Who He? - (9)

I won't try to reproduce Audibon's lecture. He has to be seen and heard to be appreciated. He's charming and attractive and successful. He is also a unique product of American culture ... the erudite ignoramus. He discourses entertainingly in a jargon of advertising slang, science fiction clichés and pocket book philosophy. He can mix phrases like "cross-ruff client expediency" "fourth dimensional cybernetics" and "the Hegelian dialectics of The Thirty Years War" in one sentence and hypnotize you into believing that he's making sense. It isn't until you listen that you realize he's just talking out loud.
    We all sat and kept our faces straight while Audibon drew a picture of the soaring, searching minds of the top network brass seeking the uppermost cultural levels for television only to be blocked and thwarted by the conservatism and lack of imagination of the writers.
    "There are new techniques, new philosophies, new infinities to explore," Audibon told us. "Reach out to the stars. Don't be afraid to experiment in your garret. We may loathe what you do. We'll probably reject nine out of every ten scripts you send us, but that doesn't mean we're opposed to new ideas. We want new ideas. We need them. It's up to you to produce them in acceptable form for the network and clients."
    When he finished we gave him a friendly hand and prepared to go about our business. Unfortunately a non-professional element had slipped into the meeting and they were either too ignorant or too indignant to go along with the joke. They got up and began filing beefs. They attacked Audibon politically, philosophically, and most of all financially. What it all boiled down to was: How dast he make a speech like that when the network kept rejecting all the wonderful scripts they sent in, and took six months to reject each script?
    We squirmed in embarrassment. Audibon got red in the face and his replies to the hecklers became shorter and more cutting. Then an astonishing thing happened. Jake Lennox got to his feet, turned on the hecklers and blasted them. He was sardonic and icy; he took them apart, politically, philosophically and financially. They were so stunned it broke up the meeting. I saw Audibon step down from the studio stage, go over to Lennox, smile and shake his hand emphatically, Lennox grinned back. They spoke for a moment, laughed, shook hands again and were separated by the low network brass who surrounded Audibon. Lennox caught my eye, made a drink motion, and I nodded.
    In Sabatini's we belted down a couple of Gibsons before I had the courage to bring up Jake's defense of Audibon.
    "We won't discuss it," he said. "I turned whore to square that lunch hassle the other day. Which reminds me. I owe you money." He forced me to take two tens.
    He brooded. His expression was contemptuous.
    "Don't let it eat you out, Jake," I said. "We all whore. What were we doing listening to Audibon but whoring?"
    "It isn't that," Lennox answered. "It's the Poison Pen test. That was a bomb. You were right, Kitten. I'm an amateur. I should have stayed out of the act."
    "What happened?"
    "I showed the photostats to all of them, looking for a sign ... a give-away. You remember what I told you about Fink?"
    "Yes. So?"
    "You think those letters knocked them off balance? Hell, they loved them. They ate 'em up. It's like those arsenic eaters of yours."
    "Poison eaters?"
    He nodded. "Poison eaters. They're mixed up. Sick in the head. But trouble doesn't bother them. They live on trouble. They feed on it. Can't do without it. They've got to have a diet that would kill a normal man."
    "All of them?"
    "All of them."
    "Not one knocked off balance?"
    "Not one out of six. And just to show you what an amateur I am, each one found something in the letters I hadn't noticed.... Something that proved they couldn't be getting them."
    "What?"
    "Oh.... Like ... Charlie Hansel found a line that showed the letters are being written to someone who's big. Charlie's a midget, you know that. Plummer noticed something about a loudmouth. And you know how quiet Johnny stammers. He's always whispering the latest from the Kremlin."
    "Kay Hill's loud."
    "But she isn't dark."
    "Stacy's dark."
    "But he isn't moralistic. They've all got outs. I don't know who the hell's getting the threats. I'm no better off than I was when I started." He shrugged. "It shows you, Kitten. Everybody imagines they can do anybody else's job much better. It isn't until you try that you find out. Damn it! I'm licked. All I can do is hope Fink'll pull us out of this jam before Sunday."
    "Tell me what everybody said when you pulled the letters on them."
    "To hell with it."
    "Let's write down how each one eliminated himself. Maybe we can add them up and find something."
    After some persuasion and another drink he gave me the facts. I wrote them down in a column:
    Big Dark Loud Moralistic Went to college Fancy and elegant Lives on the East side
    "Look at this," I said.
    Lennox looked.
    "Who does it add up to?"
    "I don't know."
    "I've got news for you," I said. "You may be an amateur, and it may not be as easy as we think to do another man's job, but you've done the job. You've found out who's getting the letters. The only trouble is, you're worse off than when you started."
    "What the hell are you talking about?"
    "You."
    "What about me?"
    "You're the guy who's getting the letters."
    He stared at me, looked at the list, then looked up again.
    "This adds up to me?" he whispered.
    I nodded.
    "Loud?"
    "They can hear you from the Bronx to the Battery."
    "Fancy? Elegant?"
    "As Mike Romanoff."
    "Moralistic?"
    "As a Puritan."
    "This is me? This is the way you see me?"
    "Yes."
    He got up without another word and walked out. I don't know what staggered him most ... the realization that he was the man being threatened, or the picture of himself as other people saw him. But I was right about one thing. He was a lot worse off than when he started.
    CHAPTER VII
    It took Lennox eleven hours to struggle through the script for the January 15th "Who He?" show. He consumed one ream of paper, half a pound of coffee, two quarts of ice cream, and answered the phone a dozen times. All of the calls were for Cooper. They were from unknowns who appeared to be phoning from the vicinity of juke boxes and spoke in hoarse underground voices. They used a jargon that was incomprehensible to Lennox and they seemed to be torturing Cooper.
    "They want material," he groaned.
    "You've got a trunkful stashed away. Submit it."
    "I can't. My old stuff stinks."
    "Then write new material."
    "I can't."
    "The hell you can't. You've arrived, son. Cash in."
    "Arrived? Sure, at the wrong station. I'm a fluke." Cooper was miserable. "You heard about the party Suidi's throwing for me?"
    "I'm coming. You'll hear me cheering in your corner."
    "Cheering. My God! They'll all be there.... Looking me over. Sizing me up. Me. A nothing. Making a fool of myself."
    "Stop that, Sam. You're loaded with talent."
    "Not me."
    "They'll size you up and their eyes'll pop. What the hell is the matter with you? You deserve success. You've earned it. Don't you want it?"
    "No, I don't want it. I just want to be left alone," Cooper shouted. "Leave me alone, for God's sake. I wish to Christ this'd never happened." He flung out of the house.
    Hot and uncomfortable, Lennox stacked his manuscript neatly, placed it in a manila envelope and went out for a walk to worry about Cooper's misery and his own.
    The Rock has an emotional as well as physical geography, and Lennox was unconsciously drawn to the neighborhoods that reflected his moods. On this morning he went through his customary cycle from despair to exhilaration never once remembering that he had been through the identical cycle and the identical walk countless times before.
    He started at low ebb. He was confused and frightened and automatically began to wander back and forth through the cross-town side streets that always reflect the slack tide in men's souls. What was happening to Sam? Why wasn't Sam happy? What was happening to himself? Could he really be receiving the threats? Was he scheduled for violence on Sunday? The side streets were a dismal prelude to disaster.
    Lennox searched his memory for guilt and enemies. He went all the way back to his small town boyhood and was drawn to Lexington Avenue, the great prototype of every Main Street in America. He could remember nothing and was overcome with sorrow for himself. He was alone ... crucified ... and he was driven south and east to the Bowery, the boulevard of self-pity. There he trudged despondently, identifying himself with the tattered vagrants, with poverty and failure.
    From sorrow, his mood changed to anger. He was outraged with himself for whining. He was furious with the world for attacking him unfairly. Hostile and contemptuous, he found himself walking up Broadway, glaring at the crowds, declaring war on a world that revealed itself so squalidly from Times Square to Columbus Circle. In his anger he flatly rejected any possibility that he could be the person described in the letters. The ferment within him increased until he was recharged with hope, and the cycle ended in elation.
    He had nothing to fear. Nothing was falling apart. He would hold everything together ... his delicious, wonderful world. He turned east to Madison Avenue to savor his world. He admired the women, the handsomest of all time; the men, the most successful; the shops, the richest. Fifth Avenue is as rich and beautiful as Madison, but Fifth Avenue is for dreaming. Madison is the bustling culmination of Now. It has no past or future, only the immediate Present.
    "Existentialist," Lennox said to himself.
    To climax this explosive surge from despair to assurance which was his main strength and weakness, he turned north and walked to a particular spot that he loved in lower Central Park. It was on a slight hill overlooking the pond and the Plaza. It was his own Exhilaration Point. There were thousands like it ... private mastheads where the pirates stood alone and exulted over the plunder before them. As Lennox walked up the path, he was annoyed to see that his very own lookout was already occupied. He resented the intruder until he looked closer and saw that it was Gabby Valentine.
    When he finally let her go, he bent down to pick up her hat and purse and his script. "Have you got a jack-knife?" he asked. "I want to carve something appropriate on a tree."
    "I can just see you cutting lovers' knots," Gabby laughed.
    Lennox winced.
    "What's the matter?" she asked quickly.
    "It was the idea of lovers' knots. Mawkish. I was thinking of something really impressive, like: D. Boon cilled a Bar on this tree year 1760."
    "You're the bear," Gabby said, feeling herself tenderly. "Don't come near me again. I've got a gun."
    "But what were you doing here, darling?"
    "You told me about your favorite spot. I had to see it."
    "Go ahead and shoot," Lennox said, but this time he was gentler.
    He was right when he told Robin that this love affair was backwards. Most people meet, get friendly, turn serious and become intimate. Lennox and Gabby had started intimately and were working their way back. They'd already been serious enough for a violent quarrel. Now they were getting friendly. They spent an hour together in that blissful past tense of all couples who are exploring each other.... "Did you?" and "Were you?" and "Had you?" They agreed, they compared, they disagreed. They matched experiences, tastes, habits, friends.
    Gabby asked about Cooper and Lennox tried to describe what the friendship meant to him. "Sam's a whole man," he said. "Most men are only part men ... like sections of a tangerine. All split up. You have to put a lot together to get a whole."
    "Do you mean F. Scott Fitzgerald's ideal? The entire man in the Goethe-Byron-Shaw tradition?"
    "I don't think so. Fitzgerald was obsessed with the idea that a man had to explore all his potential for good and for evil. I think he was trying to justify his own evil. I won't buy that. There's never any excuse for being bad."
    "There's being human."
    "That's an explanation, not an excuse."
    "Tell me more about Sam."
    "Well ... most men are overspecialized, only interested in one thing. The friend you like to fish with is a nuisance on a date. The friend you double-date with is a noodnick about ball games. The friend you go to ball games with can't understand books. And so on and so on. You have to make a dozen one-twelfth friends."
    "Maybe you demand too much."
    "No. I've got a legitimate beef. Art and music, for instance. Butch-type guys stay away from them like the plague. What happens? The fags have inherited, and that puts me in a hell of a spot. If I want to go to the ballet or the opera or an exhibit, it has to be with a fag or alone. And I hate fags worse than Squares."
    "Why can't you go with girls?"
    "Sweetheart, I love ladies, but I like men too. Men and women think differently, and sometimes I like to be with a man's point of view."
    "I'll punish you for that," Gabby said.
    "What I do?"
    "Not now. Sam isn't a one-twelfth friend, is he?"
    "No. He's twelve-twelfths. Whole."
    "How did you meet him?"
    "At Princeton. We went down for a fencing meet and Sam was host for the visiting team. You should have seen him ... the fencer's dream. All in white except for black stockings."
    "Did you really work your way through college?"
    "Yes Ma'am. I was a telegrapher. I was a telegrapher my last year in high school too."
    "Were you friendly with Sam right from the beginning?"
    "No. Not until much later." Lennox frowned. "I was jealous at first. Princeton was elegant. Society. And I was trying to climb up from a clam-shack. I hated Sam."
    "That's not nice," Gabby said.
    "I was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. That's an explanation, not an excuse. Then I met him again in the business, and we got close."
    "Had he changed?"
    "No. I changed. There's nothing like making money to discharge the venom in you. Sam was always the same. A whole man." Lennox smiled gently.
    "I like the way you look when you talk about him," Gabby said. "It shows how much you love him."
    "Love him?" Lennox was startled. "My God! Don't say that. Men aren't allowed to talk like that nowadays."
    "But you do, don't you?"
    Lennox nodded. "You know how I feel about you. If you were turned into a man.... That's how I feel about Sam." He stopped suddenly and faced Gabby. "I've got you both, Gabby. Help me hold on to both."
    "I'm not jealous," she said honestly.
    "I know that, but don't do one thing. If he's got faults that I can't see, don't point them out to me. You and Sam can sit in a corner and make fun of me all you like. God knows, I'm a prize noodnick. You can take my noodnickery apart and I won't care. Just let me love both of you."
    "Why did you flinch when I said lovers' knots?" Gabby asked.
    He looked at her in awe. "Gabrielle, you're a great woman. I thought I covered perfectly."
    She shook her head and smiled.
    "Talking to you's like turning a corner in March. You never know what's going to blow into your face."
    "What were you remembering?"
    "A Quaker, a blonde, and a knot."
    "I don't understand."
    "I did a bad thing Christmas Eve. I got dirty drunk. I imagined I was somebody else.... A Quaker from Philadelphia named Fox."
    "Why Fox?"
    "I don't know. I picked up a blonde named Aimee Driscoll. A-I-M-E-E."
    "I don't want to hear about her."
    "I don't want to talk about her."
    "And the knot?"
    "That's the part I still can't remember. I lost the night from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day. The knot must be part of it. I don't know what or how. All I know is that it terrifies me every time I think of it."
    "Is Lennox an English name?"
    "I think so. From way back. What's that have to do with it?"
    "Puritans," Gabby explained. "You're so moralistic. Always feeling guilty ... like something out of 'The Scarlet Letter.'"
    "Moralistic," Lennox repeated slowly. "Am I loud?"
    "Deafening."
    "And fancy ... elegant?"
    "Not the phony way you say it; but you have style, Jordan. Yes, you're definitely Edwardian."
    "Jesus," he muttered and was silent.
    "Stop feeling guilty. I like big loud men. And elegance is charming. I'm going to make you brocade waistcoats with silver buttons."
    After a long pause, he said: "Audibon isn't loud."
    "Oh Jordan...."
    "I shouldn't bring it up, but I've got to know. What's between you?"
    "Nothing."
    "What was?"
    "Nothing. There never was anything."
    "Then why did you--?"
    "Is that kind?"
    "No. It's jealous. Forgive me. And I do understand. He's strictly the network dazzler."
    "I wasn't dazzled. I was sorry for him. That's why I thought I loved him."
    "Sorry for him? Audibon? He's got everything."
    "He has nothing ... nothing inside. He's lost."
    "Is that why he won't let you go?"
    "One of the reasons. Another is that he hates to lose."
    "How is he stopping you?"
    "I'm active ... politically. If I try to get a divorce he says he'll ruin me."
    "That Communist routine?"
    "Yes."
    "Christ, what a club that's become for dirty fighters. Are you a Party Member?"
    "No, Jordan."
    "Tell the truth, sweetheart. If you're lying you'll give yourself away anyhow."
    "Suppose I said yes. Would it make a difference?"
    "It would."
    "Why?"
    "Because most of them are the dedicated type. Lunatic fringe. They're one-sided, and I told you I like whole people. Are you a Party Member?"
    "No, I'm not."
    Lennox searched her face, then nodded. He was beginning to learn how transparently honest she was. "All the same, I wish you'd quit the politics, Gabby. There must be other things for you to do."
    Her eyes flashed angrily. "What other things?"
    "I don't know. Lady things. Take the long view. We've got a whole life to plan together. Go vote at the polls like an honest citizen and let it go at that. You and I are more important than--"
    "Have you any idea how offensive you're being?" Gabby interrupted.
    "Offensive?"
    "I suppose you want me to quit working too, don't you?"
    "You won't have to work."
    "I see. You've got it all planned, haven't you? Doesn't it occur to you that I like my work? Doesn't it occur to you that I've got political beliefs? There must be other things for me to do. Lady things. Men and women think differently. You male chauvinist!"
    "Listen. I want my wife home with me because writing's the loneliest work in the world. What the hell's chauvinistic about that?"
    "You not only look Edwardian, you think it. A woman's place is in the home. Cross-stitched on a sampler by loving hands at home."
    "All right, Susan B. Anthony, where else is it?"
    "Where she wants it to be, not where it's convenient for you!" An angry outburst trembled on Gabby's lips. She controlled herself. "We're fighting again. I don't know what it is you do to me, but we're always tearing at each other."
    "What I do to you!"
    "Be quiet, Jordan."
    "Listen, Gabby--"
    "Be quiet."
    They walked in uneasy silence for a few minutes. Then Gabby stopped and faced him. Her dark eyes were severe, and her body, usually so relaxed and easy, was very straight. "You're destructive," she said. "You like to destroy people."
    "The hell I do."
    "Yes. It didn't just happen that time at Princeton. You haven't changed. You're still that boy from the wrong side of the tracks, jealous and envious of everybody. You can't feel equal to anyone unless you've torn him down first."
    "You're wrong. I'm fighting to hold everything together."
    "It's what you think, but it isn't true. You tear everything apart. You attack. You destroy. You may not realize it, but you do. You must have many enemies."
    A chill numbed Lennox. He fought it off. "I can't bring any to mind off-hand."
    "Of course not. You don't realize what you're doing. But you're not going to do it to me, Jordan. I won't let you." The look of consternation on his face made her relent. She took his arm again and hugged it affectionately. "Don't be frightened. It's just a part of you that we've got to heal. Don't you see, darling? The danger isn't for other people; it's for yourself."
    "Myself?"
    "Because if you attack and destroy others, you end up destroying yourself."
    He was silent until they left the park. As they parted, Gabby to return to her office, Lennox to go down to the rehearsal of "Who He?" on Broadway, he said: "I have something serious I want to ask you. There's an outside chance one of those invisible enemies is catching up with me. I want your opinion."
    "What do you mean? What's happened?" Gabby was concerned.
    "Later. I'll pick you up at five for Sam's party. If we can find a corner in the Rox Studios we'll talk it over. I'm hoping you'll exonerate me. I know you will, but I'd like to make sure."
    "Exonerate you from what?"
    "From a lunatic on Sunday. More later. Can I have a kiss now?"
    "Of course you can. Why do you ask?"
    "I thought I might be in disgrace."
    "Disgrace or no disgrace," Gabby said firmly. "Always kiss a man when he asks. That's one of my basic political beliefs."
    Lennox went down Broadway to the Joydream Ballroom where "Who He?" rehearsed. No longer a taxi-dance joint, the ballroom had been struggling along since the war as headquarters of a lonely hearts club giving dances three nights a week for its discriminating clientele (all religious faiths). Now, television's frantic search for rehearsal space had restored Joydream to solvency.
    In the Women's Lounge, the dancers in black rehearsal leotards were lined up before a wall of mirrors, headed by Charlie Hansel who was short, ebullient and graceful. They were watching their reflections intently as they memorized Charlie's new routines, and complaining chronically as only dancers can complain. Cooper was at the piano with Johnny Plummer's score, working out the beats for Hansel.
    "You're taking it in four bar sections," Cooper was saying. "And that's throwing your rhythm off."
    "Lambkin, it's written in fours. That Johnny Plummer! He's a four-cornered one, he is." Hansel spoke without taking his eyes off his reflection. None of the other dancers did either. This is not vanity. Like the complaining, it's an occupational disease.
    "You don't understand," Cooper explained. "The music's in phrases, not bars. Johnny's written two longs, a short and a medium. Count ten twice, then four and then eight. You'll come out right."
    "Samkin, there's no arguing with the composer of 'We're The Most.' He's a genius one, he is. Ready, kidkins? And!--"
    They went into the routine, counting and complaining. Cooper scowled at the compliment and began playing. Lennox backed out of the lounge.
    On the main ballroom floor, the sets for the show had been chalked and Raeburn Sachs was directing Mig Mason and the rest of the cast in the "Man Without A Country." Sol Eggleston, the network camera director, was prowling around the scene, framing it in his hands and making notes on his camera plot. This is a minute by minute schedule of the placement and occupation of all three cameras for the duration of the show, including lens settings and time allowance for changes of setting and position.
    When Eggleston saw Lennox, he motioned sharply and brought him over to a table covered with blueprints and light plots. Eggleston was fat, efficient and asthmatic. Lennox liked him. He liked all the technical men. They knew their business and never wasted time promoting delusions of genius.
    "We're in trouble," Eggleston wheezed. "Camera trouble."