Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

There was a warning knock on the door. “Curtain goes up in five more minutes.” Mimi quickly wheeled round and began rouging her cheeks with a rabbit’s paw. But she was still smiling at the huge joke.

At the end of the one week stand Wally was walking on air and living up in the clouds. But Mimi was all packed and ready to leave with the rest of the company. He was sitting out front again the night of the farewell performance — he had seen the show every night that week — and as the house lights went on, he edged his way out through a side door and around to the stage entrance. Backstage everything was in an uproar: sets being taken down and moved about, people getting in each other’s way, stagehands in overalls rubbing shoulders with girls in gorgeous evening gowns. He found Mimi’s door and knocked.

“Hello?” she called out. “What do you want?”

“It’s me, Mimi.”

There was a slight hesitation in her voice as she answered. “I’m busy right now. Can you wait?”

He noticed the drop in her voice. He opened the door and went ahead in.

She was in a tailored traveling suit with a red patent leather belt which made her look about fifteen. Her baggage was piled in a heap in the center of the room, and she was sweeping things from the dressing table into the last open suitcase.

“Didn’t you hear me tell you I was busy?” she said angrily. “What’s the grand idea? What do you take this place for, a corner drug store?”

“I’ve got to talk to you,” he said.

“Haven’t got time to talk.”

“I thought you were coming up to the Rainbow with me. It’s Saturday night.”

“I wouldn’t care if it was Christmas Eve. I’ve got to make that train.” She saw the look on his face and it softened her for a moment. “What’s the matter with you, cakie? You knew this was a one-week stand all along. We’re due to open Monday night—” And now the castle of dreams really came tumbling down, with a terrible crash that no one could hear but himself. He stood there dazed while a couple of stagehands came in and carried her baggage outside for her.

“Get a taxi if you want to take me to the train,” she said shortly. Her one moment of sentiment was over and gone.

They got into the taxi and drove to the railroad station. He looked out of one window and she looked out of the other. Neither of them spoke. When she was comfortably installed in the Pullman, she took off her hat and straightened her hair without paying any attention to him.

“Stay over just one more day—” he pleaded.

“My reservation’s paid for.”

“I haven’t told you, but can’t you guess why — why I hate to see you go?” he faltered.

“Sure I can guess,” she said confidently. “You’re keen on me, is that it?”

“That doesn’t begin to describe it. All my life I... waited... wanted... dreamed... about someone... like you are... Oh, if you’d only let yourself be the way you seemed to be the first night I saw you!”

“That’s sweet and pretty,” she told him, “but what good does it do to think about things like that? Castles in the air never did anybody any good — not so you could notice it.” She patted his hand. “There goes the whistle, sugar. The best thing for you to do is go back and dance it off.”

Outside on the platform the conductor was swinging a green lantern back and forth. “All aboard!” he wailed dolefully. “All aboard!”

“Kiss me good-bye,” exclaimed Mimi, “and forget all about me.”

Their lips met for the first and last time. The cars started to move. “I’ll go with you!” he cried, swept by a wild momentary impulse.

“What? And me lose my job?” answered the prevaricating Mimi. “I should say not. Jump or you’ll never make it!”

He ran to the lower end of the car and swung clear of the steps. The sound of his voice came trailing back to her: “’Bye, Mimi.” She pressed her face against the window pane, but it was too dark outside to make out anything. She gave a little sigh.

He picked himself up and watched the red tail-light on the rear car grow smaller and smaller until finally it disappeared altogether. Mimi was gone and he would never see her again. He dusted himself off and went back to his room.

But when he opened the door to the “budwa,” he found Connie sitting there reading a magazine.

“How did you get in here?” he asked listlessly.

She looked up. “Did you see your friend off?” she wanted to know innocently.

“Yes,” he said, “she’s gone away. Let her go.”

“I been waiting for you to come back,” Connie said. “There’s going to be a big masquerade at the Rainbow next Sa’ddy night. They’re going to give prizes for the best costume. How about us going?”

He didn’t answer. For a long time he stood looking down at her as if there were something about her he’d never realized before.

“Cake,” she said, “are you angry at me?”

“No,” he said. “Something’s just come over me. I didn’t see how I was going to stand it... I thought it was going to be lonely... I thought it would kill me.”

“Sure, honey,” she said gently. “I know how those things are. I have it myself—”

Suddenly he sank down alongside her and buried his head in her arms. “But it was you all the time, Connie. It was you all the time.”

She caressed his hair with the tips of her fingers.

“Cake,” she murmured.

“Connie,” he said softly. “Dreams do come true... sometimes.”

In the days when the two-step was tottering upon its throne and weird mulatto dances were creeping out of the Brazils to replace it, she and her partner had won fame as ballroom artists. London knew them, and Paris, and the old lobster belt, reaching in those days to Churchill’s at Forty-ninth. She was a child of seventeen then, very tall, a little too thin, wore low-heeled shoes and short skirts before their time. He was a man in his middle forties, much divorced, a little made up around the eyes. Together they rose like rockets and went out in mid-air. Paris and London had stopped dancing; they had no time any more.

Georgia, her career cut short, had turned around and married, married well. She had literally made herself a bed of golden dollars and intended to abide by it. The man of her choice was Jordan, who had made a fortune out of peanut brittle simply by removing the shells from the peanuts before they went into the brittle. What he did with the shells after they were removed was never made clear. Georgia used to say he stuffed mattresses with them.

She let her hair grow and amazed the world that had copied her dancing by having a little girl. Going over to add to her collection of chiffon stockings and perfumery, the ship was torpedoed a little after daybreak one morning, and Georgia woke up to find a thin layer of water spread over the carpet of her stateroom. She quickly drew on a crepe de chine negligee, then changed it for a black dinner dress, determined to look her best. The skirt of this was too long, though, and she finally discarded it in favor of an orange tailor-made suit, just the thing for shipwrecks. Then she called the maid, who slept in the next room, and they hobbled out on deck like frightened deer. The moment they were in the open a whole assortment of the ship’s officers lifted Georgia bodily in their arms and put her into a lifeboat. The maid was doing her best to climb in after her when Georgia tearfully commanded: “Go back and wake my husband, Marie.” Then she added in an undertone, “And for heaven’s sake, see if you can’t get hold of some face powder for me. It’s sinful, with all these people around.”