Nevada opened the door. "I can wait," he said.
9.
"Are you staying for supper, Duvidele?"
"I can't, Mama," David said. "I just came by to see how you were."
"How am I? I’m the way I always am. My arthritis is bothering me. Not too much, not too little. Like always."
"You should get out in the sun more often. For all the sun you get, you might as well be living back in New York."
"A son I got," Mrs. Woolf said, "even if I never see him. Even if he stays in a hotel.
Once every three months, maybe, he comes. I suppose I should be glad he comes at all."
"Cut it out, Mama. You know how busy I am."
"Your Uncle Bernie found time to come home every night," his mother said.
"Times were different then, Mama," he said lamely. He couldn't tell her that her brother had been known all over Hollywood as the matinee man.
Besides, Aunt May would have killed him if he stayed out.
She kept a closer guard on him than the government kept on Fort Knox.
"One week you're here already and this is only the second time you've been to see me. And not even once for supper!"
"I’ll make it for supper soon, Mama. I promise."
She fixed him with a piercing glance.
"Thursday night," she said suddenly.
He looked at her in surprise. "Thursday night?
Why Thursday night, all of a sudden?"
A mysterious smile came over her face.
"I got someone I want you should meet," she said. "Someone very nice."
"Aw, Mama," he groaned. "Not another girl?"
"So what's wrong with meeting a nice girl?" his mother asked in hurt innocence. "She's a very nice girl, David, believe me.
Money her family's got. A college girl, too."
"But, Mama, I don't want to meet any girls. I haven't the time."
"Time you haven't got?" his mother demanded. "Already thirty years old. It's time you should get married. To a nice girl. From a nice family. Not to spend your whole life running around in night clubs with those shiksas."
"That's business, Mama. I have to go out with them."
"Everything he wants to do he tells me is business," she said rhetorically.
"When he doesn't want to do, that's business, too. So tell me, are you coming to dinner or not?"
He stared at his mother for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
"All right, Mama. I’ll come. But don't forget, I'll have to leave early. I've got a lot of work to do."
She smiled in satisfaction.
"Good," she said. "So don't be late. By seven o'clock. Sharp."
There was a message to call Dan Pierce waiting for him when he got back to the hotel.
"What is it, Dan?" he asked, when he got him on the telephone.
"Do you know where Jonas is?" David laughed.
"That name sounds familiar."
"Quit kidding," Dan said. "This is serious.
The only way we'll get Nevada to make those Westerns is if Jonas talks to him."
"You really mean he'll go for the deal?" David asked.
He hadn't really believed that Nevada would.
He didn't need the money and everybody knew how he felt about quickies.
"He'll go," Dan said, "after he talks to Jonas."
"I’d like to talk to him myself," David said.
"The government is starting that antitrust business again."
"I know," Dan said. "I got the unions on my neck.
I don't know how long I can keep them in line.
You can't cry poverty to them; they saw the last annual reports. They know we're breaking even now and should show a profit next year."
"I think we better talk to Mac. We'll lay it on the line.
I think two years without a meeting is long enough."