“Eight-eighty for two seats to the opening,” said Jules Fougler. “It will be the biggest hit of the season.”
Jules Fougler turned and saw Toohey looking at him. Toohey smiled but the smile was not light or careless; it was an approving commentary upon something he considered as very serious indeed. Fougler’s glance was contemptuous when turned to the others, but it relaxed for a moment of understanding when it rested on Toohey.
“Why don’t you join the Council of American Writers, Jules?” asked Toohey.
“I am an individualist,” said Fougler. “I don’t believe in organizations. Besides, is it necessary?”
“No, not necessary at all,” said Toohey cheerfully. “Not for you, Jules. There’s nothing I can teach you.”
“What I like about you, Ellsworth, is that it’s never necessary to explain myself to you.”
“Hell, why explain anything here? We’re six of a kind.”
“Five,” said Fougler. “I don’t like Gus Webb.”
“Why don’t you?” asked Gus. He was not offended.
“Because he doesn’t wash his ears,” answered Fougler, as if the question had been asked by a third party.
“Oh, that,” said Gus.
Ike had risen and stood staring at Fougler, not quite certain whether he should breathe.
“You like my play, Mr. Fougler?” he asked at last, his voice small.
“I haven’t said I liked it,” Fougler answered coldly. “I think it smells. That is why it’s great.”
“Oh,” said Ike. He laughed. He seemed relieved. His glance went around the faces in the room, a glance of sly triumph.
“Yes,” said Fougler, “my approach to its criticism is the same as your approach to its writing. Our motives are identical.”
“You’re a grand guy, Jules.”
“Mr. Fougler, please.”
“You’re a grand guy and the swellest bastard on earth, Mr. Fougler.”
Fougler turned the pages of the script at his feet with the tip of his cane.
“Your typing is atrocious, Ike,” he said.
“Hell, I’m not a stenographer. I’m a creative artist.”
“You will be able to afford a secretary after this show opens. I shall be obliged to praise it–if for no other reason than to prevent any further abuse of a typewriter, such as this. The typewriter is a splendid instrument, not to be outraged.”
“All right, Jules,” said Lancelot Clokey, “it’s all very witty and smart and you’re sophisticated and brilliant as all get-out–but what do you actually want to praise that crap for?”
“Because it is–as you put it–crap.”
“You’re not logical, Lance,” said Ike. “Not in the cosmic sense, you aren’t. To write a good play and to have it praised is nothing. Anybody can do that. Anybody with talent–and talent is only a glandular accident. But to write a piece of crap and have it praised–well, you match that.”
“He has,” said Toohey.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Lancelot Clokey. He upturned his empty glass over his mouth and sucked at a last piece of ice.
“Ike understands things much better than you do, Lance,” said Jules Fougler. “He has just proved himself to be a real thinker–in that little speech of his. Which, incidentally, was better than his whole play.”
“I’ll write my next play about that,” said Ike.
“Ike has stated his reasons,” Fougler continued. “And mine. And also yours, Lance. Examine my case, if you wish. What achievement is there for a critic in praising a good play? None whatever. The critic is then nothing but a kind of glorified messenger boy between author and public. What’s there in that for me? I’m sick of it. I have a right to wish to impress my own personality upon people. Otherwise, I shall become frustrated–and I do not believe in frustration. But if a critic is able to put over a perfectly worthless play–ah, you do perceive the difference! Therefore, I shall make a hit out of–what’s the name of your play, Ike?”
“No skin off your ass,” said Ike.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s the title.”
“Oh, I see. Therefore, I shall make a hit out of No Skin Off Your Ass.”
Lois Cook laughed loudly.
“You all make too damn much fuss about everything,” said Gus Webb, lying flat, his hands entwined under his head.
“Now if you wish to consider your own case, Lance,” Fougler went on. “What satisfaction is there for a correspondent in reporting on world events? The public reads about all sorts of international crises and you’re lucky if they ever notice your by-line. But you’re every bit as good as any general, admiral or ambassador. You have a right to make people conscious of yourself. So you’ve done the wise thing. You’ve written a remarkable collection of bilge–yes, bilge–but morally justified. A clever book. World catastrophes used as a backdrop for your own nasty little personality. How Lancelot Clokey got drunk at an international conference. What beauties slept with Lancelot Clokey during an invasion. How Lancelot Clokey got dysentery in a land of famine. Well, why not, Lance? It went over, didn’t it? Ellsworth put it over, didn’t he?”
“The public appreciates good human-interest stuff,” said Lancelot Clokey, looking angrily into his glass.
“Oh, can the crap, Lance!” cried Lois Cook. “Who’re you acting for here? You know damn well it wasn’t any kind of a human interest, but plain Ellsworth Toohey.”
“I don’t forget what I owe Ellsworth,” said Clokey sullenly. “Ellsworth’s my best friend. Still, he couldn’t have done it if he didn’t have a good book to do it with.”
Eight months ago Lancelot Clokey had stood with a manuscript in his hand before Ellsworth Toohey, as Ike stood before Fougler now, not believing it when Toohey told him that his book would top the bestseller list. But two hundred thousand copies sold had made it impossible for Clokey ever to recognize any truth again in any form.
“Well, he did it with The Gallant Gallstone,” said Lois Cook placidly, “and a worse piece of trash never was put down on paper. I ought to know. But he did it.”
“And almost lost my job doing it,” said Toohey indifferently.
“What do you do with your liquor, Lois?” snapped Clokey. “Save it to take a bath in?”
“All right, blotter,” said Lois Cook, rising lazily.
She shuffled across the room, picked somebody’s unfinished drink off the floor, drank the remnant, walked out and came back with an assortment of expensive bottles. Clokey and Ike hurried to help themselves.
“I think you’re unfair to Lance, Lois,” said Toohey. “Why shouldn’t he write an autobiography?”
“Because his life wasn’t worth living, let alone recording.”
“Ah, but that is precisely why I made it a bestseller.”
“You’re telling me?”
“I like to tell someone.”
There were many comfortable chairs around him, but Toohey preferred to remain on the floor. He rolled over to his stomach, propping his torso upright on his elbows, and he lolled, pleasurably, switching his weight from elbow to elbow, his legs spread out in a wide fork on the carpet. He seemed to enjoy unrestraint.
“I like to tell someone. Next month I’m pushing the autobiography of a small-town dentist who’s really a remarkable person–because there’s not a single remarkable day in his life nor sentence in his book. You’ll like it, Lois. Can you imagine a solid bromide undressing his soul as if it were a revelation?”
“The little people,” said Ike tenderly. “I love the little people. We must love the little people of this earth.”
“Save that for your next play,” said Toohey.
“I can’t,” said Ike. “It’s in this one.”
“What’s the big idea, Ellsworth?” snapped Clokey.
“Why, it’s simple, Lance. When the fact that one is a total nonentity who’s done nothing more outstanding than eating, sleeping and chatting with neighbors becomes a fact worthy of pride, of announcement to the world and of diligent study by millions of readers–the fact that one has built a cathedral becomes unrecordable and unannounceable. A matter of perspectives and relativity. The distance permissible between the extremes of any particular capacity is limited. The sound perception of an ant does not include thunder.”
“You talk like a decadent bourgeois, Ellsworth,” said Gus Webb.
“Pipe down, Sweetie-pie,” said Toohey without resentment.
“It’s all very wonderful,” said Lois Cook, “except that you’re doing too well, Ellsworth. You’ll run me out of business. Pretty soon if I still want to be noticed, I’ll have to write something that’s actually good.”
“Not in this century, Lois,” said Toohey. “And perhaps not in the next. It’s later than you think.”
“But you haven’t said…!” Ike cried suddenly, worried.
“What haven’t I said?”
“You haven’t said who’s going to produce my play!”
“Leave that to me,” said Jules Fougler.
“I forgot to thank you, Ellsworth,” said Ike solemnly. “So now I thank you. There are lots of bum plays, but you picked mine. You and Mr. Fougler.”
“Your bumness is serviceable, Ike.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“It’s a great deal.”
“How–for instance?”
“Don’t talk too much, Ellsworth,” said Gus Webb. “You’ve got a talking jag.”