Эптон Синклер - Oil!

“No, Dad, what’s that?”

“There’s a conference in New York that somebody’s got to attend, and he wanted to know if I could get away. I was wondering if it would break you up at the university if you were to take a bit of vacation.”

Bunny debated with himself. What could be accomplished by staying? In the first strike, he had managed to keep the workers in their homes, but he couldn’t do even that much now, for Verne would be in charge, and would not budge an inch. Annabelle’s simile of the spring lamb appeared to fit exactly the position of the oil workers’ union. The job of slaughtering might take weeks, or even months, but it would be done—and all that Bunny could do would be to torment his poor father.

And then Bertie was called into the conspiracy. Bertie wanted him to go. She was to visit the fashionable Woodbridge Riley’s, and after that to be on Thelma Norman’s yacht, and she didn’t want her brother getting mixed up in an oil strike and perhaps making another stink in the newspapers! Wouldn’t he think about Dad for once, and get the old man to take a rest? Bunny was tired of arguing, and said, all right.

The proposed trip brought up a curious problem. How did one travel with one’s mistress, in this “land of the pilgrim’s pride?” Bunny remembered vaguely having heard of people being put out of hotels, because of the lack of marriage certificates. Would he and Vee have to meet clandestinely? He asked her about it, assuming that her experience would cover the question; and it did. On the trains one took a compartment, and no questions were asked. As for hotels, you went to the most fashionable, and let them know who you were, and they made no objection to putting you in adjoining suites, with a connecting door. Look at Verne and Annabelle, said Vee; when it suited their convenience they stayed quite openly at the most high-toned of Angel City’s hotels, and there was never a peep from either the management or the newspapers. It had happened more than once that Mrs. Roscoe had been stopping at the same hotel, and the papers would report her doings on the society page, and Annabelle’s on the dramatic page, so there was never any clash.

In truth the land of the pilgrim’s pride no longer existed; in its place was the land of the millionaire’s glory. When a moving picture star went east, with or without a paramour, she always left by daylight, and her publicity man saw to it that the newspapers published the time and place. There would be shouting thousands, and policemen to hold them back, and cameras clicking, and armfuls of flowers to let everybody on the train know who was who. There would be crowds at every station, calling for a glimpse of their darling; and if she had an oil prince travelling in the same compartment, that was not a scandal, it was a romance.

And when they got to New York, there was another crowd, conjured into being by the efficient publicity machine of Schmolsky-Superba. At the hotel there were people waiting, and more armfuls of flowers, and a dozen reporters demanding interviews. And with all that free advertising for the hotel, was any officious clerk or house detective going to concern himself with the question of whether or not the connecting door between two suites was kept locked? And with a personage of such magnificent authority as J. Arnold Ross travelling along, and beaming his approval on the situation? Dad’s face was as good as a dozen marriage certificates at any hotel in the land!

For the old man this journey was just peaches and cream all the way; a vicarious jag, with no “hang-over” the next morning. He insisted upon paying all the bills; and he had his secretary along, so everything just happened by magic—train accommodations, hotel suites, taxicabs, flowers, candy, theatre tickets—you had only to hint a wish, and the thing was there. What more could there be to add to mortal bliss? Only that Vee would have liked to eat a square meal now and then; and to have spent the morning in bed, instead of having to keep an appointment to “reduce” at a gymnasium!

They saw the world premiere of “Come-hither Eyes.” Possibly you have never been to college in America, and do not understand our lively ways of speech; so let it be explained that sometimes the eyes of “co-eds” have been observed to possess, whether from natural endowment or by practice acquired, a certain quality suggestive to the male creature of an impulse to proximity. A delicious title, you see; and a delicious picture, transporting tired and bored millions into that very same world of glorious money-spending to which Vee and Bunny had been lifted up. The mechanic who had been screwing up nut number 847 in an automobile factory all day, the housewife who had been washing baby-diapers and buying shoddy goods in a five and ten cent store—these were placed in the same position as Dad, enjoying a vicarious jag with no hang-over the next morning!

The scenes at the New York premiere were the same as in Angel City; the crowds as great, and the cheering as enthusiastic. And Vee and Bunny, sitting up in bed in their silken garments, while black-clad robots silently and mechanically served breakfast on silver trays—Vee and Bunny read the accounts of their triumph, and who had attended and what they had worn. And then, turning over the paper, Bunny read a dispatch from Angel City—ten thousand oil workers had walked out on strike, and the industry was tied up tight. The operators announced that they were no longer willing to recognize the oil board, and issued a new wage-scale that was to be taken or left. Trouble was feared, added the newspapers, because it was known that radical agitators had for some time been active among the men.

Bunny was on a holiday, and must enjoy himself; if he failed to do so, the enjoyment of his two companions would be marred. He must smile and escort them to a theatre, and afterwards send Dad home in a taxi, and go with Vee to a supper-party with some of the screen people, and gossip about their productions and their profits, and see them drink too much, and know that there would be an hour’s talk about Prohibition and bootleggers, starting as soon as he and Vee refused to drink. Were they “on the wagon”? Or were they afraid of this liquor? This was something special—the original Koski stuff, or whatever it might be in New York.

Then in the morning the pair would go to the “gym,” and practice stunts together, making themselves a quite competent pair of gymnasts—Vee said that if ever Dad went broke, and she got “kleig eyes” and had to quit the movies, they could earn several hundred a week on the “big time circuit.” They would have lunch, and then maybe there would be a matinee, or somebody calling, or reporters or special writers; or Vee would go shopping, and absolutely insist upon having her darling Bunny along, because he had such exquisite taste, and why did she dress but to please him? Bunny met other rich young men in his position, and learned that such remarks were preliminary to the man’s ordering the bill sent to him. But there was nothing of the “gold-digger” about Vee—when she gave the invitation, she paid.

What she wanted was her Bunny-rabbit. She adored him, and wanted to be with him every moment, and to show him off to all the world, including the newspapers. They had been together long enough for Bunny to know her thoroughly, and to realize the drawbacks as well as the advantages of the alliance. That she was sensual did not trouble him, for he was young, and his ardors matched hers. The arts that he had learned from Eunice Hoyt were combined with those Vee had learned from many lovers, and they were dizzy with delight; the impulse that drew them together was impossible to resist.