Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Even when they couldn’t buy half the things they looked at, it was nice just to look, and the same went for me.

Then when they were tired of walking, they could always go back home and listen to the Kate Smith program, or the Eddie Cantor show, or Burns and Allen, and that was free of charge, too. I could do that too; the only difference was I couldn’t sit down or take my coat off. I’d sold my little Emerson portable radio long before, but I used to get all the programs by standing in the entrances of hospitable music stores that had their loudspeakers turned on over the doorway. The jokes were just as funny there.

Life was as good as ever, as good as it’s always been, to me and to those strolling with me. The only difference was you needed money more than you once had, for there was now far less of it around. But there wasn’t one of us in that promenading-to-nowhere-and-back crowd who would have changed it, changed life, for anything else.

Each night when I went to bed, I said to myself, “Maybe tomorrow he’ll call.” Then the day came, and he didn’t, and the night came, and again: “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.”

A dozen times, a half a hundred times, I started to call him instead, and I kept from doing so. A dozen times I already had my nickel in the pay slot, and I pressed down the arm and brought it back to me again. Once I even got through to his office, and then I wouldn’t name myself to the switchboard operator, hung up before she could put me through.

For I knew it wouldn’t help any, wouldn’t hasten it any, might even detract from it if I become too importunate or impatient. One call would bring on a second, then a third, and each time less and less gained. He would call me when he was ready, when the decision had been reached, and he wouldn’t call me before. My calling him wouldn’t make the decision; only his calling me would.

So until then it had to be “Maybe tomorrow he’ll call me. Maybe tomorrow he’ll call.”

And then suddenly one morning he did. Very early, very unexpectedly, about 9:30 in the morning. It must have been almost as soon as he reached his desk. I’d jumped straight to the phone from my bed, and it was only as the film strips of sleep peeled slowly off my mind one by one that I realized whose the voice was. I stood there, holding up my pajama pants with one hand, the phone in the other.

“You sound half-awake,” I heard him say. “Can you come down here later in the day?” he said. “I’d like to talk to you. I’d ask you to lunch, only I’m doing without lunches these days.”

I was fully awake by now and almost bursting with excitement. “Forget lunch.” I told him. “What about the book? Is it in? Is it in?”

“Wait’ll you get your eyes open, then come down,” he hedged. “I don’t like talking on the phone anyway. It’s much more satisfactory when you get together personally.” And he hung up.

I tried to click him back on again, but he was off for good and I couldn’t get him back.

I let go my pajama waistband and it fell down to the floor and I had to bend over and hoist it up again.

It can’t be a rejection, I kept thinking as I dressed, and then later as I rode the excruciatingly slow subway, or he would have told me then and there. I knew editors well enough by now; in that case he would rather not have had me come down and see him.

When I stepped into his office, the first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t in evidence, he didn’t have it there on his desk ready to give back to me, and my hopes rose even higher still.

He started in by mentioning its good points, bouncing a pencil on its end as he remarked each one.

“It’s gay, it’s jaunty.

“There’s only one trouble. It’s no longer valid.

“That Paris is gone.”

“That Paris’ll never be gone,” I retorted resentfully, much as you refute a slander against the personality of your first sweetheart — such as that she’s aging, no longer what she used to be.

“Yes it is,” he insisted. “It’s as dead as the New York that used to send half its own population over there to visit every summer. That’s beside the point anyway. We’re not selling the book in Paris, we’re selling it right here in New York. People aren’t going to read it there, they’re going to read it here. And the New York that used to want to read about that Paris doesn’t exist anymore.”

He was right; I could see with my own eyes that it didn’t.

“It’s out,” I murmured, releasing a long, mournful sigh.

He didn’t answer.

“Well, where is it, then?” I finally wanted to know. “I may as well take it home with me.”

He opened his desk drawer and fumbled around a little, but more as though making time than actually looking for something which he really didn’t know where to locate. Then instead of the thick 300-odd-page typescript, he brought out a single sheet of paper with a few lines typed on it.

“I know you want to make money on it,” he remarked.

I didn’t answer that; it was too obvious.

He handed me the slip of paper to read.

It very briefly stated, in no more than two or three typed lines: In the event of a sale of my book, I Love You, Paris to X-Studios on the recommendation of Mr. Y, associate producer at that studio, I agreed to divide the profits of the sale fifty-fifty with Mr. Irwin—.

“You keep all the other rights just as much as ever,” he hastened to assure me. “In fact, they might even reconsider here and do it as a book, if a successful motion picture comes out of it. That’s been done before. A successful motion picture helps to sell a book, you know.”

Then he went on to tell me that he knew this Mr. Y, and was sure that if he liked it a sale could be made on the strength of his recommendation to the studio heads. It was not like sending it to an agent. This was a direct contact with the studio itself.

I didn’t need much more urging than that. I signed it and he put it back where he’d taken it from.

Then and only then he told me, “It’s already out there. We ought to hear any day now. I know you need the money, don’t want to be held up too long waiting.”

We shook hands, and my hopes went way up again, even higher than they’d been before.

On that note I left him and went home.

I knew I hadn’t been too astute, but I felt I hadn’t had much choice in the matter, and anyone else in my position would have done pretty much as I had. Certainly, I was giving away half my potential profits. But I was giving away half of nothing, for without him and his associate producer friend Mr. Y, there would be no chance of a sale at all, I knew. Half a cake, to be La Rochefoucauldian about it, was better than none.

At that, he could have been much more demanding, or let’s say much more flagrant, about it. By that I mean he could have insisted on a half-share of any picture sale at all that was made, and not just a sale to the one studio that was specified. Or worse still, he could have bought the book outright from me, all rights to it, for a thousand dollars or even five hundred dollars of his own (which I’m not sure I would have been able to refuse) and thus stand to collect the entire amount when the sale came. But I suppose, to be completely objective about it, he didn’t have the thousand or five hundred in his own pocket, and couldn’t very well ask the publishers for it since they’d already turned the book down.

I think all it amounted to was that he saw a chance to make some money on his own account out of something that had fortuitously come his way, and took it. And who is to blame him? I could see his logic, and I didn’t resent it in the least.

I’m only trying to be fair. It doesn’t matter now anymore, but it mattered terribly then.