“Sure. And don’t tell me you don’t like it. You’ve got to be hardboiled and take what you want in this world. Nobody’s going to hand it to you on a silver platter.”
Shayne decided that Joe was a bit sophomoric in his assumption of toughness. Neither his appearance nor his cultured voice quite fitted the role.
“But I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Nora.” Christine’s voice throbbed with distress. “I wouldn’t want success to come that way. I’ve always played fair.”
“Sure. We both have. And see what it’s got us. You’re understudying Nora Carson who can’t match the talent in your little finger. And me? I’m juggling props backstage while a drip like Saroyan is hailed as the white-haired boy of the American theater. Nuts! I can write rings around Saroyan and all the rest of them. But, can I get my stuff produced? You know the answer.”
“It takes time, Joe. We’re both young. We can afford to wait.”
“Forever? No. Another year of failure will embitter us. We’ll begin to think, by God, that we are failures. Then we’ll be whipped. But it’s not going to be that way, sweet. You’re headed for the top. Producers will listen to you when you bring them a script. A year from now you’ll be playing the lead on Broadway in a Joe Meade play.”
Joe had become savagely exultant. Behind his words Shayne sensed the bitter frustration of talented youth; the concentrated venom engendered by the failure of others to recognize self-appraised genius. Such a man, Shayne realized, was fully capable of almost any action to attain his end; yet nothing that Meade intimated seemed to tie up with Screwloose Pete’s murder or the note in Nora’s room. He held his impatience in check, hoping the young man would become more explicit.
When Christine spoke again, her tone was cool and brittle. “I don’t think I like what you’re telling me. I haven’t ever taken an unfair advantage of anyone.”
“Sure you haven’t. You’re straight. You don’t go to bed with your stockings on. Not yet, you haven’t. But you’ve been waking up — noticing how the others get ahead. And I couldn’t stand that, honey. Honest to God, I’d take a nose-dive to hell if you turned into a floozie like some others I’ve seen. But you won’t have to now. You’re set.” Ice tinkled in a glass. “Come on. Let’s drink up and order another one.”
“But, Joe,” Christine pleaded, “tell me what you mean. I’ve got to know.”