Part 19 (2/2)

She went halfway toward the stairs and then she turned around and looked at me.

I looked back at her silently.

At last she spoke; her voice was serious. ”Never leave me, Johnny,” she said.

For some reason I couldn't speak for a few seconds. My throat was all knotted up and I couldn't find my voice. Something in her voice, in its small, quiet sound, in its loneliness and patience, seemed to go deep inside me. Then the words seemed to come from me by themselves. I didn't form them in my mind, I didn't make them in my throat, I didn't even seem to say them with my lips; they just seemed to come from within me by themselves and build a bridge between us that no distance could ever break.

”Never no more, sweetheart.”

Not an expression on her face seemed to change, but a glow came from within her, and its warmth reached out and held me close across the room. For a moment she stood there; then she turned and started up the stairs.

I watched her go. Her step was light and easy and she moved with the quiet grace of a dancer. At the top of the stairs she looked down and blew a kiss to me.

I waved to her and she went down the hall and out of sight. I turned and let myself out the front door.

The sky was bright and the air was cool. The dew on the flowers sparkled in the slanting rays of the early morning sun. Suddenly I wasn't tired. My weariness had left me with the first deep breath of the morning air. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after five, too late to go home to sleep.

I picked up a cab two blocks from the house. ”To Magnum Studios,” I told the driver as I settled back against the cus.h.i.+ons and lit up a cigarette.

The studio was only fifteen minutes from Peter's home. I paid the driver and walked toward the gate. It was locked. I pressed the bell b.u.t.ton on the right wall and waited for the watchman to come.

I could see the light flicker as a shadow moved in front of it in the gateman's cabin a few feet beyond the gate. The door opened and he came out toward me.

He saw me through the gate and recognized me. Almost imperceptibly his step quickened until he was almost running. He opened the gate. ”Mr. Edge,” he said, ”I didn't expect to see you back so soon.”

”It's a surprise visit,” I said. ”I didn't expect to be back myself.”

He closed the gate behind me. ”Anything I can do, Mr. Edge?”

”No, thanks,” I said, ”I'm going up to my office.”

I walked down the long street to the administration building. The studio was quiet and I could hear the sound of my footsteps echoing hollowly behind me as I walked. The chippies woke up as I walked past them and began to chirp in the trees. They resented anyone coming in early. I smiled to myself, remembering the sound from the long years behind me. They always chirped when I would get to the studio early.

The watchman at the administration building was waiting for me as I reached it. He stood there in the doorway, sleep still showing in his eyes. The gateman must have called and told him I was on the way up. ”Good morning, Mr. Edge,” he said.

”Good morning,” I replied, walking through the door.

He hurried down the hall in front of me and opened the door of my office with his key. ”Is there anything I can get you, Mr. Edge?” he asked-”some coffee or something?”

”No, thanks,” I replied. I sniffed the air. It was dull and dead in the office.

He saw my gesture and rushed past me to the windows and opened them. ”Some fresh air in here won't hurt, sir,” he said.

I smiled and thanked him and he left. He seemed almost to back out the door as he shut it carefully behind him. I took off my topcoat and hat and put them in the little closet. I felt like a drink; it had been a long night.

I walked through the side door in my office. Between my office and Gordon's was a little kitchen. A refrigerator, pantry, and small electric stove were in there. A coffee pot stood on the stove. I touched it; it was still warm. The watchman must have made himself some coffee, I thought. I opened the refrigerator and took out a small bottle of ginger ale and carried it back to my office.

I took a bottle of bourbon out of my desk and a gla.s.s from the small table behind it. I put two fingers of liquor in the gla.s.s and then poured ginger ale over it until the gla.s.s was almost half full. I tasted it. It was just right. I drank almost half of it and then walked over to the window and looked out.

The sky was brighter now and I could see almost to the back lot. The writers' building was almost directly behind ours, and the other executive buildings fanned out to the right and left of it, making a sort of crescent around the administration building. Behind the writers' building was sound stage number one.

Sound stage number one. I smiled to myself as I thought of it. It was a new building, all white and modern and fireproof. The first stage that Peter and I had opened was more of a barn than a building. It was a rambling structure with four walls and no ceiling so the sun could s.h.i.+ne through. There was a big tarpaulin top that we used to stretch over it at the first sign of rain. I remembered how we used to have a man always sitting on a little platform near the top of the building, scanning the skies.

The rain-watcher we used to call him. In case rain threatened he would yell down and the tarpaulin would be rigged in a hurry. We used to leave it off almost until the last possible minute because the mercury vapor lamps we used for indoor lighting used to cost so much money.

Joe Turner had thought of it. When we had figured out how expensive the lamps were to use, he suggested: ”Why don't we put a circus top on the building? Then when it rains we can just cover it up.”

Joe had been dead almost twenty years now, but there were some things about him that were as fresh and vivid in my mind as if I had seen him each day of those two decades. I could still remember his booming laugh as he told the story of how we got the land for the studio for nothing. It was his favorite story. I smiled to myself as I looked across the forty acres that made up the studio today. It hadn't cost us a cent of our own money.

It was after I had come back to New York with the first print of The Bandit. Peter couldn't come to New York as the judgment against him that was held by the combine was still unsettled. The first showing was held at the screening rooms of Bill Borden's studios. The independents were growing a little braver as Fox's suit against the combine seemed more certain of success each day.

The screening room was crowded. All the important states' rights distributors were there in addition to an already large list of our creditors. I don't know who was more enthusiastic about the picture, the distributors who were clamoring to buy it or our creditors, who were beginning to entertain visions of getting their money back and maybe a little profit too.

I don't think any of us really expected in our wildest dreams the events that followed. Within two hours after I had screened the picture I had collected almost forty thousand dollars in deposits from the distributors against the showing of the picture. Borden, standing at my side as each distributor pressed me to accept his check for his territory, kept saying over and over to himself: ”I don't believe it, I don't believe it.”

By midnight I was talking to Peter on the phone. I was so excited I stuttered. ”We got forty thousand dollars, Peter,” I shouted into the mouthpiece.

His voice was thin and crackly as it came through the receiver. ”What did you say, Johnny?” he asked. ”It sounded like forty thousand dollars.”

”That's right,” I shouted, ”forty thousand dollars! They loved the picture!”

There was a silence at the other end of the phone, then his voice came through doubtfully: ”Where are you, Johnny?”

”At Borden's studio,” I answered.

”Is Willie there?” he asked.

”He's standing right next to me,” I said.

”Let me talk to him,” Peter said.

I handed the phone over to Borden.

”h.e.l.lo, Peter,” Borden said into the mouthpiece, ”mazel tov!”

I could hear Peter's voice crackling at the other end of the phone, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. Borden turned and looked at me, a half smile on his lips.

He waited until Peter had finished talking. His smile grew broader as he turned back to the phone. ”No,” he said, ”Johnny hasn't had a drink all night. He's as sober as I am.” There was a few seconds' silence while Peter spoke, then Borden spoke again: ”Yeah, forty thousand dollars. I seen the checks with my own eyes!”

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