"Will you say yes to the pie?" growled Henny, standing. "I'll just trot out and get it-"
Hazel shrilled, "You bring that pie, and I'll throw it at you. Sheldon, let's GO."
"Perhaps we had better run along," Klug said to the parents, with an affable smile.
The outside door closed hard, with a metallic chonkl-a. familiar Hazel farewell.
4
They were in a taxicab on the way to Sardi's, and they were caught in the after-theatre jam on Forty-fourth Street. Henny was still trying to calm Norman. "But I ask you-America's thanatos urge!" he shouted, flinging out both hands and sawing the air. "The homosexuality of Pershing's horse! The mythos and the ethos of Athos and Porthos! Jesus Christ, Henny! My daughter taken in by one of those! And the son of a bitch has a wife and child, and she knew it all along! The girl is schizoid!"
"She is not. She's in love, the poor jerk. Stop working yourself up. We're almost there now. Anyway, there's not a thing we can do about it."
'Why? Why can't we try? She was going out with some nice kids, wasn't she? Wet behind the ears, but-"
"Listen, Norm, the one thing that made me stick to you through five lousy years was the way Mama kept fighting against you. All my self-respect got tied up in it, and-" Norman was making an extremely sour face. She said hastily, "Not that I'm comparing the two of you, but-all I'm trying to tell you-"
"I was lean," said Norman. "I was wiry. I was gay. I made jokes. I never took myself seriously, like this fat pontificating slob. I was no angel, but I never slept with another man's wife, and I never deflowered a virgin, even though-"
Henny said tartly, "Okay, dear."
"Look, I mean no offense. I was glad you'd had some experience, and I-"
'Shut up." The pugdog jaw jutted at him, and Norman subsided. Henny stared through the steamy window at the fluttering snow. When she turned to him, after a minute or so, he was surprised and sobered to see tears running down her face. "We brought her into the world, didn't We? She's our daughter. If she's screwing around, who's to blame? He's a drip and let's pray she gets over him, that's all."
"Look, suppose we did go to the Caribbean? Maybe she'd come along.
She's learning nothing at N.Y.U., and as for the ballet lessons, she's never been serious-"
"Forget it, Norman. She wouldn't come. She's trying to marry the bastard, that's why she brought him to dinner, and so far he's not having any. He's got the oldest and best out." Henny struck a little fist on the armrest of the cab. "Letting her be is our best chance. He's pretty rich. I think she's going to get fed up and puke. I just hope he doesn't hurt her too much."
The cab stopped. Henny put a hand on the back of Norman's neck and rubbed, an old intimate gesture. "Here we are. Listen, kid, I want some fun tonight, do you hear? Not another word about the Sending. Not tonight. Henceforth, joy and wassail."
"It's a deal," Norman moaned, passing a dollar bill to the cab driver. "Joy and wassail."
There was an opening-night mob in the restaurant, all buzz, jewels, white bosoms, black ties, and alert clever faces, but the headwaiter bowed the Papermans to one of the better tables in the middle of the room. Norman expected this. He entertained clients and columnists here; here too he exchanged jokes and gossip with Broadway friends; his monthly bill came to a couple of hundred dollars. The purpose of all this activity was to get the names of his clients printed in the papers.
"I wonder how the Olivier opening went?" Henny said as they walked to the table.
Norman's cronies at various tables were making small cabalistic signs to him: a faint hitch of a shoulder, a roll of the eyes, a flat hand rocked back and forth on the table. "I think they're in trouble," he said. "But you know something? I don't care. I don't care, Henny, if this show is a hit or a flop. I really don't. I don't give one good god damn. Any more than I do about some show that opened last night in Copenhagen."
"Something's happening to you," she said.
After ordering drinks he took up tomorrow's News, which he had bought from a street vendor, opened it to the theatre columns, and with glum pleasure saw the names of four of his clients in print. He had always been a good workman, even if his work was contemptible. He turned to the front page. The headline was about a brunette beaten to death in her apartment. In the story on page three, the "brunette" as usual was fifty-four, just another aging lady done in by bungling thieves. He sat erect, startled. "Hey, Henny! Did you know about this?"
He showed her the story. She exclaimed, "Gosh yes, I remember! There was a crowd across the street this afternoon. Ambulance, and cops, and all that. I thought somebody had had an accident. Ye gods, murder!"
"Across the street from us, Henny. A hundred yards away."
"I know. I wonder what part of New York is safe any more."
"The cemeteries are safe," said Norman, "for the customers."
At the front of the restaurant there was a commotion, for Sir Laurence Olivier was entering with a large party. Sometimes on a first night the diners applauded the star of the new show but tonight, perhaps because Olivier awed them, there was no handclapping. Olivier's party filed to the large vacant table at the front.
"Wait a minute!" said Paperman hoarsely. "Henny! Henny, do you see what I see?"
Henny was staring, her face all wrinkled up tight. "Ye gods. I think I do."
"But-how come? Is it possible? What's happening to this town? To this world?"
The unlikely sight that the Papermans were beholding was a huge apelike figure in a bulging dinner jacket and a frilled dress shirt, with a bald cone-shaped head, taking a chair beside Sir Laurence Olivier, throwing an arm over his shoulder, saying something in his ear, and guffawing loud enough to be heard all over the restaurant. "Haw haw haw!"
Lester Atlas was in the Olivier party, without a doubt in the world.
"I'll be goddamned," murmured Norman. "I really will be goddamned! I think my life is over."
Her face still wrinkled, Henny said, "Who produced the Olivier thing? Dan Freed? That's Freed at the table."
"Sure, Freed."
"Well, that's it, then. You introduced Lester to Freed, Norm, back in March. Don't you remember? The night of the Boyer opening. Lester cross-examined him about play financing for an hour. Lester's got money in this show. That's all."
"But why has he never mentioned it? Never even hinted it! How could he resist? Olivier! Lester always runs off at the mouth about himself like a five-year-old."
"That's how much you know about Lester," said Henny. "When he wants to, he talks. When he doesn't want to, he can keep mighty quiet. If it's a flop, he won't mention it. Lester Atlas never loses."
Paperman watched Atlas and Olivier laughing together, with stricken gloom. He had spent his days in the service of glamour. Nothing had ever been more real or more important to him than the radiance of a stage star. All his work, all his life long, had been an effort to generate tiny sparks of that radiance for his clients. Here was Olivier, the most effulgent of living actors, in the embrace of the squarest of squares, Lester Atlas. It was a total collapse of values. Brightness had fallen from the air.
He knew the reason for it. This was a foul triumph of the dollar. Broadway, with its strangling costs and shrinking audience, needed so much money to survive that it had no recourse left but to fall on its knees to the Lester Atlases. And Atlas would give money. The price was his public embrace, and his vulgar hee-hawing in your ear, at the number-one table in Sardi's.
In a flash like a waking vision, Paperman found himself picturing what the Gull Reef Club must be like at this instant: the glittering moon path across black water, the dancers, Negro and white, on the terrace, the hibiscus flowers scarlet in the flare of kerosene flames, the lights jewelling Queen's Row and the dark hills, the pure ocean breeze scented with frangipani.
Henny had not lived twenty years in wedlock with Paperman, and five years out of it, without becoming expert at reading his face. She said, "Norm, tell me, how serious are you about that hotel?"
He said with a sharp, almost guilty turn of his head, "I think I'm just waiting to die here in New York, Henny. There has to be something better to do with the time I've got left."
She played with her bracelet. "It's really Eden, and all that jazz? It really is?"
"Look, the natives live in shacks. It gets too hot. It's a pleasant place. Sweetheart, the point is I know sixty people in here tonight, and every one of them goes south in winter. Every one. Dan Freed would come to
Gull Reef. Half of them would. It's something different. It's making money now, and we'd make more. But that isn't the main thing. What I picture, for both of us, is a chance to-"
"HAW! HAW! HAW!" The violent bellow made them both jump. "NORMAN HILTON, I PRESUME? Haw haw! How's the old trade-winds king?"
They had been too absorbed in their conversation to see him bearing down on them. He loomed over them in evening dress, his pince-nez glasses perched on his sunburned nose, his bald head peeling in odd patches. He carried a fat cigar as usual and a dark brown highball. His frilled shirt was a light blue. This was the color for people going on television, and Paperman thought that Lester Atlas was likely to appear on television, if ever, only in a brief interview at the gates of Sing Sing. But it was like him to affect the blue shirt.
"Hi, Lester."
"How about our wandering boy, Henny? Two days in the tropics and he sheds ten years. Gone with the trade winds. Haw haw! Listen, I've been telling Larry about the hotel. You know, Sir Laurence Olivier. He's dying to meet you. He says you sound like the smartest man in New York."
Henny felt Norman's hand in a restraining grip on her knee. She said, "Thanks, Les, but we have to get home."
Atlas, however, was already hauling Norman out of his chair and telling the waiter to bring him the check at Olivier's table. Paperman's skin crawled at the thought of being introduced to the star by Lester Atlas, but the only alternative was a physical scuffle, which he would lose anyway. He came along.
The star was gracious; he did appear curious about Gull Reef, and mildly amused at Atlas. There were three columnists at the table, besides Dan Freed and his wife. All these people were old friends of the Papermans, and they made room quickly, while Mrs. Freed exclaimed over Henny's bracelet. The columnists at once asked Paperman probing questions about the Gull Reef Club. Norman began to perk up. He was an old columnist-charmer, and for once now he had something fresh to talk about. He warmed to a word picture of the island, well aware that he was giving everyone a welcome diversion from the grim wait for the notices. Little details came back to him-the plash of the pelicans in Pitt Bay, the "hill crowd," the Turkish homosexual, the free mingling of blacks and whites on the dance floor, the underwater lights on the rocks, the Chad diplomats, the eight-fingered bartender with a gold ring in his ear. All these he used with his old raconteur's flair. Even Henny was drawn in. She knew his tricks and half imitated them: the ingratiating hoarse little chuckles, the play of the eyebrows, the eyes humorously crinkled almost shut, the outward flinging of both curved palms, the spice of an occasional Yiddish word: but she was still his best audience. Her face was alight, her laugh quick and loud.
Part of Paperman's charm was his care never to weary his listeners. He knew that the notices would soon arrive. With the questions still lively, the laughter still high, he stood, taking his wife's hand, and said he had to go home. Olivier drew a laugh by saying that he wanted to reserve the cottage named Desire right now. One of the columnists said, "Norman, how does the thing actually stand? Have you and Mr. Atlas bought the hotel yet? Or are you going to buy it, or what?"
Norman was not at all ready for the final wrench; nor was his wife, judging by the amused uncertainty on her face. He said, "Well, Henny and I are going down there, anyway, probably next week."
"To look at it again? Or buy it?"
"To buy it," Atlas interposed, "to buy it, of course. It's all set."
Paperman took a deep breath, and pressed his wife's hand. "To buy it."
Chapter four
The Deal
Henny loved Amerigo, from the moment she first saw its green hills in the morning sun through the windows of the bouncing inter-islands airplane. And Paperman's fear that, on second look, the enchanted island would prove a tawdry, hot, stupid little backwoods; that his infatuation with it had been a dream of a night and a day, woven of rainbows, moonbeams, wine, frangipani, and the bright glances of Iris Tramm-this, too, proved groundless.
They drove with Mrs. Ball in her Land Rover on a narrow broken back road along the sea, with magnificent vistas of hills and water, and glimpses of the gray ruins of old plantation houses set back in wild valleys. The ruins were what conquered Henny, and beat her quite to the ground. She had a passion for ruins. In European countries she could wander for hours amid crumbling walls open to the sky, even in heavy rain. She inquired hopefully whether the Gull Reef Club was a ruin, and showed her first sign of disappointment when Mrs. Ball told her that the building was twenty-nine years old.
