Look: Finn Wildbeck arrives in New York tomorrow and he wants very much to meet you. He carries a lot of weight with your boss, and any friend of Wildbeck’s will be in so solid with your boss that nothing Leo Bartha says can make any difference. Do you get what I mean, honey? Only for a week.”
“Mmm. No, thanks.”
“Don’t be silly, baby, you want to lose your job?”
There was a long silence at the other end.
“Hello, Rita?”
“Mmmm.”
“What do you say?”
She moaned despairingly.
“You’ll like Wildbeck, really. He’s got a great sense of humor and he acts just like a young man and … and he’s very generous.”
More silence. It ended finally in a weary sigh. “Okay,” she mumbled.
“Good girl,” I said. “You won’t have a thing to worry about now.”
She strangled a laugh. “You kiddin’?”
“Go on back to sleep now. I’ll check you tomorrow.”
“Mmmm.” Her phone clattered back on the hook. She’d be perfect for Wildbeck. He always said conversation was a waste of time.
I walked past the door labeled “DOLLS” and through the door marked “GUYS.” Wilbur, the white-coated Negro attendant, was whisk-brooming a customer’s trousers.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Falco. Yes, sir.”
“How’s business, Wilbur?”
“Very fine. Very fine indeed.” He waited until we were alone and then he went to the enameled towel cabinet and came back with a sheet of yellow paper. I unfolded it and glanced hurriedly at Wilbur’s fine handwriting. Man talk, the litany of the lavatory … verbal indiscretions which in a few days would go through the alchemy of press agentry and journalism and appear, scrubbed, polished and refurbished, on breakfast tables from one end of the nation to the other, as little syndicated pearls of wisdom from the oyster that was Broadway.
“Wilbur,” I said, “your white walls have remarkable ears.”
“Thank you, Mr. Falco. Thank you, sir.” He grinned proudly as he whisked my lapels with his brush.
I tucked the sheet of paper away in my pocket and folded a ten-dollar bill into his hand. “There’s more where this came from when there’s more where that came from.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
Sweet Smell of Success Page 25