U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [481]
He turned back into the projectionroom swinging his cane as he went. Mr. Harris explained that Mr. Margolies would let her know when he wanted her and that mean-while they would work out the contract. Did she have an agent? If she didn't he would recommend that they cal in his friend Mr. Hardbein to protect her interests. When she got into the office with Mr. Harris sitting across the desk from her and Mr. Hardbein, a hol owfaced man with a tough kidding manner, sitting beside her, she found herself reading a threeyear contract at three hundred a week. "Oh, dear," she said, "I'm afraid I'd be awful y tired of it after that length of time. . . . Do you mind if I ask my companion Mrs. Mandevil e to come
around? . . . I'm so ignorant about these things." Then she cal ed up Agnes and they fiddled around talking about the weather until Agnes got there.
-403-Agnes was wonderful. She talked about commitments and important business to be transacted and an estate to care for, and said that at that figure it would not be worth Miss Dowling's while to give up her world cruise, would it, darling, if she appeared in the picture anyway it was only to accommodate an old friend Mr. Margolies and of course Miss Dowling had always made sacrifices for her work, and that she herself made sacrifices for it and if necessary would work her fingers to the bone to give her a chance to have the kind of success she believed in and that she knew she would have because if you believed with an unsul ied heart God would bring things about the way they ought to be. Agnes went on to talk about how awful unbelief was and at five o'clock just as the office was closing they went out to the car with a contract for three months at five hundred a week in Agnes's handbag. "I hope the stores are stil open," Margo was saying. "I've got to have some clothes."
A toughlooking greyfaced man in ridingclothes with
light tow hair was sitting in the front seat beside Tony. Margo and Agnes glared at the flat back of his head as they got into the car. "Take us down to Tasker and Hard-ing's on Hol ywood Boulevard . . . the Paris Gown Shop," Agnes said. "Oh, goody, it'l be lovely to have you have some new clothes," she whispered in Margo's ear. When Tony let the stranger off at the corner of Hol y-wood and Sunset, he bowed stiffly and started off up the broad sidewalk. " Tony, I don't know how many times I've told you you couldn't pick up your friends in my car," began Margo. She and Agnes nagged at him so that when he got home he was in a passion and said that he was moving out next day. "You have done nothing but exploit me and interfere with my career. That was Max Hirsch. He's an Austrian count and a famous poloplayer." Next day sure enough Tony packed his things and left the house. The five hundred a week didn't go as far as Agnes and
-404-Margo thought it would. Mr. Hardbein the agent took ten percent of it first thing, then Agnes insisted on deposit-ing fifty to pay off the loan in Miami so that Margo could get her jewelry back. Then moving into a new house in the nice part of Santa Monica cost a lot. There was a cook and a housemaid's wages to pay and they had to have a chauf feur now that Tony had gone. And there were clothes and'a publicityman and al kinds of charities and handouts around the studio that you couldn't refuse. Agnes was won-derful. She attended to everything. Whenever any busi-ness matter came up Margo would press her fingers to the two sides of her forehead and let her eyes close for a minute and groan. "It's too bad but I just haven't got a head for business." It was Agnes who picked out the new house, a Puerto Rican cottage with the cutest balconies, jampacked with antique Spanish furniture. In the evening Margo sat in an easychair in the big livingroom in front of an open fire playing Russian bank with Agnes. They got a few invitations from actors and people Margo met on the lot, but Margo said she wasn't going out until she found out what was what in this town. "First thing you know we'l be going around with a bunch of bums who'l do us more harm than good.""How true that is," sighed Agnes.