Torchy and Vee
bored, or pat her hair or polish her nails while you're waitin' to think
of the right word. She don't seem to demand the usual chat or fish for
an openin' to confide what a swell time she had last night. In fact, she
don't make any remarks at all outside of the job in hand, which is some
relief when you're scratchin' your head to think what to tell the
assistant Western manager about renewin' them dockage contracts.
Yet she ain't one of the scared-mouse kind. She looks you square in the
eye when there's any call for it and she don't mumble her remarks when
she has something to say. Not Miss Joyce. Her words come out clear and
crisp, with a slight roll to the r's and all the final letters sounded,
like she'd been taking elocution or something.
In the course of five or six weeks she has shed the blue tam for a neat
little hat and has ditched the puckered seam effect dress for a black
office costume with white collar and cuffs. She still sticks to partin'
her hair in the middle and drawin' it back smooth with no ear tabs or
waves to it. So she does look some old-fashioned.
That was why I'm kind of surprised to notice this Lester Biggs begin
hoverin' around her at lunch time and toward the closin' hour. She ain't
the type Lester usually picks out to roll his eyes at. Not in the least.
For of all them young hicks in the bond room I expect Lester is about
the most ambitious would-be sport we've got.
You see, I've known Lester Biggs more or less for quite some time. He
started favorin' the Corrugated with his services back in the days when
I was still on the gate and rated myself the highest paid and easiest
worked office boy between Greeley Square and Forty-second Street. And
all the good I ever discovered about him wouldn't take me long to tell.
As for the other side of the case--Well, I ain't much on office scandal,
but I will say that it always struck me Lester had the kind of a mind
that needed chloride of lime on it. I never saw the time when he wasn't
stretchin' his neck after some flossy typist or other, and as sure as a
new one with the least hint of hair bleach showed up it would mean
another affair for Lester. Maybe you know the kind.
And he sure dressed the part, on and off. The Tin-Horn Sport Cut clothes
that you see advertised so wide must be made and designed 'special for
Lester. I remember he sprung the first pinch-back coat that came into
the office. Same way with the slit pockets, the belted vest and other
cute little innovations that the Times Square chicken hounds drape
themselves in.
I wouldn't quite say that he'd pass for the perfect male, either. Not
unless you count the bat ears, face pimples, turkey neck and the cast in
one eye as points of beauty. But that don't seem to bother Lester in the
least. He knows he has a way with him. His reg'lar openin' is "Hello,
Girlie, what you got on the event card for tonight?" and from that to
makin' a date at Zinsheimer's dance hall is just a step. Oh, yes, Lester
is some gay bird, if you want to call it that.
And all on twenty a week. So of course that interferes some with his
great ambition. He used to tell me about it back in the old days when I
was on the gate and hadn't sized him up accurate. Chorus girls! If he
could only get to know some squab pippin from the Winter Garden or the
Follies that would be all he'd ask. He would pick out his favorite from
the new musical shows, lug around half-tone pictures of 'em cut from
newspapers, and try to throw the bluff that he expected to meet 'em
early next week; but as we all knew he never got nearer than the second
balcony he never got away with the stuff.
"Suppose by some miracle you did, Lester?" I'd ask him. "What then?
Would you blow her to a bowl of chow mein at some chop suey joint, or
could you get by with a nut sundae at a cut-rate drug store? And suppose
some curb broker was waitin' to take her out to Heather Blossom Inn?
You'd put up a hot competition, you would, with nothing but the change
from a five left in your jeans."
"Ah, just leave that to me, old son," he'd say, winkin' devilish.
And the one time when he did pull it off I happened to hear about. A
friend of his who was usher at the old Hippodrome offered to tow him to
a little Sunday night supper at the flat of one of the chorus ladies.
Lester went, too, and found a giddy thing of about forty fryin' onions
for a fam'ly of five, includin' three half-grown kids and a
scene-shiftin' hubby.
That blow seems to discourage Lester for a week or so, since which he
has run true to form. He'll run around with lady typists, or girls from
the cloak department, or most anything that wears skirts, until they
discover what a tight-wad he is and give him the shunt. But his great
aim in life is to acquire a lady-friend that he can point out in the
second row and hang around for at the stage door about midnight.
So when I sees him flutterin' about Miss Joyce, and her making motions
like she was fallin' for him, I didn't quite know what to make of it.
Course, now that she's bucked up a bit on her costume she is more or
less easy to look at. For a little thing, almost a half portion, as you
might put it, she has quite a figure, slim and graceful. And them pansy
brown eyes can light up sort of fascinatin', I expect. And being so
fresh from the country I suppose she can't dope out what a cheap shimmy
lizard Lester is. It's a wonder some of the other typists hadn't put her
wise. They're usually good at that. But it looks like they'd missed a
trick in her case, for one noon I overhears Lester datin' her up for an
evenin' at Zinsheimer's. And when he drifts along I can't resist
throwin' out a hint, on my own account.
"With Lester, eh?" says I, humpin' my eyebrows.
"Oh, I know," says Miss Joyce. "But I do love to dance and I--I've been
rather lonely, you see."
I saw. And of course after that there was nothing more to say. She
didn't tell me as much, but I understand that it got to be a regular
thing. You could tell that by the intimate way Lester tips her the wink
as he swaggers by. He didn't take any pains to hide it, or to lower his
voice when he remarks, "Well, kiddo, see you at eight thirt., eh?"
As long as she kept her work up to the mark, which she does, it wasn't
any funeral of mine. I never have yearned to be a volunteer chaperon.
But I was kind of sorry for little Miss Joyce. I expect I said something
of the kind to Vee, and she was all for having Mr. Piddie give her a
good talking to.
"No use," says I. "Piddie wouldn't know how. All he can do is hire 'em
and fire 'em, and even that's turnin' his hair gray. It'll all work out
one way or another, I expect."
It does, too. But not exactly along the lines I was looking for it to
develop. First off, Lester quits the Corrugated. As he'd been on the
same job for more'n six years, and gettin' worse at it right along, the
blow didn't quite put us out of business. We're still staggerin' ahead.
"What's the scheme, Lester?" says I. "Beatin' the office manager to
it?"
"Huh!" says Lester. "I've been plannin' to make a shift for more'n a
year. Just waitin' for the right openin'. I got it now."
"The Morgan people sent for you, did they?" says I.
"They might have, at that," says Lester, "only I'm through bein' an
office slave for anybody. I'm goin' in with some live wires this time,
where I'll have a chance."
But it turns out that he's been taken on as a sidewalk man by a pair of
ticket speculators--Izzy Goldman and his pal, who used to run the cigar
stand down in the arcade. They handled any kind of pasteboards, from
grandstand parade tickets to orchestra seats.
"Yes," says I, "that'll be a great career. Almost in the theatrical
game, eh? You'll be knowin' all the pippins now, I expect."
"Watch me," says Lester.
Well, I didn't strain my eyes. I'd have been just as pleased to know
that Lester was going to slip out of my young life forever and to forget
him complete within the next two days. Only I couldn't. There was Miss
Joyce to remind me. Not that she says a word. She ain't the chatty,
confidential kind. But it was natural for me to wonder now and then if
they was still as chummy as at the start.
He'd been away a month or more I expect, before either of us passed his
name, and then it came out accidental. I starts dictatin' a letter to a
firm in St. Louis, Lester & Riggs. The name sort of startles Miss Joyce.
"I beg pardon?" says she, her pencil poised over the pad.
"No, not Lester Biggs," says I. "By the way, how is he these days?"
"I'm sure I don't know," says she. "I--I haven't seen him for weeks."
"Oh!" says I. "Kind of thought you'd be droppin' him down the coal shute
or something."
She shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head. "It was he who dropped
me," says she. "Flat."
"Considerin' Lester," says I, "that's more or less of a compliment."
"I am not so sure of that," says Miss Joyce. "You see, he was quite
frank about it. He--he said I had no style or zipp about me. Well, I'm
afraid it's true."
"Even so," says I, "it was sweet of him to throw it at you, wasn't it?"
She indulges in a sketchy, quizzin' smile. "I think some of the girls at
Zinsheimer's had been teasing him about me," she goes on. "They called
me 'the poor little working girl,' I believe. I've no doubt I looked it.
But I haven't been able to spend much for clothes--as yet."
"Of course," says I, throwin' up a picture of an invalid mother and a
coon-huntin' father back in the alfalfa somewhere. "And so far you
ain't missed much by not havin' 'em. I should put Lester's loss down on
the credit side if I was makin' the entry."
"He could dance, though," says Miss Joyce, as she gets busy with her
pencil again.
Then a few weeks later I was handed my big jolt. We was gettin' out a
special report for the directors' meetin' one day after lunch when right
in the middle of a table of costs Miss Joyce glances anxious at the
clock and drops her note book.
"I'm so sorry," says she, "but couldn't we finish this tomorrow
morning?"
"Why, I suppose we might," says I, "if it's anything important."
"It is," says she. "If I'm not there by 3 o'clock the stage manager will
not see me at all, and I do so want to land an engagement this time."
"Eh?" says I gawpin'. "Stage manager! You?"
"Why, yes," says she. "You see, I tried once before. I was almost taken
on, too. They liked my voice, they said, but I wasn't up on my dancing.
So I've been taking lessons of a ballet master. Frightfully expensive.
That's where all my money has gone. But I think they'll give me a chance
this time. It's for the chorus of that new 'Tut! Tut! Marie' thing, you
know, and they've advertised for fifty girls."
I suppose I must have let loose a gasp. This meek, modest young thing,
who looked like she wouldn't know a lip-stick from a boiled carrot,
plannin' cold-blooded to throw up a nice respectable job and enter
herself in the squab market! Why, I wouldn't have been jarred more if
Piddie had announced that next season he was going to do bareback ridin'
for some circus.
"Excuse me, Miss Joyce," says I, "but I wouldn't say you was just the
kind they'd take on."
"Oh, they take all kinds," says she.
"Better brace yourself for a turndown, though," says I, "I see it coming
to you. You ain't the type at all."
"Perhaps you don't know," says she, trippin' off to get her hat.
Ever see one of them mobs that turns out when there's a call for a new
chorus? I've had to push my way through 'em once or twice up in some of
them office buildings along the Rialto, and believe me, it's a weird
collection; all sorts, from wispy little flappers who should be in
grammar school still, to hard-faced old battle axes who used to travel
with Nat Goodwin. So I couldn't figure little Miss Joyce gettin'