The telephone bell was shrilling insistent summons in his apartment
when Gary pushed open the hall door thirty feet away. Even though he
took long steps, he hoped the nagging jingle would cease before he
could reach the ’phone. But the bell kept ringing, being an
automatic telephone, dependent upon no perfunctory Central for the
persistency of its call. Gary was tired, and from his neck to his
waist his skin was painted a coppery bronze which, having been
applied at six-thirty that morning, was now itching horribly as the
grease paint dried. He did not feel like talking to any one; but he
unlocked his door, jerked down the receiver and barked a surly
greeting into the mouthpiece of the ’phone. Almost immediately the
wrinkles on his forehead slid down into smoothness.
“Oh, _how_-do, Gary! I was just wondering if you had changed your
apartments or something,” called the girl whom he hoped some day to
marry. “Did you just get in?”
“No-o--certainly not! _I_’ve been having a fit on the floor! Say, I
heard you ringing the ’phone a block away. Every tenant in the joint
is lined up on the sidewalk, watching for the Black Maria or the
ambulance; they don’t know which. But I recognized your ring. What’s
on your mind, Girlie?”
“Not a thing in the world but a new shell comb. If I’d known you
were so terrifically cross this evening, I wouldn’t have a lovely
dinner all waiting and a great big surprise for you afterwards. Now
I won’t tell you what it is. And, furthermore, I shall not give you
even a hint of what you’re going to eat when you get here. But I
should think a man who could recognize a certain telephone ring a
block away might smell fried chicken and strawberry shortcake clear
across the city--with oodles of butter under the strawberries, and
double cream----”
“Oh-h, _boy_!” Gary brightened and smacked his lips into the
mouthpiece, just as any normal young man would do. Then, recalling
his physical discomfort, he hedged a little.
“Will it keep? I’m in a starving condition as usual--but listen, Pat;
I’m a savage under my shirt. Just got in from location away up in
Topanga Cañon, and I never stopped to get off anything but the
rainbow on my cheeks and my feathered war bonnet. Had a heck of a
day--I’ll tell the world! You know, honey; painted warriors hurtling
down the cliff shooting poisoned arrows at the hapless
emigrants--_that_ kind of hokum. Big Chief Eagle Eye has been
hurtling and whooping war whoops since ten o’clock this morning.
Dinner’ll have to wait while I take a bath and clean up a little. I
look like a bum and that’s a fact. Say, listen, honey----”
“Aw, take that mush off the line. Ha-ang up!” Some impatient
neighboring tenant with a bad temper was evidently cutting in.
“Aw, go lead yourself out by the ear!” Gary retorted sharply. “Say,
Pat!” His voice softened to the wooing note of the young male human.
“Best I can do, honey, it’ll be forty minutes. That’s giving me ten
minutes to look like a white man again. You know it’ll take me
thirty minutes to ride out there----”
“You could walk, you bum, whilst you’re tellin’ her about it. Get
off the line! There ought to be a law against billy-cooin’ over the
’phone----”
“Seddown! You’re rockin’ the boat!” Gary flung back spiritedly.
“Better make it forty-five, Girlie. It may take me five minutes to
lick this cheap heavy on the third floor that’s tryin’ to put on a
comedy act.”
“Say, one more crack like that an’ I’ll be down to your place an’
save yuh some valuable time. It’ll take me about two seconds to
knock yuh cold!” The harsh male voice interrupted eagerly.
“Are you there, Pat?”
“Right here, Gary. How did _that_ get into a respectable house,
dear? You ought to call the janitor.” The girl he hoped to marry had
spirit and could assuredly hold her own in a wicked city. “Take your
time, Gary boy. But remember, I’ve the biggest surprise in your life
waiting for you out here. Something _wonderful_!”
It is astonishing how a woman can pronounce a few simple words so
that they sound like a hallelujah chorus of angels. Gary thrilled to
her voice, in spite of an intensely practical nature. Patricia went
on, after an impressive pause.
“Never mind that noise in the ’phone, Gary. It’s just some
mechanical deficiency caused by using cheap material. Never mind the
grease paint, either. You--you won’t always have to smear around in
it--partner!”
While he hurried to make himself presentable, Gary’s thoughts dwelt
upon that word “partner” and the lingering sweetness of Patricia’s
tone. Patricia Connolly was not a feather-brained creature who would
repeat parrotlike whatever phrase she happened to have heard and
fancied. She did not run to second-hand superlatives. When she told
Gary that she had a wonderful surprise for him, she would not, for
instance, mean that she had done her hair in a new fashion or had
bought a new record for the phonograph. And she had never before
called him partner in any tone whatever. Gary would have remembered
it if she had.
“What the heck is she going to spring on me _now_?” he kept
wondering during the hour that intervened between the ’phone call
and his entrance into the scrap of bungalow in a bepalmed court
where Patricia had her milk and her mail delivered to the tiny front
porch.
The extra fifteen minutes had not been spent in whipping the
harsh-voiced tenant on the third floor; indeed, Gary had forgotten
all about him the moment he hung up the receiver. One simply cannot
annihilate all the men one abuses in the course of a day’s strained
living in Los Angeles or any other over-full city. Gary had been
delayed first by the tenacity of the grease paint on his person, and
after that by the heavy traffic on the street cars. Two cars had
gone whanging past him packed solidly with peevish human beings and
with men and boys clinging to every protuberance on the outside.
When the third car stopped to let a clinging passenger drop
off--shaking down his cuffs and flexing his cramped fingers--Gary had
darted in like a hornet, seized toe-hold and finger-hold and hung
on.
And so, fifteen minutes late, he arrived at Patricia’s door and was
let into Paradise and delectable odors and the presence of Patricia,
who looked as though Christmas had come unexpectedly and she was
waiting until the candles were lighted on the tree so she could
present Gary with a million dollars. Her honest sweetness and her
adorable little way of mothering Gary--though she was fours years
younger--tingled with an air of holding back with difficulty the news
of some amazing good fortune.
Patricia shared the bungalow with a trained nurse who was usually
absent on a “case”, so that Patricia was practically independent and
alone. Most girls of twenty couldn’t have done it and kept their
mental balance; but Patricia was herself under any and all
conditions, and it did not seem strange for her to be living alone
the greater part of the time. Freedom, to her, spelled neither
license nor loneliness; she lived as though her mother were always
in the next room. Patricia felt sometimes that her mother was
closer, very close beside her. It made her happier to feel so, but
never had it made her feel ashamed.
She had evolved the dinner in this manner: while her boss was
keeping her waiting until he had refreshed his memory of a certain
special price on alfalfa molasses and oil cakes, etc., etc., in
carload and half-carload lots, Patricia had jotted down in good
shorthand, “chicken, about two pounds with yellow legs and a limber
wishbone or nothing doing; cost a dollar, I expect--is Gary worth it?
I’ll say he is. God love ums. Strawberries, two boxes--Hood Rivers,
if possible--try the City Market. Celery--if there’s any that looks
decent; if not, then artichokes or asparagus--Gary likes asparagus
best--says he eats artichokes because it’s fun--Dear Sir:--In response
to your favor of the 17th inst.,--” and so on.
Some girls would have quoted asparagus in carload lots, transcribing
from such notes, and would have put alfalfa molasses on the dinner
menu; but not Patricia.
On her way home from the office in the dusty, humming barn of a
building that housed the grain milling company which supported her
in return for faithful service rendered, Patricia shopped at the big
City Market where the sales people all had tired eyes and mechanical
smiles, and a general air of hopelessly endeavoring to please every
one so that no harassed marketers would complain to the manager.
Patricia made her purchases as painless to the sales girl as
possible, knowing too well what that strained smile meant. The great
market buzzed like a bee-tree when you strike its trunk with a club.
She bought a manila paper shopping bag, but her packages overflowed
the bag, so that she carried the two boxes of strawberries in her
hand, and worried all the way home for fear the string would break;
and held the warm tea biscuits under her arm, protecting them as
anxiously as a hen protects her covered chicks. By prodding with her
elbows and bracing her feet against the swaying crush, and giving
now and then a haughty stare, Patricia achieved the miracle of
arriving at Rose Court with her full menu and only one yellow leg of
the chicken protruding stiffly from its wrappings.
She dumped her armload on the table in the kitchenette and rushed
out again to buy flowers from the vendor who was chanting his wares
half a block away. She was tingling all over with nerve weariness,
yet she could smile brightly at the Greek so that he went on with a
little glow of friendliness toward the world. At the rose-arched
entrance to the Court she tilted her wrist, looked at her watch and
said, “Good Lord! That late?” and dashed up to her door like a
maiden pursued.
Yet here she was at seven, in a cool little pansy-tinted voile,
dainty and serene as any young hostess in Westmoreland Place half a
mile away. Even the strawberry stain on her finger tips could easily
be mistaken for the new fad in manicuring. Can you wonder that Gary
forgot every disagreeable thing he ever knew--including frowsy,
unhomelike bachelor quarters, crowded street cars, all the petty
aches and ills of movie work--when he unfolded his napkin and looked
across the table at Patricia?
“Coffee now, or with dessert? Gary, don’t you dare look question
marks at me! I can’t have your mind distracted with food while I’m
telling you the most wonderful thing in the world. Moreover, this
dinner deserves a little appreciation.” Patricia’s lips trembled,
but only because she was tired and excited and happy. Her happiness
would have been quite apparent to a blind man.
I do not mean to hint that Patricia deliberately fed Gary to
repletion with the things he liked best, before imparting her
_won_-derful surprise. She had frequently cooked nice little dinners
for him when there was nothing surprising to follow. But it is a
fact that when she had stacked the dishes neatly away for a later
washing, and returned the dining table to its ordinary library-table
guise, Gary looked as if nothing on earth could disturb him. Mental,
emotional and physical content permeated the atmosphere of his
immediate neighborhood. Patricia sat down and laid her arms upon the
table, and studied Gary, biting her lips to hide their quiver.