Page 39 of Shadow Ticket

“Meantime,” after a while, riveting him with one of those sudden gazes broads like to throw around, “fair warning—I might still have to run away from you anyway, maybe even go after Hop on my own. And would you be put to some trouble then, shamus, to get me back, ’cause nowadays I’m a wised-up ol’ fugitive, see, who knows how to get invisible in a hurry.

” Twirling elegantly nail-bitten fingers, “Like Champagne bubbles into the night. As the hepcats say, gone. The Absentee Hall of Fame? Midtown Manhattan someplace? Well, last year they gave me the Judge Crater Award. They call it the Joey? Little pedestal with nothing on it?”

“OK, but what if after what’s sure to be a lot of work I find ol’ Hop is just out doing the horizontal Peabody all this time with somebody cute and don’t want to be interrupted?”

“My, you’re sure dwelling down there in the mudflats these days ain’t you, Sport.”

“Must be why the pay’s so good.”

“It had better be, because now there’s also Hop you need to worry about. Plus he might also leap to conclusions, and then you’d be up a creek or two.”

“Wait, let me write some of this down.”

“You don’t approve, I can tell.”

“I think it’s the kind of stuff that killed vaudeville, but I’m a professional hey, people care about who they care about, if they didn’t I’d have to be lookin for another line of work.”

“Hmm. Tell me what you think,” turning into a sudden three-quarter profile. “People say I look like Norma Shearer.”

“Well maybe in the society pages, right after you’ve kissed off one more of them career lounge lizards, you get almost that same look on your face—ain’t it grand the sacrifice I’m making, and at the same time, whoo, what a relief.”

“You’ve been…keeping a scrapbook or something, how charming. That’s really how I come across?”

“Heck, Toots, I don’t even know if you do.”

“Talk about suave. How’s that one work back in Wauwatosa?”

“Have I been mashing on you? No wonder I’m such a hit with the dames, out there pitching woo, half the time I don’t even know it. “

“I wouldn’t exactly call it that, but…” shifting her gaze downward for a beat and a half, then back to his face again.

“Occupational handicap, ignore it.”

“Planning to, thanks.”

“I mean if you want suave, I can be plenty suave, if I have to.”

“Of course with me you don’t have to.”

“Daphne, no offense, but now and then you strike me as…a little insecure despite in real life being blessed in all directions as few of your type of dame ever are? Is?”

“Why, how sweet. A girl could get confused.”

“About what?”

“Your intentions.” They both know that runaway fiancées and their duty-bound pursuers are expected to fall in love—stage, screen, and radio are full of it.

Hicks angles his head, hoping his eyeballs are lubricated enough to flash highlights of warning, in case she plans on rolling any further up that particular stretch of scenic highway, offers her a smoke from his last pack of duty-free Spuds from the Stupendica, which she tucks into a crease of her gown and switches for one of her own Melachrino cork tips, bending in toward him carefully, an intimate of flame at many levels from candles to arc lamps…

knowing how different sorts of briquet light will work with a given makeup job, how long to remain lit up before ignition and withdrawal, how deep to inhale, so forth.

Flashing him another look, and this time, what a look.

Remarking in a reasonable tone, “Whoever’s alley this may or may not be up, don’t be expecting any easy spares. ”

“Come on,” taking her by a hand not holding a cigarette, which is parked instead on her lower lip. A murmur to the bandleader, “You gents know ‘Cigana de Catumbi’?”

“Gotcha,” with one of those complicit grins.

Ordinarily it’s not a good idea to dance the Maxixe with somebody till you really know them well—not that the steps are that tricky, but since you do have to look good, it helps to feel as sincere as you want it to look, keeping always pressed close, with a lot of swaying, till it becomes hard, so to speak, to pretend your intentions are that nonsexual for very long, as it were.

“You must, you know.” Daphne lamplit in one of the two or three possible varieties of surefire fatal…the line of her neck…the corners of her eyes…“You must get clear of this. It isn’t for you.”

She’s been watching him with that how-much-can-I-trust-this-one look he knows all too well.

“…once, in one of these mental fix-it shops I kept getting sent to, up on the office wall was a motto of Carl Jung—Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit. I said what’s this my Latin’s a little rusty, he sez that’s called or not called, the god will come. ”

“And…back then when you were out in the woods—how’d that work, you called, you didn’t call—what happened?”

“Once, twice, something showed up, don’t know about any god, but,” shrug, breaking off eye contact. “Something.”

“Your old pals from the rez think it’s spoze to be a critter.”

Takes a deep pull at the Egyptian gasper and thinks about that. “When you first saw me did you ever wonder—is she really crazy after all, maybe they actually have every right to keep her inside their laughing academy?”

“You were on the run, that was enough.”

“One more North Shore subdeb who needed to be rescued from something, you figured.”

“I did?”

“What I do know,” alluringly shrugs the Cheez Princess, “is you’ve let yourself in for plenty. When the Ojibwe tell you somebody’s on your duty list forever—”

“A-a-ack! Reminding you again, Tootsie Roll, how this ain’t my ticket, no matter how many of these Chippewa curveballs you keep throwin me.”

“And of course everybody in M’waukee knew all about the speedboat.”

“Not from me.”

“No,” Daphne nodding, “from me actually, and so what.”

“So I had to put up with Ole Evinrude remarks, job offers from undercover G-men for midnight hooch runs and booby-hatch crash-outs. Had me starting to feel like Fairbanks Junior or something—you discombobulated my workday as much as I did yours, but am I insisting on some contract clause? Heck no, never asked for no fugitive heiress ticket, not my specialty and did I also mention— where you going?”

“If I wanted a fifteen-minute sob story, I’d have the radio on, wouldn’t I.”

—

Hicks may have strolled by Daphne’s hotel once or twice but hasn’t till now set foot inside, being reminded of places he tends to get thrown out of or at best told to move along from.

Tonight however, seems Daphne has been busy sweet-talking the management.

“What a pleasure to meet you at last, Mr. McTaggart. Madame expects you, please follow me.” Delivered with a face just managing to avoid the well-known bellboy smirk.

The second he clears the doorsill, before the door has even latched behind him, Hicks understands that Daphne has timed this whole routine so it’ll look like he’s catching her by surprise. “Oh—I must be early, hey.”

“Didn’t want you to miss the aldehyde fractions.

” She’s sporting one of these black yet see-through negligee getups, while with some powered atomizer, valves and gauges all over it, she now triggers into the room an enormous cloud of scent, slips off the fancy kimono and steps, pale as a crescent moon, this freckle-dusted beauty, into the patch of fragrance that hangs in the air, strangely coherent, like it’s waiting there for her.

“Brand-new, House of Tuvaché, Jungle Gardenia. Come on in, it isn’t riot gas. ”

“Try to tend to business smelling like this all through next week? thanks, Toots, I don’t need the attention. Jungle what?”

“Too late, you’re in trouble now, way past the five-second limit in fact, nothing can resist it, not even the shine on that cheap suit—”

“Off the rack, maybe,” Hicks protests, nevertheless toppling on in, “but it probably cost— hey, careful with that, what do you think you’re doing—”

“You know what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, but do I know what I’m doing.”

For a second he thinks he can see past the nightclub eyes, the scarlet lipstick, back to the nervous kid climbing off that rumrunner’s special like an explorer facing into who knew how much unmapped land, Nicolet or one of them, stepping ashore once upon a time thinking it’s only a short day-sail from Green Bay to China, its deep splendor, its mystery…

And then back comes the postdated debutante on the run, to reclaim this present hour of shenanigans, hammering away in clouds of jungle perfume and cigarette smoke…

“Forget what they sent you for…be the lost and found just for me…”

Which you’d think would be an improvement on all the “You big ape” types of remark he’s gotten used to, not that sometimes it isn’t agreeable to be taken for a big ape, especially one with what’s known as a One-Track Mind, many’s the dame who enjoys that and why shouldn’t she?

Later, no closer to being back out of unfamiliar territory, sentimentally swaying to music on the Victrola. “Swell that we finally got around to this.”

“That night on the speedboat? you know you could’ve made me do anything.”

“And it ain’t till now that I find out, swell, here just let me flag down a—oh…oh, Time Machine? uh huh? over here?”

A number of pauses to flip the record over, or sometimes forget to.

“Yes and while we’re on the subject, you’re sure, Daphne, now, about your—about, um, that Hop Wingdale? who could come strolling in here any minute—you’re sure he don’t mind that we…”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but we have a free and forgiving arrangement, yes many’s the time I’ve come upon him in the sweaty clutches of some Swing Girl barely into her teens, Louise Brooks hairdo, nighttime makeup in the daylight hours and all, ah but then why brewed, as Schlitz said to Pabst, as long as Hop and I each do get to have our own adventures you see.

Are you waiting for details? I hope not. ”

“Had my mouth open again, didn’t I.”

“Hop is dear to me,” she advises, “beyond anything a kicked-around peeper such as yourself may be able to grasp, and frankly I don’t mind admitting as an off-and-on praying person that I’m praying for his safety right now. Which is already more than you need to know.”

“Fair enough except for maybe one or two details, like, oh would he be packing a heater of any kind, and how ready would he be to, you know…”

“This isn’t Chicago.”

Pretending to look the place over, “By golly you’re right, it isn’t, but—”

“Though now that I recall…of course, you haven’t really seen him with the steam coming out his ears, yes, Hop can become quite excitable indeed, most ammo is like birdshot to him, bounces right off. Anyone wants to keep us apart, short of fifty-caliber, forget it.”

“Faithful?”

“Maybe not ‘unto death,’ as Herbert Gustave Schmalz might put it, but at least unto a high level of inconvenience for somebody. Just so you know—if it will get Hop back to me safe and sound, OK? there’s no depths I wouldn’t go to, even degrading myself rolling around with a lowlife such as you.”

“Could’ve just said you love the guy, I would’ve bought that.”

“But this way you also got to have your ashes hauled.”

“Now that you bring it up—”

“Looks like I have, but no.”

“Aw?”

“Because unless I lost count that would make it twice, Cupcake. Very different from once, or did they forget to teach you that back at hard-boiled dick academy?”

“Ah…Just some one-nighter in a motorboat, yep it figures, why don’t I ever tumble sooner.”

Hicks isn’t about to admit it, but the thought crosses his mind—stops halfway, looks back over its shoulder and winks actually—wouldn’t it be a nice turnaround to bring some couple back together again, put the matrimony back in “matrimonial” for a change, instead of divorce lawyers into speedsters and limousines.