"You got the right number, Mister, but I think you got the wrong party."
"You don't know me?"
"No. Should I?"
"If you've been writing me letters, you should. You—" Lennox stopped. The man had hung up. Lennox started to dial another Knott and then quit. "Am I crazy?" he asked himself. "I can't get anywhere this way."
He left the phone booth, went out into the street and realized that he felt steady and solid as rocks. The uncertainty was ended. Lennox walked a few blocks while he examined himself in his new role of victim, then went over to Houseways, Inc. and picked up Gabby Valentine. He chattered exuberantly during the cab ride to Rox, concealing the discovery he had just made and the driving resolution it had brought about in him. He was not ready to reveal the crisis to Gabby until he had lived with it a little longer.
Rox Studios on West 50th Street occupied the top floor of an ancient loft building. It was decorated in Industrial Modern with aerial photomurals, phallic light fixtures, and blond functional furniture. There were offices, recording studios, stock rooms, and an impressive reception room which had been taken over by a catering company. Over the bar and hors-d'oeuvre tables were hung giant blow-ups of the great hit records of the past. "We're The Most" was also prominent. Cameramen were arranging celebrities in groups. Flash bulbs were flaring.
On the surface, all cocktail parties are alike. You find the conventional percentages of pretty girls, pretty boys, big wheels, nobodys, name-droppers, and the ubiquitous scrawny woman who drinks too much, insults too much, throws up too much and has to be taken home. It's the lower levels that distinguish one party from another, but on The Rock the lower levels are exposed, and consequently the percentages turn into the deludeds, the hostiles, the compulsives, the persecuteds, the insecures and the harassed.
If your eye is trained you can see their frantic gyrations as they jostle and balance on their tightropes over their chasms. If your ear is sharp you can hear their bedevilments through the brittle glitter of the talk ... whispering with ghost voices like a badly tuned radio.
In the midst of all this, Cooper, who was usually so casual and carefree, stood rigid with terror. He was learning the bitter lesson that is taught on The Rock ... that ambition besets us with many dangers to be fought and survived, and one of the greatest dangers is success. It's dangerous because it focuses attention, and the successful man becomes a new target for the attacking pirates.
As a nobody on The Rock, Cooper had been living in happy obscurity, ignored by the poison eaters. Now he was spotlighted and they declared open season on him. The Ned Bacons cut him down to their size. The Mig Masons resented his claim on their exclusively owned limelight. The pretty girls took hold to climb over him to fresh heights. The pretty boys saw in him another celebrated name to drop and to bitch. The property owners marked him for future possession. And all this took place under the surface of the congratulations and compliments, like a poison ring inside a Borgia hand-clasp.