“How do you like the show?” he asked eagerly.
“Your music is splendid!” Kim said gravely. “Youthful.”
Sonny couldn’t have been more touched. “Youthful,” was, to Sonny, the peak accolade.
“We work hard,” Sonny said joyously.
“Your music brings out the best qualities in Hank’s voice,” Kim said.
He was heaping it on so thick that even Sonny could afford to be generous. Sonny beamed at me.
“Why, I don’t know what we’d do without Hank,” he said. “She’s tops.” He patted my hand. It was like the touch of a dry old lizard.
Donald Frees came in between shows, a few moments before Sonny left our table. As I told Kim, Frees is working up to be a playboy. His bland, moon-like face expresses nothing but fatuous self satisfaction. His pink hands are always faintly wrinkled as though he had just stepped out of a long, hot tub. He is about thirty, I think, but by reason of his weight he has jowls, which make him look older.
At the age of twenty-five, Donald became heir to a life income of at least a hundred thousand a year after taxes. But he doesn’t fit properly into the role of playboy, for he worked for five years after college and got into the habit of it and feels remotely guilty about the whole thing.
He motioned to me to come over to his table and since I resent being summoned like the cigarette girl, I ignored him. Several minutes later he lumbered over, smelling of soap, hair tonic, shaving lotion, a pine and leather scent, shoe polish, deodorant and fine Scotch. Kim stiffened a little and I sensed the instantaneous dislike.
I introduced them and Donald said to me, “Mind if I join you?”
“This is Mr. Hale’s table,” I said primly.
Donald sighed. “Then you join me, Laura.” Donald feels that Laura Lynn is more dignified than Hank Ryan, so he always calls me by my professional name.
“I came with Kim,” I said.
Donald’s little blue eyes inspected Kim again. “May I join your table?” he asked.
Kim looked him up and down carefully, taking his time. He pursed his lips, smiled pleasantly and said, “Get your own dates, fatso.”
It was the first time I had ever seen Donald without his pink complexion. He turned and walked majestically off, his back rigid. Twenty seconds after he paid his check, Sam Lescott came over, a dark look on his face.
“Honey,” he said, “Did you brush moneybags?”
“I did,” Kim said. “He asked if he could join me and I told him no.”
I looked at my watch. “Sam, he’ll be back in twenty minutes. Don’t fret.”
“I hope so, honey. All by himself he’s good for enough, and once in a while he brings in a nice party.” He walked away.
“I don’t care for Mr. Frees,” Kim said.
“Nobody does, Kim. But he’s harmless. He just breathes on me, and his eyes go soft, and then he asks me if I’ll let him buy me a beautiful house in Hawaii or the South of France or Bermuda or somewhere. And he never looks at my face while he’s asking. He always looks where my tie clip would be if I were a man.”
“His kind of money is never harmless, Hank. I’ve learned that with lots of money you can hire people to be unpleasant for you.”
“Why you old cynic, you! And so young, too.”
The rest of the evening was uneventful until, at quarter to one, Roger Blate came in with a small party of sharpies. Roger gave me a look of pure hatred and I knew that it hadn’t been his idea to come to the Staccato. I finished my number and went back to the table. I pointed out Roger to Kim.
“There, my boy,” I said, “is what too many people think of when they think of showbusiness.”
“How so?”
“Roger Blate was my agent. I was getting a hundred and seventy-five a week and I’d made one recording and I was just beginning to catch on. Roger came to me all excited and told me that he had a new spot for me at a hundred dollars more a week, singing with Jerry Jerome and his band. I took the job and Jerome’s business manager thought I was pretty nice. One night he got tight and told me that Blate had asked Jerry Jerome for five hundred a week for my services, which would have given Blate fifty a week as his commission. But then, after the price was decided on, Blate told Jerome he could have me for two seventy-five, provided he’d kick back a hundred cash each week to Blate. Of course Jerome agreed, as it saved him a hundred and a quarter a week, and Blate was happy because it meant he made one hundred twenty-seven fifty a week off me instead of only fifty. And little Hank was the babe in the woods.”
“What did you do?” Kim asked. “Sue him?”
“Are you crazy? Some of the little boys on my street in Brooklyn grew up to be on the rough side. They like to help a gal from the old neighborhood. One of them went to see Blate and Blate nicely canceled our contract. The doctors took eight stitches on the inside of Blate’s mouth. Then I hooked up with Carl Hopper, who is straight.”
