Who He? - (14)

"We share an apartment. Why?"
    "How long?"
    "About a year."
    "How long's he been on your program?"
    "He's worked the show since it started. Over nine months. What is all this?"
    "You and this Cooper ever fight?"
    "Now wait a minute, Bob. I'm no fool. If you're headed in that direction, I don't buy any of it. Not Sam."
    "Funny, this Cooper not remembering where he saw the writing."
    "He's got troubles of his own to remember."
    "Sometimes a grudge lasts a long time."
    "What grudge?"
    "You tell me."
    "There's nothing to tell. The whole idea's for laughs."
    "Tough," Fink murmured.
    "Forget Sam, will you! If it has to be someone on the show, maybe it's a stagehand or a cameraman named Knott. Do we have a Knott on the payroll?"
    "No," Fink said. "That's what makes it tough."
    "Can you get me off the hook by Sunday?"
    The office door opened and a swarthy man entered briskly. Lennox saw at once that he was carrying the blue sheets and envelopes of the threatening letters from "Guess Who." They were stained and discolored and had been sprayed with a fixative that made them shine. As Lennox straightened in excitement, Fink spoke.
    "Mr. Salerno," he said, "this is Mr. Lennox. He just figured out he's getting these letters."
    Salerno grinned. Lennox was about to speak when suddenly he heard what Fink had just said. "Mister Salerno," he repeated. "Mister Lennox. That's the code, isn't it? You're warning him to be careful."
    "You see?" Fink said. "It doesn't make any difference if you know. We're protecting ourselves."
    "From me?"
    "Not necessarily." Fink stood up. "Now don't worry. We'll try to get you off the hook by Sunday." He took Lennox to the door and politely closed it in his face.
    Lennox departed, not at all comfortable in his mind, and went home to change. Cooper was there, in slacks and T-shirt, working feverishly at the piano. He had a pencil in his mouth, a sheet of manuscript paper on the music rack, and dozens more scattered around the piano bench. He was working his way painfully through a chord progression while he hummed to himself in the high composer's keen that only dogs can hear.
    "Fink's crazy," Lennox thought, and resolutely buried the suspicion in the deepest crevice of his mind.
    He tip-toed around the apartment. After he changed, he locked the Siamese upstairs in his office where they couldn't distract Cooper. He made fresh coffee and slid a cup against the left side of the music rack so as not to interfere with Cooper's writing hand. He intercepted the cleaning woman (this day was vacuum cleaner day for the living room) and told her to work upstairs first. Exiled from his own office, he got tools from the kitchen and settled down at the table before the garden windows to repair his gimmick book.
    In some primitive cultures it is believed that a man's soul can be contained in an object ... an amulet, a bit of stone or wood, a fetish ... which is carefully concealed by the owner and earnestly sought after by his enemies. Destruction of the object means destruction of the man. Lennox would never admit it, but he felt exactly that way about his gimmick book. That was why he had become so panicky when it was lost and quarreled so unreasonably with Cooper. He spent hours at a time sewing it, mending it with scraps of leather and metal, until it was a patchwork quilt of the original. It never occurred to him that his soul might also be a patchwork of makeshift repairs.
    From tinkering with the notebook, he got to reading it, and presently a forgotten idea caught his attention. He thought about it and the idea took shape. Lennox got a yellow legal pad and soft pencils and began to block out a script, grunting and mumbling softly to himself in the low writer's grumble that only seismographs can record. Working away like that, Cooper and Lennox sounded like a duet between a peanut whistle and a cement mixer.
    For the rest of the morning there was peace in the room, the old kind of peace they hadn't known in the past week. Once Cooper murmured: "Virgil, which sounds better?" He played two indistinguishable phrases and Lennox rumbled appropriately. Once Lennox grunted: "Wolfgang, which sounds better?" He read two indistinguishable phrases and Cooper keened appropriately. This was the secret of their friendship and their deep need for each other.
    Creation is the loneliest work in the world, which is why most artists go stir-crazy. By some miracle of human chemistry, Cooper and Lennox were able to work together. Not only did they have companionship, a rare thing for working artists, but each was able to draw on the other's creative drive and enlarge his own. They never worked so well as when they worked together in the same room.
    At 11:15, Lennox grunted and mumbled his way to the kitchen for more coffee, only to meet Cooper coming out with two cups in his hand. Lennox took one and then forgot why. With his pencil he absently shaded a moustache on Cooper's lip while Sam stood with eyes shut and hummed, unaware of his disfigurement.
    "No!" Lennox exclaimed suddenly. "The whole point of the scene is that the ingénue pivots. More kissed against than kissing."
    Cooper nodded to this gibberish, handed the second cup to Lennox and went back to the piano still nodding like a porcelain mandarin. Lennox returned to his yellow pad. The duet continued.
    At 11:45 they met in the bathroom where Lennox added a goatee to the moustache.
    At 12:30 they met in the storage closet alongside Sam's room where the cigarette cartons and stationery were stashed.
    At 12:55, without a word or a sign to each other, they quit work simultaneously and became aware of themselves and the world around them. They were in the manic mood that always follows intense creative concentration.
    "Good morning," Cooper said. "You're new in this ward, aren't you?"
    "I was here before you," Lennox said in hot tones.
    "My good man, I was here before it was built. My name is Cornerstone."
    "The name is familiar," Lennox mused. "But I can't remember the face."
    "Ach! So. Und vhen did dis antikinetic facial phobia virst manifesdt idself, Mr. Lennox?"
    "I can't remember, Doctor," Lennox answered in a low voice.
    "You can't remember? Tausend Teufel! Vas it at your mutter's breast?"
    "I ... I don't remember."
    "You must remember, Mr. Lennox, or I send you back to dat freud, Dr. Quack."
    "Will you try that line again, please."
    "Oh. Sorry.... To dat quack, Dr. Freud."
    "Wouldn't 'kvack' be more authentic?"
    "Maybe, but I can't feel it, Mr. Sachs. There's a value missing."
    "That's because you've got your dialects mixed. I know Dr. Livingston wouldn't speak low Dutch. I have a talent for never being wrong."
    "Livingston? I thought we were doing Pasteur. Cue, please."
    "You see, Dr. Livingston, bosoms are my problem."
    "Proceed, Mr. Stanley."
    "They ... I know this sounds silly ... but they all look alike. And there's always two. Two! Two! Two! Why can't there ever be an odd number? Sometimes I think I'll go mad, do you hear? Mad! Mad! Mad!"
    "Steady on, old man.... (Pipe business).... Pity you haven't read my monograph on Trichinopoly ashes and busts. I can distinguish twenty-four varieties by their action."
    "Amazing!"
    "Elementary. There's the plainbeat bust, the backfall bust, the double backfall, the springer, the shaked elevation, the turn, the battery, the double relish...."
    "Sam!" Lennox interrupted in delight. "Where did you find those ever-lovin' words?"
    "It's musical ornamentation," Cooper grinned. "Didn't I ever tell you? They're the old names for trills and grace notes and such, but they kind of fit the front ornamentation of ladies too, don't they?"
    Lennox nodded as he jotted down the words in his gimmick book.
    "Kay Hill, for instance. She's the close shake. Irma Mason's the battery. All directions. The dancers are strictly the plainbeat. One bounce to a step. Robin's the shaked elevation. Your girl's the double relish."
    "Who? Gabby?" Lennox blushed.
    "I noticed at the party. One of the few things I did notice, outside of that hassle with Tooky Ween...."
    "I'm sorry about that, Sam, but I had to protect you. You would have...."
    "And something Suidi let slip."
    "Oh? What he let slip?"
    "It was your party."
    "It may have been my idea, but--"
    "It was your bankroll."
    "Oh. He blew it. In French or English?"
    Cooper hoisted himself up on the piano and sat swinging his legs. Then he began to speak, choosing his words carefully.
    "I appreciate what you tried to do, Jake.... But let me tell you how. Last year a kid cousin of mine bought me a birthday present. He saved up his allowance and bought the best present he could think of ... a bag of marbles."
    "Immies," Lennox corrected absently.
    "What?"
    "They call them immies on The Rock."
    "All right, immies. I appreciated that present, Jake. I was really touched. I appreciated your present the same way. It touched me the same way. You understand?"
    "No."
    "The kid didn't give me anything I could use. He gave me what he loved."
    "You mean I'm a kid?"
    "No, Jake. You gave me the thing you love most. And when you found out I didn't want any part of it, you tried to make me want it. You don't understand anybody not wanting to be a big wheel in the business, do you? That's your bag of immies."
    "What the hell are we working for?"
    "Fun."
    "Fun's not the answer. We've got to have something to show."
    "Fun's enough for me."
    "Why don't you grow up, Sam!" Lennox said impatiently. "You talk about immies. You're the kid. Playing games with cap pistols. Soon as somebody pulls a real gun on you, you turn chicken."
    "All right. I'm a kid playing games. Leave me alone. Don't protect me. Don't sponsor me. Don't try to shove a loaded gun into my hand." Cooper jumped down off the piano. "What's that line you use on the agency kibitzers when they try to make you rewrite a script their way? What do you always say? Go ahead ... tell me."
    "If you have to hang, hang on your own rope."
    "Q.E.D.," Cooper said. "You want to keep things going the way they always have?"
    "You know that."
    "Then lay off. Let me go to hell my own way."
    Lennox turned away angrily. The hidden crevice in his mind opened and Fink's dreadful hint shot up to the surface and burst like a bubble in acid.
    "Who wrote those letters?" he asked abruptly.
    "What? What letters?"
    "You know damned well what letters. I told you yesterday I found out they're written to me. They're written by somebody named Knott. That's the writing you recognized. Who's Knott?"
    "Nobody I know."
    "But you know the writing?"
    "I thought so."
    "Changed your mind recently?"
    "What's eating you out all of a sudden?"
    "I don't play games. Neither does Blinky. He found out I'm getting the letters and I'm off the show. If there's any kind of trouble, he'll murder me with a lawsuit. So it's coming up to the clutch. Two days to Sunday. I'm in so deep, if anybody makes waves I'm dead. This is fun. Yak it up."
    "I'm not laughing."
    "If you've got anything besides immies to contribute, now's the time. Who wrote the letters?"
    "Lay off, Jake. Don't badger me."
    "You can't tell or you won't tell. Which is it?"
    "I don't know. I can't remember."
    "I think you're lying."
    "That's a hell of a thing to say."
    "It hurts to say it. I think you're lying."
    "Why lying all of a sudden?"
    "Not all of a sudden. It's a slow take. You recognize the writing, but you don't know whose. When I tell you the name, it doesn't ring a bell. Who the hell are you kidding, Judas?"
    "Jake!"
    "I'm fighting to hold on to what's between us, too. I don't think it can live through a lie. Not now. Not when I'm on the cross yelling for help. Is it a lie?"
    Cooper shook his head.
    "All of a sudden it's sour between us. Nothing I do is right. I try to plug your tune. No good. I try to hold the chiselers off. I stink. I try to fight my way out of a jam. You object. I suppose when I tell you I've set it up for you and one of the dancers to do a duet of 'We're The Most' in next Sunday's show you'll--"
    "Damn you, Jake!" Cooper gestured angrily.
    "I stink again. But by God you'll do it. What's got into you? What are you trying to do ... slug me when I come around the corner? I don't think you're trying to pull out of the rat-race. I think you're trying to pull me down into the grave!"
    Cooper attempted to speak, then gave it up and stormed into his room. He slammed the door so hard that half a dozen books bounced off the shelves. Lennox made no move to pick them up. The phone rang. Lennox made no move to answer it. After five peals, it stopped, and a moment later the P-lady called downstairs. Lennox picked up the living room extension.
    "Yes?"
    "Jake, this is Melvin Grabinett."
    "How are your associates?"
    "What?"
    "It's a question I've been wanting to ask you for years. Who the hell are your associates anyway? Helter and Skelter?"
    "Are you drunk?"
    "No. Unemployed."
    "Listen, I'm in Tom Bleutcher's suite at The Brompton House. Been here the whole Almighty morning. Olga wants you to have lunch with us."
    "Olga? Who she?"
    "His daughter. You made a big hit with her last time they was in town. Come on down."
    "Get the new writer."
    "I got no new writer. Anyway she yens for you. Come on down."
    "Why should I help entertain the client? I'm off the show. Remember?"
    "You still got a piece of the royalties. You want to keep on collecting? Help keep it on the air. Come on down."
    *       *       *       *       *
    Grabinett's relations with his client were shaky because they were based on marriage. Grabinett's wife was the daughter of Pan-American Export. Grabinett's father-in-law was the biggest single purchaser of Mode Shoes, exporting thousands of pairs each year to South American dealers. So long as Mode Shoes remained on Pan-American's catalogue, Tom Bleutcher would remain Blinky's client. But he didn't have to like it.
    He was a heavy man with a red face and thick iron-grey hair; a third generation German, and the Germans are the best shoe manufacturers in the world. They are also the most pig-headed manufacturers in the world. Bleutcher had formed his opinions in Chicago during the years 1900-1910. Nothing that had taken place subsequently had served to alter them. He did not believe in advertising. He did not believe in television. He was convinced that if a man builds a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to his door. He ran his million dollar firm like a mousetrap maker and was the despair of his advertising staff.
    His daughter, Olga, youngest of a family of seven, was the Intellectual Bleutcher. She had just graduated from college, had had her year at the Sorbonne, and was the soul of the Brockton Literary, Marching & Chowder Society. She was plain, verging on ugly, with a broad saddle nose and wide clown mouth; but she had good teeth and magnificent cat's eyes. Her figure was so arresting that it had to be thought of as a body, and after sufficient contemplation of that body, most men raised their eyes above the neck and even found the face attractive.
    In the grill room of The Brompton House, a tiered oval around a dance floor on which visiting Firemen shuffled to the music of a lymphatic band, the quartette drank Manhattans, ate shrimp cocktails, lobster bisque, fried oysters, French fried potatoes, French fried onions, French fried eggplant, Waldorf salad, strawberry shortcake and coffee. Mr. Bleutcher insisted on fish on Friday. He saved his beef for labor unions, manufacturing costs and the iniquities of the open-toe craze.
    In addition, he disapproved of smoking for women, high wages for labor, modern dress and all modern medicine outside of chiropractic correction. Although he never once looked at Grabinett or Lennox, he demanded their complete attention. Grabinett blinked his all. Lennox gave as much as he could spare from the daughter.
    Olga was very young and very intense. She put her hand on Jake's arm and discussed Sartre, Kafka and Henry James. Since she was seated on his right, this made eating difficult for Jake. She was plainly excited with him as a professional writer. "Christ in close-up," Lennox thought. "She wants to be a writer too. I'm dead." She attempted an arresting originality of conversation that was exhausting. In self-preservation, Lennox asked her to dance. This was a mistake.
    Olga Bleutcher was a lovely dancer, but she didn't melt into Jake's arms. She projected her body against him and operated with alarming suggestiveness. There was no escaping the pressures of her bosom, her torso and thighs. It was obvious that Olga too was aware of her big selling point. It was also obvious that she had been under restraint while she was with her father.
    "My God!" she whispered in Jake's ear. "Isn't he a reactionary old fart?"
    Lennox tried to turn his grunt of amazement into a chuckle.
    "Do you think they'd let us sneak a smoke on the floor?" Olga asked. "I'm dying for a cigarette."
    "I don't know. We can try."
    "You keep dancing," she murmured. "I'll find them."
    Her hands began exploring his pockets. Lennox had to explain that he didn't carry cigarettes because he didn't smoke. "What have I got myself into?" he wondered. "Is she a nympho?"
    Miss Bleutcher pressed herself against him. "It's so comforting dancing with a big man," she said. "You can spread out on him. There was a private beach north of Cannes where I used to strip and sunbathe. You feel just like the sand."
    "Careful of the shells," Lennox muttered. He glanced down at her. All he could see was the cat's eyes. He was alarmed to discover that she was getting better looking.
    "Where can a soi-disant virgin get plastered New Year's Eve?" Miss Bleutcher inquired.
    "You're going to be in town over New Year's?"
    "I'm going to be on the town New Year's ... after Four-Buckle Arctics corks off."
    "Who?"
    Olga Bleutcher motioned with her head toward her father. "I'm going to pour myself into a strapless and come to no good. Have you got any suggestions?"
    "I've got a basic suggestion, but I also have a show to worry about tomorrow night," Lennox stalled. "I'll phone. What's the password? Metatarsal?"
    She laughed. "Bunions. No, leave a message for me at the switchboard. Just say it's for Olga. They understand a gal's problems."
    After five minutes more of New Year's preview, Lennox managed to detach her from his anatomy and return to the table. As they sat down, a waiter appeared and presented a telephone message to Bleutcher who read it carefully, then excused himself and lumbered toward the hotel phones. Olga at once took a cigarette from Grabinett's pack, picked up her handbag and departed for the woman's lounge. Lennox and Grabinett were left alone.
    There was a long pause. Finally Grabinett lifted his eyes and blinked into Jake's hard, level gaze.
    "If you don't want any trouble, don't say anything," Lennox warned.
    Grabinett's mouth opened and his face twitched. Lennox poured cold coffee into his cup and went through the motions of drinking it.
    "Borden wants you and me down to his office for a conference with Bacon," Grabinett blinked suddenly. "Two thirty."
    Lennox didn't answer.
    "What's Bacon after?"
    "Sachs' job," Lennox answered curtly.
    "The hell he is! He ain't going to get away with it."
    "He is, and I'm going to help him."
    "How do you think you're going to swing it? Who's running this Almighty show anyway?"
    "The three of us are going to vote Sachs out. And if you give us any trouble, I've got an ace in the hole."
    "What?"
    "Give Ned a hard time and find out."
    Grabinett blinked uncertainly. At last he blurted: "All I'm trying to do is keep a show on the air. You're giving me the hard time. That letter scandal, and now Bacon. What are you? In business or in war? Listen. I got a contract with Sachs. He gets a flat weekly retainer and it's a gut-buster. If I keep him working all my shows I just about break even. But if I got to pay out an extra seven and a half bills to Bacon for direction--Will you guys be reasonable! Have a heart!"
    Lennox stared at Grabinett incredulously. "Are you human?"
    "I'm asking you to be human."
    "You knifed me less than twenty-four hours ago. The moment when I needed every check I could get and all the help I could get, you kicked me off the show. And now you have the gall to ask me to have a heart! Lay there and bleed!"
    "You're crazy!" Grabinett explained. "A crazy writer. What are you cuddling a grudge for? You get yourself into a jam and then you blame me for protecting the show. Didn't you tell me Monday I had to keep my nose clean? So I took your advice. What do you want from me?"
    "I want the same thing from you that I want from the rest of the world!" Lennox shouted. "I want a fair shake."
    "Jake! Quiet! Keep it quiet!" Grabinett blinked around in embarrassment, then focussed his twitch on Lennox. He lowered his voice. "All right. Here's a deal. I'll stick with you if you'll stick with me. Yes? You're back on the show."
    "How do I stick with you?"
    "No Bacon on the payroll. Sachs stays. If Bacon wants to direct TV leave him do it at somebody else's expense. Not on my budget. Okay?"
    Lennox swallowed.
    "Hurry up, Jake. Here comes Bleutcher. Is it a deal? For the good of the show you vote with me. We're satisfied with how the show's going. We want to keep everything exactly the way it always was. Yes?"
    "Yes, by God!" Lennox said. "Yes."
    Bleutcher lumbered up to the table and sat down. "Mr. Audibon has been trying to reach me at the Brockton office," he explained.
    Grabinett started. "What for?"
    "I have not been advised as yet. His office called four times."
    "Did you call him back, Mr. Bleutcher?"
    "He's been out to lunch for two hours." Bleutcher compressed his lips. "It is most inadvisable for a business man to clog his digestive system with heavy foods during the working day. My staff has standing orders to restrict the midday meal to greens and roughage. Our plant cafeteria...."
    Bleutcher lectured on fats, proteins and carbohydrates until Olga returned to the table. Grabinett paid the check with nervous haste and the luncheon party broke up.
    "We'll see you at the show Sunday, Mr. Bleutcher?" he blinked.
    Bleutcher nodded ponderously.
    "Just leave word for Olga," Miss Bleutcher whispered.
    Lennox nodded absently.
    In the lobby of The Brompton House, Grabinett darted to a phone booth and called the network. Audibon had not yet returned from lunch. Grabinett came out of the booth, blinking anxiously.
    "He's been trying to get me all morning too. What the Almighty mischief is he up to? What a business! Come on, Jake. Let's take care of Bacon first."
    Avery Borden's office had the quality of a court room. His high-backed desk chair looked like a judge's bench. Against one wall was a line of mahogany armchairs that looked like a jury box. When they entered, Bacon was sprawled on two of the chairs, confiding a thief-type revelation to Borden who was leaning against a window, glasses in hand, fascinated. Lennox and Grabinett sat down quietly and waited. No matter how savage warfare may be on The Rock, there is one sacred law that is never broken. No man ever kills the point of another man's story.
    When it was over and Borden had reacted satisfactorily, Bacon stood up and began to swagger back and forth across the office. He preferred to sit when other men were standing, and to stand when other men were sitting. Borden obligingly seated himself behind the desk.
    "Now we're all here to read the up-state returns," Bacon drawled. "The show isn't sick yet, but when you pull out the thermometer any interne can read the temperature. It hasn't broken a hundred, but it will if we don't yank the substitutes and send in the regulars."