“But I’d kind of like to wait until this heals up,” she said in her small sweet voice, embarrassed, pointing to the black eye. She was sitting on the plump-cushioned sage green mohair couch, legs curled up under her; I was next to her, but not right next to her. She had slipped her shoes off and her toenails were painted red; her long-sleeved pink sweater and slacks showed off her trim shapely figure, and her shortish honey blonde hair was a tousled nest of curls.
Room service had brought us up a couple of burgers with french fries, and I’d plucked cold Pabsts from my refrigerator. A coffee table by the couch was the repository for our plates and beers and my stockinged feet. We only had one light on, a lamp on the end table near me, creating a forty-watt pool of glowing light. The mood was one of casual intimacy — for complete strangers, we were surprisingly comfortable with each other.
My apartment, by the way, was functionally furnished, a page torn from a Sears and Roebuck catalog — living room, bedroom, small spare room I used as a home office, and modest kitchen. I’d dressed the living room up with a television and a radio phonograph console — the radio on, at the moment, Nat King Cole softly singing “Mona Lisa” accompanied by traffic sounds from Michigan Avenue below — but I wouldn’t kid you: the apartment was really just a hotel room got slightly out of hand.
“Haven’t your girl friends ever seen a black eye before?” I asked her.
“It’s just — Ginny, the one I’ll probably call, she warned me about Rocco, way back when, and I didn’t listen.”
“Yeah, nobody likes ‘I told you so.’”
She shrugged. “I’d rather not have to answer questions. Anyway, I heal really fast. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”
“You can stay as long as you like — don’t worry about it. Listen, I could even stake you to a room here at the scenic St. Clair, for a few nights, if you’d rather.”
In the dim light her heart-shaped face with the pretty features took on an angelic radiance. “Why are you so sweet to me?”
“I’m just one of those Good Samaritans you hear so much about. Why, if you weighed two-sixty and had warts all over your face and two double chins, I’d probably do the same thing... Probably.”
She laughed at that, and we’d talked. She told me the story of her Bible-thumping parents and the talent agent, who (unbelievably) had done good things for her, though she mentioned offhandedly she’d lived with him for a while. Smalltown or not, she seemed to understand the big-city rules.
“Do I look familiar to you?” she asked, rather coyly. This was on the second beer, the burger and fries a memory.
“Sure,” I said, sipping my own second Pabst. “I saw you at the Chez Paree — you were one of the Chez Adorables.”
Which was what the chorus line there was called.
“Till six or eight months back I was, but that wasn’t what I meant. About two years ago, I was Miss Chicago.”
“No kidding!”
“Yeah, in the Miss Illinois pageant. I was in all the papers.”
“Well, sure, I remember now. How could I forget that face?” Of course, I didn’t remember her. Cheesecake photos were a dime a dozen in the Chicago press, and cute as this little doll was, she was just another showgirl... albeit one with a black eye.
“Of course, I didn’t win the state title,” she said, “and go on to Atlantic City or anything... and I didn’t have any use for the scholarship money... College was never in the cards for me.”
“And so your friend the talent agent got you an audition for the Chez Paree.”
She nodded. “I was always a good dancer. I worked at a grocery store, in high school, to pay for ballet lessons that my parents didn’t know I was taking.”
“Which is where you met Rocco... The Chez Paree, I mean, not the grocery store.”
She laughed and nodded again. “I know you won’t believe this, but he was really sweet, at first. Rocco, I mean. He’s no matinee idol, I admit...”
“Maybe if the matinee is a horror triple feature.”
She smiled at that, a little. “He took a big interest in me. I didn’t want to just be in the chorus — I wanted to be featured, to be a headliner someday, to sing and dance, like Judy Garland or Betty Hutton. He said he’d get me lessons.”
Rocco had encouraged her to quit the Chez Paree chorus line — she was too good for that, he’d said — and she had moved in with him, in the penthouse on Sheridan. After all, Rocco and his brothers, particularly Joey, had all sorts of show business connections.
But the lessons never happened — Rocco claimed he couldn’t find teachers worthy of Jackie’s talent — and before long, she was shoveling coal on the Fischetti model railroad.
“He was sweet for the longest time,” she said. “Then one day I asked about my lessons — I wasn’t snippy or sarcastic or anything, that’s not my way — and I’d asked lots of times before, about the lessons, plenty of times... but this time he slapped me.”
I felt my eyes tighten. “Why didn’t you leave?”
