Nothing but a Smile Page 19

  It was also Sal's idea, in the interest of boosting goodwill with the man they now called Sunshine State, the grumpy proprietor of the neighborhood news shop, to give him a special rate on their S&W titles—for him, they would work directly, cutting out, for his store only, the distributor they'd acquired. In exchange, she felt certain he would give them special placement on the shelves, maybe push the titles with his regulars. “Think of it as a foothold,” she said. “If it works, we expand the offer to a few other places around the area, maybe even regionally. It's a little more work, but it's a way to get some notice, have it build….”

  Wink saw himself in a truck, delivering the things store by store, but she told him that would never happen. “Limited offer,” she said. “Just enough to get things rolling. And if nothing else comes of it, at least good ol' Sunshine might be a touch more polite next time we're supposedly ‘loitering.' ”

  When she presented the idea to the man himself, disguised in a dark wig, she took along an autographed photo and signed it for him from Weekend Sally with big Xs and Os and suggested he put it on display over his stool.

  The man's grumbles and gripes seemed to drop down a full register. “So that's you, then, lady? With your butt-knocks hanging out and all?”

  Sal gave him a wormy smile. “In the flesh!”

  Wink noticed, as they were leaving, that the publicity photo was actually one of Reenie, with a sun hat barely covering her bare ass, pouting over her shoulder. He recognized her back. But he didn't say anything. He was sure Sal was more than aware and knew what she was doing.

  A week or so after the first special came out, he was up on a stepladder behind the counter, rearranging boxes of flashbulbs, and Sal was at the other end, balancing the cash drawer, when Mr. Price walked in with two bouquets of cream-colored roses.

  He said, “One is for you, Mrs. Chesterton, and—”

  “The other's all mine!” Wink called down from the ladder.

  Mr. Price glanced up, acknowledging him with a weak smile, then returned his attention to Sal. He told her the other bouquet was of course for her friend, Miss Rooney—”Or is she going by ‘Winkin' Sally' these days?”

  This guy made him even edgier now that Reenie had managed to learn more about their onetime client, apparently from her brother Dennis. Jericho Price, it was said, traded in more than girlie pictures or even dirty pictures, his most legitimate enterprise being prizefighters—he was said to back a few title contenders, in fact—but Wink assumed being a promoter was just a sliver of his involvement in the fight world.

  Of course they were learning this a little late in the game— a fact he found rather annoying. It sounded like maybe Reenie could have dug up a tad more background on the guy before they conducted business with him on the card deck. For one thing, he might be one of those guys who, if you conduct business with them, presto chango!—you're in business with him. That wasn't what he and Sal had in mind.

  Now Mr. Price was saying he'd heard a few things around, rumors only, about them starting their own publishing venture and trademarking the two girls, and he said it in such a disbelieving way that Sal was quick to say—almost bragging, Wink felt— that it was absolutely true; they'd done all those things since the last time they saw him.

  Mr. Price's look of concern seemed almost fatherly. “Oh, I wish you hadn't done that, my dear. Risky, going out on your own like that, the little guy, all alone. It sounds like fun at first, but there are a variety of obstacles and headaches that may befall you that you will not see coming, I promise you.”

  He took a moment to tsk-tsk and shake his head, casting his eyes down to the glass display case and polishing it with his cuff in a way that looked absentminded.

  But then he somehow managed to perk up, smiling again, beaming back at them. “Well! No reason to fret: if you ever feel the need for a partner in this venture—or you would like to be rid of it entirely—merely give me a jingle.”

  It gave Wink the creepy crawlies, the way he said jingle. It was like a man of his stature and influence asking if there was a little boys' room where he might go tinkle.

  62

  It was the anniversary of their anniversary and, admittedly, she'd had a few. Sauced, Wink would say she was, which was probably a load of hooey because she could still feel her legs, so what the hell did he know? Big judgmental lug …

  Just to make sure, she started feeling her legs, and they felt great, leaning over in her kitchen chair and running her hands down the length of them. It was some time ago now that she and Reenie had gone out and each purchased a pair of actual nylons—their first since the war, not counting the giant-sized black-market fiasco—and her pair had been sitting in her top drawer, remaining untouched in their original package like prissy, nonparticipatory little prudes while Reenie's pair was no doubt ruined by now, with scandalous runs from some guy's greedy, grabby paws, probably lost in some bachelor's couch cushions somewhere in the city, maybe snaked around a bedpost, maybe even in the apartment of Mr. Judgy McJudge'em down the hall.

  Practically anywhere, Reen's hose could be now! The girl had an old prewar Buick some new guy had just out and out given her for “no reason,” and she was lately forever driving all over the city, to this party and that …Crazy …

  The motion of leaning over, feeling herself up, made Sal a little tipsy and light-headed, so she stopped and sat up, still admiring how great they looked.

  What a gyp, she thought. A person's anniversary, and no one to even comment on that person's great-looking legs, let alone …

  She remembered the last time he'd told her she was sauced— the night she got a little tipsy because it was Chesty's birthday, back when they still counted, when he was alive, and she unbuttoned his shirt and took a big whiff of him.

  Wink, that is, not Chesty. Wink's chest …

  And where was that long, man-smelling judgy man, anyway? What did a person have to do around here to just smell a good-looking man once in a blue moon, it being a special occasion and all?

  Pushing herself up from the kitchen table, she first put away the bottle so he wouldn't judge, then went out into the hall and meant to knock on his door, and perhaps she did, but it seemed as if he simply appeared, opening up and stepping out. Maybe he'd heard her coming.

  When she spoke, it didn't come out nearly as clear or forceful as she'd hoped: “Sorry I said all that … mean stuff …”

  He looked puzzled. “Mean stuff?”

  It dawned on her that she hadn't said anything, just drinking alone in her kitchen, so she moved on. “I got married today. We were married.”

  He just nodded a little and pulled her close. She was still talking, trying to tell him something, though she wasn't clear what, so her mouth was still somewhat open when it landed on him, on his neck, and she felt the salt of his skin against her lips and wondered if he would think she'd kissed him. She hadn't meant to. She could smell the starch in his shirt collar and just a hint of sweat and tobacco and maybe perfume—Reenie's, still, or someone else now? maybe just hair oil?—and she wanted to smell him again like that last time, smell his chest for just a second.

  She pulled away a little, unsure herself if it was in order to step away or just to unbutton his shirt and smell his chest. He let her go, his hands lingering lightly on her arms as if meaning to steady her, and something in his eyes that she caught only out of the corner of hers, as she looked down now, at his shirt, looked about as much like pity as she thought she could bear.

  She opened her mouth to tell him off or thank him or cry, she wasn't sure, but something else happened instead. It was hard to think of it as a kiss. It was more like she pressed her mouth against his to keep herself from yelping and breathed in deeply and held her breath, not moving from this perilous perch until a sob came over her that came crashing out, and she let go, turning away, unable to look him in the eye, and went back into her apartment and closed the door, knowing she'd be out flat in a matter of seconds and wouldn't remember much of this
in the morning, thank God.

  63

  He rose before he heard her stirring down the hall and slipped out, leaving through the back door of the shop. His first stop was the hotel he'd first stayed in—when was that? Jesus, over two years ago … What the hell had he been doing sitting down the hall from her like a maiden aunt for two-plus goddamn years? It was sick, this thing they had. He couldn't very well put the make on his dead buddy's wife, but he also couldn't just sit there like a nutless pansy.

  It took almost five minutes to raise a response at the front desk. The fact that the desk clerk appeared in his bathrobe, none too pleased to be answering the bell, did not bode well for their having a room. “What,” the guy said, an entirely new guy since he'd last been there, “the NO VACANCY sign was too complicated for you?”

  After explaining that the kid was a smartass and possibly looking to have his teeth handed to him, Wink asked about potential vacancies, anything coming up in the near future. “Long term, I'm talking about.” It didn't make any difference in the answer he got, other than the addition of a sir, and the kid lowering his voice.

  His next stop was the news shop, to get the papers and scour the apartment listings.

  It was incredible. A year after the boys had started coming home, and there still wasn't enough room for them. The only listings were in Elmhurst, Park Ridge, Mount Prospect, Downers Grove, Palatine—places that seemed as far-flung as Tunisia.

  On the off chance he might have heard of something, he asked the old grouch who owned the shop. “Listen, you see people every day, you hear stuff—I should ask you: got any idea where I might rent a room?”

  “And I should ask you,” he said, “got any idea where I could maybe rent a unicorn?”

  So that was that. He stopped for a couple bear claws in a sack, breakfast for him and his “roomie,” and started home, turning, somewhere en route, toward Union Station.

  He was on his uncle Len's farm in St. Johns, Michigan, by late afternoon. It was the heart of soft red winter wheat season, so his uncle wasted little time on catching up and instead put him immediately to work on the combine.

  He hadn't seen the old guy in years, but he didn't look significantly different. He claimed his old bedroom hadn't changed, either. “It's always here for you,” he said. “Kept it just like it always was.”

  Which wasn't even remotely accurate, Wink saw, when he finally went up to wash for supper. His old bed remained, true, and his bookshelf and the birch-bark lamp he'd made, but a lot of the clutter was gone. Also missing was the rest of the furniture, replaced by a long metal and glass rectangle crammed into one end of the room that looked to be—and the lingering odor confirmed it—a chick incubator.

  The majority of pictures he'd tacked up were gone, replaced with a couple sketches he recognized as his own that he was pretty sure he'd never hung himself, certainly not framed, as they now were. The calendar hadn't been touched. It was an Elvgren boilerplate, compliments of a Saginaw seed company for the year 1941—the one called A Knockout, with the smiling blonde in the corner of a boxing ring, wearing boxing gloves and leaning casually on the ropes like it was all over. One of the man's least steamy, so Wink wasn't that surprised his uncle had failed to purge it.

  He recalled having stacks of books that had piled up on the floor, overflowing the bookshelf. And a dresser, topped with a collection of rocks and other treasures he'd found, plus a desk, scattered with more of the same, including jelly jars, containing various homemade experimental rocket fuels, and the science project he'd made in the eighth grade—a working model of stalactites and stalagmites using yarn and reservoirs of water and washing soda. It hadn't been pretty, and it had smelled moldy even back then, but it hadn't been easy to make, so he'd been reluctant to pitch it.

  The rug was new—a gaudy rag oval that looked like his uncle had run a circus tent through his combine, though more likely something purchased at a craft bazaar at the church. The souvenir pennant from a Tigers game he'd been too young to remember attending was still there, faded a slate gray and peach and thumbtacked to the back of the door.

  After supper, out on the old glider on the screened-in porch, Wink finally dropped a hint that he'd actually found his room to be a little more sparse than he recalled.

  “Well, I pared it down some, sure. But the essentials haven't changed. I didn't toss any of the important stuff, is what I meant.”

  Wink asked him specifically about his missing science project.

  “Did you become a scientist? You did not. So how important could it have been? You hang on to what you need. The rest …”

  He flicked at the air like he was brushing away a bug. Maybe he was.

  “Plus, you got rid of my old desk and my dresser … What is that—an incubator?”

  Uncle Len grinned. “Last year I hatched two hundred baby chicks in there.” He appeared to be proud of himself.

  Wink stared at him. This is what happened when men were allowed to remain bachelors for so long.

  “I'm not lying.”

  He told his uncle he didn't think he was lying; that he could still pick up faint whiffs of “something I'd call Eau de Bad Easter.”

  The old man snorted. “Nephew, are you unable to open a window?”

  “I did, believe me. And it was nice to see you hadn't gotten rid of the windows …”

  “You've still got that smart mouth, I see. I'm sure that served you well in the big city?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the war?”

  “There, too. The United States military values nothing higher than a smart mouth.”

  Uncle Len chuckled, then seemed to choke it back, and he reached over, still looking out at the darkening fields, not looking Wink's way, and clamped him firmly on his shoulder. Wink took the cue to look away, too, but sit still and listen: the man had rarely touched him, even when he was little, so this meant he had something important to say.

  “I'm sure you were disappointed about your hand, Nephew. Real disappointed—your drawing hand and all. And that is too bad. But I don't mind telling you, I was praying real hard every night that you'd just make it back.”

  For a second, Wink felt guilty for not coming to the farm sooner, but weighing people down with guilt wasn't really his uncle's habit, and sure enough, as if reading his mind, Uncle Len added, “Didn't have to be here, of course—just back.”

  When they turned in and he was back in his room, he stood studying the moonlight pouring in on the incubator and wondered if he'd be able to sleep with that thing in his room. Even empty of chicks, it did in fact retain an odor. And it made him think of babies and breeding, that impulse to see life continue— as if some cosmic commanding officer in the sky or maybe in their blood told them As you were, soldier—that all his fellow GIs seemed to embrace so strongly these days, and he had yet to feel.

  The old farmhouse was so quiet. He tried to listen for sounds from the next room, but he couldn't make any out. He'd gotten pretty used to at least hearing footsteps and the occasional piece of furniture shifting down the hall and the city outside, rattling itself.

  He stood there, looking down at the fields and the darkness stretching out for miles. If he had to long for her, he guessed he'd rather do it close up.

  His uncle really didn't seem hurt or put out when he took the first train back the next morning.

  Leaving Union Station, he decided to stop at the Zim Zam for a new sack of bear claws, even though these, too, were not the freshest this late in the day, and even though she wasn't expecting bear claws and he hadn't even told her where he was going, anyway.

  At the camera shop, she was back behind the counter. She gave him a normal enough smile and a hello, and he offered her some of the pastry as if he hadn't disappeared for a day and a half. She probably assumed he'd been staying at Reenie's or something. She didn't ask, and he made no mention of what happened in the hallway the other night.

  They were stuck with each other, no matter how cockeyed t
hings had become between them; no matter if he was starting to wonder if he wasn't maybe a little in love with her.

  64

  A few days after she embarrassed herself with Wink—and, she suspected, nearly scared him off—Mort Doerbom, the lawyer, stopped by. He'd always appeared chipper and fresh scrubbed when he was helping them form S&W Publishing and set up the legal papers for the trademarks and all of that, but today she noticed he sported an actual carnation in his lapel.

  For some reason, she found herself feeling a little glad that Wink was out visiting a printing plant. Maybe it was because, though Mort had been nothing but kind to them, taking what she considered a very minimal fee, considering what she'd heard a lawyer's help would cost, Wink had made a few disparaging remarks behind his back. It seemed uncharacteristic of Wink, who could be cutting at times, but only when someone was asking for it. She recalled how he'd described Mort after the two men first met: “I don't know,” he'd said. “This character Doerbom— he strikes me as a guy who should wear glasses.”

  She told him Mr. Doerbom probably didn't need glasses. As a customer, he never squinted at his negatives or his prints, which he nonetheless examined carefully each time right at the counter before leaving the shop.

  “I'm not saying he needs glasses but shirks them; I'm saying he just … should wear glasses. By rights.”

  She still wasn't clear on what he was getting at. Maybe it was some sort of 4-F, goldbricker crack, but when she asked him to clarify further, he couldn't—just said, “Forget it, Sal,” shrugged his shoulders, and retreated into the darkroom.

  If it was meant to be a crack, it wasn't one of his best, and she wondered why he couldn't do better.

  When Mr. Doerbom came by now, starting off asking if she had any issues or questions about the forms he'd helped her file, he led so quickly into a question about having dinner, at first she put the two subjects together and told him if they were going to discuss business, she'd have to check with Wink; that she didn't know his schedule.