The Celebrity by Laura Z. Hobson Page B

he said. “Check his office and see if he’s staying in Chicago for tonight and if they say yes, send him this, fast rate: ‘Discussing movie possibilities today will phone this evening please start no Hollywood action without consulting me first since I am still acting as my brother’s agent thanks.’” He looked at Diana. “Punctuate that and sign it G. Thornton Johns and add our address.”
    “Yes, Mr. Johns,” she said in her soft voice. She started out.
    “Oh, and Diana.”
    She turned around.
    “Yes, Mr. Johns?”
    “I’m working late tonight,” he said, hardly knowing, before he heard his words, what they were to be. “And I hope you can stand by.”
    “Of course.” The old caressing note was in it, the old assurance that he was her one concern. But this time there was an urgency beneath the tone, as if she realized well how demanding life on a certain plane could be. “I have a date, but I’ll break it and get a sandwich at the drugstore.”
    “No,” he said, and paused. When had he decided to do this? He glanced up at her. Her eyes still held something of their rounded awe, and he spoke gently, as if he were sorry that she should be so transparent, so easily understood. “I’ll have to have some sort of food too,” he said. “We’ll grab a quick dinner together, if you’d rather.”
    “Oh, I would, Mr. Johns,” she said.

CHAPTER FIVE
    O F THE CONSIDERABLE NUMBER of people who were already privy to the news about Gregory Johns’ novel, the only one who was not by now actively up and doing was the author himself. Gregory Johns was still asleep.
    This was due not to sloth but to exhaustion, for he and Abby had talked until five, at which time, finding his mind ridiculously alert, he had been guilty of hypocrisy. “If we’d each shut up for exactly sixty seconds,” he had said, “we’d be dead to the world.” It had worked for Abby; he would have hated to have it succeed for him. He had waited for her breathing to assume a proper tempo, and then had departed for the only unoccupied room in the house—the kitchen—where he could enjoy the sense, if not the physical fact, of mobility. He had begun to walk happily: six fair paces from door to sink; sharp turn and four short ones from sink to stove; sharp turn and seven good long ones on the hypotenuse of his triangle back to the door—enough to give his thoughts unlimited range.
    Variety was missing but he did not care. Scraps of talk between Hat, Abby, and himself scurried across his mind. It had all been an unabashed materialism: What does this mean for us? What changes will it bring? What improvements? Until Hat had been shipped off to bed at three, he had told, himself stoutly (and had afterwards told Abby) that girls of seventeen were not frequently notable for the loftiness of their interests, but he and Abby, when finally they were alone, had found themselves still grooved in the rut of practical considerations, and unable to haul themselves out of it.
    To this phenomenon Gregory Johns now prepared to give his full attention. He lighted a cigarette; it burned his tongue and he decided on a glass of milk instead. The handle of the Frigidaire against his palm instantly brought back Hat’s first—perhaps only—suggestion about getting something somebody else in the family wanted. To wit, a new icebox.
    “But now that we’ll soon be moving out,” Abby had answered, frowning, “there’s no sense buying one for this place.”
    Remembering, Gregory thought, Conflict already, the yes and no, the plus and minus. For years Abby had wanted only to rush forth, and buy a gleaming ample magnificence of an icebox, but now, with the means to do it had come simultaneous reasons for not doing it. Only in the dry and frosty vacuum of impossibility could one yearn without hindrance; the moment attainment was at hand, the damp mildew of logic began its sly attack. Poor Abby.
    But not poor Hat. From the moment they had left Thorn’s house,