I Could Go on Singing (2 page)

His name was Jason Brown, and he was in his thirties, a limber and indolent-looking man, concealing ulcerous tensions behind a lazy-eyed equanimity, a knuckle-jointed man with a used, pebbled, furrowed face, each fresh suit irreparably wrinkled the moment he put it on, shock of brown hair springing to disorder as soon as the comb was put down, pipe spewing ashes.

The stewardess brought his drink, and he sipped it and looked toward the night and saw his reflection in the glass and marveled that the face, as familiar as old shoes and jackets, should look the same as always.

He lifted his glass and said to himself, “Down with this revolting, idiotic mess. Down with Jason Brown. Down with traps, subterfuge, conspiracy, and especially down with Sid Wegler.”

The trouble with people like Wegler, he reflected, they always detected your vulnerabilities, then used them against you. But that was very probably one of the essential skills
of the head of a large movie studio, the ability to get the maximum use out of the Jason Browns of this world.

And the basic vulnerability was money, as always. And his own incomparable credulity. He had walked right up to stand on the trap door, and Wegler had pulled the string. Smiling.

If, three weeks ago, anyone had tried to tell Jason Brown that he was going to become involved again in any way with Jenny Bowman, he would have said firmly that it could not possibly happen. Yet here he was, hurtling toward Sunday morning, toward the ancient dignified grubbiness of London, toward the London Palladium where Jenny was doing a charity concert this coming evening prior to her London opening.

In retrospect he knew he should have been wary when Wegler had phoned him directly in Santa Barbara, where he was living and working in his sister’s house, and said affably, “Jase, you’re the one can work the bugs out of this cruddy script we got so much money in already, I got to salvage it or look very bad, that is if you can pull loose from whatever you’re working on. Just checking to make sure before I send one of my smart boys to dicker with your smart agent, fella.”

Creative man is forever gullible. He feigned reluctance. Sandy, the agent, worked the studio for a sixteen-week contract at enough a week to make Jason Brown feel as if he had suddenly walked out of a damp cave into refreshing sunlight. When, on his first day, Wegler made him wait only twenty minutes, then greeted him with effusive cordiality in his big office and gave him a copy of a Headly Jamison script, an original, Jason should have felt the first tickle of wariness. Not that his creative record was entirely meager. There was one fair play, and one reasonably solid novel, and the listed credits in radio, television and moving pictures. But there were also the plays that never worked, the novels that died quietly, and the numerous credits that emitted a small sharp odor of hack. When you chop and change and rework the original efforts of others, that flavor is almost inescapable.

There had been the years when the money came in very nicely, and he had spent too much of it. And, of late, he had committed a few tactical errors. He had become too confident of the book he was working on, and had side-stepped a few too many television assignments in order to work on it, and then had seen the book slowly going sour, had gotten too
anxious about it, and had lost his sense of certainty about what was needed to retrieve it. And four-year-old Bonny was his hostage to fortune.

And so Wegler’s offer had been such a timely windfall, he had not stopped to think that in the normal course of events one does not hire a Jason Brown to salvage a Jamison script. They gave him a pleasant office, efficient equipment, ample supplies and access to a secretary.

And he went to work on the script, looking for the flaws he expected to find. He read it over and over. He made notes. He marked passages. He told himself this scene could be tightened, and that motivation could be strengthened, and these stretches of dialogue could be smoothed out. But after three days of it, he knew he was kidding himself. As far as he could see, it was the best thing Jamison had ever done. It had originality and power. It had scope and persuasion and great dramatic impact. He knew he was enough of a craftsman to be able to tinker with it in minor ways and effect a few minor improvements. But if the studio heads thought it needed a major salvage job, they were out of their minds.

The Jamison script was called
The Longest Dawn
. As is, solidly cast, produced and directed, it could bring down a golden rain of Oscars, and he had too much respect for decent work to chop into it, knowing he would only diminish it. And so, on his fourth working day he tried to make an appointment with Sid Wegler. He tried for a week without success, and finally composed a long memorandum to Sid, stating his views. He cut the memo down to three paragraphs and sent it along, appending the few changes he had made in the script. He visited Sandy’s office and told him what he had done and showed Sandy a copy of the memo. As he had expected, Sandy called him a damned fool.

There was no response from Sid Wegler. The day before yesterday Wegler had called him in. Sid was a lean, bald, bland man. He could look thirty-five or sixty-five, depending on his mood. He used long silences as a weapon of discomfiture.

“Jase, sit down and let’s thrash this thing out. I was heartened by your memo. Truly heartened. It is the kind of integrity I would expect from you.”

“Who had the idea anything was wrong with the script?”

“My boy, in this business if we could be sure of anything, we would all be stinking rich. Little doubts creep in. Is
there an audience for a mature, adult, significant story like
The Longest Dawn
? Should it be hypoed a little? You are on contract to work on this script, Jase, and you are going to live with it.”

“But there’s nothing I can do to it, Sid.”

“Have you examined it from all angles? I say no. I say you have not. Because there is a factor, a very important factor, which must be fitted into this equation, Jason. And that is the factor of the star. Am I right?”

“Any actress worth beans would give up eternal salvation to get her teeth into this.”

“But some ways of doing a scene play right for one and should be changed for another. There is a fitness about these things. And though we have provisional script approval, I want you to work this whole thing out very very carefully with the star. Are you willing?”

“Of course, Sid, but isn’t that the director’s business?”

“In this case there are a few little problems. Emotional, psychological, you name it. I keep frictions down. Friction costs money. In this case, it seems to me best that you handle it, go over it with her, prepare recommendations which will guide the director.”

“Who is the lucky girl?”

There had been an odd flicker in Wegler’s eyes, immediately explained when he said, “Jenny Bowman.”

Jason Brown had found himself standing, trembling, his voice uncertain. “Now
wait
a moment!”

“Don’t jump around. This is a quiet talk between friends. A professional talk, Jason. How many years ago was it? You and Jenny were very close. Six? Seven?”

Jason sat down. “Seven years ago,” he said in a dull voice.

“You wrote the screenplay, worked along on the shooting, Jenny starred. A solid little picture. Nothing exceptional. It made a dollar.” Wegler’s voice softened. “In this business so many tensions, erosions of ego. Take Jenny’s two marriages, for example. They ended in hate and despair. But after you were close, you and she parted in friendship, warmth, perhaps gratitude. Who can say? But a good relationship, a civilized way for things to end. Even, we might say, an adult way.”

“How would you know that?”

Wegler shrugged. “Somebody said she speaks well of you.”

“Did you know this … I mean did you have this in mind when you phoned me in Santa Barbara three weeks ago?”

“How could I help it, dear boy? You were hired to work on a script starring Jenny Bowman. The association was inevitable. I was aware that she trusts you, and trusts your judgment. I remember something about your prying her loose from a financial adviser who was robbing her blind.”

“You’re too well-informed for this to be entirely casual, Mr. Wegler.”

“What happened between you and Jenny?”

After a thoughtful pause, Jason said, “I’ll tell you only because it will give you the reason why I’m not the one to go see her about this script. She was vulnerable. She was on the rebound from that first miserable marriage and that scabrous divorce, and her nerves were raw. She was sick unto death of public personalities, and she thought she saw in me a … a kind of strength and stability and quietness that she thought she wanted. She didn’t see me as I am. She saw what she thought she needed, and so I tried to be what I thought she needed. At best, it was an impersonation. She wanted to lean on somebody, and I was perfectly willing, like a damned fool, to tell her what she should do with her life. When the picture was in the can, we went down to Acapulco for a few days. We planned to be married. We both belived it would work out. We nearly got married in Mexico, Sid. But we decided to wait until she finished some television things in New York and a short personal appearance tour. I went with her to New York, but I had to come back here when she went on tour. What happened to us was that we were both wrong about each other. She bought my imitation of strength and certainty and control. And what I didn’t realize about her was that I had met her when she was as low as she ever gets. The emotional strain and the working strain had worn her down to a shadow of her normal self. But never having known her when she was up, I couldn’t see it. She was trying to hide from the world and from herself, and I thought that was the normal Jenny Bowman. But she started to recover in Mexico, and she was more like her normal self in New York, and by the time she had finished the tour, she was herself again, all that fabulous incredible energy, all that outgoing warmth and joy and confidence, loving the people milling around her every minute. I soon realized that I could only be peripheral in her life, an appendage, a Mr. Jenny Bowman. She wasn’t looking for my strength any more, and when she stopped looking, the imitation collapsed and she saw me as I am, a sort of uncertain
guy, mildly neurotic I guess, often confused, too emotional about some things and not emotional enough about others. But I do know I helped her when she needed it most. I was there at the right time, and the imitation was good enough, I guess. But when we were together again, we knew we weren’t the same two people any more. One of the sources of her strength, Sid, maybe the key source, is that she had a strongly developed sense of the ludicrous. In her blackest moments, she gets a hearty, healing reaction to absurdity. And she was the one who made the opening when we were both trying to break it up, in such a way we could both save face and not hurt each other. Across a table she gave me a mocking and wonderful look out of those huge dark brown eyes and said, ‘Darling, what were the names of those two types who went to Acapulco? You’d think we’d at least hear from them once in a while. The last I heard they were going to get married, but somehow I never quite believed it. Did you?’ It was a masterful escape, Sid, for both of us, and out of that special kind of wild wisdom she has, she provided it. Yes, we parted friends. And it’s too easy to look at it, perhaps, as one of those ordinary little affairs that pop up like out of a toaster every time any movie is made, and get chilled out when it’s over. But it wasn’t like that, Sid. She marked me. You see, I fell in love with the Jenny Bowman that was trying to hide from a world that hadn’t been using her very well. And when she stopped trying to hide, that woman was gone, the one I loved. But it is a real and valuable memory and I don’t have many of those, and I am not going to mess it up by getting back into her life—or allowing her back into mine—in any way, shape or form. I married Joyce on the rebound from Jenny Bowman. And when Joyce rolled her car into the sea, Jenny was singing in Chicago. She flew out to the funeral. That was the only time I have seen her since. And she didn’t say a word then. She just hugged me very hard for about three seconds, and looked at me and went away, and that meant a hell of a lot more than anything anyone else did during that whole horrible week. She has a capacity for friendship. I’m probably boring you with too much of all this, Sid, but what I want to get across is that it wasn’t trivial. And it isn’t … usable. If you’ve taken me on because you think I can talk her into something easier than some of your other boys, then you made a bad guess.”

Wegler was silent for three full minutes, swiveled around,
looking out his windows. He turned back slowly. “It is a warm and touching story and again, Jason, you force me to say that I value you for your integrity. I value you highly. It hurts me to have to use people in the ways I have to use them. It makes me feel shabby, believe me.”

“But I tell you I …”

Wegler raised a hand. “Please. Let me pick one remark out of your fine account, Jason. ‘But I do know I helped her when she needed it most.’ It does you credit. It is an honorable way to feel. She came to you in your hour of heartbreak. Can you do less for her? If she needs you now?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I can assume, can I not, that when you and Jenny were in love, you did not keep important secrets from each other?”

“I kept none from her. I can’t vouch for her, of course.”

“But she told you she had a child?”

“Whatever she told me, Sid, was in confidence.”

“I see that she did tell you. A few of us, a very few of us, believe me, in the industry know about this. She was a valuable property even then, you understand. Thirteen years ago. That’s how old the boy is now. We hushed it up perfectly. An old scandal, Jason. Dead and buried you would say. But a boy lives. He grows. Her only issue. And the years add importance to such a thing.” Suddenly he slapped the script so loudly that Jason Brown jumped. “Do you think she can do this part?”

“Y-Yes.”

“Do you think she should do this part?”

“Yes, I do, but …”