Nothing but a Smile Page 10

  She thought that if she didn't know better, she'd think Wink was peeved about something, even acting a little hostile.

  She'd never felt like she was head of her class in guessing what went on in the thick domes of men, and she was sure as hell out of practice lately.

  Tuning in one of the least dreary soaps on the radio, she sat down at her kitchen to write Chesty a nice long response and cram it full of love and understanding and other sweet nothings.

  33

  The next check arrived with an advance copy and a friendly note saying, Send us more of “Winkin' Sally.” Love her!

  He stared at it like it was Japanese.

  With no idea what they were talking about, he flipped through the pulpy pages of the magazine till he recognized Sal's smile.

  Two pages of familiar photos, with this headline:

  WINKIN' SALLY,

  YOUR BARRACKS GAL-PALLY!

  This stunning soldier-ette's making a surprise inspection!

  Under the photos of Sal in his tunic and overseas cap were the following inane captions: “DRESS inspection? Gee, I'm not sure where I left it last!” … “To be fair, I'm only half out of uniform” … “GI must stand for ‘Getting Ideas'!” … “At EASE? Who you calling EASY, soldier?!” … “Let's try bouncing a quarter off your bed— or something! …” … “So does my uniform pass muster, buster?”

  He stared at it for the longest time before he could even begin to piece together what in Jesus' name happened.

  He'd been plastered. Always a fair guess, but he was pretty sure, thinking back, he'd been feeling mopey and blue up in his room, burned up about his hand, unable to draw, feeling lonesome and still thinking about those shots he'd taken of Sal the night before, half in his uniform, as the corny copy said, and how they were right downstairs, all printed out and the negatives safe in their waxpaper sleeves, all set to go off to the magazine publisher. He remembered that they hadn't sealed the manila envelope, but agreed to leave it there, unsealed, for twenty-four hours, just in case they changed their minds. Also in the envelope was a release form the publisher had sent along when they bought Sal's first series, the shots she'd done on her own in the kitchen.

  The late hour and the low spirits and the descending hash mark on his bottle got the better of him, and he snuck downstairs with the bold determination to spread the photos out on the darkroom workbench and whack his pecker. Wax the dolphin, as someone used to say back in the PTO. Except he couldn't go through with it. Instead, he looked at each of them, in the red glow of the safelight, and took another pull on his bottle each time, toasting her: “To Mrs. Chesty Chesterton …”

  And the form was there on the workbench, having spilled out of the envelope with the rest of the contents. She had almost completed it, but it had gotten kind of late, so she'd agreed to finish it when the waiting period was over and they mailed it in.

  He was pretty sure now, thinking back to that hazy night, he must have snatched up a grease pencil and, with his shaky left hand, scribbled Wink-n-Sal encircled by a heart, right on the form, then shoved it in the envelope and licked it closed. He seemed to remember thinking he was filling out the space for Contributing artist(s): but possibly it hit a little closer to the line that read Working title, if applc.

  When he told the girls, he showed them both the editor's note and the magazine, but kept this theory of its origin to himself, along with any admission of having scrawled an illegible valentine on the official submission form. Not only wasn't he sure he could explain to either one of them what would possess him to do such a thing, alcohol notwithstanding; he wasn't sure, given even the far future stretches of his own living days, he could ever explain such a thing even to himself.

  He would tell them it was a mystery; that her name and his must have appeared somewhere in the correspondence and the magazine folks took it upon themselves to combine them, maybe as a joke, trying to be cute; maybe out of confusion.

  Besides, it didn't matter how it had happened, he figured, so much as what the hell they were going to do about it.

  “You've got yourself a brand name!” Reenie said when he showed the photo spread to the two of them. “Just because you weren't looking for it, doesn't mean it's not a good thing. A lot of great things in life are accidents. This penicillin they've got now? Some scientist got sloppy with his sandwich, his bread got all moldy … bingo! He's cured the clap.”

  “Yeah, but …” Sal looked a little stricken, as he thought she might. “I mean, it's got my name in the name!”

  Reenie gave her a playful shove. “Bilge! You go by Sal, they know Sally. Whole different gal.”

  It was hard to convince himself that Sal seemed very persuaded by her friend's logic, and he felt a little guilty about the whole snafu. He wished, in a way, he'd just gone ahead and waxed the dolphin to her photos and been done with it; skipped the graffiti and kept her name out of the whole thing.

  Sal studied the two-page spread again while he and Reenie stood by, as if waiting for her final, official verdict. “Maybe I wouldn't feel so iffy about it if the stuff they wrote wasn't so …”

  Reenie was tapping the magazine with a pencil, studying it closer. “The copy's corny as hell, granted. We could do better than they did—maybe send in our own copy next time.”

  “And it does worry me a little,” Sal said. “Some guy might connect the name with the face, here in the shop, maybe cause trouble. It feels a little … exposed.”

  He told her if that was how she felt, then absolutely, they could call it quits right there, no problem. But he could see from her face that she wasn't ready to toss in the towel over a silly nickname. And the way her pal was fired up, there was no way Reenie would allow her to.

  “The only thing you two should be worrying about is how much longer you can keep this up without getting some proper stockings. Have you seen many of these girlie magazines? Lots of legs, my friend. And rationing or no rationing, a pinup girl with her very own name like that has to at least own one decent pair of stockings. End of discussion.”

  Except it wasn't—the discussion did not end, but simply sidetracked to the issue of how best to procure nylons without getting tangled up with black-market thugs and then sidetracked again to stocking varieties and classifications he'd never heard of (Sal appeared a little in the dark, as well) or ever guessed existed, such as something Reenie called Cuban heels, shifting next to a primer on the anatomy of the female calf and how it could be rendered more aesthetically pleasing by positioning and flexing and which pumps created the best effects.

  Frankly, Wink felt they'd stepped far out of his wheelhouse. The more they talked about great legs and disreputable contacts, the more it became clear to him that Reenie would now be their resident expert on both.

  34

  The first one they did together, they went once more with a military theme. It seemed to Sal, between what Wink told her and the comments she'd received from the publishers, plus hearing Reenie's own two cents, backed up with evidence she lugged in—stacks of recent girlies she'd pilfered from her brothers— the military angle, these days, was a surefire bet.

  It was beyond Sal why this would be—did these GIs, far away, really fantasize that their sweethearts back home might sneak in one night, get past the sentries and land mines, possibly get a bullet through their brain pan at every step, possibly fall into enemy hands and be ravished beyond all mercy, all to then parade around in a strictly confined area that included legions of equally sex-starved men, who, no matter if they shared his uniform, might also ravish her beyond all mercy? When she really thought about it, it was pretty fruity.

  But they cobbled together the bare semblance of two quasi-military uniforms and, borrowing an old Scout pup tent from Reenie's brother Patrick, went through a series of comic poses, each of which exposed their legs and cleavage and showed off the muscles on Reenie's calves and the bulge of Sal's own bosom as she tugged with exaggeration on the line, as if trying to stake it into the hard studio f
loor.

  They both had their long suits, she figured, and even if she wore her wig, as she was, rendering them both raven-haired cuties, they each had their special feature that would distinguish them: she was the busty one, Reenie had the gams. But were they both going to be Winkin' Sally, she wondered, or would the editors come up with something completely new? There was a part of her that felt petty worrying about such things, but she wondered if men might like Reenie better. Maybe they were equally pretty, each in her own way, but her friend was certainly the bolder of the two. And she was also the one with the great, expressive eyebrows, the big sexy wink. It was right in the name—maybe she was Winkin' Sally, not Sal herself.

  Well, she thought, that wasn't their end of it. That was beyond their domain. Their job here was to toss their bodies around in front of the camera and not worry about anything other than exposing parts of themselves in ridiculous predicaments.

  It wasn't hard to fumble and fall on the floor—the tent was a shambles and neither of them had a clue how to raise the moldy old thing—and when they'd fall, they'd hold the pose, Reenie's legs up over her head, Sal's buttons popping. It was ridiculous and so much fun. Much more so now that she had a girlfriend to do it with her, and the hardest part to all this, she was starting to realize, was not cracking up so hard they broke the pose and fell all over each other laughing.

  It felt wonderful paying off the creditors, starting to set things right. With the second sale of photos, she felt confident enough about this turn of fortune to write Chesty and tell him … something. Of course, she wasn't ready to tell him that she'd been producing girlie pictures, not to mention posing for them. She liked to think he was understanding enough that later on, when he was no longer far off and in harm's way, he might be able to hear the whole truth and not fly off the handle. Wink seemed to think he would be able to—he claimed he never would have gotten involved in all this himself if he really thought Chesty wouldn't understand, over time, given some perspective.

  “But don't tell him now, no,” he agreed. “You should see what a mess worry and distance makes of the married guys back there. You're right keeping him in the dark till he's Stateside. Or maybe till you two have had your third child or so.”

  And the other thing that made it tricky writing Chesty and telling him things were turning around was he wasn't actually aware things hadn't been hunky-dory—she'd been sugarcoating the shop's finances for him almost as much as she had been for his uncle in their monthly visits at his bank, so how could she tell her husband, Hey, we're no longer in danger of losing the shop to creditors!?

  She knew it was pride that made her want to spill the beans. Some sort of bravado about rolling up her sleeves, taking care of her man. She felt, in her way, a little like Rosie the Riveter, doing what had to be done when times turned hard. Except, in her case, the rivet gun was a camera, and the assembly line of bombers she produced was an assembly line of boners and grins for all the young men out there.

  She was all set to wad up her airmail letter when Wink came to her rescue. He'd been watching her struggle through the better part of two cups of coffee, the two of them having developed the habit of breakfast together at her end of the hall. Decorum hadn't gotten so lax—they still both dressed before he appeared in her kitchen—but still, it had grown considerably familiar and casual between them. For instance, he made no pretense about glancing over at what she was writing in this private letter to her husband.

  “Tell him Business has improved nicely. I'm doing very well. You can get into the particulars later.”

  She was growing rather fond of this trait of his—he seemed to be able to sum up a situation and the best course of action all in the same moment. It made her wonder, sometimes—if he hadn't once been such a good illustrator and cartoonist— whether he would have been given men to command in battle.

  She told him his suggestion made sense, it was just that she kind of wanted Chesty to be proud of her and … well …

  He'd been doing his “left-hand doodling,” as he called it, too discouraged to refer to it as actual drawing. She would never admit it to him, but she could see why he was discouraged. The retraining process didn't seem to be working—which made it all the more admirable that he kept slugging away at it. His usual procedure, during their breakfast coffee and toast, was to do what he was doing now—sketch, with his left, on a stack of scrap paper while alternating sips of coffee and bites of dry toast with his crippled right.

  But now he stopped all motion, setting down his pencil and his toast, and intertwined his unsatisfying hands, looking at her directly in a way that made her squirm. “Let me ask you something, Sal. Are you proud of yourself?”

  She hesitated, though she knew the answer. “Yes, I am.”

  “Then you're all set. Case closed.”

  He smiled that sad smile she'd grown so accustomed to mornings of late and went back to his scribbling.

  35

  He felt pretty nervous stopping by the Stevens-Gross Studio, home of such talented commercial artists as Haddon Sundblom and Gil Elvgren, but it made sense to pick Reenie up from work. He was taking her to a retrospective show of war-bonds poster art, then to grab a bite, then maybe take in a picture, then swing by a porch party some of her ad friends were throwing to celebrate the liberation of Paris, and the first stop of the evening, the poster art show, was just down the block from Stevens-Gross.

  She gave him a halfhearted tour. Every artist there had their own individual studio. Two were still hard at work, artists Wink failed to recognize—he might have had better luck if he could see their canvases. Reenie just waved as they passed, not introducing him; probably not wanting to interrupt. They seemed young, and Wink wondered if they were maybe staying late to make a good impression. One of them looked younger than him, and it was hard not to imagine himself getting that slot in another version of the world, in a life in which he wasn't stupidly hungover and not paying attention on a submarine tour.

  He asked about Elvgren. The prospect of running into his hero and former painting instructor was both exciting and scary. Wink wasn't sure what he would say to explain what he was up to these days.

  “Home with the wife and kids by now,” she said. “He's a nine-to-fiver. You wouldn't know it for all the naughtiness the guy likes to paint, but he's a real family man. All business. Very professional.”

  Sundblom's studio was filled with work for Coke—warm, rosy-cheeked girls tipping back the hourglass bottle. On the easel there was one of his famous Coke Santas, the red suit and the window of what had to be his workshop still only roughed in.

  “Man alive,” Wink said, and told Reenie that this was like walking through the commercial artist's equivalent of the Art Institute of Chicago.

  Reenie shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  For the Paris party, all the guests were supposed to bring cheese if they could get their hands on it, but at least wear berets.

  “What kind of world is this now,” he'd said earlier, “where it's become easier to find berets than cheese?”

  Reenie thought there might be some in the costume and prop bins the illustrators kept in the back, and she left him alone in Elvgren's studio to go dig around for berets.

  “Man alive …,” he said again, to himself this time, unable to keep it in.

  The girl on the canvas, though barely completed, was beautiful—that face so rosy and smiling, eyeing him coyly. There was a portion of the painting roughed out for the boilerplate print—he had no idea yet what the box would double as. Maybe a crate, a radio, something like that. This was how they did it: leaving a section of the illustration ready and blank where they could slug in the advertiser's copy later.

  There were props and stools and various risers shoved over in the corner. He'd understood from Reenie that Elvgren didn't work from live models but from reference photos he posed and shot himself, and these were all over one side of the studio. Wink moved closer, inspecting the rows of black-and-white shots of a
blonde model with a pageboy straddling an overturned chair like it was a horse, cowboy hat in hand; then supine on the floor with her legs propped up on a Kodak box, holding a yardstick like it was a fishing rod. There were even a few of Reenie. She appeared to be in her everyday work clothes, no doubt just pitching in and helping out. In one, Wink could see the string holding her skirt back as she peered over her shoulder at a point marked on the wall with an X of adhesive tape. This was the bare bones of … what? A fence, a bush, something that would snag the girl's dress.

  Even the photos were great. Hell, they were as good if not better than the best stuff they'd been shooting. And this, for these guys, these real artists, was just the beginning of the process. Imagine that …

  Returning to the easel, he leaned close, loving the texture of the brushstrokes, still damp, and the garage smell of the oil paint. He picked up the man's palette, disappointed that he was apparently one of those diligently organized artists who cleaned his palette at the end of each workday. He would have liked to see how he was mixing the colors.

  Wink missed mixing the colors, layering it on, building it up.

  “Listen,” Reenie said, suddenly behind him, “if this place makes you so gaga, we could wait till everyone leaves and …”

  He hadn't realized he was caressing the glass palette. He turned to face her, trying to puzzle out if it was a sincere offer or not. The short time they'd been fooling around, he'd learned enough of Reenie's ways to suspect it was possible she was on the level. She might want him to take her right there, maybe on the drop cloth.

  She rolled her eyes up to the beret on her head, gave him a smirk. “Kidding, chum. I'm not doing it in here! You nuts? Someday, I am leaving again—mark my words—moving up to bigger and better, brother, and I'll need to ask these folks for references, believe you me. So ix-nay on the ooky-nay.”