Free I Could Go on Singing by John D. MacDonald Page A

are a very nice guy. But it won’t do you a bit of good. Now get out of here because I have to get on the phone and do more battles.”
    As Jason Brown reached the door, George said, “Is that Jamison script as good as it seemed to me when I read it?”
    “George, it is so good that to force any other writer to read it is cruel and unusual punishment.”
    “It would be the best thing she ever did in her life?”
    “Beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
    “Maybe she knows that, Jase. Maybe she wants it. Maybe that’s the best hope we have.”

five
    For Jason Brown it was a strange, aimless, restless day, filled with the tension of waiting. He envied George Kogan and Lois Marney all the detail work that kept them busy. Jenny, after four complete and frantic changes, had set off in a dark suit, cloth coat trimmed and lined with fur, a little mink hat and a big mink muff. George, properly wary of the British press, had intercepted the doctor at the desk, and then smuggled Jenny out a service entrance. He reported that the doctor looked a little younger than he had expected, quite a handsome guy, maybe a little too handsome. And Jenny had been pale as chalk, her hands shaking. They had taken off in the doctor’s Humber, the doctor driving.
    For George and Lois, the biggest problem was how to reschedule, without ruffling too many feelings, the press, magazine, radio and television interviews which had been set up for Jenny and approved by her—how to sense which ones could be safely canceled, and which ones had to be fitted into the scheduling of the following days prior to her opening. It required a combination of guile, judgment, flattery and good sense. And the throat problem, imaginary as it was, came in handy, and might eventually be of tactical use in explaining any association with Doctor Donne.
    Jason heard George say, with the same impeccable sincerity, a dozen times, “She really gave last night, sweetheart. She belted more than she was supposed to. So, I swear, she’s taking it easy today. We can’t take any chances. You understand that. She wants to talk to you particularly. She’s very very upset about having to change things around a little, and she hopes you won’t be mad at her.”
    In the late afternoon, after a walk in the clearing weather, and after writing a letter to Bonny and buying a present for her and having it sent airmail, Jason wandered back to the Park Lane. George was in Lois’s room, stretched out on the chaise, drink in hand. Lois was typing up the revised schedule for the balance of the week. She gave Jason a quicksmile and turned back to her typewriter. At George’s invitation, Jason fixed himself a drink.
    “Now what we do,” George said, “we hope that she doesn’t have something all worked up for tomorrow too.”
    “Hush,” Lois said without interrupting her typing speed.
    “Most of the time,” George said thoughtfully, “Jenny is real good about these things. But when she goofs …”
    “Hush,” Lois said again.
    “That’s the weird thing about this business,” George said. “You’ve seen it enough times, Jase. No temperament at all usually means no talent either, right? And too much temperament usually means no talent, too. But when you get as big as Jenny is, suppose like three percent of the time you fling your weight around. What happens, the press people make it sound like ninety percent. How many times in her life has she walked out of a commitment? Seven? Eight? Maybe ten even? And how many times has she gone on, how many hundreds and hundreds of times, even when everything was failing down on her head?”
    “Nothing like what could fall down this time,” Jason said.
    “Stop reminding me.”
    Jason moved over toward the typing table and looked over Lois Marney’s shoulder. It was his intention to look at the new schedule. But he found himself looking at the nape of Lois’s neck. She sat so erect the small of her back was concave. It was a strong-looking