U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [421]
"I guess you think I'm just a dumb cluck."
"You're a nice boy, Tad, but I like you best when you keep your hands in your pockets."
"Oh, you're marvelous," sighed Tad, looking at her with round eyes from out of his turnedup fuzzy col ar from his own side of the cab. "Just a woman men forget," she said. Having Tad to Sunday dinner got to be a regular
thing. He'd come early to help Agnes lay the table, and take off his coat and rol up his shirtsleeves afterwards to help with the dishes, and then al four of them would play hearts and each drink a glass of beefironandwine tonic from the drugstore. Margo hated those Sunday afternoons but Frank and Agnes seemed to love them, and Tad would stay til the last minute before he had to rush off to meet his father at the Metropolitan Club, saying he'd never had such a good time in his life.
One snowy Sunday afternoon when Margo had slipped
away from the cardtable saying she had a headache and had lain on the bed al afternoon listening to the hissing of the steamheat almost crying from restlessness and bore--259-dom, Agnes said with her eyes shining when she came in in her negligee after Tad was gone, "Margo, you've got to marry him. He's the sweetest boy. He was tel ing us how this place is the first time in his life he's ever had any feeling of home. He's been brought up by servants and ridingmasters and people like that. . . . I never thought a mil ionaire could be such a dear. I just think he's a darling."
"He's no mil ionaire," said Margo, pouting.
"His old man has a seat on the stockexchange," cal ed Frank from the other room. "You don't buy them with cigarstore coupons, do you, dear child?"
"Wel ," said Margo, stretching and yawning, "I cer-tainly wouldn't be getting a spendthrift for a husband.
. . ." Then she sat up and shook her finger at Agnes. "I can tel you right now why he likes to come here Sundays. He gets a free meal and it don't cost him a cent." Jerry Herman, the yel owfaced bald shriveledup little castingdirector, was a man al the girls were scared to death of. When Regina Riggs said she'd seen Margo hav-ing a meal with him at Keene's Chophouse between per-formances, one Saturday, the girls never quit talking about it. It made Margo sore and gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach to hear them giggling and whispering behind her back in the dressingroom.
Regina Riggs, a broadfaced girl from Oklahoma whose real given name was Queenie and who'd been in the Zieg-feld choruses since the days when they had horsecars on Broadway, took Margo's arm when they were going down the stairs side by side after a morning rehearsal. "Look here, kiddo," she said, "I just want to tip you off about that guy, see? You know me, I been through the mil an'
I don't give a hoot in hel for any of 'em . . . but let me tel you somethin'. There never been a girl got a spoken word by givin' that fourflusher a lay. Plenty of 'em have
-260-tried it. Maybe I've tried it myself. You can't beat the game with that guy an' a beautiful white body's about the cheapest thing there is in this town. . . . You got a kinda peart innocent look and I thought I'd put you wise." Margo opened her blue eyes wide.
"Why, the idea.
. . . What made you think I'd . . ." She began to titter like a schoolgirl. "Al right, baby, let it ride. . . . I guess you'l hold out for the weddin'bel s." They both laughed. They were always good friends after that.
But not even Queenie knew about it when after a long wearing rehearsal late one Saturday night of a new num-ber that was coming in the next Monday, Margo found herself stepping into Jerry Herman's roadster. He said he'd drive her home, but when they reached Columbus Circle, he said wouldn't she drive out to his farm in Con-necticut with him and have a real rest. Margo went into a drugstore and phoned Agnes that there'd be rehearsals al day Sunday and that she'd stay down at Queenie Riggs's flat that was nearer the theater. Driving out, Jerry kept asking Margo about herself. "There's something dif-ferent about you, little girl," he said. "I bet you don't tel al you know. . . . You've got mystery."