Tad was a simple kind of redfaced boy who never had much to say. Margo did all the talking from the minute he handed her into the taxi to go to the nightclub. She’d keep him laughing with stories about the other girls and the wardrobewomen and the chorusmen. Sometimes he’d ask her to tell him a story over again so that he could remember it to tell his friends at college. The story about how the chorusmen, who were most of them fairies, had put the bitch’s curse on a young fellow who was Maisie De Mar’s boyfriend, so that he’d turned into a fairy too, scared Tad half to death. “A lot of things sure do go on that people don’t know about,” he said.
Margo wrinkled up her nose. “You don’t know the half of it, dearie.” “But it must be just a story.” “No, honestly, Tad, that’s how it happened… we could hear them yelling and oohooing like they do down in their dressingroom. They all stood around in a circle and put the bitches’ curse on him. I tell you we were scared.”
That night they went to the Columbus Circle Childs for some ham and eggs. “Gee, Margo,” said Tad with his mouth full as he was finishing his second order of buttercakes. “I don’t think this is the right life for you… You’re the smartest girl I ever met and damn refined too.” “Don’t worry, Tad, little Margo isn’t going to stay in the chorus all her life.”
On the way home in the taxi Tad started to make passes at her. It surprised Margo because he wasn’t a fresh kind of a boy. He wasn’t drunk either, he’d only had one bottle of Canadian ale. “Gosh, Margo, you’re wonderful… You won’t drink and you won’t cuddle cooty.” She gave him a little pecking kiss on the cheek. “You ought to understand, Tad,” she said, “I’ve got to keep my mind on my work.”
“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 collar 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 roll up his shirtsleeves afterwards to help with the dishes, and then all 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 till 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 all afternoon listening to the hissing of the steamheat almost crying from restlessness and boredom, 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 telling 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 millionaire could be such a dear. I just think he’s a darling.”
“He’s no millionaire,” said Margo, pouting.
“His old man has a seat on the stockexchange,” called Frank from the other room. “You don’t buy them with cigarstore coupons, do you, dear child?”
“Well,” said Margo, stretching and yawning, “I certainly wouldn’t be getting a spendthrift for a husband…” Then she sat up and shook her finger at Agnes. “I can tell 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 yellowfaced bald shriveledup little casting-director, was a man all the girls were scared to death of. When Regina Riggs said she’d seen Margo having a meal with him at Keene’s Chophouse between performances, 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 Ziegfeld 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 mill an’ I don’t give a hoot in hell for any of ’em… but let me tell you somethin’. There never been a girl got a spoken word by givin’ that fourflusher a lay. Plenty of ’em have 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. “All right, baby, let it ride… I guess you’ll hold out for the weddin’ bells.” 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 number 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 Connecticut with him and have a real rest. Margo went into a drugstore and phoned Agnes that there’d be rehearsals all day Sunday and that she’d stay down at Queenie Rigg’s flat that was nearer the theater. Driving out, Jerry kept asking Margo about herself. “There’s something different about you, little girl,” he said. “I bet you don’t tell all you know… You’ve got mystery.”
All the way out Margo was telling about her early life on a Cuban sugarplantation and her father’s great townhouse in the Vedado and Cuban music and dances, and how her father had been ruined by the sugartrust and she’d supported the family as a child actress in Christmas pantomimes in England and about her early unfortunate marriage with a Spanish nobleman, and how all that life was over now and all she cared about was her work. “Well, that story would make great publicity,” was what Jerry Herman said about it.
When they drew up at a lighted farmhouse under a lot of tall trees, they sat in the car a moment, shivering a little in the chilly mist that came from a brook somewhere. He turned to her in the dark and seemed to be trying to look in her face. “You know about the three monkeys, dear?” “Sure,” said Margo. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” “Correct,” he said. Then she let him kiss her.
Inside it was the prettiest farmhouse with a roaring fire and two men in checked lumberman’s shirts and a couple of funny-looking women in Paris clothes with Park Avenue voices who turned out to be in the decorating business. The two men were scenic artists. Jerry cooked up ham and eggs in the kitchen for everybody and they drank hard cider and had quite a time, though Margo didn’t quite know how to behave. To have something to do she got hold of a guitar that was hanging on the wall and picked out Siboney and some other Cuban songs Tony had taught her.
When one of the women said something about how she ought to do a Cuban specialty her heart almost stopped beating. Blue daylight was coming through the mist outside of the windows before they got to bed. They all had a fine country breakfast giggling and kidding in their dressinggowns and Sunday afternoon Jerry drove her in to town and let her out on the Drive near Seventyninth Street.