Free Some Faces in the Crowd by Budd Schulberg Page A

light you at all. I think you have great possibilities.”
    Jenny smiled happily, the wine and encouragement going to her head, and Nathan reached over and patted her hand in what was meant to seem a fatherly gesture, though he lingered a moment too long. But Jenny hardly noticed, swept along in the dream.
    Lew Carteret looked at his watch nervously. It was almost time for the floor show. There wouldn’t be much chance to talk during the acts, and after that, the party would be over. He looked across at Mimi, trying to find the courage to put it up to A. D. If only A. D. would give him an opening. Lita and Bruce were watching too, wondering when to bring up Wagons Westward. And André, behind the head waiter’s mask was thinking, Only ten more minutes and I will he speaking to A. D. about my scenario.
    “André,” Nathan called, and the head waiter snapped to attention. “Are you sure there hasn’t been a call for me?”
    “No, m’sieur. I would call you right away, m’sieur.”
    Nathan frowned. “Well, make sure. It should have been here by now.” He felt angry with himself for losing his patience. There was no reason to be so upset. This was just another long-distance call. He had talked to New York a thousand times before—about matters just as serious.
    But when André came running with the message that New York was on the wire, he could not keep the old fear from knotting his stomach and he jostled the table in his anxiety to rise.
    “You may take it in the second booth on the left, Mr. Nathan,” said Ava Gardner, as she looked up from her switchboard with a prefabricated smile. But he merely brushed by her and slammed the door of the booth behind him. The telephone girl looked after him with the dream in her eyes. When he comes out I’ll hafta think of something arresting to sayta him, she decided. God, wouldn’t it be funny if he did notice me!
    Five minutes later she heard the door of the booth sliding open and she looked up and smiled. “Was the connection clear, Mr. Nathan?”
    That might do for a starter, she thought. But he didn’t even look up. “Yes. I heard very well. Thank you,” he said. He put half a dollar down and walked on. He felt heavy, heavy all over, his body too heavy for his legs to support and his eyes too heavy for the sockets to hold. He walked back to the table without seeing the people who tried to catch his glance.
    “Everything all right?” his wife asked.
    “Yes. Yes,” he said. “Everything.”
    Was that his voice? It didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded more like Lew Carteret’s voice. Poor old Lew. Those were great old times when we ran World-Wide together. And that time I lost my shirt in the market and Lew loaned me 50 G’s. Wonder what ever happened to Lew.
    Then he realized this was Lew Carteret, and that he was listening to Lew’s voice. “A. D., this has sure been a tonic for Mimi and me. I know we didn’t come here to talk shop, but—well you always used to have faith in me, and …”
    “Sure, sure, Lew,” A. D. said. “Here, you’re one behind. Let me pour it. For old times.”
    He could feel an imperceptible trembling in his hand as he poured the wine.
    Under the table a small, slender leg moved slowly, with a surreptitious life of its own, until it pressed meaningfully against his. Jenny had never slept with anybody except Bill. She was frightened, but not as frightened as she was of living the rest of her life in Hollywood as the wife of a grip in a bungalow court.
    Bruce flipped open his cigarette case—the silver one that Lita had given him for his birthday—and lit a cigarette confidently. “By the way, A. D., Lita let me read the script on Wagons. That’s a terrific part, that bank clerk who has to go west for his health and falls in with a gang of rustlers. Wonderfully written. Who’s going to play it?”
    “Any leading man in Hollywood except you,” Nathan said.
    Bruce looked undressed without his assurance. The silence was