Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (311 page)

In the Writers’ Building he went into the lavatory. Then he remembered: by some inspired ukase from above, all mirrors had been removed from the Writers’ Building a year ago.

Across the hall he saw Bee McIlvaine’s door ajar, and discerned her plump person.

‘Bee, can you loan me your compact box?’ he asked.

Bee looked at him suspiciously, then frowned and dug it from her purse.

‘You on the lot?’ she inquired.

‘Will be next week,’ he prophesied. He put the compact on her desk and bent over it with his comb. ‘Why won’t they put mirrors back in the johnnies? Do they think writers would look at themselves all day?’

‘Remember when they took out the couches?’ said Bee. ‘In nineteen thirty-two. And they put them back in thirty-four.’

‘I worked at home,’ said Pat feelingly.

Finished with her mirror he wondered if she were good for a loan--enough to buy a hat and something to eat. Bee must have seen the look in his eyes for she forestalled him.

‘The Finns got all my money,’ she said, ‘and I’m worried about my job. Either my picture starts tomorrow or it’s going to be shelved. We haven’t even got a title.’

She handed him a mimeographed bulletin from the scenario department and Pat glanced at the headline.

TO ALL DEPARTMENTS

TITLE WANTED--FIFTY DOLLARS REWARD

SUMMARY FOLLOWS

‘I could use fifty,’ Pat said. ‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s written there. It’s about a lot of stuff that goes on in tourist cabins.’

Pat started and looked at her wild-eyed. He had thought to be safe here behind the guarded gates but news travelled fast. This was a friendly or perhaps not so friendly warning. He must move on. He was a hunted man now, with nowhere to lay his hatless head.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he mumbled and walked hastily from the room.

II

Just inside the door of the commissary Pat looked around. There was no guardian except the girl at the cigarette stand but obtaining another person’s hat was subject to one complication: it was hard to judge the size by a cursory glance, while the sight of a man trying on several hats in a check room was unavoidably suspicious.

Personal taste also obtruded itself. Pat was beguiled by a green fedora with a sprightly feather but it was too readily identifiable. This was also true of a fine white Stetson for the open spaces. Finally he decided on a sturdy grey Homburg which looked as if it would give him good service. With trembling hands he put it on. It fitted. He walked out--in painful, interminable slow motion.

His confidence was partly restored in the next hour by the fact that no one he encountered made references to tourists’ cabins. It had been a lean three months for Pat. He had regarded his job as night clerk for the Selecto Tourists Cabins as a mere fill-in, never to be mentioned to his friends. But when the police squad came this morning they held up the raid long enough to assure Pat, or Don Smith as he called himself, that he would be wanted as a witness. The story of his escape lies in the realm of melodrama, how he went out a side door, bought a half pint of what he so desperately needed at the corner drug-store, hitchhiked his way across the great city, going limp at the sight of traffic cops and only breathing free when he saw the studio’s high-flown sign.

After a call on Louie, the studio bookie, whose great patron he once had been, he dropped in on Jack Berners. He had no idea to submit, but he caught Jack in a hurried moment flying off to a producers’ conference and was unexpectedly invited to step in and wait for his return.

The office was rich and comfortable. There were no letters worth reading on the desk, but there were a decanter and glasses in a cupboard and presently he lay down on a big soft couch and fell asleep.

He was awakened by Berners’ return, in high indignation.

‘Of all the damn nonsense! We get a hurry call--heads of all departments. One man is late and we wait for him. He comes in and gets a bawling out for wasting thousands of dollars worth of time. Then what do you suppose: Mr Marcus has lost his favourite hat!’

Pat failed to associate the fact with himself.

‘All the department heads stop production!’ continued Berners. ‘Two thousand people look for a grey Homburg hat!’ He sank despairingly into a chair, ‘I can’t talk to you today, Pat. By four o’clock, I’ve got to get a title to a picture about a tourist camp. Got an idea?’

‘No,’ said Pat. ‘No.’

‘Well, go up to Bee McIlvaine’s office and help her figure something out. There’s fifty dollars in it.’

In a daze Pat wandered to the door.

‘Hey,’ said Berners, ‘don’t forget your hat.’

III

Feeling the effects of his day outside the law, and of a tumbler full of Berners’ brandy, Pat sat in Bee McIlvaine’s office.

‘We’ve got to get a title,’ said Bee gloomily.

She handed Pat the mimeograph offering fifty dollars reward and put a pencil in his hand. Pat stared at the paper unseeingly.

‘How about it?’ she asked. ‘Who’s got a title?’

There was a long silence.

‘Test
Pilot’s
been used, hasn’t it?’ he said with a vague tone.

‘Wake up! This isn’t about aviation.’

‘Well, I was just thinking it was a good title.’

‘So’s
The Birth of a Nation.’

‘But not for this picture,’ Pat muttered.
‘Birth of a Nation
wouldn’t suit this picture.’

‘But not for this picture,’ Pat muttered.
‘Birth of a Nation
wouldn’t suit this picture.’

‘Are you ribbing me?’ demanded Bee. ‘Or are you losing your mind? This is serious.’

‘Sure--I know.’ Feebly he scrawled words at the bottom of the page. ‘I’ve had a couple of drinks that’s all. My head’ll clear up in a minute. I’m trying to think what have been the most successful titles. The trouble is they’ve all been used, like
It Happened One Night.’

Bee looked at him uneasily. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open and she did not want him to pass out in her office. After a minute she called Jack Berners.

‘Could you possibly come up? I’ve got some title ideas.’

Jack arrived with a sheaf of suggestions sent in from here and there in the studio, but digging through them yielded no ore.

‘How about it, Pat? Got anything?’

Pat braced himself to an effort.

‘I like
It Happened One Morning,’
he said--then looked desperately at his scrawl on the mimeograph paper, ‘or else--
Grand Motel.’

Berners smiled.

‘Grand Motel,’
he repeated. ‘By God! I think you’ve got something.
Grand Motel.’

‘I said
Grand Hotel,’
said Pat.

‘No, you didn’t. You said
Grand Motel--
and for my money it wins the fifty.’

‘I’ve got to go lie down,’ announced Pat. ‘I feel sick.’

‘There’s an empty office across the way. That’s a funny idea Pat,
Grand Motel--
or else
Motel Clerk.
How do you like that?’

As the fugitive quickened his step out the door Bee pressed the hat into his hands.

‘Good work, old timer,’ she said.

Pat seized Mr Marcus’ hat, and stood holding it there like a bowl of soup.

‘Feel--better--now,’ he mumbled after a moment. ‘Be back for the money.’

And carrying his burden he shambled toward the lavatory.

FUN IN AN ARTIST’S STUDIO

Esquire
(February 1941)

I

This was back in 1938 when few people except the Germans knew that they had already won their war in Europe. People still cared about art and tried to make it out of everything from old clothes to orange peel and that was how the Princess Dignanni found Pat. She wanted to make art out of him.

‘No, not you, Mr DeTinc.’ she said, ‘I can’t paint you. You are a very standardized product, Mr DeTinc.’

Mr DeTinc, who was a power in pictures and had even been photographed with Mr Duchman, the Secret Sin specialist, stepped smoothly out of the way. He was not offended--in his whole life Mr DeTinc had never been offended--but especially not now, for the Princess did not want to paint Clark Gable or Spencer Rooney or Vivien Leigh either.

She saw Pat in the commissary and found he was a writer, and asked that he be invited to Mr DeTinc’s party. The Princess was a pretty woman born in Boston, Massachusetts and Pat was forty-nine with red-rimmed eyes and a soft purr of whiskey on his breath.

‘You write scenarios, Mr Hobby?’

‘I help,’ said Pat. ‘Takes more than one person to prepare a script.’

He was flattered by this attention and not a little suspicious. It was only because his supervisor was a nervous wreck that he happened to have a job at all. His supervisor had forgotten a week ago that he had hired Pat, and when Pat was spotted in the commissary and told he was wanted at Mr DeTinc’s house, the writer had passed a
mauvais quart d’heure.
It did not even look like the kind of party that Pat had known in his prosperous days. There was not so much as a drunk passed out in the downstairs toilet.

‘I imagine scenario writing is very well-paid,’ said the Princess.

Pat glanced around to see who was within hearing. Mr DeTinc had withdrawn his huge bulk somewhat, but one of his apparently independent eyes seemed fixed glittering on Pat.

‘Very well paid,’ said Pat--and he added in a lower voice, ‘--if you can get it.’

The Princess seemed to understand and lowered her voice too.

‘You mean writers have trouble getting work?’

He nodded.

‘Too many of ‘em get in these unions.’ He raised his voice a little for Mr DeTinc’s benefit. ‘They’re all Reds, most of these writers.’

The Princess nodded.

‘Will you turn your face a little to the light?’ she said politely. ‘There, that’s fine. You won’t mind coming to my studio tomorrow, will you? Just to pose for me an hour?’

He scrutinized her again.

‘Naked?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Oh, no,’ she averred. ‘Just the head.’

Mr DeTinc moved nearer and nodded.

‘You ought to go. Princess Dignanni is going to paint some of the biggest stars here. Going to paint Jack Benny and Baby Sandy and Hedy Lamarr--isn’t that a fact, Princess?’

The artist didn’t answer. She was a pretty good portrait painter and she knew just how good she was and just how much of it was her title. She was hesitating between her several manners--Picasso’s rose period with a flash of Boldini, or straight Reginald Marsh. But she knew what she was going to call it. She was going to call it Hollywood and Vine.

II

In spite of the reassurance that he would be clothed Pat approached the rendezvous with uneasiness. In his young and impressionable years he had looked through a peep-hole into a machine where two dozen postcards slapped before his eyes in sequence. The story unfolded was
Fun in an Artist’s Studio.
Even now with the strip tease a legalized municipal project, he was a little shocked at the remembrance, and when he presented himself next day at the Princess’s bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel it would not have surprised him if she had met him in a turkish towel. He was disappointed. She wore a smock and her black hair was brushed straight back like a boy’s.

Pat had stopped off for a couple of drinks on the way, but his first words: ‘How’ya Duchess?’ failed to set a jovial note for the occasion.

‘Well, Mr Hobby,’ she said coolly, ‘it’s nice of you to spare me an afternoon.’

‘We don’t work too hard in Hollywood,’ he assured her. ‘Everything is “Mañana”--in Spanish that means tomorrow.’

She led him forthwith into a rear apartment where an easel stood on a square of canvas by the window. There was a couch and they sat down.

‘I want to get used to you for a minute,’ she said. ‘Did you ever pose before?’

‘Do I look that way?’ He winked, and when she smiled he felt better and asked: ‘You haven’t got a drink around, have you?’

The Princess hesitated. She had wanted him to look as if he
needed
one. Compromising, she went to the ice box and fixed him a small highball. She returned to find that he had taken off his coat and tie and lay informally upon the couch.

‘That
is
better,’ the Princess said. ‘That shirt you’re wearing. I think they make them for Hollywood--like the special prints they make for Ceylon and Guatemala. Now drink this and we’ll get to work.’

‘Why don’t you have a drink too and make it friendly?’ Pat suggested.

‘I had one in the pantry,’ she lied.

‘Married woman?’ he asked.

‘I have been married. Now would you mind sitting on this stool?’

Reluctantly Pat got up, took down the highball, somewhat thwarted by the thin taste, and moved to the stool. ‘Now sit very still,’ she said.

He sat silent as she worked. It was three o’clock. They were running the third race at Santa Anita and he had ten bucks on the nose. That made sixty he owed Louie, the studio bookie, and Louie stood determinedly beside him at the pay window every Thursday. This dame had good legs under the easel--her red lips pleased him and the way her bare arms moved as she worked. Once upon a time he wouldn’t have looked at a woman over twenty-five, unless it was a secretary right in the office with him. But the kids you saw around now were snooty--always talking about calling the police.

‘Please sit still, Mr Hobby.’

‘What say we knock off,’ he suggested. ‘This work makes you thirsty.’

The Princess had been painting half an hour. Now she stopped and stared at him a moment.

‘Mr Hobby, you were loaned me by Mr DeTinc. Why don’t you act just as if you were working over at the studio? I’ll be through in another half-hour.’

‘What do I get out of it?’ he demanded, ‘I’m no poser--I’m a writer.’

‘Your studio salary has not stopped,’ she said, resuming her work. ‘What does it matter if Mr DeTinc wants you to do this?’