The Troubled Air (3 page)

“Thanks, Albert,” Herres said, swinging off his chair. “Probably she wants to say she will only be three days late for drinks.” He followed the headwaiter toward the phone in the back room.

Archer watched his friend stride easily and gracefully past the tables. He noticed with amusement that, as usual, two or three ladies looked away from their escorts to examine Herres as he passed. One hard-faced woman in a veil got out her handbag mirror and surreptitiously followed Herres’ progress over her shoulder. What went on in women’s minds, behind those weighing faces at a moment like this? Archer wondered: Better never to know. A bald man, he thought ruefully, is in no position to speculate on this subject, just as a starving man could not judge a banquet. He looked at himself in the mirror on the other side of the bar. Gold-tinted in the soft light above the bottles, his face stared back at him. I have lost weight, Archer decided, and I look a lot better than I did five years ago. The prime of life, he said to himself, smiling at what he thought was vanity, the prime man. Good for another five years without refrigeration.

Herres came back and Archer looked away a little guiltily from the mirror. “Nancy on her way?” he asked.

“No,” Herres said. He seemed worried. “Young Clem woke up yelling, with a hundred and three fever. She’s waiting for the doctor.”

Archer made the usual face of the adult confronted by the report of the wanton and inconvenient illnesses of the young. “That’s too bad,” he said, hoping it wasn’t polio or meningitis or a psychosomatic symptom of a mental disorder that would send young Clement to a psychiatrist twenty years later. “But you know how kids’ fevers are. They don’t mean anything.”

“I know,” said Herres. “But I’d better get home.”

“One more drink?”

“Better not.” Herres started to leave. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He stopped. “Oh,” he said, reaching for his wallet. “The bill …”

“Forget it.” Archer waved him away.

“Thanks.” Herres strode swiftly out of the bar.

Archer looked after him for a moment and asked for the check. Nearly four dollars, nearly five with the tip. He felt the recurrent twinge of extravagance as he paid. Some day, he thought, for the hundredth time, I am going to keep an account of what I spend in bars for one month. Probably be scandalizing. We live to support the Scotch. And three hundred dollars promised to Burke, staring at his twelve-year-old whiskey down the bar with a cold, unthankful eye. That shiver you feel each month is your bank balance opening and closing.

He got his coat, regretting the necessity of tipping the girl a quarter, and went out. I really should go by subway, he thought, standing in the dark wind, feeling tired and economical, and looked for a taxi.

Then he heard his name called. “Clement … Clement …” It was O’Neill, bulky in his coat, hurrying up the street toward him. “Wait a minute.”

“I thought you were going to a party,” Archer said as O’Neill came up to him.

“I have to talk to you,” O’Neill said.

“We have a date for tomorrow at eleven-thirty,” Archer reminded him.

“I just saw Hutt and the sponsor,” O’Neill said, “and I have to talk to you tonight.” He peered at the dark fronts of the buildings, broken here and there by a restaurant’s lights. “Where can we go?”

“I just came from Louis’,” Archer said. “I guess they’ll take me back.”

O’Neill shook his head impatiently. “No,” he said. “Some place quiet. Where nobody knows us. I don’t want anybody barging in.”

“What’s the matter, Emmet?” Archer asked as O’Neill took his arm and started toward a little Italian restaurant on the other side of the street. “The police after you? Have they finally got you for double-parking?”

O’Neill didn’t smile, not even politely, and Archer wondered whether he had had time to get drunk since the program went off the air. The radio business, Archer thought resignedly, as O’Neill held the door open for him; everything is treated as though it’s a matter of life and death.

I
N THE RESTAURANT, WHICH WAS SMALL AND DARK AND SMELLED OF
dried cheese, O’Neill picked a table in a corner. He waited until the bartender had put their drinks on the table and gone off before he said anything. He took a quick sip of his whiskey, looked briefly at Archer, then kept his eyes down, staring at his fingers.

“The party I went to,” he said, “wasn’t really a party. It was more of a conference. Hutt and the sponsor.” Lloyd Hutt was the president of the agency that put on University Town. “They thought it would be better if I got to you tonight.”

Archer watched him, puzzled, but didn’t speak.

“The program tonight,” O’Neill said officially, keeping his eyes lowered, “was well liked.”

Archer nodded. University Town had stayed on a comfortable, even keel for more than four years now, but it was pleasant to hear that the individual show had done well.

“And the next two scripts have gone through mimeograph and been approved,” O’Neill went on. Archer could tell he was slowly getting himself ready to say something disturbing. “But …” O’Neill picked up his glass, looked at it absently, and put it down again. “But, there’s a … a feeling that this is about the time to … make some changes, Clem.” Suddenly O’Neill began to flush. A deep plum color tided into his cheeks and forehead. Only the skin around his lips remained pale and looked surprisingly white.

“What sort of changes, Emmet?” Archer asked.

“Well,” O’Neill said, “the general impression is, maybe we’ve been using the same people a little too much. Too familiar, maybe. Not enough variety. The music, too. Maybe it’s a little too modern,” O’Neill said lamely.

“Now, Emmet,” Archer said, annoyed with him, “you just said the program was fine. What’s the sense in tampering with it now?”

“This might just be the time to do it. Not wait until it starts to slide. Keep ahead of it, in a manner of speaking. Shake it up. Not rest on our oars.”

“Emmet,” Archer said, “did I hear you say, ‘not rest on our oars’?”

“Yes, you did,” O’Neill said angrily. “What the hell’s wrong with that?”

“What’re you practicing to do—make speeches to conventions of vacuum-cleaner salesmen?”

“Cut it,” O’Neill said. He was redder than ever. “Save your jokes for the program.”

“Look,” Archer said. “You’re embarrassed. I can tell that. You’re passing on somebody’s message and you don’t like the assignment. OK. You don’t have to be delicate with me. Let’s have it.”

“I’m not passing on anybody’s message,” O’Neill said loudly. “I’m representing a general consensus of opinion.” His voice had the same unaccustomed rhetorical falseness in it. “We want to make some changes. What’s so damned curious about that? An agency’s entitled to improve a radio program from time to time, isn’t it? You don’t have any feeling we’re putting Holy Writ on the air every Thursday night, do you?” The flush was receding now that he was getting angrier and arguing himself into righteousness.

“All right,” Archer said. “What changes are you thinking of? Specifically.”

“First of all,” O’Neill said, “the music’s been getting more and more highbrow every week. We’ve got to remember that we’re working in a popular medium and our listeners like to hear a little melody once in a while and at least one resolved chord a week.”

Archer couldn’t help smiling. “OK,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll talk to Pokorny.”

“The feeling is,” O’Neill said slowly, “we want somebody new. Get rid of Pokorny.”

“You want my opinion?” Archer asked.

“Of course.”

“Pokorny’s music is the best thing on the show.”

“We’ve discussed it,” O’Neill said, “and we decided Pokorny is too European.”

“What does that mean, for the love of God?” Archer demanded. “Every other writer of incidental music steals it all from Tschaikovsky. Where do they think Tschaikovsky comes from—Dallas, Texas?”

“We want someone else to start doing the music for next week’s show,” O’Neill said stubbornly.

“What else?” Archer asked. He would argue about Pokorny later, he decided, when he heard the whole story.

O’Neill stared at him for a moment. To Archer it seemed as though O’Neill were begging for something with his eyes; and again Archer thought of the baffled bulldog.

“We want to drop certain actors,” O’Neill said. “For the time being.” He waited for Archer to say something. But Archer remained silent. “Stanley Atlas …”

“Now, Emmet,” Archer began.

“Alice Weller,” O’Neill went on quickly. “Frances Motherwell.” He stopped and took a breath. Then, in a low voice, he said, “Vic Herres.”

He took a long gulp of his whiskey.

“You’re kidding,” Archer said. “Now tell me the joke.”

“It’s not a joke, Clement,” O’Neill said, his voice troubled. “We’re dead serious.”

“First of all,” Archer said, speaking slowly and with exaggerated reasonableness, “my arrangement with the agency is that I’m in complete control of hiring and firing. Right?”

“It has been, Clement,” O’Neill said. “Up to now.”

“You mean that’s changed,” Archer said. “As of today.”

“Not really,” said O’Neill. “Only in the case of these five people.”

“Also,” Archer looked squarely at O’Neill, who was opening and closing his mouth in a nervous half-yawn, “whoever made up that list happened, by luck, to include the most valuable people on the program.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” O’Neill said. “Maybe you’re a little too close to them and your judgment’s been influenced. Vic Herres is your best friend. And the truth is you’ve been carrying Alice Weller for a long time.” He stopped uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Clem,” he said.

“All right,” Archer said. “Let’s leave Herres and Weller out of it for a moment, although you could ask anybody around radio for a list of the five best actors in the business and Herres would be named every time. As for Alice Weller,” Archer went on, evenly, “she’s no Duse, but she’s a good solid type and she does a decent, dependable job every time out. And you’ll never get anyone one-tenth as funny as Stanley Atlas, and you know it. A funny man, a really funny man like Atlas is a rare thing, Emmet, and I treasure him. I don’t like him, but he makes me laugh. And he makes everybody else laugh. A good proportion of the people who listen to your show turn on their radios to hear Stanley Atlas and taking him off is deliberate sabotage and I want to know who wants to sabotage the program and why you’re willing to let it happen.”

O’Neill opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something. Then he closed it again and uneasily slid his hand along the table.

“Now we consider the case of Frances Motherwell,” Archer went on, professorially. “As they say at the cocktail parties, Frances Motherwell is one of the most exciting young talents in the country.” He waited for O’Neill to oppose him, but O’Neill still didn’t say anything. “In two or three years she’s going to be one of the biggest stars in the country and you’ve told me that yourself, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” O’Neill said miserably. “I did.”

“And yet you want me to fire her?”

“Yes,” O’Neill said. It was almost a whisper now.

“You insist,” Archer went on, methodically, like a lawyer delivering a charge, “that I fire all five of the people.”

“We insist,” O’Neill said.

“In that case, Emmet,” Archer said pleasantly, “I fire myself too. See you in a bar somewhere.” He started to get up.

“Clem!”

Archer stopped.

“Sit down, please.”

Archer hesitated.

“Sit down, sit down,” O’Neill said impatiently.

Archer dropped slowly back into his chair.

“Clement,” O’Neill said, “I think you’re going to be sorry you made me explain.”

“What did you expect?”

“I expected you’d make me explain.” O’Neill smiled wanly. He rubbed his hand over the back of his head and the bristly hairs stood up aggressively. “You’re right,” he said. “We’re not asking you to get rid of those people because they’re bad performers.” He paused. “Clement,” he said soberly, “will you take my word for it that it’ll be better for your peace of mind to stop inquiring right here and let me handle it for you?”

“I don’t know what the man is talking about,” Archer said.

“OK,” O’Neill said. “Here it is. All of them are accused of being Communists. The sponsor wants them off the program. Immediately, if not yesterday.”

Archer blinked and felt that he had been sitting with his mouth open. I must look stupid, he thought irritably. Then he turned to O’Neill. “Once more, please,” he said.

“They have been accused of being Communists,” O’Neill said without expression, “and the sponsor wants them off the program.”

“O’Neill concurring?”

“Hutt concurring,” O’Neill said. “O’Neill just works here. He is not asked to concur or not concur.”

“Still,” Archer persisted, “O’Neill must have an opinion.”

“O’Neill has the opinion that he likes to collect his salary every Friday,” said O’Neill.

“What would you say my position was?”

“The same as mine.” O’Neill moved uneasily in his chair. “Exactly the same as mine.”

“Thursday is a tough day,” Archer said pettishly. “I’m tired on Thursday. You might at least have waited till tomorrow.”

O’Neill didn’t say anything and Archer knew he would have to collect himself, do something, immediately. He rubbed his hand across the top of his head, staring at O’Neill’s broad tweed shoulders and unruly hair.

“Item one,” Archer said finally, thinking, That’s it, get it down in mathematical order, “Item one, who says they’re Communists?”

“You ever hear of a magazine called
Blueprint?”

“Yes,” Archer said. He had seen copies of it several times lying in radio producers’ offices. It was a belligerent little magazine, financed mysteriously, dedicated to exposing radical activities in the radio and movie industries. “What about it? I haven’t seen anything about us in it.”

“Not yet,” O’Neill said. “Come close.” He glowered suspiciously at the bartender across the room. “I don’t want to shout this.”

Archer hitched his chair a little nearer O’Neill.

“They sent a letter to the sponsor last week,” O’Neill said wearily, “saying that in their next issue, three weeks from now, they would expose the Communist connections of five people from our program. They also wrote that if before presstime they could have proof the five people had been released, they’d hold the story.”