Tales of the Jazz Age | Page 6

come along with me," commanded Clark. "I've got something
that'll put an edge on the evening."
Jim followed him awkwardly across the floor and up the stairs to the
locker-room where Clark produced a flask of nameless yellow liquid.
"Good old corn."
Ginger ale arrived on a tray. Such potent nectar as "good old corn"
needed some disguise beyond seltzer.
"Say, boy," exclaimed Clark breathlessly, "doesn't Nancy Lamar look
beautiful?"
Jim nodded.
"Mighty beautiful," he agreed.
"She's all dolled up to a fare-you-well to-night," continued Clark.
"Notice that fellow she's with?"
"Big fella? White pants?"
"Yeah. Well, that's Ogden Merritt from Savannah. Old man Merritt
makes the Merritt safety razors. This fella's crazy about her. Been
chasing, after her all year.
"She's a wild baby," continued Clark, "but I like her. So does

everybody. But she sure does do crazy stunts. She usually gets out alive,
but she's got scars all over her reputation from one thing or another
she's done."
"That so?" Jim passed over his glass. "That's good corn."
"Not so bad. Oh, she's a wild one. Shoot craps, say, boy! And she do
like her high-balls. Promised I'd give her one later on."
"She in love with this--Merritt?"
"Damned if I know. Seems like all the best girls around here marry
fellas and go off somewhere."
He poured himself one more drink and carefully corked the bottle.
"Listen, Jim, I got to go dance and I'd be much obliged if you just stick
this corn right on your hip as long as you're not dancing. If a man
notices I've had a drink he'll come up and ask me and before I know it
it's all gone and somebody else is having my good time."
So Nancy Lamar was going to marry. This toast of a town was to
become the private property of an individual in white trousers--and all
because white trousers' father had made a better razor than his neighbor.
As they descended the stairs Jim found the idea inexplicably depressing.
For the first time in his life he felt a vague and romantic yearning. A
picture of her began to form in his imagination--Nancy walking boylike
and debonnaire along the street, taking an orange as tithe from a
worshipful fruit-dealer, charging a dope on a mythical account, at Soda
Sam's, assembling a convoy of beaux and then driving off in triumphal
state for an afternoon of splashing and singing.
The Jelly-bean walked out on the porch to a deserted corner, dark
between the moon on the lawn and the single lighted door of the
ballroom. There he found a chair and, lighting a cigarette, drifted into
the thoughtless reverie that was his usual mood. Yet now it was a
reverie made sensuous by the night and by the hot smell of damp
powder puffs, tucked in the fronts of low dresses and distilling a

thousand rich scents, to float out through the open door. The music
itself, blurred by a loud trombone, became hot and shadowy, a
languorous overtone to the scraping of many shoes and slippers.
Suddenly the square of yellow light that fell through the door was
obscured by a dark figure. A girl had come out of the dressing-room
and was standing on the porch not more than ten feet away. Jim heard a
low-breathed "doggone" and then she turned and saw him. It was
Nancy Lamar.
Jim rose to his feet.
"Howdy?"
"Hello--" she paused, hesitated and then approached. "Oh, it's--Jim
Powell."
He bowed slightly, tried to think of a casual remark.
"Do you suppose," she began quickly, "I mean--do you know anything
about gum?"
"What?" "I've got gum on my shoe. Some utter ass left his or her gum
on the floor and of course I stepped in it."
Jim blushed, inappropriately.
"Do you know how to get it off?" she demanded petulantly. "I've tried a
knife. I've tried every damn thing in the dressing-room. I've tried soap
and water--and even perfume and I've ruined my powder-puff trying to
make it stick to that."
Jim considered the question in some agitation.
"Why--I think maybe gasolene--"
The words had scarcely left his lips when she grasped his hand and
pulled him at a run off the low veranda, over a flower bed and at a
gallop toward a group of cars parked in the moonlight by the first hole

of the golf course.
"Turn on the gasolene," she commanded breathlessly.
"What?"
"For the gum of course. I've got to get it off. I can't dance with gum
on."
Obediently Jim turned to the cars and began inspecting them with a
view to obtaining the desired solvent. Had she demanded a cylinder he
would have done his best to wrench one out.
"Here," he said after a moment's search. "'Here's one that's easy. Got