Serenade - James M. Cain [50]
***
Under their contract, they had three months to call me for the next picture, and the way the time was counted, that meant any date up to April 1. It was just before Christmas that I got the wire from the New York agent that she had a tip the Met was interested in me, and would I please, please, let her go ahead on the deal? I began to rave like a crazy man. "Hoaney, why you talk so?"
"Read it! You've been going to school, there's something for you to practice on. Read it, and see what you've been missing all this time."
"What is 'Met'?"
"Just the best opera company in the world, that's all. The big one in New York, and they want me. They want me!--she'd never be sending that unless she knew something. A chance to get back to my trade at last, and here I am sewed up on a lousy contract to make two more pictures that I hate, that aren't worth making, that--"
"Why you make these pictures?"
"I'm under contract, I tell you. I've got to."
"But why?"
I tried to explain contract to her. It couldn't be done. An Indian has never heard of a contract. They didn't have them under Montezuma, and never bothered with them since. "The picture company, you make money for her, yes?"
"Plenty. I don't owe her a dime."
"Then it is right, you go?"
"Right? Did they ever give me anything I didn't take off them with a blackjack? Would they even give me a cup of coffee if I didn't pack them in at the box office? Would they even respect my trade? This isn't about right. It's about some ink on a dotted line."
"Then why you stay? Why you no sing at these Met?"
That was all. If it wasn't right, then to hell with it. A contract was just something that you probably couldn't read anyway. I looked at her, where she was lying on the bed with nothing on but a rebozo around her middle, and knew I was looking across ten thousand years, but it popped in my mind that maybe they weren't as dumb ten thousand years ago as I had always thought. Well, why not? I thought of Malinche, and how she put Cortes on top of the world, and how his star went out like a light when he thought he didn't need her any more. "...That's an idea."
"I think you sing at these Met."
"Not so loud."
"Yes."
"I think you're a pretty bright girl."
Next day I hopped over to the Taft Building and saw a lawyer. He begged me not to do anything foolish. "In the first place, if you run out on this contract, they can make your life so miserable that you hardly dare go out of doors without some rat shoving a summons at you with a dollar bill in it, and you'll have to appear in court. Do you know what that means? Do you know what those blue summonses did to Jack Dempsey? They cost him a title, that's all. They can sue you. They can sew you up with injunctions. They can just make you wish you never even heard of the law, or anything like it."
"That's what we got lawyers for, isn't it?"
"That's right. You can get a lawyer there in New York, and he can handle some of it. And he'll charge you plenty. But you can't hire as many lawyers as they've got."
"Listen, can they win, that's all I want to know. Can they bring me back? Can they keep me from working?"
"Maybe they can't. Who knows? But--"
"That's all I want to know. If I've got any kind of a fighting chance, I'm off."
"Not so fast. Maybe they don't even try. Maybe they think it's bad policy. But this is the main point: You run out on this contract, and your name is mud in Hollywood from now on--"
"I don't care about that."
"Oh yes you do. How do you know how well you do in grand "I've been in it before."
"And out of it before, from all I hear."
"My voice cracked up."
"It may again. This is my point. The way Gold is building you up, Hollywood is sure for you, as sure as anything can be, for quite some time to come. It makes no different to him if your voice cracks up. He'll buy a voice. He'll dub your sound for you--"
"Not for me he won't."
"Will you for