Good-by, I says and call up Jack Warner. How about Bette Davis?
Wait a minute, he says.
I sit on the phone ten minutes.
"The pisher thinks I don't know what he's doin'?
He's calling his brother Harry in New York, that's what he's doin'.
Here I am, sitting on long distance in New York with the charges running up by the minute and he's calling back his brother Harry, who is two blocks away from where I'm sitting.
Hang up the phone, I feel like telling him. I can call your brother for only a nickel.
"Finally, Jack gets back on the phone to me ninety-five dollars later.
You're lucky, he says. We ain't got her penciled in for nothing until September.
You can have her for a hundred and fifty grand.
For a hundred and fifty, don't do me no favors, I tell him. The most she's gettin' is thirty, thirty-five a picture, maybe not even that.
"How much you want to pay? he asks. Fifty, I says. Forget it, he says.
O.K., then, seventy-five, I says. One and a quarter, he says.
One even and it's a deal, I says. It's a deal, he says. I hang up the telephone.
A hundred and thirty-five dollars the call costs me to talk two minutes.
"So I go back to Wall Street and tell the underwriters and bankers we now got prestige. This picture is goin' to be so artistic, we'll be lucky if we get anybody into the theater.
They're very happy and congratulate me and I get on the train and come back to Hollywood." Bernie ran out of breath suddenly and picked up the glass of water again and drained it. "Ain't that enough trouble for anyone?" David nodded. "So enough troubles I got when I walk into my office this morning, you agree? So who do I find waiting but Rina Marlowe, that courveh.
'Rina, darling,' I say to her, 'you look positively gorgeous this morning.'
Do I even get a hello?
No!
She shoves the Reporter under my nose and says, 'What's this? Is it true?'
"I look down and see the story about Davis in Sunspots.
'What are you getting so excited about, darling?' I say.
'That's not for you, a bomb like that. I got a part for you that will kill the people.
Scheherazade.
Costumes like you never in your life saw before.'
And you know what she says to me?"
He shook his head sadly. "What?" David asked.
"After all I done for her, the way she spoke to me!" his uncle said in a hurt voice. "
'Take your hand off my tits,' she says, 'and furthermore, if I don't get that part, you can shove Scheherazade up your fat ass!'
Then she walks out the door.
How do you like that?" Norman asked in an aggrieved voice.
"All I was trying to do was calm her down a little.
Practically everybody in Hollywood she fucks but me she talks to like that!"
David nodded.
He'd heard the stories about her, too.
In the year since she had broken up with Nevada, she seemed to have gone suddenly wild.
The parties out at her new place in Beverly Hills were said to be orgies.
There was even talk about her and Ilene Gaillard, the costume designer. But as long as nothing got into print, they'd looked the other way.
What she did was her own business as long as it didn't affect them.
"What are you going to do about it?"
"What can I do about it?" Bernie asked.
"Give her the part.
If she walked out on us, we'd lose twice as much as we're losing right now." He reached for a cigar. "I'll call her this afternoon and tell her." He stopped in the midst of lighting it.
"No, I got a better idea.
You go out to her place this afternoon and tell her.
I'm damned if I'll let her make it look like I'm kissing her ass."
"O.K.," David said. He started back toward his own office.
"Wait a minute," his uncle called after him. David turned around. "You know who I ran into in the Waldorf my last night in New York?" Bernie asked.
"Your friend."