Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1940)

men for cocktails. At first Jerry thought it might be a cloak she wore over a broken heart. She searched for some fever in the gaiety, but she couldn't find any. Wanda was the very last word in modern young divorcees. So lovely, like a girl still, yet there was a sort of gay worldliness in her manner, a flavor to her speech, a look of promise in her eyes that a girl wouldn't have. She's happy, Jerry thought, and that's all I want. Jerry was sprawled on her bed with a book one night when Wanda came in hurriedly. "Darling, I'm in such a mess. You'll have to help. His name is Mac — Alan MacNally. I was going dancing with him — he's a sweet kid, really. Who should bob in but David. Imagine. He says we ought to be friends and people wonder why we're never seen anywhere together. He says they think we're old-fashioned. What can I do? But you know how he always behaved about any man I ever spoke to. I told him Mac was your date. Put on something — that white frock with the blue coat — and come down." The place looked just as usual. Three people in the living room. Wanda and the two men. It seemed odd to find David there, in the little house where he had once been master. He looked disagreeable and contemptuous, his eyes on Wanda pretending to be amused, but they weren't really. "Hiya, Dave," Jerry said, trying to be very careless about it. "Glad you're still speaking to me," David said. "I thought maybe you believed your own testimony." "I can believe anything for five minutes at a time," Jerry said. "That beats your sister's record," David said. Wanda threw a slim arm around Jerry's shoulders. "Don't tease the child. You might say hello to Mac, youngster." Her blind date. Jerry turned and faced him and her heart stood still. Just a young man in a tweed suit, not very tall and not handsome. But everything about him was familiar to her, the way his hair grew and the fact that his mouth went up at one corner, and a crooked eyebrow he had, and the smile in his eyes. Of course she knew him. He fitted into the mold her dreams had made and there wasn't a wrinkle. So this is it, she thought. I always wanted to fall in love at first sight and now I've done it. She said, "Hello, Mac, how's everything?" and he said, "Top-hole, Miss Geraldine, and thank you for asking," and they grinned at each other. "Hurry up, you kids," Wanda said, "we're going out on the good barge Corona and gamble. That's David's contribution. No more quiet evenings at home playing Russian bank with DB"d Hollander f31"'" Holland, Jr. "PeW" Oilman £rski<* Brandon *""«"! * FrankBui,er ' * -Frank Fay " ' Jess'ie Ralph ■ ^fOavenpori ' -VonradHagel " ' MteqKuht, 1 0or<% BurgeSS ■ S,,ln'yBlackmer the little woman — one divorce, and I get a break." While they slipped into their coats, Wanda gave her a swift dossier on Mac. "Studying to be a lawyer — goes up for his exams pretty soon, he says. Nice kid. Used to be nuts about me years ago — one of those kid crushes. David got sore, as usual, and I haven't seen him since. He's all right." So Mac had been in love with Wanda. Now that she was free, he had come back. Probably he had never forgotten Wanda. Her charm wasn't easy to forget. If Wanda was his ideal, he wouldn't go for Jerry, because she wasn't glamorous and she didn't have charm, she was just young and clean-cut and as real as sunshine. Sisters under the skin, she thought, but unfortunately, beauty is only skin deep. It was rather fun on the gambling ship. Crowds and music and excitement. All kinds of people, some in evening clothes, some in rather shabby street wear. You could gamble for anything from five cents up. "I," Mac told her, "have exactly five dollars and eighty-five cents, which I had hoped would see me through a simple little evening with Wanda. Up to that limit, I'll stake you." They lost it leisurely at blackjack in a big room where there were hundreds of tables and a red and gold ceiling, and then went out and sat on the deck. He talked about Wanda. "She was my dream girl when I was a callow youth," he said. "I'm about her age, at that, but she was such a knockout. Yep, she was my vote for the No. 1 Glamour Girl." David and Wanda had disappeared, so eventually Jerry and Mac went back in to the tables. Jerry found a dollar in her coat pocket so they played more blackjack. It was late and nobody else was playing; the pale, sour-looking dealer looked sleepy, too. Pretty soon they lost the dollar. "Why don't you kids go home, huh?" the dealer said. "I guess you're not married, huh?" "No," Jerry said, "we're living in sin." "You oughtn't to joke about things like that," the dealer said. "My name's Jeff. I'm married myself. My wife, sings here. But she wants a divorce." "Why don't you give her one?" Jerry said. "If anybody wanted to divorce me, I'd give it to him so fast it'd make his head swim." "Oh, I'll give her a divorce all right," Jeff said. "But I got me a few doughnuts saved up and I'm not going to give her any of them. You got to be careful about divorces, or you wind up paying more of your wife's relatives than Bob Burns has got. Me, I'm going to buy a fishing boat." "Fishing," Mac said, "is something. Gives you time to think." Jeff brightened. "Sure," he said, "and fish can't talk — and they can't sing. Yellowtails running now. Whyn't you come out on my fishing boat some day, see?" Wanda came in at that point, alone. She (Continued on page 76) 29