Big Money (53 page)

The worst of it was going into the dressingroom to take off her wraps. The women who were doing their faces and giving a last pat to their hair all turned and gave her a quick onceover that started at her slippers, ran up her stockings, picked out every hook and eye of her dress, ran round her neck to see if it was wrinkled and up into her hair to see if it was dyed. At once she knew that she ought to have an ermine wrap. There was one old dame standing smoking a cigarette by the lavatory door in a dress all made of cracked ice who had xray eyes; Margo felt her reading the pricetag on her stepins. The colored maid gave Margo a nice toothy grin as she laid Margo's coat over her
arm that made her feel better. When she went out she felt the stares clash together on her back and hang there like a tin can on a dog's tail. Keep a stiff upper lip, they can't eat you, she was telling herself as the door of the ladies' room closed behind her. She wished Agnes was there to tell her how lovely everybody was.

Margolies was waiting for her in the vestibule full of sparkly chandeliers. There was an orchestra playing and they were dancing in a big room. He took her to the fireplace at the end. Irwin Harris and Mr. Hardbein who looked as alike as a pair of eggs in their tight dress suits came up and said goodevening. Margolies gave them each a hand without looking at them and sat down by the fireplace with his back to the crowd in a big carved chair like the one he had in his office. Mr. Harris asked her to dance with him. After that it was like any other collection of dressedup people. At least until she found herself dancing with Rodney Cathcart.

She recognized him at once from the pictures, but it was a shock to find that his face had color in it, and that there was warm blood and muscle under his rakish eveningdress. He was a tall tanned young man with goldfishyellow hair and an English way of mumbling his words. She'd felt cold and shivery until she started to dance with him. After he'd danced with her once he asked her to dance with him again. Between dances he led her to the buffet at the end of the room and tried to get her to drink. She held a scotch and soda in a big blue glass each time and just sipped it while he drank down a couple of scotches straight and ate a large plate of chicken salad. He seemed a little drunk but he didn't seem to be getting any drunker. He didn't say anything so she didn't say anything either. She loved dancing with him.

Every now and then when they danced round the end of the room she caught sight of the whole room in the huge mirror over the fireplace. Once when she got just the right angle she thought she saw Margolies' face staring at her from out of the carved highbacked chair that faced the burning logs. He seemed to be staring at her attentively. The firelight playing on his face gave it a warm lively look she hadn't noticed on it before. Immediately blond heads, curly heads, bald heads, bare shoulders, black shoulders got in her way and she lost sight of that corner of the room.

It must have been about twelve o'clock when she found him standing beside the table where the scotch was. “Hello, Sam,” said Rodney
Cathcart. “How's every little thing?” “We must go now, the poor child is tired in all this noise. . . . Rodney, you must let Miss Dowling go now.” “O.K., pal,” said Rodney Cathcart and turned his back to pour himself another glass of scotch.

When Margo came back from getting her wraps she found Mr. Hardbein waiting for her in the vestibule. He bowed as he squeezed her hand. “Well, I don't mind telling you, Miss Dowling, that you made a sensation. The girls are all asking what you use to dye your hair with.” A laugh rumbled down into his broad vest. “Would you come by my office? We might have a bite of lunch and talk things over a bit.” Margo gave a little shudder. “It's sweet of you, Mr. Hardbein, but I never go to offices . . . I don't understand business. . . . You call us up, won't you?”

When she got out to the colonial porch there was Rodney Cathcart sitting beside Margolies in the long white car. Margo grinned and got in between them as cool as if she'd expected to find Rodney Cathcart there all the while. The car drove off. Nobody said anything. She couldn't tell where they were going, the avenues of palms and the strings of streetlamps all looked alike. They stopped at a big restaurant. “I thought we'd better have a little snack. . . . You didn't eat anything all evening,” Margolies said, giving her hand a squeeze as he helped her out of the car. “That's the berries,” said Rodney Cathcart who'd hopped out first. “This dawncing makes a guy beastly 'ungry.”

The headwaiter bowed almost to the ground and led them through the restaurant full of eyes to a table that had been reserved for them on the edge of the dancefloor. Margolies ate shreddedwheat biscuits and milk, Rodney Cathcart ate a steak and Margo took on the end of her fork a few pieces of a lobsterpatty. “A blighter needs a drink after that,” grumbled Rodney Cathcart, pushing back his plate after polishing off the last fried potato. Margolies raised two fingers. “Here it is forbidden. . . . How silly we are in this country. . . . How silly they are.” He rolled his eyes towards Margo. She caught a wink in time to make it just a twitch of the eyelid and gave him that slow stopped smile he'd made such a fuss over at Palm Springs. Margolies got to his feet. “Come, Margo darling . . . I have something to show you.” As she and Rodney Cathcart followed him out across the red carpet she could feel ripples of excitement go through the people in the restaurant the way she'd felt it when she went places in Miami after Charley Anderson had been killed.

Margolies drove them to a big creamcolored apartmenthouse. They went up in an elevator. He opened a door with a latchkey and ushered them in. “This” he said, “is my little bachelor flat.”

It was a big dark room with a balcony at the end hung with embroideries. The walls were covered with all kinds of oilpaintings each lit by a little overhead light of its own. There were oriental rugs piled one on the other on the floor and couches round the walls covered with zebra and lion skins. “Oh, what a wonderful place,” said Margo. Margolies turned to her, smiling. “A bit baronial, eh? The sort of thing you're accustomed to see in the castle of a Castilian grandee.” “Absolutely,” said Margo. Rodney Cathcart lay down full length on one of the couches. “Say, Sam old top,” he said, “have you got any of that good Canadian ale? 'Ow about a little Guinness in it?”

Margolies went out into a pantry and the swinging door closed behind him. Margo roamed around looking at the brightcolored pictures and the shelves of wriggling Chinese figures. It made her feel spooky.

“Oh, I say,” Rodney Cathcart called from the couch. “Come over here, Margo. . . . I like you. . . . You've got to call me Si. . . . My friends call me that. It's more American.” “All right by me” said Margo, sauntering towards the couch. Rodney Cathcart put out his hand. “Put it there, pal,” he said. When she put her hand in his he grabbed it and tried to pull her towards him on the couch. “Wouldn't you like to kiss me, Margo?” He had a terrific grip. She could feel how strong he was.

Margolies came back with a tray with bottles and glasses and set it on an ebony stand near the couch. “This is where I do my work,” he said. “Genius is helpless without the proper environment. . . . Sit there.” He pointed to the couch where Cathcart was lying. “I shot that lion myself. . . . Excuse me a moment.” He went up the stairs to the balcony and a light went on up there. Then a door closed and the light was cut off. The only light in the room was over the pictures. Rodney Cathcart sat up on the edge of the couch. “For crissake, sister, drink something. . . .” Margo started to titter. “All right, Si, you can give me a spot of gin,” she said and sat down beside him on the couch.

He was attractive. She found herself letting him kiss her but right away his hand was working up her leg and she had to get up and walk over to the other side of the room to look at the pictures again. “Oh, don't be silly,” he sighed, letting himself drop back on the couch.

There was no sound from upstairs. Margo began to get the jeebies
wondering what Margolies was doing up there. She went back to the couch to get herself another spot of gin and Rodney Cathcart jumped up all of a sudden and put his arms around her from behind and bit her ear. “Quit that caveman stuff” she said, standing still. She didn't want to wrestle with him for fear he'd muss her dress. “That's me,” he whispered in her ear. “I find you most exciting.”

Margolies was standing in front of them with some papers in his hand. Margo wondered how long he'd been there. Rodney Cathcart let himself drop back on the couch and closed his eyes. “Now sit down, Margo darling,” Margolies was saying in an even voice. “I want to tell you a story. See if it awakens anything in you.” Margo felt herself flushing. Behind her Rodney Cathcart was giving long deep breaths as if he were asleep.

“You are tired of the giddy whirl of the European capitals,” Margolies was saying. “You are the daughter of an old armyofficer. Your mother is dead. You go everywhere, dances, dinners, affairs. Proposals are made for your hand. Your father is a French or perhaps a Spanish general. His country calls him. He is to be sent to Africa to repel the barbarous Moors. He wants to leave you in a convent but you insist on going with him. You are following this?”

“Oh, yes,” said Margo eagerly. “She'd stow away on the ship to go with him to the war.”

“On the same boat there's a young American collegeboy who has run away to join the foreign legion. We'll get the reason later. That'll be your friend Si. You meet. . . . Everything is lovely between you. Your father is very ill. By this time you are in a mud fort besieged by natives, howling bloodthirsty savages. Si breaks through the blockade to get the medicine necessary to save your father's life. . . . On his return he's arrested as a deserter. You rush to Tangier to get the American consul to intervene. Your father's life is saved. You ride back just in time to beat the firingsquad. Si is an American citizen and is decorated. The general kisses him on both cheeks and hands his lovely daughter over into his strong arms. . . . I don't want you to talk about this now. . . . Let it settle deep into your mind. Of course it's only a rudimentary sketch. The story is nonsense but it affords the director certain opportunities. I can see you risking all, reputation, life itself to save the man you love. Now I'll take you home. . . . Look, Si's asleep. He's just an animal, a brute blond beast.”

When Margolies put her wrap around her he let his hands rest for a
moment on her shoulders. “There's another thing I want you to let sink into your heart . . . not your intelligence . . . your heart. . . . Don't answer me now. Talk it over with your charming companion. A little later, when we have this picture done I want you to marry me. I am free. Years ago in another world I had a wife as men have wives but we agreed to misunderstand and went our ways. Now I shall be too busy. You have no conception of the intense detailed work involved. When I am directing a picture I can think of nothing else, but when the creative labor is over, in three months' time perhaps, I want you to marry me. . . . Don't reply now.”

They didn't say anything as he sat beside her on the way home to Santa Monica driving slowly through the thick white clammy morning mist. When the car drove up to her door she leaned over and tapped him on the cheek. “Sam,” she said, “you've given me the loveliest evening.”

Agnes was all of a twitter about where she'd been so late. She was walking around in her dressinggown and had the lights on all over the house. “I had a vague brooding feeling after you'd left, Margie. So I called up Madame Esther to ask her what she thought. She had a message for me from Frank. You know she said last time he was trying to break through unfortunate influences.” “Oh, Agnes, what did it say?” “It said success is in your grasp, be firm. Oh, Margie, you've just got to marry him. . . . That's what Frank's been trying to tell us.” “Jiminy crickets,” said Margo, falling on her bed when she got upstairs, “I'm all in. Be a darling and hang up my clothes for me, Agnes.”

Margo was too excited to sleep. The room was too light. She kept seeing the light red through her eyelids. She must get her sleep. She'd look a sight if she didn't get her sleep. She called to Agnes to bring her an aspirin.

Agnes propped her up in bed with one hand and gave her the glass of water to wash the aspirin down with the other; it was like when she'd been a little girl and Agnes used to give her medicine when she was sick. Then suddenly she was dreaming that she was just finishing the
Everybody's Doing It
number and the pink cave of faces was roaring with applause and she ran off into the wings where Frank Mandeville was waiting for her in his black cloak with his arms stretched wide open, and she ran into his arms and the cloak closed about her and she was down with the cloak choking her and he was
on top of her clawing at her dress and past his shoulder she could see Tony laughing, Tony all in white with a white beret and a diamond golfclub on his stock jumping up and down and clapping. It must have been her yelling that brought Agnes. No, Agnes was telling her something. She sat up in bed shuddering. Agnes was all in a fluster. “Oh, it's dreadful. Tony's down there. He insists on seeing you, Margie. He's been reading in the papers. You know it's all over the papers about how you are starring with Rodney Cathcart in Mr. Margolies' next picture. Tony's wild. He says he's your husband and he ought to attend to your business for you. He says he's got a legal right.” “The little rat,” said Margo. “Bring him up here. . . . What time is it?” She jumped out of bed and ran to the dressingtable to fix her face. When she heard them coming up the stairs she pulled on her pink lace bedjacket and jumped back into bed. She was very sleepy when Tony came in the room. “What's the trouble, Tony?” she said.