Serenade - James M. Cain [60]
"Oh, you knew I was in Mexico?"
"Know it! I went down there to bring you back, but you had gone. What's the idea, hiding out on me?"
"Oh, I've been working."
One minute later I was in a big chair in front of the fire, with a bottle of the white port I had always liked beside me, a little pile of buttered English biscuits beside that, he was across from me with those long legs of his hooked over the chandelier or some place, and we were off. Or anyhow, he was. He always began in the middle, and he raced along about Don Giovanni, about an appoggiatura I was leaving out in Lucia, about the reason the old scores aren't sung the way they're written, about a new flutist he had pulled in from Detroit, about my cape routine in Carmen, all jumbled up together. But not for long. He got to the point pretty quick. "What's this about Hollywood?"
"Just what I told you. I'm sewed on a goddam contract and I've got to go."
I told him about it. I had told so many people about it by then I knew it by heart, and could get it over quick. "Then this man--Gold, did you say his name was?--is the key to the whole thing?"
"He's the one."
"All right then. You just sit here a while."
"No, if you're doing something I'll go!"
"I said sit there. Papa's going to get busy."
"At what?"
"There's your port, there's your biscuits, there's the fire, there's the most beautiful snow I've seen this year, and I've got the six big Rossini overtures on the machine--Semiramide, Tancred, the Barber, Tell, the Ladra, and the Italians, just in from London, beautifully played--and by the time they're finished I'll be back."
"I asked you, where are you going?"
"Goddam it, do you have to bust up my act? I'm being Papa. I'm going into action. And when Papa goes into action, it's the British Fleet. Sip your port. Listen to Rossini. Think of the boys that were gelded to sing the old bastard's masses. Be the Pope. I'm going to be Admiral Dewey."
"Beatty."
"No, I'm Gridley. I'm ready to fire."
He switched on the Rossini, poured the wine, and went. I tried to listen, and couldn't. I got up and switched it off. It was the first time I ever walked out on Rossini. I went over to the windows and watched the snow. Something told me to get out of there, to go back to Hollywood, to do anything except get mixed up with him again. It wasn't over twenty minutes before he was back. I heard him coming, and ducked back to the chair. I didn't want him to see me worrying. "...I was astonished that you missed that grace note in Lucia. Didn't you feel it there? Didn't you know it had to be there?"
"To hell with Lucia. What news?"
"Oh. I had forgotten all about it. Why, you stay, of course. You go on with the opera, you do this foolish broadcast you've let yourself in for, you sing for me, you make your picture in the summer. That's all. It's all fixed up. Once more, Jack, on all those old recitatives--"
"Listen, this is business. I want to know--"
"Jack, you are so crass. Can't I wave my wand? Can't I do my bit of magic? If you have to know, I happen to control a bank, or my somewhat boorish family happen to control it. They embarrass me greatly, but sometimes they have a kind of low, swinish usefulness. And the bank controls, through certain stocks impounded to secure moneys, credit, and so on--oh the hell with it."
"Go on. The bank controls what?"
"The picture company, dolt."
"And?"
"Listen, I'm talking about Donizetti."
"And I'm talking about a son-of-a-bitch by the name of Rex Gold. What did you do?"
"I talked with him."
"And what did he say?"
"Why--I don't know. Nothing. I didn't wait to hear what he had to say. I told him what he was to do, that's all."