The sins of philip flemi.., p.4
The Sins of Philip Fleming, page 4
She inhaled. “Thank you.”
He sat beside her. “I hope you’ll be as happy in this house as I’ve been.”
“Have you been happy here?”
“With the house, yes,” he said carefully.
She glanced about. “If you enjoyed it, I’m sure I will.” Her eyes met his. “I think our tastes are the same. Will you be moving far from here?”
“The Briars,” he said. “About twenty minutes.”
Suddenly she said, “I’m glad your wife wasn’t here.”
“Why?”
“When I meet a man, and like him—I felt this even when I was married—I like to think of him just that way. A wife changes it. She fusses over him, or babies him, or runs him down, or—oh, I don’t know. Forget it. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Anyway, it’s been fun today, talking to you. I’m really thrilled to have your house. Somehow I feel like celebrating.”
He nodded gravely. “We should celebrate, both of us. We had to sell. You had to buy. And two such lovely people—”
“That’s what I mean.”
“It’s not even like business. If this is business, to hell with art.”
“Let’s have a party,” she said.
“A party?”
“A houseleaving housewarming. I’ll do it, but we can do it jointly.”
“When?”
Her face was Christmas morning. “Next Friday—no, we’ll all be too tired—Saturday—next Saturday night. After dinner. You and your wife come. Bring some of your friends. I’ll invite a few of mine. We’ll celebrate right here.”
The prospect was exhilarating.
“I’ll bring the scotch,” he said.
“And I will, too.”
He extended his hand. “It’s a date.”
She took it solemnly. “A date.”
Mrs. Burdock’s voice was rising from the dining room. “The papers are ready!”
He rose, indicated the dining room with a mock bow. “After you—Peggy.”
“Thank you—Philip.”
He held out his arm. She took it. They went into the dining room.
He did not see her again until late Monday morning.
She was seated on a green leather chair in the escrow department of the bank, her slender fingers toying with an unlit cigarette as she listened to Mrs. Burdock, when they came in. She was wearing a printed jersey sport dress, something light purple and blue.
“Hello,” he said. “This is my wife—Peggy Degen—Helen Fleming.”
Tire two nodded courteously and acknowledged the introduction.
“I do appreciate your letting me in early,” said Peggy Degen to Helen. “I was in a terrible spot. Steve—lie’s my son—we were being evicted from a rental—the apartment house had been sold, and the new landlord wants to move in—and I just couldn’t seem to find the right place.”
Helen was friendly. “I’m glad you liked our house.” She studied Peggy Degen. “I don’t know—I—I expected you to be a much older woman.”
“Is that what Mr. Fleming told you?” Peggy Degen asked, flashing Philip a quick mocking smile.
Philip protested seriously. “I did nothing of the kind.”
“No,” said Helen. “But he mentioned that you were a widow. I think that threw me off. Well, I think you’ll be pleased. It’s a house for young people.” She took Philip’s hand possessively. “At least, we think so.”
Philip wished she had not taken his hand. He freed himself. “Well, should we get the business over with?”
Mrs. Burdock was at the railing, speaking to a stiff young man in horn-rimmed glasses. She returned to them. “It’ll be just a minute. They can’t guarantee clearing the title by Friday—”
“I’ve told you, it doesn’t matter for my part,” said Peggy Degen.
“Well, it’ll just be a minute.” Mrs. Burdock hurried back to the railing to wait, like a perched blue jay.
Peggy Degen sat reposefully, looking at the activity in the bank. Helen watched her, then moved and sat in the chair next to her.
“Philip tells me you’re having a party—”
“Well, I think we meant to do it together—”
Philip interrupted, somewhat annoyed with Helen. “I told you,” he said to his wife, “it’s going to be a joint celebration. The old order giving way to the new. I’ve already invited the Marksons.”
“And I’ve invited two couples,” said Peggy Degen.
Helen had objected to the party when he had mentioned it. She did not know Mrs. Degen. She did not know her friends. She would be busy with the new house, and exhausted, and she did not want to go back to the old house. But he had insisted. It was a spontaneous plan, and it would be relaxing for both of them. Helen had given in grudgingly, on the condition that they did not stay late. Now she said to Peggy Degen, “I was just afraid we might all be so tired—”
“We can make it a pajama party,” said Peggy Degen cheerfully. Helen laughed. “All right. It’ll be fun.” She glanced away.
Mrs. Burdock was still waiting. Helen found her purse. “I think I’d like to go to the ladies’ room. Would you care to join me, Mrs. Degen?” Peggy Degen followed Helen into the corridor. Philip wished that she had remained.
Later, after the escrow formalities had been completed, and they were driving up Sunset, he asked Helen what she and Peggy Degen had talked about.
“What do you mean?”
“When you both went to the bathroom.”
“Oh. Nothing much. She’s got a little boy. We’ve got a little boy. That kind of talk. She seems nice.”
“Yes.”
“She’s very young to be widowed. She told me she’s going to be twenty-seven next month.”
Twenty-seven, he thought. Thirty-five. Eight years.
“She’s very pretty,” Helen was saying. “Don’t you think so?” The trap. Helen had no esthetic, impersonal interest in beauty.
“Well—if you like that type.” He smiled at his wife. “Personally, I’m blonde-prone.”
Helen ignored this. “She’s got a magnificent body,” she went on.
“How do you know?”
“I was in the bathroom with her, silly. Flat belly, narrow hips, and those legs—”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t remarried.”
“I’m sure she does all right.”
“I suppose.” She was peering through the window. “Philip, isn’t that expensive lamp store along here somewhere? I’d love to stop by for a few minutes.”
“Just tell me when we get there.”
Flat belly. Narrow hips. Legs. Long legs. Gradually, the image filled his mind. He drove in silence. He felt warm and alive. He had a secret.
It was the week of cartons. Finding them. Filling them. And the best part of the week was that each day, Saturday drew closer. No hour had passed without some vision of Peggy Degen in his mind. The absurdity of his daydream devotion troubled him once or twice. He had seen the girl only three times, and then briefly. He knew nothing of her. Most of all, he had no proof that she had any interest in him, aside from his role as owner of the house. Yet, she had seemed attentive to him. And the party. After all, she had suggested it. Was it merely because she was alone and lonely and wanted company? Or was it her method of bringing them together once more? If the latter, then what? He would not allow himself to think beyond that point in a realistic way. The image, that kept him in perpetual heat, was one thing. It was a Mohammedan’s dream of Heaven and could be enjoyed as such. But as to reality: he bent to his cartons.
He hardly thought of work at all, until just before dinner on Wednesday, when Nathaniel Horn telephoned. Nathaniel Horn was Philip’s motion picture agent. He was actually much more. He was a true friend of Philip’s, and an honest critic of his work. Horn had a loose representation arrangement with Philip’s New York agent, and the two agents shared commissions on all clients delivered from the East.
Professions or trades, Philip often reflected, leave their mark on the men in them. Most doctors look like doctors should look, and lumberjacks like lumberjacks, and agents, of course, like agents. The reason for this, probably, was that most men grooming for a profession have an idealized portrait of how a member of that profession should look. They then mold themselves after their prototype. Nathaniel Horn was the exception to the rule. He appeared to be anything but an agent. The typical Hollywood agent falls into one of two broad categories: he is either a cigar-chomper, hard-talking but secretly sentimental and all heart, with office under his hat, the basic ulcer, and a single Big Name client; or he is a serious, dapper young man, cut out with the same cookie cutter as his competitors, a crew haircut, black knit tie, dark Dacron suit, and a steady supply of erotic jokes and gossip, and who is employed by some vast, cheerless talent factory. Horn fell into neither group. He was that rarity: a literate, sophisticated nonconformist who did not pimp.
Horn was a tall slender man with flat brown hair, tired, baggy eyes, and a bony but attractive face. He was a graduate of Harvard, Harry’s Bar, and Polly Adler’s social club of recent memory.
He had read Proust in the original French. He was happily married to a splendid woman, a former actress, and they had four normal children. He vacationed regularly at a fishing resort in Mexico, and his passion was pugilism.
Now his clipped voice was reassuring. “Phil, old boy, what have you done with a whole week?”
“Gotten rich. We sold the house.”
“Wonderful! Did you get your price?”
“Roughly. I’ve been up to my ass in packing. What’s going on around town?”
“It’s slow. But I think I’ve got something for you.”
“Really?”
“Herman Ritter wants you.”
“No kidding?”
Philip was impressed. Herman Ritter was the top producer at Master Pictures. Ritter, a red-faced gnome addicted to first editions, sports cars, and outsized blondes, had left UFA and National Socialism to become a Hollywood producer. His first film, a vigorous celluloid biography of Victor Hugo, had been an award-winning classic and had made his reputation. With his overnight success, and motion picture business booming, Ritter had been offered a long-term contract at six thousand dollars a week by the heads of Master Pictures. Ritter had hired a battery of attorneys to make the contract foolproof, and then he had signed it. But with the ascendancy of television, and the recession in movie business, the studio heads found Ritter’s salary top-heavy. They tried to make him take a cut, but he resisted with Teutonic doggedness. Then they schemed to break his contract. A favorite story about this effort, probably apocryphal, concerned the time the studio heads made Ritter work as a tourist guide. They had combed his contract and learned that they had the right to employ him in any capacity. Ritter, it was said, smilingly undertook the assignment. With Germanic thoroughness, he spent his mornings and afternoons guiding bands of out-of-town visitors through the studio stages and laboratories. On one such occasion, one of the tourists, accompanied by his family, proved to be an Eastern banker involved in the studio’s financing. Pleased with his guide’s intimate knowledge of the lot, the banker complimented Ritter at the end of the tour. “I’m going up front and let them know that you deserve a raise, my good man,” said the banker.
“Tell me, what are you paid?”
“Six thousand dollars a week,” said Ritter.
He had been producing ever since. The prospect of working for such a man was exciting to Philip.
“What’s the assignment, Nat?”
“A Western.”
Philip groaned.
“Look, Phil, I know—but they’re not giving Ritter anything better—and that’s all there is. Anyway, he wants you.”
“But another Western—”
“Okay, no Academy Award. At least, it’s a thousand a week and a decent man to work for. You’ve got a new house, haven’t you?”
“Don’t brainwash me.”
“You know better than that. Think about it tonight, Phil, and then we’ll hash it over tomorrow. Come in around eleven. Matter of fact, there’s something else I want to discuss with you.”
“All right, Nat. Tomorrow.”
The following morning, at five minutes to eleven, Philip parked his sedan before the office building with the colonial façade where Horn kept his Beverly Hills suite. Philip stopped briefly at the stationer’s to buy the trade papers, then climbed the stairs to the second floor. Viola, Horn’s cute secretary, was out. The door to Horn’s inner office was open. Horn was tilted back in his swivel chair, drinking a Coke from a paper cup and reading the sports section of the airmail edition of the New York Times. He sat up as Philip came in.
“Hi, Phil. Just reading about last night’s fight. Did you see that Mexican kid taking a beating on television?”
“No, I was packing dishes. But you can count ten over me too, if I take another Western. What’s it about?”
“Ritter didn’t tell me much. Some lousy book with one idea. I think it’s called The Rusty Star. Something like that.” Horn screwed up his face, trying to remember. “Anyway, this Midwest family, the daughter’s the heroine, is heading for California in two wagons—”
“Sounds new,” said Philip bitterly.
“—and they come across an ambushed, burning stagecoach. Only one survivor. A wounded man with a badge, a sheriff, handcuffed to his dead prisoner—”
Philip held up his hand. “Only it turns out after a while that the survivor is not really the sheriff, but actually the prisoner, a guy wanted for murder. As soon as he recovers, he expects to run for it. But the way the family treats him, especially the girl, makes him change his mind. He decides to clear up the crime of which he’s been wrongly accused. Close?”
Horn laughed. “Something like that. Look, I’ve heard worse.”
“Isn’t there anything else around?”
“Not much. Well, one other possibility I wanted to mention. A certain producer, who shall be nameless—”
“Who?”
“Not yet, Phil. Anyway, he’s a big independent. He telephoned yesterday. He’s playing around with a biographical idea, and he’s looking for the right man. He wants Ernie Ives—someone in the two-to three-thousand dollar class—so I’m sending Ives in. But I also put in a pitch for you.”
“What’s it about?”
“I’d rather not say yet. I don’t want to get your hopes up. But I have an idea it’s much better than any Western.”
“You think I have a chance?”
“I don’t know. I gave him something of yours to read. But don’t think about it. Think about Ritter.”
“When does Ritter have to know?”
“Early next week’s the latest.” He wheeled his chair around and regarded Philip with concern. “Look, Phil, I know how you feel about all this hack junk. I’m with you. I’ve told you that a hundred times before. If I knew you could afford it, I’d be the first to say to hell with Westerns and melodramas and all that crap. I’d say go down to La Jolla and write another book—or a play—do what you should be doing. But you haven’t got the money. And there are no patrons around.”
“Why haven’t I got the money? A grand a week for how many years—where does it go?”
“You don’t know. That’s where it goes.”
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
“All I know is that you’ve got your overhead. So I have to do my job. And my job’s to see that you make a living.”
Philip shoved himself out of the chair with resignation. “All right. Unless something comes up—we’ll take the Western.” He drove slowly through Beverly Hills headed for home. But, at the second intersection, instead of going straight ahead, he turned to his left. He did not know why he made the turn. Possibly, it was that he was not ready to return home yet. Or, possibly, it was that he wanted to see someone.
There was a vacant parking place near the Pegasus Book Shop, and he took it. He stretched to see himself in his rear-view mirror, then, digging into his pocket for change, opened the door. He was inserting his second nickel in the parking meter, when he saw a matronly young woman top-heavy under a mop of brown hair emerge from the bookstore.
He moved hurriedly to intercept her. “Good morning, Mrs. Stafford.”
Dora Stafford looked up without immediate recognition. Then, she smiled. “Mr. Fleming. What are you doing on our reservation?”
“I was just coming in to browse.”
“God knows, we can use every customer we get. My husband’s in there. He’ll help you.”
“Are you going to lunch?”
“Just a hamburger at the corner. If you don’t mind Germaine, why don’t you join me?”
“That’s what I’ve been fishing for,” he said with a grin.
“Come along. I haven’t got all day.”
They talked about the book business as they found a cramped booth, ordered hamburgers medium well with coffee, and then discussed a current best-seller. She told him some pointed, amusing stories about authors who appeared weekly to wet-nurse their latest publications. She spoke easily, with lusty abandon, and he had difficulty in matching her. His own conversation was labored and stiff.
As they finished their hamburgers and received refills on their coffee, Dora Stafford suddenly looked up and said, “Okay, Phil—I’m going to call you Phil—we’ve had enough of this periphery nonsense. I’ve got ten minutes, so let’s stop wasting time. Why are you here?”
“Because—”
She cut him short. “That’s a rhetorical question. I know why you’re here. Not because you’re interested in an old bag like me, or in Irwin, or in any damn bookstore. You want to talk about Peggy.”
“Whatever gives you that idea?”
“The look on your face the day we walked into your living room. Like you’d just set eyes on Nell Gwynn or Agnes Sorel. I’ve seen that look a hundred times—on a hundred men who’ve met her.”
