Free The Dream Merchants by Harold Robbins

with me?”
    “What’s the use?” Peter snapped, “I told you before I wasn’t interested.”
    Esther looked up at him suddenly. Intuitively she knew from his voice that this was what had been troubling him. She turned to Johnny. “What is it you want him to do?”
    Johnny turned to her, sensing an ally. “Bill Borden is opening a new studio in Brooklyn shortly and he’s putting his old one on the block. I want Peter to come down to New York and look at it. If he thinks enough of it, maybe he and Joe and me will go into it.”
    “You mean make pictures?” she asked, watching Peter out of the corner of her eyes.
    “Yeah. Make pictures,” Johnny answered. “There’s a lot of money in it an’ it’s getting bigger every day.” Excitedly he began to tell her about the possibilities he saw in it.
    Esther listened attentively. It was all new to her, but Peter sank into his chair with an apparent air of boredom. It was only Esther who could see that beneath the mask of indifference on Peter’s face the idea had intrigued him.
    Johnny talked about it all through supper. He could speak endlessly about it, and when he went downstairs to sleep, his words still lingered in Esther’s mind. Peter had not commented one way or the other; he seemed wrapped up in other thoughts.
    About nine o’clock they went to bed. It was still snowing and the room was cold. Esther waited for him to come to bed; when he did he was sleepy, but Esther wanted to talk.
    “Why don’t you want to go and see what Johnny says for yourself?” she asked him.
    He grunted and turned over on his side. “What for?” he mumbled into his pillow. “The kid is all excited over nothing.”
    “He was right about the nickelodeon,” she pointed out. “Could be he’s right about this.”
    He sat up. “That’s different,” he said. “The nickelodeon we know is a novelty. When it wears off, we close up the thing; we’re not out no money because we went in cheap. But this is a big business. It takes a big investment to go into it. Yet it’s based on the same novelty, and when the nickelodeons close, where is it? Gone. With this when we close up, we made our money, so we don’t lose no sleep.”
    She persisted. “But Johnny thinks it will get bigger. He says nickelodeons are opening up at the rate of over twenty a week.”
    “So it’ll die so much quicker.” He lay back on the pillow again. A thought came to him. “Why are you so interested in what Johnny says all of a sudden?”
    “Because you are,” she answered simply, “only I don’t go around looking for excuses why I shouldn’t do something because I’m afraid of it.”
    Peter didn’t answer. “She is right,” he was thinking. “I’m afraid to take a chance. That’s why I won’t go down with Johnny. Because I’m afraid he’s right and I’ll pass it up anyway.”
    They were quiet for a while. Peter was just drifting off to sleep when she spoke again. “Are you up?”
    “I’m up,” he answered testily.
    “Peter, maybe it’s a good idea that Johnny’s got. I got a feeling.”
    “I got a feeling too,” he grumbled. “I got a feeling I should like to sleep.”
    “No, Peter.” She sat up in bed and looked at him. “I mean it. Remember when the doctor told us to take Doris out of New York and how I felt about Rochester?”
    He looked at her through the darkness. He wouldn’t admit it, but he had a healthy respect for her hunches. Time had proved her right many times. That time he had wanted to go somewhere else. Instead they came here and prospered, while the man who had taken the other place had failed. “So?” he asked.
    “Well, now I got a feeling this was one of the things we came here for and now the time is right for us to go back to New York. I never said nothing because we came here for the baby’s health, but now, thank God, the baby’s all right and I’m lonely. I miss my people, my family. I want Mark to go to cheder where my papa used to pray. I