Джеймс Кейн - Career in C Major and Other Fiction

I pushed through the revolving door, and hated to cross the lobby. The clerk looked up, with his plastered-on smile, and it stayed plastered on, when he saw me, like in one of those movies where they stop the camera a second, to get a laugh. He swung his turntable around, but slow, like he hated to do it. I registered:

While I was writing, his hand wandered to the key rack, and then it wandered to a button, and pressed it. In a second a big gimlet-eyed guy was standing beside me, and everything about him said house detective. They looked at each other. The clerk swung the turntable around again, read my card, and spoke mechanically, while he was blotting it, like an announcement on an old-time phonograph record: “Single room, Mr. Borland? We have them at a dollar-and-a-half, two and two-and-a-half. With bath, three, four and five.”

“I want a bedroom, bath and sitting room.”

I needed a sitting room about as much as an ourang-outang does, but I had to say something to take them off guard. I was in terror they’d give me the bum’s rush across the lobby. If they tried that, I didn’t know what I would do. I might take the joint apart, and I might do nothing, and just land in the gutter, and that was what I dreaded most of all.

They looked at each other again. “We have a very nice suite on the tenth floor, outside — bedroom, bath, sitting room, and small kitchenette with ice box — seven dollars.”

“That’ll be all right.”

“Ah... have you luggage, Mr. Borland?”

“No.”

I took out my bill-fold. I still had a hunk of cash that I’d brought back from the trip, and I laid down a $50 bill. They relaxed, and so did I, and began to talk like myself. “Have you a house doctor?”

“No, but we have one on call.”

“Will you get him, and send him up to me as quick as you can? I’ve — been in an accident.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, Mr. Borland.”

The house dick took charge of me then. He put his arm around me like I could hardly walk, and called a boy, and took me up to my room, and talked like I had been in a taxi accident, and said it was a crime the way those guys drove. If anybody could get a face like mine in a taxi accident, it would be a miracle, but it was his way of saying everything was O. K., that there would be no questions asked, that he’d take care of me. “You haven’t had dinner yet, Mr. Borland?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I’ll send the waiter up right away.”

“Fine.”

“Or maybe you’d rather wait till you’ve seen the doctor? Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll send the waiter up now, and after the doc gets through, you ring room service and tell them you’re ready. I recommend the turkey, sir. They’ve got nice roast turkey on the bill tonight, fine, young, Vermont turkey, from our farm up there — and the chef has a way with it. He really has, sir.”

“Turkey sounds all right.”

They sent the coat out to be cleaned and fixed up, and had a boy go down and buy me pajamas on Fourteenth Street, and the doctor came and plastered me up, and I had the turkey and a bottle of wine with it. I kept the waiter while I ate, and we talked and we got along fine. But then he took the table down, and I was alone, and I went in and had a hot bath, and by then it was about half past nine, and there wasn’t anything to do but go to bed. I took off my clothes, and put on the Fourteenth Street pajamas, and got in bed, and pulled up their sleazy cotton blankets, and lay there looking at the paper, where it was beginning to peel off the walls. I tried to think what there was funny about that paper. Then I remembered that paper hadn’t been used on hotel walls for fifteen years. Only the old ones have paper.

I turned out the light and tried to sleep. I didn’t seem to be thinking about anything at all. But every time I’d drop off I’d wake up, dreaming I was standing there, bellowing at the top of my lungs, and nobody would even turn around and look at me. Then one time this horrible thing was coming at me in the dark, and I woke up moaning. I tried to get to sleep again, and couldn’t. I told myself it was just a dream, to forget it, but it wasn’t just a dream. I must have dropped off, though, because here it was, coming at me again, and this time I wasn’t moaning. I was sobbing. I quit kidding myself then. I knew I’d give anything to have it back, what I had pulled at the party that afternoon. It wasn’t brave, it wasn’t big, it was just plain silly. I had made a jackass of myself, and put something terrible between me and Doris. I began thinking of her, then, and knew it didn’t make any difference what she had done to me, or anything else. I wanted her so bad it was just a terrible ache, wanted her worse than ever. And here I was, I had no wife, I had no home, I had no kids, I had no work, I didn’t even have Cecil. I was in this lousy dump, and had just made a mess of my life. I think I hit an all-time low that night. I never felt worse. I couldn’t feel worse.

Three days later, when I could leave, I went up and took a suite at a hotel in the fifties. I took it by the month. I didn’t hear anything from Doris. I began reading the society pages after a couple of days, and she was in. Every time I saw her name I saw Leighton’s. On the singing, I never opened my trap. One day a guy showed up at the office by the name of Horn. He sat down, and kept looking around kind of puzzled at the drafting room, and in a minute I asked him pretty sharp what he wanted.

“You’re Mr. Borland? Mr. Leonard Borland?”

“Yes, I’m Leonard Borland.”

“Well... I got the address out of the phone book, but it certainly doesn’t look like the right place, and you don’t look like the right guy. What are you, in the construction business?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m looking for the Leonard Borland that sang with the American Scala Opera Company under the name of Logan Bennett. Anyway, I hear he did.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I was in Pittsburgh last week. I heard it from a friend of mine. Giuseppe Rossi.”

“... Well? What of it?”

He knew then he had the right guy, and kept looking me over. “I tell you what of it. I’m connected with this outfit that’s giving opera over at the Hippodrome, and—”

“Not interested.”

“Rossi said you were pretty good.”

“Nice guy, Rossi. Remember me to him if you see him.”

“I need a baritone.”

“Still not interested.”

“If you’re as good as he says you are, I could make you a pretty nice proposition. You understand, a singer’s no draw until he gets known, but I could offer you $125 a night, say, with three appearances a week guaranteed. That’s a little more than Rossi was paying you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, quite a little.”

“Well... will you think it over?”

“No, I won’t think it over.”

“Listen, I need a baritone.”

“So I judge.”

“I got a couple of good tenors, and another one coming. I got a couple of sopranos I think are comers. But in opera, you’ve got to have one good baritone before you’ve got a show.”

“You certainly have.”

“All right then, I’ll come up a little. How about a hundred and fifty?”

“Maybe you didn’t understand what I said when you came in here. I appreciate what you say, I’m grateful to Rossi, — but I’m just not interested.”

The idea of singing made me sick. He went and I put on my hat and engaged in my favorite outdoor sport, about that time. That was walking around the Metropolitan Opera House hoping I’d see Cecil. A couple of days after that I did see her. I raced back to the office as fast as I could get there, and put in a call for her at her hotel. They said she wasn’t in. I knew she wouldn’t be. That was why I had been watching. I left word that Mr. Borland called. Then for a week I stuck at my desk from nine to six, hoping she would call back. She never did.