“That doesn’t begin to describe it. All my life I... waited... wanted... dreamed... about someone... like you are... Oh, if you’d only let yourself be the way you seemed to be the first night I saw you!”
“That’s sweet and pretty,” she told him, “but what good does it do to think about things like that? Castles in the air never did anybody any good — not so you could notice it.” She patted his hand. “There goes the whistle, sugar. The best thing for you to do is go back and dance it off.”
Outside on the platform the conductor was swinging a green lantern back and forth. “All aboard!” he wailed dolefully. “All aboard!”
“Kiss me good-bye,” exclaimed Mimi, “and forget all about me.”
Their lips met for the first and last time. The cars started to move. “I’ll go with you!” he cried, swept by a wild momentary impulse.
“What? And me lose my job?” answered the prevaricating Mimi. “I should say not. Jump or you’ll never make it!”
He ran to the lower end of the car and swung clear of the steps. The sound of his voice came trailing back to her: “’Bye, Mimi.” She pressed her face against the window pane, but it was too dark outside to make out anything. She gave a little sigh.
He picked himself up and watched the red tail-light on the rear car grow smaller and smaller until finally it disappeared altogether. Mimi was gone and he would never see her again. He dusted himself off and went back to his room.
But when he opened the door to the “budwa,” he found Connie sitting there reading a magazine.
“How did you get in here?” he asked listlessly.
She looked up. “Did you see your friend off?” she wanted to know innocently.
“Yes,” he said, “she’s gone away. Let her go.”
“I been waiting for you to come back,” Connie said. “There’s going to be a big masquerade at the Rainbow next Sa’ddy night. They’re going to give prizes for the best costume. How about us going?”
He didn’t answer. For a long time he stood looking down at her as if there were something about her he’d never realized before.
“Cake,” she said, “are you angry at me?”
“No,” he said. “Something’s just come over me. I didn’t see how I was going to stand it... I thought it was going to be lonely... I thought it would kill me.”
“Sure, honey,” she said gently. “I know how those things are. I have it myself—”
Suddenly he sank down alongside her and buried his head in her arms. “But it was you all the time, Connie. It was you all the time.”
She caressed his hair with the tips of her fingers.
“Cake,” she murmured.
“Connie,” he said softly. “Dreams do come true... sometimes.”
Mother and Daughter
In the days when the two-step was tottering upon its throne and weird mulatto dances were creeping out of the Brazils to replace it, she and her partner had won fame as ballroom artists. London knew them, and Paris, and the old lobster belt, reaching in those days to Churchill’s at Forty-ninth. She was a child of seventeen then, very tall, a little too thin, wore low-heeled shoes and short skirts before their time. He was a man in his middle forties, much divorced, a little made up around the eyes. Together they rose like rockets and went out in mid-air. Paris and London had stopped dancing; they had no time any more.
Georgia, her career cut short, had turned around and married, married well. She had literally made herself a bed of golden dollars and intended to abide by it. The man of her choice was Jordan, who had made a fortune out of peanut brittle simply by removing the shells from the peanuts before they went into the brittle. What he did with the shells after they were removed was never made clear. Georgia used to say he stuffed mattresses with them.
She let her hair grow and amazed the world that had copied her dancing by having a little girl. Going over to add to her collection of chiffon stockings and perfumery, the ship was torpedoed a little after daybreak one morning, and Georgia woke up to find a thin layer of water spread over the carpet of her stateroom. She quickly drew on a crepe de chine negligee, then changed it for a black dinner dress, determined to look her best. The skirt of this was too long, though, and she finally discarded it in favor of an orange tailor-made suit, just the thing for shipwrecks. Then she called the maid, who slept in the next room, and they hobbled out on deck like frightened deer. The moment they were in the open a whole assortment of the ship’s officers lifted Georgia bodily in their arms and put her into a lifeboat. The maid was doing her best to climb in after her when Georgia tearfully commanded: “Go back and wake my husband, Marie.” Then she added in an undertone, “And for heaven’s sake, see if you can’t get hold of some face powder for me. It’s sinful, with all these people around.”
Marie began to weep and said she wasn’t going back to be drowned like a rat.
“You’re not, eh?” said Georgia, narrowing her eyes. “You’re discharged. Get out of this boat.”
By three the following afternoon Georgia had found out she was a widow. She took it greatly to heart. “Poor Jordan!” she said. “What will become of the peanut industry now?”
The peanut industry, however, did very nicely. In fact it flourished exceedingly, so that by the time Jicky was ready to come out into the world she needed a rake in each hand to tidy up the dollars that came fluttering down about her like green and yellow leaves.
Jicky was the daughter. Homely mothers frequently have beautiful children, but it also works the other way around. Georgia’s mother before her had been undoubtedly attractive, even with all the obstacles of apparel that had to be overcome in her day. But when it came to Jicky, the beauty in the family seemed to have run out. Georgia had eyes that were mixed with star dust. Jicky wore convex lenses in front of hers. Georgia could make her hands talk. Jicky could make hers drop things at critical moments. Georgia could wear a twenty-dollar gown and make it look mysterious. Jicky could wear a two-hundred dollar one and make it look terrible. Georgia could make the traffic part in the middle to let her through, like the Red Sea. Whereas taxi drivers had been known to foist their cabs upon the sidewalk in their efforts to run Jicky down. Georgia walked like a dream, like a lotus borne upon a sacred pool. Jicky walked into things.
Everything Georgia did was done right. If she stroked a dog, the dog stayed stroked for the rest of the day. No one else could do it as gracefully, as full of charming little nuances. If she poured coffee, you asked for a second cup just to see her pour it over again. If she played cards, you forgot your game, so absorbed were you in the delicate shivery way she shuffled.
Jicky? Jicky spilled them all over the floor and dealt them face up. And once, mind you, once, Jicky had been known to trump her partner’s ace. She tried to explain later that was all she held in her hand. It was no use though; appearances were against her, and the legend went all over the country club.
Now at about this time there appeared on the scene Scotty Tryon, about twenty-nine or thirty and untroubled as yet by poor digestion or feminine attachment. Jicky met him out at the club one day when a long distance telephone call had broken up a game of doubles. When first seen he was wearing a gray flannel shirt with a package of cigarettes squaring the pocket and a web belt that went up on one side and down on the other. The web belt decided her. A man who didn’t worry about the hang of his trousers ought to play a good game. She pressed him into service.
If there was one thing Jicky was good at, it was tennis. I mean, she had nothing to lose by acting in front of the net like a dervish out on a spree. Perspiration or rumpled hair didn’t count with her. And when you have nothing to lose, why hold back? She didn’t. Consequently, when she smacked the ball, it took your mind off a great many things at once. She looked better in flat shoes than she did on high heels anyway, and the green shade over her eyes did a lot for her face.