PAGE 5
The Jelly-bean
by
“That so?” Jim passed over his glass.”That’s good corn.”
“Not so bad. Oh, she’s a wild one. Shoots 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, talking 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 thoughtl
ess 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.