Max Collins - Angel in black

The aquamarines widened. “You are so right… though I do have the figure for it, don’t you think?”

“No argument there, and I’m not judgmental about the profession. Some of my best friends are strippers.”

That news didn’t seem to put her off. “Well, anyway, I’d never stoop to… stripping.”

“Good. It’s a hard life-and if you aren’t Sally Rand or Gypsy Rose Lee or Ann Corio, you’re lucky to make fifty bucks a week.”

“I’m better off waiting tables.”

“Yeah, and it’s warmer.”

She lifted her chin as if offended-but maybe kidding on the square. “Is that what you think I should stick to? Waiting tables?”

“Hey, I’m not trying to discourage you-that’s just the reality of it. Tough as that town is, Hollywood’s a better bet for you.”

She nodded, saying, “I’ve been there-several times.”

“Any luck?”

“I’ve done some extra work, and a little radio.”

“It’s a start.” I waved a waitress over for more tea and coffee. “Look, there is some modeling to be had in Chicago-I know people at the agencies. Plenty of local advertising, and the big mail-order companies do their catalogue work here…”

“I might take you up on that. But I probably will head back to Southern Cal. I only came to Chicago for the modeling job, and…”

“And what?”

She shrugged. “A serviceman I know had a stopover scheduled here. An Army Air Corps lieutenant.”

“Boy friend?”

“Nothing serious. I met him last year, at the Hollywood Canteen. I was a junior hostess, there. Met a lot of stars-Franchot Tone, Arthur Lake, all kinds of celebrities.”

“What about that Air Corps lieutenant?”

“What about him?”

“If you and he weren’t serious, why did you come to Chicago to see him?”

Another shrug. “Like I said, I came for the modeling job, and just took the opportunity to connect with Gordon again. I’d been writing him letters… I have a lot of servicemen friends. I write to several, I like to build their morale…”

“Sure. Guys you met at the Hollywood Canteen.”

Was that her story? I wondered. Was she one of those “Victory Girls,” who had a thing for servicemen?

“Yes,” she said, as if answering my unspoken question. “I’ve kind of bounced around back and forth from Florida to California, and I met quite a few nice boys both places.”

“California to Florida is quite a commute. Where are you from?”

She sipped her tea, looking out at the Lindy’s clientele, probably seeking celebrity faces. “I’m not really from anywhere.”

“Everybody’s from somewhere. I’d almost swear I heard a little New England in your voice… Or maybe I’m imagining that, ’cause we met at the Boston Oyster House.”

She laughed lightly; I had her attention again. “You are a detective… I grew up in Medford, Massachusetts. But I never really felt like I lived there.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, exactly. For a long time, even in high school days, I wintered someplace warm, because of my health-asthma…”

That explained the cough.

“… and maybe that’s why I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere, except maybe-don’t laugh-Hollywood.”

“I’m not laughing, Beth. You look like a movie star.”

Beaming, she said, “Everybody says I look like-”

“Deanna Durbin.”

“That’s right.” She was obviously proud of that. “And I sing like her, too, only my voice is lower.”

I didn’t suppose it had ever occurred to her that Hollywood already had a Deanna Durbin, name of Deanna Durbin.

Beth was saying, dreamily, “I’ve always known, deep down inside of me, that I was different… special… that I was going to be famous someday.”

How many pretty, ambitious, restless girls had thought that same thing? Every day of every month of every year, buxom babes like Beth left farms and small towns, forsaking family and friends and sweethearts for the lure of bright lights, boarding a bus or hitching, diamonds in their eyes and cardboard suitcases in their hands. It was one of the most standard, enduring, and little-realized American dreams.

And yet I said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you did become famous, Beth. You’re a lovely young woman, with a nice speaking voice, and a refined demeanor.”

“You really think so?”

“I really think so.”

She spent the night with me in my suite at the Morrison. We sat on my couch and talked and talked into the night, and I heard all about her hopes and dreams and enthusiasms. She went on and on about how much she loved music-Benny Goodman, the Andrews Sisters, Kate Smith, Glenn Miller, Jo Stafford, both Bing and Frankie-and when I told her I knew Sinatra personally and that maybe I could introduce her someday, she had given me a great big kiss.

And then we necked, like schoolkids, and for a change I was drunk not with rum but with a girl’s beauty and her perfume and those clear blue-green eyes that you wanted to dive into and splash around. We petted, and I caressed her perfect breasts-they were full and firm and more than a handful-and finally she let me undo the back of her dress and it folded down around her waist like flower petals and her skin was a remarkable alabaster, smooth and flawless, with a beauty mark on one shoulder. I kissed the buds of her breasts and she moaned with pleasure and I kissed them some more, buried my face in their soft firmness, but when my hand, stroking the suppleness of her thighs, tried to edge up between them, she took me by the wrist and drew my hand back, shaking her head, her expression almost sad, as she said, “No, no, not yet, it’s too early,” and I could understand that, since this was only our first night, so when her hand undid my zipper and her head dipped into my lap, that pile of curls bobbing up and down, working expertly, I was stunned, I was shocked, I was delighted…

I saw her three more times. Whether I picked her up at the hotel where she was freeloading off model friends, or simply met her at the Morrison, she would be dolled up in expensive clothes-either that leopard fur coat or a white fur, and black outfits with dark nylons, her white-powdered face glowing angelically in the night, red lips like a lovely scarlet wound-looking like a movie star, not a would-be actress waiting tables. She borrowed money from me every time we were together-as little as twenty, as much as a hundred-but she was not a hooker, at least she didn’t see herself that way, and I refused to see her that way.

We would talk about each other. She described herself as Black Irish-“lace curtain, not shanty!”-and wondered why a man with a Jewish last name looked so Irish, and I explained that my father had been an apostate Jew, a leftist bookseller on the West Side, and my Irish mother, who died when I was born, had given me my red hair and Mick mug. She said she barely knew her father, that he had been an entrepreneur who had had a small chain of miniature golf courses that failed in the early years of the Depression, and disappeared, only to turn up years later in California, where she had tried to get to know him, and failed.

Because she was so soft on servicemen, I found myself telling her how I’d been in the Marines and on Guadalcanal, since after all I had to compete with these kids in uniform she was writing her letters to; and she even wormed it out of me that I’d been awarded a Silver Star-something I never mentioned to anybody; I never talked about the war-but, what the hell, she could know anything, she could take anything, considering what she was giving.

And I told her about Peggy, and she told me about her late fiance, Matt, a major in the Flying Tigers who had been killed on his way home from India, in a plane crash, earlier that year.