“I’m just not demonstrative,” I said. “Of course I love you. Satisfied?”
She gave me a wry smile. “What woman wouldn’t be after such a passionate avowal?”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” I said impatiently. “You want to get married or not?”
“You’re the boss in this family,” she said. “We do whatever you want to do.”
We were married on New Year’s Day. We took a six-week honeymoon cruise to South America, then returned to Houston and stretched our honeymoon to another six weeks at the Shamrock.
Toward the end of March, Mavis announced that we had a little over four thousand dollars left in the bank. It was time to go back to work.
“We have to dream up a new racket,” I told Mavis. “The POW gimmick has about worn itself out. Let’s see what the Houston sucker list has to offer.”
The Houston list turned up two old ladies who would have been perfect marks for the prisoner-of-war dodge. But I was afraid of it. Our previous scores had been too well publicized.
“I don’t see a single weakness we might capitalize on among these other people,” I told Mavis. “There’s a guy who collects stamps, another who’s a nut on sailboating. There’s a couple of women who spend all their time at club meetings. Period. Give me a couple of days to think.”
It was Mavis who finally produced an idea, though I was the one to recognize it as a possibility. She was reading the paper in bed one morning while I shaved, when she suddenly emitted a little laugh.
“Listen to this, honey,” she called through the open bathroom door. “People put some of the funniest things in personal ads.”
“Yeah?” I inquired.
“Comely widow, age 35, desires correspondence with single or widowed gentleman of same age. Must be strong, healthy, willing to work, able to manage fight gym left by deceased husband. Object: matrimony.”
I grinned into the mirror and went on shaving. “The world is full of screwballs,” I said. “How about phoning room service for breakfast?”
For some reason the item stuck in my mind. As we lingered over our breakfast coffee, I said, “Wonder if that widow has any money in addition to the gym.”
“The one in the ad?” Mavis inquired.
“Yeah,” I said. “See if you can find that item again.”
Mavis rose to get the paper and began to turn pages. “Here it is,” she said finally, handing me the folded paper and pointing out the item.
I read it over, noting that a box number was given for replies.
“It says she’s a comely widow,” I commented. “According to Webster, that means agreeable to the sight.”
“That’s her own description,” Mavis said. “She’s probably a living horror. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have to advertise for a husband.”
“There’s one way to find out.”
Mavis raised her eyebrows inquiringly.
“I’m going to answer the ad,” I told her. “Maybe she has some money we can shake loose.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but my decision was the turning point of our lives. It was to start us in a new and permanent career.
It was our entry into the big time.
Chapter V
Mavis pointed out that the ad asked for a man of thirty-five, and I had just passed my thirty-first birthday in February.
“Of course, some men don’t change much between thirty and forty,” she said. “Maybe you could pass for a young-looking thirty-five.”
I went to look in a mirror, and decided I could.
Mavis and I spent a lot of time drafting a letter. We were pretty proud of the finished product. It went:
Dear Madam:
This is in answer to your personal ad in this morning’s paper. I am a single man of thirty-five with no relatives except a younger sister. I believe I have all the qualifications to manage a fight gymnasium.
I had two years of college at the State University of Iowa, majoring in physical education. I was on the university boxing team both years. Later, for seven years, I was an athletic trainer and faculty manager of the boxing team. For the past three years I have been a fight trainer in New York State. Recently the owner and manager of the training camp where I worked died, and the camp was sold to a man who converted it into a vacation resort. I am therefore free of any commitments at the moment.
I am six feet three, weigh 210 and have a fairly presentable appearance.
Any matrimonial discussion would have to await our meeting and getting to know each other, of course. But even if this didn’t work out, perhaps we could come to a business agreement about managing your gymnasium.
Very truly yours,
I thought that the Shamrock would be an unlikely address for a man answering a matrimonial ad. I rented a post office box and gave its number as my return address.
Two days later I got an answer. It read:
Dear Mr. Plainfield:
I got your letter. You sound like a good prospect. Now let me tell you about me.
My husband has been dead six months, and the guys running the gym he left me are robbing me blind. I could sell it, but it brings a pretty good income when it’s run right, and I’d have to take a gypping if I let it go right now when its income is down. Not that I really need its income, because my husband left me pretty well fixed besides the gym. But I’m tired of being robbed. I’m also tired of sleeping alone, if you get what I mean. I’m the kind of woman who needs a man around.
Like I said in the ad, I’m thirty-five, too. And not a bad looker, if you like them a little on the plump side. I’m five feet four and weigh 142 pounds. I can knock off twenty pounds with hardly no effort at all with a diet I got, though, if you like them slimmer.
Like you, I don’t want to buy no pig in a poke, so I’m not promising anything until we meet. But if you’d like to talk it over, come out to the house any evening after seven P.M.
Yours truly,
The return address was in the thirty-nine hundred block of Case, which is a solid, upper-middle-class residential section.
Mavis said, “She sounds like a dream. I think I’m jealous.”
“You should be,” I said dryly. “She has so much more than you do.”
“Probably all in the wrong places,” Mavis murmured. “I hope.”
I had some preparations to make before I called on Mrs. Hannah Stokes. All of the clothes I owned would have been as out of character as my Shamrock address. I went down to a department store and bought a cheap ready-made suit, a pair of cheap shoes and a dollar necktie.
When I called on the widow that evening, I looked like what I was supposed to be: a man of moderate income all dressed up for a blind date. I arrived at five minutes after seven.
Hannah Stokes lived in a two-story frame home with a broad lawn edged by a low fence. The door opened instantly when I rang.
The woman had lied a little about her age. She looked close to forty. She was a stocky, freckle-faced woman with wide hips and a massive bust. In a coarse sort of way she wasn’t bad-looking. She had strawberry-blonde hair that fell to her shoulders in waves, a wide, humorous mouth and twinkling brown eyes in a plain, but not unattractive, face, and strong white teeth. She was solid rather than fat, having a moderate waistline and well-rounded, though somewhat thick, arms and legs.
Apparently she had prepared for company in case it came. She wore a loud print dress, a rhinestone bracelet with matching earrings, bright lipstick and mascara.