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

Marie began to weep and said she wasn’t going back to be drowned like a rat.

“You’re not, eh?” said Georgia, narrowing her eyes. “You’re discharged. Get out of this boat.”

By three the following afternoon Georgia had found out she was a widow. She took it greatly to heart. “Poor Jordan!” she said. “What will become of the peanut industry now?”

The peanut industry, however, did very nicely. In fact it flourished exceedingly, so that by the time Jicky was ready to come out into the world she needed a rake in each hand to tidy up the dollars that came fluttering down about her like green and yellow leaves.

Jicky was the daughter. Homely mothers frequently have beautiful children, but it also works the other way around. Georgia’s mother before her had been undoubtedly attractive, even with all the obstacles of apparel that had to be overcome in her day. But when it came to Jicky, the beauty in the family seemed to have run out. Georgia had eyes that were mixed with star dust. Jicky wore convex lenses in front of hers. Georgia could make her hands talk. Jicky could make hers drop things at critical moments. Georgia could wear a twenty-dollar gown and make it look mysterious. Jicky could wear a two-hundred dollar one and make it look terrible. Georgia could make the traffic part in the middle to let her through, like the Red Sea. Whereas taxi drivers had been known to foist their cabs upon the sidewalk in their efforts to run Jicky down. Georgia walked like a dream, like a lotus borne upon a sacred pool. Jicky walked into things.

Everything Georgia did was done right. If she stroked a dog, the dog stayed stroked for the rest of the day. No one else could do it as gracefully, as full of charming little nuances. If she poured coffee, you asked for a second cup just to see her pour it over again. If she played cards, you forgot your game, so absorbed were you in the delicate shivery way she shuffled.

Jicky? Jicky spilled them all over the floor and dealt them face up. And once, mind you, once, Jicky had been known to trump her partner’s ace. She tried to explain later that was all she held in her hand. It was no use though; appearances were against her, and the legend went all over the country club.

Now at about this time there appeared on the scene Scotty Tryon, about twenty-nine or thirty and untroubled as yet by poor digestion or feminine attachment. Jicky met him out at the club one day when a long distance telephone call had broken up a game of doubles. When first seen he was wearing a gray flannel shirt with a package of cigarettes squaring the pocket and a web belt that went up on one side and down on the other. The web belt decided her. A man who didn’t worry about the hang of his trousers ought to play a good game. She pressed him into service.

If there was one thing Jicky was good at, it was tennis. I mean, she had nothing to lose by acting in front of the net like a dervish out on a spree. Perspiration or rumpled hair didn’t count with her. And when you have nothing to lose, why hold back? She didn’t. Consequently, when she smacked the ball, it took your mind off a great many things at once. She looked better in flat shoes than she did on high heels anyway, and the green shade over her eyes did a lot for her face.

Her game took his breath away. Later he asked someone who she was.

“That? Oh, that was Jicky Jordan. Her pillow’s stuffed with goldbacks at night. She’s supposed to be a man hater. It oughtn’t to be hard with a face like hers.”

“I wouldn’t say things like that if I were you,” Scotty remonstrated, creasing his forehead. “Isn’t called for, you know.” Thinking how she played, for a girl.

They had an appointment to play again the next day, and the next after that, and so on through the weeks. They were really the best foils for each other either one had yet encountered, and in athletics admiration is the closest thing there is to love. Then too, they had begun on a rock-bottom basis. She had never seen him when his shirt wasn’t plastered to his back, and he had never seen her when her hair wasn’t flying in all directions and her toes curved out. She became vain of her very untidiness, clung to it as a token of her sexlessness. She would run her fingers through her hair and purposely tousle it before coming out of the locker room to meet him in the mornings. She could no more picture him with a collar and tie on than he could imagine her with lipstick and face powder. This was ideal but it couldn’t go on forever, naturally.

She had him up to the house one day to show him her collection of rackets, which they handled and discussed avidly over two tall glasses of iced tea out on the veranda.

“Coming out to the club dance tomorrow night?” he asked offhand.

“I believe I’d like to,” she said without a moment’s hesitation.

He bit his lip and looked off in another direction. “Suppose I call for you at nine,” he said, seeing there was no help for it.

“Fine,” she answered, and turned around and ran into the house as though she were afraid he’d change his mind if she stayed out there too long with him.

There was a noticeably dejected air about him as he got back into his car and slumped down until his chin met the wheel.

The girl who is sure of herself is always late. The girl who isn’t gets ready too soon. Jicky was ready to go to the dance from eight-thirty on and knew every square inch of the mirror by heart. Six hundred dollars wouldn’t have bought the silver slip she had on with a solitary orange poppy over one hip. And she never wore the same dress twice. Her stockings were so spidery you had to look again to be sure she had any on. But she wore her glasses.

When she came downstairs at two minutes past nine without having been called, she found him standing there talking to someone. He had come without a hat apparently, but he had the collar of his coat turned back in the approved manner. She passed him her shawl and he draped it lightly around her.

“Don’t catch cold, dear,” her aunt said. “Be sure to put your shawl over you if you go outside between times.”

Jicky smiled ruefully. A wallflower formerly had been a girl who couldn’t get partners to dance with. Nowadays the wallflower was the girl who danced every dance and was never coaxed outside for a while in the moonlight.

The club, seen through the trees, was like a grotto of fireflies, and long rows of cars were drawn up outside. The moon was the color of champagne and from the gauzy clubhouse came music of Show Boat and Good News like the patter of furtive raindrops on a sheet of tin.

Inside they separated, she to seclude herself in a room already sugary with cologne and sachet odors. Other girls were there, reddening their lips, fumbling with the hems of their skirts. When they saw the silver lace on Jicky, they sighed enviously and gave one another looks. She took her glasses off and wrapped them in her shawl although everything looked blurred to her. She knew she was taking a chance. She might go up to the wrong starched shirt outside the door. That was what reading hundreds of books in sunlight and firelight and lamplight when you were twelve and thirteen did for you. As she stepped outside into the glare and excitement, she had a feeling she was dowdy, even though she knew her dress to be an original and her heels were as tall as an infanta’s. Some girls could take a piano cover and a rhinestone shoe buckle and get better results.

Not knowing her and not knowing the club, one might have mistaken Jicky for someone immensely popular, the way the young men gathered around her. True, she knew everyone. But it was only a synthetic popularity as far as Jicky was concerned, and no one realized it better than she herself. They knew they would have to dance with her sooner or later in the course of the evening, and the trick lay in getting it over with as soon as possible. Afterwards, when the center of gravity shifted to the cars outside, she would be left high and dry on the dance floor. She could distinctly recall having been left behind in places where the only other living beings were the musicians and possibly the caterers.