“Oh Miss Oglethorpe I’m so glad to see you,” she twittered in a little voice like a parrakeet’s. “I’ve often seen you and thought you were the loveliest thing. … I did my best to get Harry to bring you up to see me.”
“This is my sister Rachel,” said Goldweiser to Ellen without getting up. “She keeps house for me.”
“I wish you’d help me, Snow, to induce Miss Oglethorpe to take that part in The Zinnia Girl. … Honest it was just written for you.”
“But it’s such a small part …”
“It’s not a lead exactly, but from the point of view of your reputation as a versatile and exquisite artist, it’s the best thing in the show.”
“Will you have a little more fish, Miss Oglethorpe?” piped Miss Goldweiser.
Mr. Snow sniffed. “There’s no great acting any more: Booth, Jefferson, Mansfield … all gone. Nowadays it’s all advertising; actors and actresses are put on the market like patent medicines. Isn’t it the truth Elaine? … Advertising, advertising.”
“But that isn’t what makes success. … If you could do it with advertising every producer in New York’d be a millionaire,” burst in Goldweiser. “It’s the mysterious occult force that grips the crowds on the street and makes them turn in at a particular theater that makes the receipts go up at a particular boxoffice, do you understand me? Advertising wont do it, good criticism wont do it, maybe it’s genius maybe it’s luck but if you can give the public what it wants at that time and at that place you have a hit. Now that’s what Elaine gave us in this last show. … She established contact with the audience. It might have been the greatest play in the world acted by the greatest actors in the world and fallen a flat failure. … And I dont know how you do it, nobody dont know how you do it. … You go to bed one night with your house full of paper and you wake up the next morning with a howling success. The producer cant control it any more than the weather man can control the weather. Aint I tellin the truth?”
“Ah the taste of the New York public has sadly degenerated since the old days of Wallack’s.”
“But there have been some beautiful plays,” chirped Miss Goldweiser.
The long day love was crisp in the curls … the dark curls … broken in the dark steel light … hurls … high O God high into the bright … She was cutting with her fork in the crisp white heart of a lettuce. She was saying words while quite other words spilled confusedly inside her like a broken package of beads. She sat looking at a picture of two women and two men eating at a table in a high paneled room under a shivering crystal chandelier. She looked up from her plate to find Miss Goldweiser’s little birdeyes kindly querulous fixed hard on her face.
“Oh yes New York is really pleasanter in midsummer than any other time; there’s less hurry and bustle.”
“Oh yes that’s quite true Miss Goldweiser.” Ellen flashed a sudden smile round the table. … All the long day love Was crisp in the curls of his high thin brow, Flashed in his eyes in dark steel light. …
In the taxi Goldweiser’s broad short knees pressed against hers; his eyes were full of furtive spiderlike industry weaving a warm sweet choking net about her face and neck. Miss Goldweiser had relapsed pudgily into the seat beside her. Dick Snow was holding an unlighted cigar in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue. Ellen tried to remember exactly how Stan looked, his polevaulter’s tight slenderness; she couldn’t remember his face entire, she saw his eyes, lips, an ear.
Times Square was full of juggled colored lights, crisscrossed corrugations of glare. They went up in the elevator at the Astor. Ellen followed Miss Goldweiser across the roofgarden among the tables. Men and women in evening dress, in summer muslins and light suits turned and looked after her, like sticky tendrils of vines glances caught at her as she passed. The orchestra was playing “In My Harem.” They arranged themselves at a table.
“Shall we dance?” asked Goldweiser.
She smiled a wry broken smile in his face as she let him put his arm round her back. His big ear with solemn lonely hairs on it was on the level of her eyes.
“Elaine,” he was breathing into her ear, “honest I thought I was a wise guy.” He caught his breath … “but I aint. … You’ve got me goin little girl and I hate to admit it. … Why cant you like me a little bit? I’d like … us to get married as soon as you get your decree. … Wouldn’t you be kinder nice to me once in a while … ? I’d do anything for you, you know that. … There are lots of things in New York I could do for you …” The music stopped. They stood apart under a palm. “Elaine come over to my office and sign that contract. I had Ferrari wait. … We can be back in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve got to think it over … I never do anything without sleeping on it.”
“Gosh you drive a feller wild.”
Suddenly she remembered Stan’s face altogether, he was standing in front of her with a bow tie crooked in his soft shirt, his hair rumpled, drinking again.
“Oh Ellie I’m so glad to see you. …”
“This is Mr. Emery, Mr. Goldweiser. …”
“I’ve been on the most exordinately spectacular trip, honestly you should have come. … We went to Montreal and Quebec and came back through Niagara Falls and we never drew a sober breath from the time we left little old New York till they arrested us for speeding on the Boston Post Road, did we Pearline?” Ellen
