Inside the terminal, railway travelers began arriving from every side. Dozens of them, hundreds, thousands, all with their eyes fixed on the big clock. Rayette had her timetable in her head.
She navigated the expanse of the Tennessee marble floor, not bothering to look up at the stars reeling across the cerulean-blue painted sky. She'd seen them already. Head lowered, she skirted the information kiosk with the big clock and made for Track 17.
The Grand Central Theatre and the Newsreel Cocktail Lounge across from Track 17 had just opened this summer. These additions to the terminal were wildly popular. Travelers waiting for trains passed the time in the bar and little movie house, catching news, shorts and cartoons.
Rayette ignored the newsstand stocked with magazines, candy bars, tobacco and gum, tour brochures for Pan Am flights and steamship cruises. She had what she needed and didn’t want the fat blonde at the stand to remember her.
She did a fast inspection of the sandwich board with today’s movies. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor honeymooning in France. Adolf Hitler sending truckloads of prisoners to a new concentration camp at Buchenwald. Cartoon clips from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. No heists or murders. Just more of the usual.
Rayette stepped into the bar. Nice place. She didn’t see any cops. Polished brass rail, red barstools, tables, the alcove with easy chairs in leatherette. It was cheery with the clatter of glasses and talk. She took note of the morning drinkers. Besides the shifting crowd of transients and long-distance travelers, the cocktail lounge drew a core of regulars – northbound commuters and newsmen from the neighborhood papers, The Daily News, The Sun, The New York World-Telegram. The newsmen bragged about the great pix they’d got the night before with their Speed Graphics, and hoped to get when the 20th Century Limited came in again at five. Hollywood celebrities and the world’s most beautiful women got the red-carpet treatment in the Biltmore Room when they breezed in on the 20th Century.
Big-shouldered Eddie Kromer was one guy who didn't need a timetable, didn't own a Speed Graphic and had no reason to watch the clock. He wasn't going anywhere. His jacket was thin for the cold June they were having. He had on a rumpled maroon tie, gray slacks, and like some of the newsguys, a fedora shoved back on his head. His shock of curly hair fell over his forehead and grew down on his neck. It was eight weeks since his last haircut.
Chain-smoking at the bar, Eddie gaped with religious awe at the bright-lit altar of bottles. Whisky in jewel colors. He thought of asking the barman for more credit, picturing an amber glassful before him like a lovely elixir of oblivion. He needed a drink and yearned for a girl. Just one girl. Bonnie. She’d crushed his heart. She'd left him for a guy with more money, more paunch and a lot less hair than Eddie, and this old dude was twice Bonnie’s age. More than anything, Eddie Kromer needed a job. His prospects selling Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedias door to door did not shine bright as a way of winning back Bonnie’s attention.
Bonnie was a traveling stenographer on the luxurious 20th Century Limited. She took dictation for rich moguls on the coast-to-coast run. This one money-czar was now taking up her time, and Bonnie made that clear to Eddie.
Eddie moped. When the next 20th Century came in, he'd go look for Bonnie as she stepped off the train with her steno pad, prettier than any movie star. He’d reason with her. He was edgy. With the buzz of talk, the Newsreel Cocktail Lounge had the feel of suspended action, of something waiting to fall and break and define the situation.
That was when the girl walked in. A lot of heads turned to appraise the newcomer and Eddie's head swiveled too.
She was young, between a waif and a voluptuous waking dream. A stunner. A beautiful madonna in little French heels with chartreuse stockings. Tousled bobbed hair the color of rosé wine. She wore a trim black suit, the plunging throat showing off a curve of creamy bosom. She parked the valise on a corner chair. She sat beside it, unbuttoning and peeling off her long chartreuse three-button gloves, pinching the fingertips, drawing finger by finger in a leisurely striptease that had every man's eyes riveted as she bared her tapered white hands.
Rayette looked over the men at the bar for the one who'd suit her. She went over to join Eddie, not taking a barstool but standing close to his side. She beamed him a touching smile that got right to him. He let himself breathe her smell, flowery jasmine mixed with girl-sweat.
Eddie said, “Hi,” and fell right into those gray velvet eyes, soft as the fur of a Persian feline the color of locomotive smoke.
“I could use a drink,” said the girl, ever so faintly.
“This is the place,” said Eddie. “What can I get you?”
“A double Cutty Sark,” she breathed, her voice trailing into sweet melancholy. “On three or four rocks.”
Before gentlemanly Eddie could ask the barman for credit the girl smiled at him.
“I’ve got money,” she said in the breathy voice of a little girl playing at being a big girl, and pulled a couple of dollars from a tiny bulging green change-purse. Enough for two drinks. The barman set a brimming glass for her on a cocktail napkin with a movie-projector logo. And a drink for Eddie.
Flummoxed, Eddie introduced himself.
“How do you do, Eddie,” said Rayette. “I’m Madelyn Burns.”
“Hello, Madelyn.”
“I’d like it if you joined me,” she said innocently. “It’s a little confusing here.” Her lips were full, a glossy pink and turned down with sadness. “Why don’t you bring your drink over, Eddie, and share my table?”
“Sure,” he said, not because it meant anything, but she seemed to need protection, and seemed to be from some very small town. If he was surprised he wasn’t showing it, and carried both drinks to the corner table where she’d left the black lizard bag and the valise. The long green gloves lay discarded on the table, as if this weren’t New York where you never took your eye off your valuables.
“You got to be careful of your things in the big city,” Eddie said. He would have added, You look like you need somebody taking care of you. But he held back on this, which he judged too personal.
From there on, they hit it off. They traded a lot of talk, how he'd had a run of bad luck, and she said she had too. They smoked, drank, exchanged details. So many details were similar. Wasn't that a coincidence? Inevitably, they got to know each other well.
Gratified, maybe surprised that she welcomed him so readily, Eddie realized he was used to thinking of himself as a gentlemanly nice-guy and so her friendliness did not seem hard to believe.
“You know what?” said Rayette. “Let’s see a movie. Wouldn't it be fun?”
“Well, sure, great idea.” And Eddie thought that in the dark Newsreel Theatre he might hold her hand or even get his arm around her. They found two plushy seats way in the back row. They gazed at the screen with the luminous clock overhead for passengers catching a train, which neither of them was.
The next newsreel brought gasps from the audience. Platinum-blond bombshell Jean Harlow was dead of uremic or maybe platinum poisoning. Shots were shown of Clark Gable in a lip-clinch with Jean looking platinum as hell.
Eddie slipped an arm around his movie date, and they sat entwined in the dark. Eddie was surprised at what a nice girl Madelyn was to him. Eddie Kromer kissed her on the mouth, which was sweet as juicy fruit, and she was taking hold of him in one of her silky paws in a moment that granted him a supreme ecstasy such as he could compare to nothing,
“Cigarette?” she whispered. “Here, have one of mine. They’re imported.” She offered her pack from the lizard satchel. He lit hers, and one for himself. Amazing aroma. Fragrant. He inhaled deeply, and at the same time uttered a choking gasp, which could have sounded like a passionate seizure of bliss at being clutched in a longed-for embrace. No one heard his horrible throttled gagging since Eddie and Rayette were way in back and the audience was still moaning about poor Jean Harlow.