Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/201

 for money. She can talk, she has an income from her dead aunt. Kirby isn't good in jazz but he is the best in my "Rose" number. That boy was miserable with Ilona and almost starving.

She was being called.

"All right, Claudel, the Rose number."

"So sorry to disturb your—thoughts—dear, but I have an engagement," Tessie Soler said cattily.

"That's all right, I'm ready any time you are."

"Now, girls!" Beman exclaimed impatiently.

"Look who's here," showgirl Clarice said out loud to no one and Lucy, peering into the dark house, saw—sitting next to Beman—Lyle Bigelow. He was looking at her while Beman was talking to him.

"I'm thinking of having Lucy again for my next show, she has done so well in this one," Beman said, keeping his voice matter-of-fact so as not to indicate to Bigelow he knew the score and was pushing him into being the show's angel.

Bigelow, half listening, knew what Beman had in mind and it wasn't a bad idea. She was an ambitious girl out for more than bracelets. She was even more beautiful than when he had gone away to get over her. No go. Sixteen now at least and a shade rounder and with an assurance that would pass for a few years older. Back the show as a starter. Even marriage, if that was the only way. The family would yell bloody murder, but what the hell? Her mother was a pushover.

Showgirl Dorinda came down to ask Beman a trumped-up question about the color of a bird on a spring hiding the juncture of her celebrated legs.

"Hello, Lyle." Her voice and mascaraed eyes invited.

"How are you," he said distantly. These girls never knew when you were finished with them. He noted ironically the diamond wrist watch he had given her as payoff two years ago. You could lay them all with routine gifts. Except Lucy, damn her! One night at the Midnight Frolics he had suggested giving her a chinchilla wrap but she had refused. "To tell you the truth," she had said, "I don't care for chinchilla, it looks too mussed up." Since his fourteenth year he hadn't waited for any girl. Christ! What a piece! He'd never felt like this about anyone.

"No, no, no, Dorinda!" screamed Damon St. John, the scene and costume designer. "You can't have a fish instead of the bird—it would throw off the whole design." Indignities like this never would Rh