Nineteen

The decision was not demanding enough, on a deeper level. Had he not made a small fortune, wisely invested, and had he not been assured that he would never again have to pound the Manhattan pavement to make a buck, and had he not been guaranteed that he would never again miss a meal or have to wear last year’s topcoat, it might have meant a great deal more.

But Shelly had made his pile from Stag; he had gained a large measure of financial security; so it was still a matter of inner turmoil, or more closely: how ethical he could afford to be.

The vindictive strain in his conscience said, Sure you can

afford to be righteous and get out! Certainly. You’ve got

yours; I’m all right, Jack. Let’s see how honest you’d be if you

were broke and the payment was due on that hot rod of

yours. Now you’ve made it and you’re suddenly developing a

streak of ethics. Hypocrite! Charlatan! Fink! As soon as

there’s trouble, you grab and run. Creep!

Was that the case? Had he milked Stag for all he could, used him till the bank book bulged, and then on the first discordant note split for the hills? Was he still the phony hipster with ideas of fame and fortune predicated on the cut of a suit, the turn of an ankle, the size of a tailfin or the push of an engine? Was he still the animal? Was it only a momentary relapse that had convinced him this life was a pit?

How much was he fooling himself? And if he was pulling a fast one on himself, how empty a gesture would it be, to drop Stag’s contract? Would it be the smart thing to tag along further, pull as much loot as he could out of the scene, then sell short like Freeport? Who, after all, was looking out for Number One?

And the reassuring strain in his conscience answered, You aren’t the same man you were when you found him four years ago. You’ve changed. Your values aren’t the same. Don’t be a greedy fool. He used you as much as you used him … now get out from under. You’ve done all you can. He’s out of your area of responsibility. The money changed you, but for the better … for Stag it was only a spur to his rottenness; it corrupted him all the more. How guilty can you feel?

How much longer can you punish yourself, eating your heart out at every stinking stunt the kid pulls off? You’re not alleviating the evil, you’re only corrupting yourself again. A man exposed to Plague doesn’t allow himself to be contaminated again, once he’s been healed, unless he’s a fool. Are you a fool, Shelly?

Don’t believe it. You’re a decent guy; get out of this and go cover your scars with some honest muscle. You’re a good publicity man … You can make a living anywhere. Get out now. It’s got to get worse, and no indication that it will get better.

You don’t owe it to anyone back there. They’re animals, Shelly. They know no allegiances. They’ll eat you alive. The money isn’t a factor in any way. You’d have to cut even if you were penny-poor. But do it now.

And from that teeth-grating inner conversation came a philosophy. A very simple one, yet one that brought with it a sense of reality; a rationale for existence.

Money is freedom.

If you have money you don’t need to sell yourself. You can sell your services, but only to whom you want, for those ends you feel worthy. It is possible to bring from the dry-rot of a hipster existence a flowering decency by which a man can be his own man and live. The money had been made: don’t think about it. It was a tool. A tool can be neither good nor evil. It is only to be used.

Money is freedom.

Shelly realized he might limp for a while, for after all, he had been lame a long while. But living in a leper colony was possible only for another leper. He was out of the scene now. For good.

One stray tie bound him, however faintly.

Jean Friedel. When he had decided there were no debts owing to the animals of Jungle York, did that also mean Jeanie? There had been nights when they had talked … the time after Ruth Kemp had been turned away … the evening Stag had tried to rape her … other times since then. She had been a useful companion in running Stag Preston, Incorporated. Was there a debt still owed?

He didn’t know. He decided he’d have to find out.

She was on her knees before a filing cabinet, shuffling stacks of papers and file folders, hanging them into the sliding racks more in gobs than in particular. Her skirt was very tight across her rump, and once again he marveled at the mechanisms of modern women’s undergarments that had introduced the unbroken, one-cheek backside. He wasn’t certain he altogether approved of the innovation, though there were times—and now was one of them—that the sight was distinctly appealing.

He ran through his memorized list of clever mental openings, for one he had never used on Jean Friedel, and came up with, “You look like a girl who’d like an intensive six-week course in karate.”

She turned her head and smiled, still cramming great sheaves of documents into the file drawer. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself,” he replied, perching on an edge of the desk. It was a new desk; an inexpensive modular unit that poorly copied a Knoll design. It was typical of the furniture in this new office: an office whose bills were paid by the syndicate of small-time operators. It was flashy on the surface, but underneath merely borax. Freeport was oak and gold; the little men were borax and gilt.

“Oooo,” she exhaled heavily, rising. “What a job! Transferring records from the Colonel’s office to this joint has been almost more than I could take.” She kicked the bottom file drawer closed with the tip of her Capezio.

“Didn’t they have a records transporting concern do it?” he asked.

She gave him a lopsided, rueful grin and said, “Oh sure. Lotsa luck.

“I did it all by my lonesome. I’ve been up and down Fifth Avenue maybe ninety-two times in the past week.” She held up a grimy pair of hands. “How would you like to take The Soot Queen out to lunch?”

He grinned despite the tenseness in his stomach. “Mah pleasuh, Ma’am,” he imitated Stag’s phony Kentucky drawl. While she washed her hands and put on fresh makeup he lit a cigarette and walked around the office.

It was going to be difficult. Was there anything between them? She had once told him she wanted everything there was to want, and if she didn’t want it, it wasn’t worth having. That might still be true. There had been moments when they had communicated, when they had shared something, however small. But whatever it was, did it really have any meaning to her? Shelly had run with the pack in Jungle York long enough to know their hungers were monstrous, and small pleasures were exchanged, shared, accepted only when they did not interfere with the running, or the eating. It was going to be difficult.

He took her for schnitzel and dark beer at the Steuben Tavern on West 47th, and in a back booth, surrounded by the deep reassurance of dark woods and good smells, he lit for both of them and settled back waiting for openers.

“How’s the rogue of the rock’n’roll set doing today?” She smiled at him. When she smiled, small creases appeared at the corners of her eyes. Shelly thought he liked that very much. It wouldn’t be difficult looking at this girl first thing every morning for the next fifty years…

“Oh, hey!” She cut him off before he could speak. “We got the transcript of the coroner’s inquest this morning. Did you have to give anybody anything for that testimony? Stag looked solid gold when it was over.”

Shelly did not feel it was necessary to tell her the syndicate of small-time operators had made their deals. Stag had indeed looked like solid gold. The verdict had been accidental death. Even Marlene’s parents from Secaucus were convinced, and when Stag had gone to them at the inquest, put his arms around the dead girl’s mother and wept unashamedly, it had won the day. Suspicions had disappeared like morning mist.

Stag had even given the dead girl’s parents a handsome check to cover the funeral arrangements. The heaviness of the check would have provided for the burial of a maharajah.

“To me, that girl was more important than the King of England,” Stag had said, wiping his cheeks of tears. “I sung before some of the biggest people in the world, but that little girl was the best of them all.” It had gone over very well.

Shelly had considered offering the script to Theatre Arts Magazine for an unabridged publication.

Shelly dragged his thoughts back to the girl across the booth. The inquest was over, Stag had been exonerated. Now Shelly had to make his decision to check out, stay, or take her with him in either case. He avoided answering the question about bribing the witnesses at the inquest. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got some things I’ve got to say and I’m embarrassed.”

She looked at him archly. “You’re kidding.”

“Now c’mon,” he said sophomorically, blushing, “it’s hard enough being serious for a change, and twice as hard when you sit there putting me on. I’m about to unbare the tortured inner surface of my soul, so pay attention—”

“Jeezus!” She shook her head.

“Look, Jeanie…” Shelly leaned toward her. He wanted to take her hand, but they were both holding cigarettes and the awkwardness of shifting hands and smokes would have destroyed what he was trying to build. “The kid is on his way out. I know for sure, and so do you if you’ve been taking as good care of the office as I think. But it’s there. I heard from Universal that they’re going to drop his option…”

“Whaat?”

He nodded. “That’s right. The morals clause. They’ve got him, if they want him. And they may just decide to dump. This thing with the chick who took the brodie is just too hot to shut up. We may have kept it out of the papers, but his fans are leaking it. That bunch in Secaucus—we’ve tried to hush them, but no good—they’ve even mimeographed some innocuous gossip sheets and they’re mailing them to every Stag Preston Fan Club in the country.”

“Anything libelous?” she asked, more concerned than he thought she would be.

He shook his head, pursing his lips contemplatively around the cigarette. “They must have had a lawyer dream it up for them. Safe as a Copa girl having her period. But it’s doing the job; that, and word of mouth. It’s circulating, Jeanie. The word is out, and even Am-Par is getting edgy. I tried to get through to Sid, but he’s been ‘conferencing’ like mad.

“I’m getting out, Jean. All this I’ve said about the wind rising has nothing to do with why I’m checking out. It was only offered as reasons for your leaving Stag, too.”

“Why are you checking out?”

He snubbed the cigarette and blew out the final blast of smoke. “Because I’m having trouble with my dry cleaners.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“They can’t get the stink out of my clothes,” he explained.

She bit her lower lip as she nodded understanding. In silence. In deep. She was thinking.

“And you want me to come with you.” She stated it more than asked it. He nodded. “And do what?”

“And get married, maybe, we’d see.”

“And live in Bucks County or in Riverdale out in the Bronx, in a big rich house, and raise kids between us?”

“There’s worse.” He was defensive now; her tone…

She shook her head with stately deliberation. “Uh-uh, Sweetie. You’re a wonderful guy, and you’ve somehow found the secret of it all, but it won’t play.”

“Why not? Anything as simple as—you don’t love me?”

She looked pained at that. Her jaw muscles clumped for a moment, then relaxed, and the cosmopolitan veneer slid sickly back across her eyes. “That too, Shelly. You’re fun to ball once in a while, and you’re nice to talk to, but I don’t love you. And even if I did, it would still be a no.”

“Why, for God’s sake? Do you like this life?”

Her smile was patronizing. He finally understood. “Now you understand. Yes, Shelly, I do like it. I love it. This is my way. Everybody’s entitled to go to hell in his or her own way, and this just happens to be mine. We aren’t alike anymore, Shelly, you and I. We’ve changed in the past weeks, but you more than me. I’ve seen it happening. You can’t con or swing with the Lindy hang-ups any more. They hurt you … here…” She tapped his chest.

Then the food came, and they ate without talking.

When it was gone, the schnitzel `a la holstein and the apple sauce, and the strudel, and the coffee, again they lit their cigarettes and shared smoke, perhaps the last thing they could share.

“I don’t know what I’ll do with my share of the contract,” Shelly said.

“Well, sell it, of course,” she advised him. “What else?”

He toyed with a fork. “I don’t know,” he said softly.

“Shelly…”

He looked up. Hoping.

“N-nothing.” She shook her head, as if to clear it.

He exhaled deeply, as though washing his hands of the entire matter and expelling the last air drawn while it was under consideration. “Do me a favor, will you, Princess?”

She smiled softly, sweetly, affirmatively.

“Call a meeting of the stockholders for tomorrow night, will you? Eight o’clock at their usual stand.” He folded the linen napkin from his lap, very neatly, and laid it on the table. He started to rise.

“Do me a favor, Shelly … no, two favors.” She waited.

He nodded acquiescence.

“The first is please always remember what I told you that night I called you, and you came over to help me with Stag.

Some of us can’t help ourselves, Shelly. You don’t curse a steam whistle when it blows; that’s what it’s built to do…”

“And the second favor,” he said cutting in sharply.

“Let me come to the meeting.”

Shelly had finally made up his mind. Or rather, it had been made up for him, by his conscience, by his philosophy, and by Jean Friedel, who had denied whatever they had shared, and who had decided to remain on the deck of the sinking ship.

Sinking. While Shelly was escaping?

At the meeting, when Shelly announced he was getting out, the eyes of the members of the syndicate of small-time operators gleamed ferociously. One man’s bald head began to sweat. It shined like oil, slick and moist in the overhead lights. Another thirty percent open to them … up for grabs.

Teeth began to gnash, sharpening, silently.

They began dry-washing their hands almost in unison; it resembled some wild Rockette routine, employing old, anxious, greedy, senile men.

Old they were. And anxious. Greedy, as well. But hardly senile. Teeth flashed, hands dipped toward eyes, shading them so emotions could not shine out.

The sweet odor of the animals about to feast filled the room, filled Shelly’s nostrils, spurred the old men on.

Stag leaped up and slammed his hand on the table. “I wanta talk to you, Shelly. I wanta say something to you.” He waited for Shelly to give some indication, then strode around the table into the other office. He pulled the door tight behind him and turned on Sheldon Morgenstern.

There was open fear in the boy’s eyes.

“Shelly, they gonna cancel me at The Palace. You heard!”

Shelly nodded. He’d heard.

“I need you, boy. I need you bad. You been with me from the first and if you take off and leave me I’m gonna be out in the open for them lousy kike bastards in the other room there.” He noticed Shelly stiffen, but had no idea why.

“Sorry, Stag. I have to go away.”

Stag Preston’s face became a grimace. “You can’t! You can’t just jerk out and leave me sittin’, man! I need your help. You been makin’ a pile … look, I’ll give you a couple of my shares of the contract … that way you’ll have a bigger bite than any one of them.”

Shelly actually felt sorry for the boy. It was down to the wire now. He could feel it in the air. Everyone was running away from him and he knew he was slipping. Now even his monumental self-assurance, the driving hunger that had made him as big as he was, could not help.

Stag abruptly altered his expressions and his nostrils flared as he threatened Shelly, “Look, you sonofabitch, I’m tellin’ you this: you leave me and I’ll have you blackballed in every city in this country. You’ll have to go to Russia to get a job, you smart-aleck sonofabitch, you hear me?”

Shelly shook his head sadly.

“What you gonna do with all that contract, you bastard? What you gonna do with that thirty percent … give it to those slobs out there to use against me? That what you’re gonna do? Sell it to them?”

He stood with fists clenched at his side, panting, the blood drained out of his hollow-cheeked face, his eyes black and intense, glowing, glaring.

Shelly spoke very softly. “No, Stag, I’m going to put it where it belongs, give it back to the one who deserves it most.” He reached into his jacket pocket for the contract.

“That crummy Ruth Kemp, thass who! That’s who you gonna give it to … that mewlin’ sonofabitch woman come around here suckin’ and cryin’ till we don’t know what all…”

Shelly cut him off as he handed the contract shares across to the boy. “Here, Stag, you take them. It’s a gift. A little piece of your soul back again. I held it too long.”

Then he turned for the door, and said very quietly, without capitals, “excuse me now, i have to go take a bath.”