“I guess I was born to suffer,” he muttered brokenly.
For a moment there was a complete silence in the sunny park. Then:
“Why?”
The voice, soft and caressing, sounded beside him.
Howie sighed soul fully.
“Why?” the caressing voice persisted.
Shaken from his gloomy reverie Howie took his head from his hands and looked up. A girl was seated beside him on the park bench, her dark eyes resting on him in limpid compassion.
Howie hadn’t heard the girl come up and sit down and he wondered about this for a second. Then he straightened up, self-consciously aware of her intense gaze.
“Why are you unhappy?” she asked.
Howie turned to the girl impulsively, eager to pour forth the sorry story of his great affection for Mazie and her callous disregard of him. So absorbed was he in his own plight he did not particularly notice the amazing beauty of the girl sitting beside him.
Her hair was dark with strange highlights of blue that glistened in the sun, forming a shimmering halo about her delicate, perfectly molded features. In her eyes of deep cobalt blue, sultry fires seemed to leap and dance. There was something ageless and deathless about her loveliness, as if it were too beautiful to be ravaged by even Time itself. She wore a plain white dress that was almost severe in Grecian simplicity, but which accentuated perfectly her slim, delightfully curved figure.
Howie disregarded all of these abundant charms. If he even saw them he did not indicate it by so much as a flicker of an eyelash. He plunged into his story, happy for sympathetic ears to absorb it. He talked on, adding one glowing word after another in praise of Mazie’s beauty and charm. When he could think of nothing else to add he sighed with all of the reverence of a Tibetian monk in the presence of the Inner Mysteries and lapsed into moody silence.
“Is she so beautiful?” the dark haired girl asked.
Howie sighed.
“There’s no other woman like her,” he said.
“Is she,” the dark haired girl’s voice was as soft as a summer’s breeze, “is she more beautiful than I?”
Howie turned and looked at the dark haired girl critically.
“You’re kind of pretty,” he said, “but you haven’t got the same cute wrinkles in your neck that Mazie has.”
The dark haired girl’s face remained expressionless but there was a flicker of angry astonishment behind her smouldering eyes.
“Look at me,” she whispered.
Howie looked at her. He saw her slightly parted lips, her burning blue eyes, her slender voluptuousness. She moved closer to him, one soft white hand stealing across his shoulder to caress the back of his head.
“Can’t you forget this other girl?” she whispered. “We could be happy together, you and I. Look into my eyes and tell me if it would be difficult to love me.”
Howie squirmed uncomfortably and shifted away from the girl.
“It wouldn’t be difficult for a person to fall in love with you,” he said awkwardly. “You’re really nice and pretty and everything.” He tried desperately to think of something to say that would be kind and at the same time would discourage her intentions toward him.
“You just be patient,” he added, “and some nice young man will come along. As for me though, I’m in love with the only girl for me, Mazie.”
The dark haired girl’s features were unchanged, but there was dawning consternation in the depths of her eyes.
“Do you mean,” she asked, and there was a faintly anxious tone in her smooth voice, “that you are able to ignore me for this other girl? Surely she cannot be a tenth as desirable as I. Please look at me. You must see that I am beautiful. I could make you happier than you dream possible if you will only look at me and love me.”
“I’m sorry,” Howie said with finality, “but that just isn’t possible. I’ve told you you’re pretty — after a manner. But I’m in love with Mazie and nothing can change that. We got some good looking boys over in the store jerking sodas and if you’d like, I could maybe fix things up for you with one of them. But as for me, that’s out.”
He ran a long finger around the inside of his collar and moved a few inches away from the girl. A dizzy feeling of desperation was sweeping over him. He was no Casanova and he knew it, but this girl was acting as if he were a combination of Clark Gable and William the Conqueror.
“I’ve got to be getting back to the store,” he said apologetically, “it’s been nice knowing—”
“You can’t go,” the dark haired girl cried passionately. “You mustn’t leave me. I need you. I must have you. Why don’t you take me? Everything I have, everything I am will be yours to use as you wish. Only tell me you find me desirable and you love me, and I will be yours.”
The girl’s beautiful, haunting features were strained and fearful and a nameless terror was lurking deep in her eyes.
“You mustn’t leave me,” she begged. “You must say you love me and that you will be mine. Please tell me you can’t resist me.”
“I’d like to oblige you,” Howie stammered breathlessly, “but I just can’t do it.”
He scrambled to his feet and shoved the half-empty bottle of milk into her hands.
“Here,” he said desperately, “maybe this’ll help you. It’s on me.”
He wheeled then and sprinted across the grass...
When Howie Lemp reached the drug store, he was panting strenuously. Ducking inside, he hastily wrapped a clean apron around him and took his place behind the counter with a vast sigh of relief. He had been in a few uncomfortable spots in his lifetime, but never one that equalled the predicament he had just escaped. For several blissful seconds he enjoyed the sensation of security and then one of his fellow clerks nudged him.
“Lookit!” he whispered. “Lookit the doll at the end of the counter. Baby is she a knockout. And she’s giving you the eye.”
“Where?” Howie asked.
He needn’t have asked that question. All he needed to have done was to follow the gaze of all the male employees and customers in the store. They were all staring in unconcealed admiration at an incredibly beautiful girl with blue-black hair and great flashing eyes that were now resting limpidly and adoringly on a tall, gangling soda jerker by the name of Howie Lemp.
Howie swallowed nervously as he recognized the amorous creature who had shared the park bench with him some few minutes ago. She was looking at him. But all of the fear and consternation had left her. Now she was apparently the happiest creature in the world, smiling at him with a secretive, dreamy smile that was similar in kind if not in quality to that of a love struck adolescent mooning over an autographed picture of Robert Taylor.
“What’ve you got that I ain’t,” Howie’s fellow clerk whispered enviously. “If a dame like that gave me the eye I’d drop everything and run.” Blushing to the roots of his thin hair Howie hurled himself into the job of constructing a ham-and-cheese triple-decker. Why was this girl following him? What did she want? These unanswerable questions buzzed around in his head as he worked.
“Ham on rye,” a nasal voice sang out, and looking up, Howie saw Mazie standing in front of him. “It’s a special,” she snapped, “for Old Man Potterson, so be careful.”
Howie nodded. Potterson was one of the big shots from the Colossal Studio office on the fifth floor. He was a Hollywood producer, but he spent a good deal of time traveling on the search for talent. A liberal tipper, but he was finicky about his food.
“About tonight,” Howie said desperately, as Mazie was turning away. “Haven’t you changed your mind about taking in that show with me?”