“Shut up, Lois!”
“I’m going home. I wish I’d never met you. I wish I were still Ree. Oh, I wish I were dead.” She sank into a chair and began sobbing. The door slid open, and Lizbeth stepped into the room. She studied Lois curiously for a moment, shrugged, and brought the check to Brant’s desk.
“You Hancock it, and I’ll send it over, Van.”
“Grooved.” He took a pen from the holder on his desk, glanced at the amount on the check, and signed it. He picked up the check then and flapped it in the air, drying the ink.
Liz nodded her head at Lois. “What’s with Redbird?”
“Art,” Van said cryptically.
“Oh.” Liz plucked the check from his fingers, studied the signature briefly, and then sighed. “Good luck.” She walked from the room swiftly, swinging her hips exaggeratedly. At the door, she turned and winked, and then was gone. Van walked over to Lois and put his arm around her shoulders.
“Look, baby...”
“Don’t get Ree, mister,” she snapped.
Van withdrew his arm hastily. “I was only...”
“I’m leaving in a minute, so save your breath. I don’t want any part of you or your damned Senso. I just want to be left alone.”
“You’re doing it wrong, Lo, I’m trying to help.”
“You can help me by dropping dead.”
“Is that nice?”
“Yes, I think it would be damned nice.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” She sucked in a deep breath, passed a hand over the side of her face, and asked, “All right, mastermind, how do we fix it?”
“That’s my girl.”
“Never mind the goo. How do we fix it?”
“Listen to this, Lo, just listen to it.” He picked up the script and began reading. “Darling, kiss me. Take me in your arms.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not loaded. It doesn’t stimulate the listener. We want something like: Darling, put your mouth on mine. Cover my lips with yours. Crush your arms around me. Press me against your body and let me...”
“I get it,” she said dully. She took another deep breath. “Have you any morph, Van?”
“Honey, I’m Mister Morph himself.” He started toward the bar.
Lois smiled, but her eyes were mirthless.
“It doesn’t fit,” Walt Alloway said. There was no emotion in his voice. He was simply stating a matter of fact.
“Then we’ll make it fit.”
Walt shook his head. They were alone in Brant’s office, and the city gleamed like a broad, jeweled tiara outside the window. The light over Van’s desk cast a golden circle around the scripts scattered on the polished top.
“It’s no go, Van.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not a whiner, Van. You know I’m not.”
“Spell it,” Van told him.
“Lois.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Nothing that talent wouldn’t fix.”
“She’s not that bad.”
“Van, she’s terrible. She’s got Ree sentiments as long as my arm; and on top of that, she can’t write.”
“You weren’t so damned hot when I stumbled across you, either.”
“No, but at least I had the inclination. Van, you’ve got to face it. Some got it, and some ain’t. I didn’t always think that way. I used to feel that writing was just a matter of application. Do it regularly, and do it often, and it’ll begin to pay off. That’s what I used to think.”
“Look, Walt...”
“But it isn’t that way, Van. Not at all. You see, everyone thinks he’s a natural born scribe. Anyone who’s ever written a letter to his Aunt Zephinia in Albuquerque automatically assumes he’s a scribe. He automatically joins the great brotherhood, entitled to all the privileges and amenities. The college jerk who pens a sonnet becomes part of the brotherhood. The dunce who puts on paper an embarrassing situation he lived through — he’s part of the brotherhood. Anybody and everybody. All part of the great, big, shining brotherhood of scribes.”
“Walt...”
“And those who succeed, they’re called the lucky ones. They’re called the ones who had pull, or the ones who kissed somebody, or the ones who fell in. You’ve heard it often enough, Van. Why? Because everyone can write; everyone can hold a bloody pen in his fist and scribble some hen tracks on a sheet of paper. An engineer? That takes training and a natural affinity, a mind for that sort of thing. A painter? Hell, father, no layman would call himself an artist after he painted his outhouse. But the scribe, ah the scribe, ah the underrated scribe — that doesn’t take talent. Just practice, that’s all. Like learning to pitch quoits. Well, it takes a lot of hard work — but it takes a hell of a lot of something else, too. And if you haven’t got it, you might just as well donut-leap, because that’s as far as you’ll get.”
“You finished?” Brant asked.
“No. Lois has nothing. Nothing at all. Sure, she tries, but that isn’t enough. She may be able to write that letter to Aunt Zephinia, but that’s all. We’ll never mate her words and mine, Van. Never.”
“You’re wrong, Walt. We damn well better mate them.”
“I tell you she’s no good. Zero.”
“Lower your voice. She’ll be here any second.”
Alloway shook his head again. “Why are you keeping her, Van? She’s a smooth enough broad, I suppose, with the right things in the right places, and a frontage out of a stereoshow. But... you’re not going Ree, are you?”
“Friend or no friend,” Van said seriously, “I can still punch you in the mouth.”
“All right, I’m sorry. Suppose you tell me why?”
“I’m paying her five gee; you’re getting twenty. Is that good enough?”
Walt spread his hands wide. “The root of all.”
“Damn right. For fifteen gee sliced from the bill, I’d have taken on a Mongolian idiot.”
“And what happens to slave Walt? You pay the broad five and me twenty. That’s fine from where you sit, sure. But it means I’ll have to work hard enough to earn fifty, and the broad will amble along earning about three clams worth. That sounds fair, all right; that sounds really fair, all...”
“This sounds like a hijack, Walt. Are you boosting me?”
“Oh, boost rocks!” Alloway said. He stood up and walked to the bar, wringing his hands aimlessly. There was a lengthy silence. Walt stood with his back to Van, and the city flickered outside the window, casting pools of illumination on the dimly lit floor.
“What’s the matter, Walt?” Van asked at last.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, father. This is Van.”
Alloway whirled. “All right, I don’t like it. I quit Lana Davis because she was a cashew. But she paid me more than I’d get at ten years of this. Now you slap another bedbug on me — only this one hasn’t any talent. Lana may have been psyched-up, but at least she knew which end to sit on. This broad...”
“This broad is costing me five gee.”
“Yeah, and she’s costing me a hell of a lot more than that!”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing. Not a goddamned thing. I wanted to blow off steam, and I did.”
“Walt...”
“Cut it, Van. I agreed to come along on this crazy goddamned scheme, and here I am. Don’t make me think of the moo I’m losing again, or I’ll walk out cold.”
“Okay. Fine.”
“Just remember one thing. If I’m going to have to teach that broad to write, she’s going to have to listen. One peep out of her, and...”
A tapping sounded on the outer door.
“There she is,” Van said. He touched the lock release on his desk, and they heard the outer door slide open, heard the hurried click of high heels through the reception room. The door to Brant’s office slid wide then, and Lois came into the room.