Irving Wallace - The Prize

Craig was appalled. He measured his words. ‘Let me get this straight. I want no semantic misunderstanding. Are you suggesting-actually suggesting-that you will buy my next novel if-only if -I change it to conform to your idea of what the heroine should be?’

Märta Norberg laughed, and lowered herself deeper in the water. ‘You make it sound like I’m threatening you. Don’t be an arty boy, Craig-one of those too young, ever young, foolish New England boys, forever out of the Ivy-making believe they are tender Prousts, untouched by human hands or other minds, putting down their precious, puny, gilded words as if the heavens had rent asunder to inspire them. What nonsense, and you know it, and I know it. Dickens, Balzac, Dumas, the whole lot of them, wrote by the page, manufactured to please their printers or their public, and nothing was spoiled, because they were good. Well, you’re good-and keeping one character alive to suit a customer and to keep your bank account in balance won’t make you a hack or sell you out. It’ll only teach you that you’ve grown up.’

‘What if I answer no, flatly no? Will you make the deal anyway?’

‘Of course not. As you say, there would be nothing in it for me.’

He hated to say the next, but he wanted the deal.

‘You could change it around in Hollywood. I wouldn’t give a damn about that.’

‘Impossible. The book itself will be widely read and known-serial, book clubs, trade edition, paper edition-and I want that heroine built up-talked about-loved-long before I give her life on the screen. Now, will you do it?’ She smiled at him sweetly. He was about to speak, evidently in anger, for she quickly put her wet forefinger to his lips, sealing them. ‘Wait, Craig. Before you speak, there’s another aspect of my offer that I’ve deliberately withheld from you. I was going to tell you about it later-under-under more favourable circumstances.’ She paused. ‘I see you’re so male upset, I had better tell you now.’

‘All right-what?’

‘The two hundred thousand was only a part of my offer. There is a richer part, and it’s worth infinitely more. Do you know what that part is?’

‘No.’

‘Me.’ She smiled at his bewildered reaction. ‘Me, Märta Norberg,’ she said simply. ‘I go with the deal.’

At first he was puzzled, because what this innuendo suggested was possible between them had been so remote in his head, and then he pretended to be more puzzled than he really was, because if he had misunderstood her, he would be made to look a dunce. He studied her wet, celebrated, and mocking countenance beneath the rubber bathing-cap, and held his silence.

‘Did I shock you?’ she asked.

‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘Bingo,’ she said cheerfully. ‘As the little girls with curls used to say, in silent pictures, I’m prepared for a fate worse than death. I don’t have the cutes, Craig, and I don’t have coyness. When I collaborate, it’s all the way.’

He was so dumbfounded, he wondered how he could offer any negative reaction without sounding less than adult, less than masculine. He decided to handle the offer as lightly as she had originally made it, and see what would come of their talk. ‘My dear, no man has ever been more flattered.’

‘Balls,’ she said.

The expletive was not coarse but business like, and he grimaced. ‘You mean it, then? How can you-?’

‘It’s easy,’ she said curtly. ‘I want what you have, and you want what I have. That’s all that matters. I will add this. What makes the trade more agreeable is that I find you attractive, and I’m sure you find me so. Even if you weren’t attractive, my offer would still stand.’ She read the lingering disbelief on his features, and solemnly took one hand from the ladder and patted his cheek. ‘Don’t make a federal case of a simple proposition. You creative people are all the same. You think too much. You introspect every pleasure to death. Obey your real impulse, Craig, and you will look back on this night as the beginning of the most memorable deal-relationship-in your life.’

With that, she turned back to the ladder and gracefully, sideways, in the way actresses are taught, climbed out of the pool. For a moment, she stood long and lean, high above him, water sliding down her concave breastbone and slight bosom and sleek flanks and dripping to the poolside. As she unclasped her bathing-cap, and then shook her hair free, she was transformed into femininity once more, and he became aware of her, almost for the first time this evening, as a love object. The wetness of her, the brevity of her attire, the posture of her, the knowledge of her legend, gripped him. She wore two strips of peppermint bikini, one strip of material unfilled and pasted by water to her button breasts, and the other strip, stopping several inches below her navel, water-sogged and caught up and drawn up tightly between her legs to two bows on her naked hips.

Craig did not deceive himself. He felt desire for this person, but the desire he felt was not unadulterated lust for an inciting female but passion for Märta Norberg, a love object the whole world of men coveted and were denied.

If you thought about it-and now he did-the invitation was unbelievable, and because it was unbelievable, it was irresistible. Here now, looking down at him as she dried herself, was the most popularly desired woman on the surface of the earth, kept in the public eye by continuous reruns of her classic films. This moment, in darkened community houses girdling the earth, men in endless number, of every size, shape, complexion, morality-men who were Roumanians, Bulgarians, Kurds, Afghans, Armenians, Siamese, Sudanese, Nigerians, Ecuadorians, Andorrans, and fellow Protestant Americans-sat glued to their theatre seats and benches, staring up at the elongated, enlarged, flat and bright image of this enigmatic Swede projected on white sheets and screens before them. This night, they were united in a common admiration and indulgence. One and all were vicariously subjecting Märta Norberg to physical ravishment, and enjoying the bliss of their cinematic rape. Only when the lights went on, and the screen went blank, and they knew the image was all illusion, did they feel briefly cheated-but the fantasy of Norberg remained in their minds, and the elusive legend continued immortal.

And now, incredibly, the flesh and not the image of all this vicarious seduction was before him. She was his for a single word. Yet he could not utter it.

Having dried, she sat down at the edge of the pool, dangling her legs so that her toes touched the water. ‘Well, Craig, what were you thinking?’

‘I was watching you.’

‘Yes, I know. Does it simplify your decision?’

‘It makes it more complicated.’ He moved to the ladder. ‘I want you, you know.’

‘Of course you do. I want you, too. So what stands between us?’

‘The deal. Do you really mean it?’

‘Certainly, I mean it. Do you doubt me for one second? Say yes, and you shall have the preliminary letter to sign, and the down payment in the morning, with the rest of the money when you have finished the novel.’

‘No, I mean the other part.’

‘Me? That, too, of course, with pleasure.’

‘I’m dumb. Spell it out.’

Her lips curled slightly in what he interpreted to mean a triumphant contempt for the inevitable weakness and surrender of all men. ‘What do you wish me to tell you, Craig?’

He grabbed the rails of the ladder, and pulled himself out of the water, and climbed the rungs to the poolside. He retrieved her towel and began to rub his skin under her gaze.

‘I’m an amateur at these matters, and I admit it,’ said Craig, working the towel. ‘How do I get the bonus payment? And how do I deliver my work to your satisfaction?’