What do you do? There are just so many legitimate theaters in the city.
While I'm pondering this and negotiating with a Hollywood agent to maybe take Beach Boy off my hands, along comes Red Rice, an epic novel of Communist China that out-Bucked Pearl a hundred heart-wrenches to one.
One phone call sold that one to McMullin, and when they got a look at the manuscript they raised the advance to $10,000. This was not bad for a first novel, and I didn't resent my $1000 agent's fee.
Before the summer was over I was about ready to give up show business and become a one-author agent. Hillary was keeping four secretaries busy taking dictation and transcribing. He never researched, never revised, never even glanced at the copy. I've known some prolific writers, but none could grind it out like Hillary Hardy.
And it was good! Every piece was better than the last. His characters were strictly 3-D right on paper, and word pictures! When he mentioned bedbugs, you itched and bled; when the villain slugged the hero a low-blow, you felt it in your guts; and when boy got girl—brother, turn up the house-lights, quick.
I got so involved trying to produce five plays at once, making dickers with publishers and motion picture studios, fighting off television people and answering mail demanding a chance at foreign rights, that it was mid-November before I realized that it was over a month since I'd heard from the golden goose.
In fact Ellie drew my attention to it one morning. "Hadn't you better call the sanitarium?" she suggested. "Maybe he had a breakdown or something?"
The thought chilled me. Not only had I sold Hillary's complete output to date, but I had a file full of contracts for future novels and movie scripts worth a couple of million dollars.
I didn't phone—I went. To Hoboken.
In the outskirts I found his private hospital, demanded to see Sam Buckle and was told to sit down and wait. He was in therapy.