What Makes Sammy Run? (18 page)

Julian began reading obediently, too busy to notice Blanche’s suspicions. What kind of a job was this that kept them from the studio? she wanted to know
.

“Lots of writers work at home,” Sammy said. “I told them I thought it would go faster here. And to tell you the truth—you aren’t exactly on the payroll yet, Julian.”

“Oh,” said Julian
.

“Not exactly?” said Blanche
.

“I’ll come clean with you,” Sammy said. “The studio canned the writer who was working with me because they seemed to think I could get along better alone. But I find I haven’t got time to knock the script out myself so I thought it would be a swell idea to get you out here to give me a hand. And as soon as you have a couple of scenes under your belt it’ll be a cinch for me to get you a regular job by showing ’em what you can do. Meanwhile you can move in with me and I’ll loan you twenty-five a week to keep you going till you’re on your feet.”

It didn’t sing like the telegram. But at least it was an in and even Blanche was willing to ride along
.

Julian rolled up his sleeves without knowing the difference between a fade-in and a stand-in. He stayed up all that night reading one screenplay after another, getting the feel of it. By morning he discovered that he was able to find holes in the script that grew out of the bizarre collaboration of S. Henley Forster and Sammy Click. Twenty-four hours after he arrived he was rewriting the first scene and he kept batting out scenes for the rest of the week in eighteen-hour stretches. The plan was for him and Sammy to write alternate sequences. Only Sammy was always being called to conferences at the studio that lasted most of the day. But he explained to Julian that he was still carrying the brunt of the work as he was going ahead and laying out the ensuing scenes. In his mind
.

In the frenzy of those first days Julian began to feel he had been writing scenarios all his life. When Sammy read his work all he said
was, “This stuff sounds okay,” but Julian noticed that he didn’t waste any time racing off to the studio with it
.

Blanche and Julian took the day off and discovered Hollywood was a small town on a large scale with simple, modest houses separated by small, neat lawns. It was Julian’s last day before he was to take his place with Sammy at the studio. They rode to the end of carlines, holding hands and giggling like kids. They felt as if they were taking the first deep breath since they arrived. It was fun to remember that this was late winter, with the green trees and the warm sun. Blanche wondered happily how long it would take for this crisp heat to dry up Julian’s sinuses. They even stopped in to ask the rent of one of the cute little stucco bungalows on Orange Grove Avenue. Fifty dollars a month with a small yard of their own and two orange trees, tiny ones but each with a real orange
.

Sammy was waiting for them when they got home. With a face full of bad news. “Tough luck, kid,” he said. “I’m afraid your scenes didn’t go over like I thought they would.”

He let Julian feel just lousy enough before adding:

“But I haven’t lost faith in you. In fact just to show you where you stand with me I’m going to throw in ten bucks a week extra with that twenty-five.”

That was more money than Julian had ever made before, enough for him and Blanche to take a flat of their own in one of the cheap apartment houses above Hollywood Boulevard
.

Sammy started calling Julian his secretary. He was doing all his work at the studio now, but he thought it would be good practice for Julian to go on writing through the script and promised to go over his scenes with him and give him pointers, to help him learn the trade
.

When the script was finished and Sammy was waiting for his next assignment, Julian didn’t like to sit around without writing so he started working on an original called
Country Doctor
because he thought it would help Sammy plead his case at the studio. He was almost too frightened of Blanche’s beautiful and brutal candor to tell her the story, but she surprised him by saying, “Julian, if you were only as smart as you knew how to write! It doesn’t matter how
much money there is in this story as long as you make sure it says—By Julian Blumberg. So the big shots will finally find out my pupsie is a writer.”

Julian wrote easily, and it was his sort of stuff, simple and human, and he had it finished in a week. For the next three days he wondered whether it was good enough to show to Sammy. He had decided it wasn’t when Sammy came to him and said, “Say, I read that yarn of yours Blanche showed me. It’s pretty fair—got a couple of nice moments. I’ll see what I can do with it.”

“Well,” Julian said,” weeks went by and it looked like he’d forgotten all about my story, so I started helping him with his next screenplay because there didn’t seem to be anything better to do. And then one day Blanche happened to be reading through the trade papers and found this:

He handed me a ragged little clipping. I was beginning to feel like a district attorney. “Exhibit B,” I said.

Sammy was running through the room again as I started to read: “Sammy Glick makes it two in a row as his latest original,
Country Doctor
 … ” and handed the squib back.

What a two-scene that must have been, Julian’s stammering request for an explanation—Sammy hammering back at him:

“Listen, Julie, don’t be a schlemiel all your life. Everybody thinks I’m hot at the studio right now. So I saw a chance of smacking them for a bonus that means twice the dough they’d pay a Julian Blumberg.” He made the name sound like a cussword. “Jesus Christ, what the hell have you got to bitch about when I’m putting the money in your pocket?”

“But it isn’t fair …”

“No fair,” Sammy mimicked. “Like they say in sissy schools. No fair! For Chris’sake, grow up, this isn’t kindergarten any more, this is the world.”

That was one of the most philosophical observations Sammy ever made.

I was beginning to feel like a groggy fighter waiting for his manager to toss in the towel and Julian seemed to sense this, for he said, “Well, there isn’t a whole lot more to tell, Mr. Manheim …”

My God, more! I thought. If what he had been telling me were supposed to be fiction I would have broken in ten minutes ago to tell him his story was hopeless hyperbole. But you could tell Julian was telling the truth. It’s strange that a writer as gifted as Julian could be so stupid that he was incapable of telling anything but the truth. I believed him because truth is never hard to recognize. Nothing is ever quite so drab and repetitious and forlorn and ludicrous as truth.

“I guess you must have thought I was a little shell-shocked when you saw me after the preview last night. Well, maybe I was. Because that picture was the biggest shock in my life, Mr. Manheim. How do you think you’d feel going in to a movie cold and suddenly starting to realize you’re hearing all your own scenes?”

Oh, God, I thought, I’m going to explode. Sammy Glick is a time bomb in my brain and it’s going to go off any moment and blow me to bits.

“The whole picture,” Julian was saying. “All those scenes I thought I was just doing for practice—actually showing on the screen—all mine—every line, mine—you know what I felt like doing, Mr. Manheim? I felt like jumping up right in the middle and screaming. I wanted to tell everybody there that the only line Glick wrote on
Girl Steals Boy
was the by-line on the cover. I felt like telling all of them that now I know why he had me fly out in such a hurry—because when he got the other writer bounced he knew he couldn’t stay on the picture alone—he didn’t dare.”

“Why didn’t you?” I said. “I suppose you’d’ve been rushed to the psychopathic ward, but it would have been worth it.”

“I just got sick to my stomach,” Julian said. “I mean actually throwing up, in the men’s room. And when I came out Blanche made me talk to Sammy right away. I’ve seen Blanche mad, but I’ve never seen her like that before. I thought it might be better to wait and see Sammy in the morning. But she said either I saw
him right then and there—or she’d go home and move out. You see, Blanche is a funny kid, Mr. Manheim. To look at her you wouldn’t think she was anything but a nice, frail little Jewish girl. But …”

“So you did have a talk with Sammy last night?” I said.

“I caught him for a moment in the lobby on his way out,” Julian said sadly.

“Sammy, you’ve got to listen to me! How could you do this to me, Sammy? Telling me they didn’t like my scenes when they used …”

Sammy looked around the lobby coldly, saw the little group nearby surrounding Sidney Fineman
.

“I don’t want to discuss it here.
”

“But Sammy, I can’t go on this way. Blanche …”

“I said shut up.”

Then he looked up and added, “Thank you very much. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

Julian looked around. A gray-haired gentleman with a smiling pink face was joining them. He slipped his arm around Sammy with fatherly affection
.

“Looks like we have a hit, son,” he said. “And everybody’s talking about the writing.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fineman. Julian, I don’t suppose I have to tell you who this is—Sidney Fineman?”

“I’m very glad to meet you,” said Julian
.

“How do you do,” said Fineman. Julian felt he was being cordial and oblivious to him at the same time. “How did you like the picture?” It was hardly a question the way Fineman put it, more like the perfunctory How-are-you in passing an acquaintance on the street. And it demanded the same kind of “Fine-thanks” answer
.

There was a pause. Julian was hesitating. Wondering if Blanche was watching him. Repeating to himself what he knew he ought to say. Fineman was waiting. Sammy was staring at him like the bully in the classroom whose eyes say “See you after school.”

“Very much,” Julian said
.

“Fine,” said Fineman. “There are a couple of things I want to talk over with you, Sammy. Will you excuse us?”

And Julian was left standing there alone in the lobby, not knowing what to do until he spotted Sammy’s friend, Al Manheim, in the crowd. Even then he might not have introduced himself if Blanche hadn’t insisted that he go over and try to tell him the whole story
.

“And
God knows you have,” I said. “So what are all the fireworks between you and the Missus?”

“That’s the part I haven’t told you,” he said. “The part that’s just happened.”

“Oi vay!”
I said.

“You see, Sammy was over to see me at half past eight this morning.”

Now I remembered another morning that Sammy had been up at the crack of dawn after an all-night party to keep an appointment with Julian—leaving me behind in his apartment to dwell on my biliousness and his sudden interest in Julian’s welfare.

“He was awfully friendly. He said he was still convinced our destinies lay together and was willing to raise me to fifty a week to convince me. He said he had just sold Mr. Collier a story called
Monsoon
without having anything down on paper. But he had to have something written by the time he saw him again, and he thought we might knock it out together over the weekend. And, oh yes, he told me that there are plenty of ghost writers in this town who make more dough than lots of pretty well-known B writers. Well, I wasn’t wild about the idea, but fifty bucks is fifty bucks, so he made me promise I’d call at his office at three o’clock this afternoon and give him my answer. Then I told Blanche. She went nuts. I told her with fifty bucks a week we could rent that cottage on Orange Grove we wanted. But you should have heard her.”

“To hell with the cottage! Maybe it would help pay the rent if I walked the streets too. That’s what that great pal of yours wants
you to do. Only worse. I’m beginning to feel I’m living with a ghost. Look at you, you’re even beginning to look like one, so pale, and losing weight and stammering worse than ever. It’s this lousy job. You want to go through more nights like last night? You think it’s worth fifty dollars a week to vomit your supper in the toilet?”

“Next time I won’t get so upset,” Julian said. “Now I know how I stand. I’m a ghost writer, and meanwhile …”

“Meanwhile,” Blanche said in a voice that gave Julian the shivvers, “if you let him
shmeikle
you into this, I’ll be in New York. I’ll catch the bus tonight.”

The waiter came to take the plates away.

“You haven’t eaten anything,” I said.

“I’m not hungry,” he said. “I can’t eat.”

Then I realized that I had hardly eaten anything either.

“Will you help me,” he said, “Al?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “All I know is that I’m going to try.”

“I thought because he was a friend of yours,” he started to say.

“Here’s a nickel,” I said. “Get Blanche on the phone. Tell her she was right. Tell her that whatever happens you two are sticking together. And tell her that somebody who’s never met her but knows her awfully well sends his love.”

Then I called Pancake, whom I hadn’t been able to clip from behind in spite of Sammy’s coaching, and told him I would be unavoidably detained from the studio this afternoon. I realized this meant giving him a free-kick at my posterior, but if you can’t take an hour off to help a guy with something on the ball, you begin to wonder just what the hell you think you’re working your ass off for. And other questions equally searching.