Page 76 of Shadow Ticket
“It had better be, because now there’s also Hop you need to worry about. Plus he might also leap to conclusions, and then you’d be up a creek or two.”
“Wait, let me write some of this down.”
“You don’t approve, I can tell.”
“I think it’s the kind of stuff that killed vaudeville, but I’m a professional hey, people care about who they care about, if they didn’t I’d have to be lookin for another line of work.”
“Hmm. Tell me what you think,” turning into a sudden three-quarter profile. “People say I look like Norma Shearer.”
“Well maybe in the society pages, right after you’ve kissed off one more of them career lounge lizards, you get almost that same look on your face—ain’t it grand the sacrifice I’m making, and at the same time, whoo, what a relief.”
“You’ve been…keeping a scrapbook or something, how charming. That’s really how I come across?”
“Heck, Toots, I don’t even knowifyou do.”
“Talk about suave. How’s that one work back in Wauwatosa?”
“Have I been mashing on you? No wonder I’m such a hit with the dames, out there pitching woo, half the time I don’t even know it. “
“I wouldn’t exactly call it that, but…” shifting her gaze downward for a beat and a half, then back to his face again.
“Occupational handicap, ignore it.”
“Planning to, thanks.”
“I mean if you want suave, I can be plenty suave, if I have to.”
“Of course with me you don’t have to.”
“Daphne, no offense, but now and then you strike me as…a little insecure despite in real life being blessed in all directions as few of your type of dame ever are? Is?”
“Why, how sweet. A girl could get confused.”
“About what?”
“Your intentions.” They both know that runaway fiancées and theirduty-bound pursuers are expected to fall in love—stage, screen, and radio are full of it. Hicks angles his head, hoping his eyeballs are lubricated enough to flash highlights of warning, in case she plans on rolling any further up that particular stretch of scenic highway, offers her a smoke from his last pack of duty-free Spuds from theStupendica, which she tucks into a crease of her gown and switches for one of her own Melachrino cork tips, bending in toward him carefully, an intimate of flame at many levels from candles to arc lamps…knowing how different sorts of briquet light will work with a given makeup job, how long to remain lit up before ignition and withdrawal, how deep to inhale, so forth. Flashing him another look, and this time, what a look. Remarking in a reasonable tone, “Whoever’s alley this may or may not be up, don’t be expecting any easy spares.”
“Come on,” taking her by a hand not holding a cigarette, which is parked instead on her lower lip. A murmur to the bandleader, “You gents know ‘Cigana de Catumbi’?”
“Gotcha,” with one of those complicit grins.
Ordinarily it’s not a good idea to dance the Maxixe with somebody till you really know them well—not that the steps are that tricky, but since you do have to look good, it helps to feel as sincere as you want it to look, keeping always pressed close, with a lot of swaying, till it becomes hard, so to speak, to pretend your intentions are that nonsexual for very long, as it were.
“You must, you know.” Daphne lamplit in one of the two or three possible varieties of surefire fatal…the line of her neck…the corners of her eyes…“You must get clear of this. It isn’t for you.”
She’s been watching him with that how-much-can-I-trust-this-one look he knows all too well. “…once, in one of these mental fix-it shops I kept getting sent to, up on the office wall was a motto of Carl Jung—Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit. I said what’s this my Latin’s a little rusty, he sez that’s called or not called, the god will come.”
“And…back then when you were out in the woods—how’d that work, you called, you didn’t call—what happened?”
“Once, twice, something showed up, don’t know about any god, but,” shrug, breaking off eye contact. “Something.”
“Your old pals from the rez think it’s spoze to be a critter.”
Takes a deep pull at the Egyptian gasper and thinks about that. “When you first saw me did you ever wonder—is she really crazy after all, maybe they actually have every right to keep her inside their laughing academy?”
“You were on the run, that was enough.”
“One more North Shore subdeb who needed to be rescued from something, you figured.”
