Nothing but a Smile (3 page)

He could see from the way she talked about the camera shop and pointed out several of the furnishings that had remained in the apartment since back when she'd been a little girl that she
was keeping it all going as much for her father—the original owner—as she was for Chesty. It seemed like something she cared a lot about and was struggling to hold on to.

They were sipping coffee now, and picking at the cannoli crumbs off an old spiderwebbed saucer. He was pretty sure the coffee was actually chicory.

“I'm sorry I can't offer you work here,” she said, completely unprovoked. “But things are just—”

He stopped her before the details, telling her it was no problem, that it wasn't really the sort of work he had in mind, anyway. “Hey, I know next to nothing about cameras and such. I wouldn't mind learning a little something about it someday—might be handy to have in my bag of tricks now that I'm—” He waggled his bum right hand, thinking,
Now that I can't draw a simple bowl of fruit.
“You know … But no. Really. That's fine. I swear I wasn't fishing around for—”

“Oh, I know,” she said. “But I wish we were in a position to.”

He told her he had a whole list of places he hadn't exhausted yet, and then they talked a little of new movies he hadn't even heard of and actresses they both liked until the coffee was gone.

She acted very impressed when he got to the sink before her and started in on the dishes. She didn't stop him but joined him, and they worked on them together. He let her take over the washing and worked the dish towel instead, not explaining why, but, frankly, she didn't appear to have a surplus of unchipped china, and he didn't trust his right hand in the slippery suds as much as he did drying.

She went over and turned on the radio, and he didn't realize he was whistling along to “Paper Doll” until she joined in as well. It stopped him up short, and she laughed at him.

“Pardon me,” he said. He'd sort of forgotten where he was, for a moment.

“No pardons necessary for a man who does dishes. If you're staying put for a while, Wink, I'm sure I have a friend or two you could ask out on a date.”

He told her that staying depended on the job prospects. “Otherwise, it's me for Michigan.”

When she asked where he was looking, he showed her the list in his pocket, the contacts he had left. It looked sort of pathetic, he thought, with the four so far crossed off.

She pointed to one still left—LD&M. Lampe, Deininger & Monroe. “One of these single friends I'm thinking of, actually, she works there now.”

He asked what she did there.

“I'm not sure. But look out for her. Her name's Reenie.”

He said he would, but it was just an interview and it was a big company with a lot of employees, so …

“You can't miss her,” she said. “She looks like a pinup.”

Downstairs, saying his thank-yous, standing by as she unlocked the shop door to let him out, he felt, if he were to be honest about it, he hadn't quite completed the assignment. He hadn't said exactly what Chesty had told him to say, and who was he to decide if the wording mattered or didn't? Maybe it mattered. Say Chesty never made it back to say everything he wanted to say— if that happened, Wink knew he'd likely kick himself a little for not being more of a stickler about the thing. More
verbatim.

Besides, the idea of relaying the mush now felt just a hair more comfortable than it did a few hours back, when he was facing this woman for the first time. It felt like he knew her a hell of a lot better now. He could do this.

Despite that, preparing himself to say it, standing in the open front door, he chuckled a little. Even being just the messenger,
he felt sheepish and tongue-tied. He turned to look down the street, in the direction of his hotel. He'd forgotten how desolate the Loop got at night, and it seemed even more so now, with all the rationing and belt tightening. “It feels a little personal to be slinging this around, but anyway, Chesty wanted me to tell you that he really … uh,
loves
you … Present tense!” It made him chuckle again. “There you go! And I'm to make it real clear he's being … true—you know—uh, faithful …” He caught her eye now, looking up at him seriously in the dim shadows of the streetlights. She wasn't chuckling. “But anyway, I'm sure you know all that, ma'am. Goes without saying.” He could picture his friend's face, the last time he saw him, and it didn't take any flashing of wallet photos to see how much the guy missed her, and it was hard not to think of that, of what his friend would give to be standing there in his place in this dim doorway, in the glow of his home and his wife, without getting a little choked up himself. “And I knew it, too,” he said. “Obvious to anyone who knew him—
knows
him, I mean, present tense—for even five minutes, him always keeping it in his … Anyway, it's true.” Finally, she said, “Truer than the coconut story?” He felt his ears heating up, but he knew she knew he was giving her the straight dope. “Absolutely.”

All the next morning, she never heard the bell jangle once. Which wasn't all bad—she had plenty to distract her without the public wandering in to buy very little or just look. And at least this one morning she had things on her mind to fill these restless, panicky hours in which the store was officially open but usually
vacant. She had those new ideas she'd dreamed up for homier, girl-at-home girlie shots, and she hoped to get them down on paper somehow by the end of the day. Maybe this time she wouldn't bother shooting them just yet, but she'd thought she was on to something with this angle last night—the young lady in the kitchen—and it would be smart to jot them down in some manner.

Before she could get to that, though, she had the past evening's wonderful visit to recount, as best as she could piece it together, most of which was going directly into a long letter to Chesty that she'd started right after her chicory and toast. Maybe it was silly, retelling every little thing his friend had told her, since most of it Chesty probably had already heard before, and much of it he'd actually participated in himself, but she wanted him to know just how much it had meant that he'd sent this man to check in on her and, in a sort of indirect, intermediary way, call on her and share a little slice of his life there. It was romantic of Chesty, in a way, reaching out to her by proxy from across the globe.

She got so caught up in getting it all down, she started to thank him for the coconut before she had to scratch it out, forgetting for a moment that there wasn't actually a coconut, and even if there had been, it hadn't originated with her husband, but with his friend.

Plus, she had an idea to propose:

She decided it would be best not to upset him with two additional points: her last restocking order for some of the darkroom chemicals had been refused for a past-due back payment. Which was fine—a minor setback. And anyway, they were all set on developer, just running a little low on fix. Not that they were developing enough film these days to make the shortage an imminent crisis, exactly—that was the crux of the problem, after all: lack of customers—but if she had to dilute it much more, the quality would begin to suffer, and besides, it just felt unprofessional, running low on something so basic. Not to mention the fact that it made the shop look bad to the chemical company, an outfit that had been supplying her pop for two decades and with whom, until now, they had yet to welsh on a tab.

The second factor driving her to consider renting to Wink was the break-ins. As unpatriotic as it struck her, it being wartime and all, there'd lately been a rash of petty robberies in the neighborhood. It was probably juveniles—too young for the draft, too unsupervised with all the men away. She'd even felt nervous a few times walking home alone from the movies. Most of the other shops were dark at night, and there were sometimes groups of young boys sniffing around in the shadows, probably mostly trying to act tough to one another, having their jokes, but you never knew. It felt threatening, and the emptiness of her pocketbook was no safeguard. It was enough to keep her moving, glancing over her shoulder, and some nights, even with the doors locked and the windows grated, it got pretty spooky up above the shop. Every little sound, all the way down Adams—a distant trash can rolling or the tinkle of glass—could sometimes jangle her nerves, make her go for the radio and crank it up, let them know there were folks,
plural,
living there.

She didn't write Chesty about this second concern, either. There was no sense giving him the Tokyo Rose treatment, getting
him worked up. But it
was
further reason to consider this idea of renting to Wink.

The biggest argument against it, of course, would be how it might look. As desolate as it seemed some nights, she still knew a few other people on the block—not only fellow shopkeepers but also several dear old busybodies living a few doors down, in particular, Mrs. Brablec and Mrs. Mulopulos, and she expected they'd get a lot of mileage out of a tall handsome mystery man coming and going as if he lived there, using his very own key at the door of the shop, pocketing it, and whistling on his way to work, bold as can be. They'd sprain their tongues.

One solution, of course, was to put out a sign in the window that said
ROOM FOR RENT,
let them get the idea ahead of time that she didn't have a boyfriend or anything like that. No, better still:
APARTMENT FOR RENT.
Sure. Make it clear it was a whole separate living area.

She'd do that for a week or so—hang it out there and sort of let the concept sink in. Also, she could give him a key to the back, so it would appear even more separate. Even folks working and living right on the block probably didn't know the upstairs apartments were only divided by a hallway. They might assume it was completely separate and walled off, with its own rear stairway and everything.
That
would certainly be upstanding and proper enough, if it were true.

The only other flaw in the idea would be Wink himself. He might not want to rent the apartment, even if it was at a cut-rate price. Maybe he hadn't really enjoyed talking to her that much. Maybe his visit had been entirely out of obligation—a chore to check off the list, done only out of respect for his pal Chesty— and he would rather find a place more exciting, where the action was. Maybe a place with a lot of other veterans as tenants, where you could get a poker game going at all hours or toss around a
medicine ball in your undershirt. A place where unmarried, available women might be living next door, not some boring married lady.

And, of course, she needed to get her husband's okay.

The sun was setting on the war-bonds billboard—setting, too, on another day of dismal luck. An orangey glow washed across the sign and the oily-looking rooftop supporting it and the El track just beyond where a train was whisking all of those employed Chicagoans away from the Loop, home to their dinners and loved ones after a job well done.

The coy squint and chipper, toothy grin on the beaming, painted majorette, dressed up like Uncle Sam, seemed precisely calculated to make her just slightly naughty, implying she just might be a “victory girl,” one of those notorious stateside gals who felt it was her patriotic duty to sleep with any red-blooded serviceman, whether just returned home or about to ship out.

Sure, her legs were bare, but for a legitimate reason: she was no doubt leading a war-bonds parade. And the striped stovepipe hat was tipped over one eye only because it was too large, not to be sexy, and the hand cocked on her hip was standard to twirlers and marchers, not a streetwalker stance, a come-on. But that wide, wet smile—brother, better look twice!
That
made his pecker jump, despite his glum state. Which meant the artwork was doing its job—hats off to the illustrator and art director!

Lucky employed bastards …

His list of prospective contacts had dwindled even faster than his meager savings (nine dollars and seventy cents). He'd crossed
the last off his list today, with nothing more promising than a lot of hearty thumps on the back and words of admiration for the work in his portfolio he could no longer duplicate and the standard
welcome home, soldier!
guff. One creative director he met with, Rollo Deininger, did say that there was a
chance
he could start him off managing the in-house production studio at LD&M, and then see if he could eventually work his way up into an art director position—if Wink weren't able to eventually return to his real calling, illustration work. Production studio manager wouldn't be a great job—not much better than the near possibility of the day before at that other agency, stock boy for the art supplies. It would be a hell of a step down, in terms of pay and prestige. He'd essentially be gluing campaign comps onto presentation board and constructing one-off in-store stand-up displays and that sort of thing, along with overseeing a crew of the ad world's truly underpaid—art students and interns—as they put together all the layouts and did all the grunt work to make the creative teams look good when they pitched a client. What was worse, Deininger wasn't even actually offering him the job yet, just informing him that it
might
be a possibility.

Great to know,
he thought.
So might the end of the war and my marriage to Betty Grable and the return of full function to my drawing hand—all possibilities …

On that score, Deininger had come right out and asked. He seemed like a blunt man, but Wink understood the need to know.

He assured him the lame hand would present no problem in the event of either job becoming available—art director or production studio manager. The truth was, he could work an X-Acto knife and bottle of mucilage and boss around the production kids even if he had a hook for a hand. Art director, he was less sure of—it would be hard to entirely avoid drawing with that one.