I gasped. “You didn’t overdo it, did you?”
“I don’t think so. Tomorrow will tell.”
I got him a small corner table not far from the dance floor at the Staccato. The place would have given anyone snow blindness, but I knew that it would fill up later on. I had time to sit and have a drink with Kim. Sam Lescott came over. Sam is a balding man in his late fifties with the energy of a man half his age. His features are somewhat marred from the old days when he did a bit of prize fighting in the ring.
“Sit down, Sam,” I said. “Meet Kim Hale.”
They shook hands. Sam sighed and sat down. He waved a hand at the empty tables.
“Look at the place!” he exclaimed. “Without you, honey, it would look that way all night. Take care of yourself. You’re money in the bank for tired old Sammy.”
I saw Kim’s hand tighten on the tabletop. He asked in an easy tone, “I suppose some of your competition would like to see Laura Lynn booked for a hospital instead of the Staccato?”
“They wouldn’t cry none if she broke a couple legs.”
“Is there anybody in particular, Sam, who’d like to see you have trouble making ends meet?” Kim asked. I kicked him under the table.
Sam gave him an odd expressionless stare. “If you’re asking if I got enemies, sure. All kidding aside, I just talk like this to make Hank feel good. She’s a top star. But there’s other toppers, friend. She gets sick and I get somebody else. In this business you got to give the customers top entertainment.”
Kim smiled easily. “And you certainly know how to do it.”
“I been doing it long enough, Mr. Hale.” Sam stood up. “See you around,” he said and wandered off.
Betty was waiting for me up in the dressing room. With our usual struggle we managed to get the Ryan figure into the silver gown. The top of the dress doesn’t start until it gets way down to here. And I mean way down. Sammy says half the customers come back time after time to see if I’ll ever get the hiccups. The rest of the dress fits in such a way that if I ever get a mosquito bite on one hip, it won’t be possible to zip it up the side.
I sat and smoked and listened to Sonny’s boys ride through the numbers, then the drum roll, the announcement, and I stubbed out the cigarette, went down the stairs and out across the floor, the spot picking me up at the doorway and taking me on out to the mike. Even after all these years, it’s hard to remember not to squint into the glare of it. Some juvenile yowled like a wolf, but I kept my smile on and gave them “Old Fashioned Love” in that voice that Downbeat calls “low down and dirty.”
I gave them a current one, then another oldie and when they clapped long enough, another current one. The spot carried me back to the door, then shifted to Sonny. I threaded my way between the tables and Kim saw me coming. He jumped up and held my chair.
After Sonny finished his special number, the lights came up a little. I could see that Kim was uncomfortable. He wanted to look at me, and yet my show dress was so extreme that he was shy about it. He jingled change, fiddled with his glass and kept tugging at his necktie.
When the break came, I caught Sonny’s eye and motioned him over. Kim stood up and I introduced them. Sonny sat down. He is aging and has been aging since 1901. But he fights bravely against it. The black wavy hair and the teeth are detachable. He is fabulously beaten on the massage table to keep the waistline down. He eats bland foods, doesn’t smoke or drink, gets all the sleep he can and exercises most religiously.
Sam says that for all practical purposes, Sonny Rice died in 1931, and the current walking corpse is the result of pure will power. From forty feet away, Sonny looks twenty-three. From twenty feet away he looks thirty-two. From six feet away he looks fifty. From three feet away he looks as though he had been taken out of one of those Egyptian mummy boxes and reactivated.
Most women get to see Sonny from forty feet away. His voice is quick, light and gay — with something in it like the voice of a woman who is laughing while clutching a sodden handkerchief and mopping at her eyes.
“How do you like the show?” he asked eagerly.
“Your music is splendid!” Kim said gravely. “Youthful.”
Sonny couldn’t have been more touched. “Youthful,” was, to Sonny, the peak accolade.
“We work hard,” Sonny said joyously.
“Your music brings out the best qualities in Hank’s voice,” Kim said.
He was heaping it on so thick that even Sonny could afford to be generous. Sonny beamed at me.
“Why, I don’t know what we’d do without Hank,” he said. “She’s tops.” He patted my hand. It was like the touch of a dry old lizard.
Donald Frees came in between shows, a few moments before Sonny left our table. As I told Kim, Frees is working up to be a playboy. His bland, moon-like face expresses nothing but fatuous self satisfaction. His pink hands are always faintly wrinkled as though he had just stepped out of a long, hot tub. He is about thirty, I think, but by reason of his weight he has jowls, which make him look older.
At the age of twenty-five, Donald became heir to a life income of at least a hundred thousand a year after taxes. But he doesn’t fit properly into the role of playboy, for he worked for five years after college and got into the habit of it and feels remotely guilty about the whole thing.
He motioned to me to come over to his table and since I resent being summoned like the cigarette girl, I ignored him. Several minutes later he lumbered over, smelling of soap, hair tonic, shaving lotion, a pine and leather scent, shoe polish, deodorant and fine Scotch. Kim stiffened a little and I sensed the instantaneous dislike.
I introduced them and Donald said to me, “Mind if I join you?”
“This is Mr. Hale’s table,” I said primly.
Donald sighed. “Then you join me, Laura.” Donald feels that Laura Lynn is more dignified than Hank Ryan, so he always calls me by my professional name.
“I came with Kim,” I said.
Donald’s little blue eyes inspected Kim again. “May I join your table?” he asked.
Kim looked him up and down carefully, taking his time. He pursed his lips, smiled pleasantly and said, “Get your own dates, fatso.”
It was the first time I had ever seen Donald without his pink complexion. He turned and walked majestically off, his back rigid. Twenty seconds after he paid his check, Sam Lescott came over, a dark look on his face.
“Honey,” he said, “Did you brush moneybags?”
“I did,” Kim said. “He asked if he could join me and I told him no.”
I looked at my watch. “Sam, he’ll be back in twenty minutes. Don’t fret.”
“I hope so, honey. All by himself he’s good for enough, and once in a while he brings in a nice party.” He walked away.
“I don’t care for Mr. Frees,” Kim said.
“Nobody does, Kim. But he’s harmless. He just breathes on me, and his eyes go soft, and then he asks me if I’ll let him buy me a beautiful house in Hawaii or the South of France or Bermuda or somewhere. And he never looks at my face while he’s asking. He always looks where my tie clip would be if I were a man.”