Page 7 of Shadow Ticket
However, a few more dances and drinks on into the evening—
“Oh my! Is that for me?”
“Thought you’d never notice.”
A pause, which he has the sense to wait through. “Maybe it’s the time of night a girl needs something to hold on to.”
“Go ahead, it won’t mind.”
“Oh, of course that’d be only one extra problem for you, I guess, easy in and out, get it over with quick as possible…”
“Who said easy?”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Anybody around here likely to get fooled, Toots, it’d be me.”
Pretending to recoil in sympathy, “Ooh! Poo-uh, lay-umb! Can I help?”
“You mean, by somehow not playing me for a sap? You’d really do that for me?”
“No. Not even if I knew you better.”
“Let’s hope that don’t happen.”
Yeah, let’s hope.
She is squinting at him, suspicion all over that photogenic kisser. The full-scale Wabash Avenue once-over and then some. Has he ever been scrutinized quite this close before? Normally at about this point there begins to drift across the face of the broad in the scene a look of evasiveness Hicks has grown used to, followed by some form of “How cheapened has my life become that I have to put up with attention from palookas like this?” Except now, for once, it doesn’t happen—moments tick by as it slowly dawns on him that here’s a woman who’s finding a way to withhold her annoyance withhim so skillfully that it’s invisible even to an old rejection whiz like himself. When did this happen last, a tomato he’s hardly met going to so much trouble? Ever? He could be paying a professional actress union scale to perform this small act of mercy, and here’s this April here giving it away for free. Not a thunderbolt, maybe, but at least a wave of gratitude slopping over him…
—
As they getto know each other better, Hicks discovers that though April is more streetwise than the crowd she usually runs with, careful with her money, not about to say no to a drink now and then, usually now, where her sentimental eye chart goes running off into a dangerous blur is in connection with married men. A gold-accented ring finger has the same effect on April as a jigging spoon on a Lake trout, especially when kept on while kidding around, good as a framed copy of a marriage license hanging up on a love-nest wall.
For a while Hicks tended to sympathize with the wandering husbands, although soon he found he was beginning to take it personally.
“Don’t know. I see enough of it at work already, don’t I. Crazy wives, jealous husbands, even when there’s nothing going on, it’s like they still want it to be.”
“How about you?”
“Just happy to see you when I see you.”
“Not sure how I feel about that.”
“What, I’m not crazy enough? You want me creeping around outside your window in the middle of the night? Cross-eyes? Napoleon hat? Got one of those, I could wear it for you.”
While not as common as a nose or needle habit, April’s married-man fixation does bring along its own set of health risks. Wronged spouses within easy reach of firearms can no longer be ruled out of the national domestic melodrama, where the list of everyday household appliances now routinely includes hardware such as the Colt .32 used by the recently famous Mrs. Myrtle Bennett of Kansas City, who in the course of an otherwise friendly bridge game shot her husband dead for coming up two tricks short on a contract, delivering her into headlines nationwide.
“Everything,” April has remarked wistfully to Hicks more than once, “right here for you, more romance than you’ll find outside the movies, until I remember this one little item, this ringless finger here…”
“So…when we’re kidding around, all that ooh, that aah, you mean that’s just an act? Thought you were havin a good time there. My sweetie.” Pulling out a hip flask from which he pours not hooch but some slow green liquid, rubs it between his hands, runs both hands through his hair as an intensely herbal aroma fills the room, begins to comb it into place…
“Putting some time in on your hair there, Sport.”
“A shine you can see your face in. Lasts for days, glows in the dark.”
“Show me,” reaching for the light switch.
“Hmm…maybe not as shiny as that. But long as we’re here…”
