If Mr. Roosevelt was leading the country out of the Depression, he was starting somewhere other than Chicago—or anyway, somewhere other than the corner of Van Buren and Plymouth.
So now here I was again, feeling faintly ridiculous in my light-weight white suit and wide-brimmed Panama hat (souvenirs of a Florida job last year), wandering the avenues of the City of Tomorrow, in the shadow of the twin Eiffel-like towers of the fair’s famed Sky Ride, where “rocket cars” skimmed above the flat surfaces and pastel colors of the modernistic pavilions. One of the towers was nicknamed Amos, and the other Andy, but I never could remember which was which. (Except on the radio.) I hopped a double-decker bus, took a wicker seat on the upper open deck, where you could feel a lake breeze cut through the heat; that felt good, but being here at the fair again felt odd. It was like I was my own ghost, somehow; haunting myself. I got off at the Streets of Paris, which you entered through a big blue-and-white-and-red facade designed to look like a steamship.
Inside, the narrow “streets” were patrolled by phony gendarmes, a temporary world of sidewalk cafes with striped awnings and little round tables under big colorful umbrellas, and stalls where you could buy Parisian hats (by a North Side milliner) and charcoal sketches of yourself (by a Tower Town art student in a beret and paste-on mustache), along walkways prowled by chestnut vendors, strolling troubadors and flower girls. (No wildly careening taxicabs or whores, however.) The flat surfaces of flimsy exterior walls were covered with startling bright posters, and an outdoor “Lido” swimming pool boasted free floor shows of bathing beauties every bit as lovely as Miss Rand.
But Miss Rand was a star, now (she’d made a movie in Hollywood with George Raft, since her success here last summer), and she had her own revue in the Cafe de la Paix, with dancing girls and the works. She had a matinee coming up in half an hour, so I went in and dropped her name and a tuxedoed waiter whose French extended to, “This way, mon sewer,” sat me at a postage-stamp table, near ringside.
The place was nearly full, couples mostly, the men trying to hide anticipatory smiles, the women pretending to be embarrassed, when irritated (if curious) was more like it. Meanwhile, overhead fans kept the place cool— overhead fans and beer.
The show took place on the dance floor, behind which the tuxedoed orchestra was seated in tiers on a stage; there was no seating to the right or left of the polished floor, which extended to draped areas on either side. I was halfway into a second beer when the orchestra began playing something vaguely Parisian and the lights dimmed and the dance floor filled up with blond show girls in filmy dresses, moving around trailing gauzy cloth like untalented but well-endowed Isadora Duncans.
After a while the show girls went away, the lighting went blue, and Sally came gliding on, in a clinging white gown, long blond tresses swaying, accompanied by her big bubble, which she guided, though it seemed to have a mind of its own. The orchestra, who kept their eyes on their music despite the rear view they were getting, played Beethoven’s
When I entered her dressing room backstage, she was sitting before her lightbulb-surrounded mirror combing out her medium-length light brown hair; the long blond hair—a wig—was on the head of a dressmaker’s dummy nearby. She wore a silky blue robe and had a bobby pin in her teeth.
“Heller!” she said, looking at me in the mirror. “I saw you, ringside. How’d you like the show?”
“I liked it fine. I’ve always liked classical music.”
She put the hairbrush down and the bobby pin too and turned and looked at me; her wide, red pretty smile seemed sincere. She had the longest eyelashes I ever saw on a woman (or a man, for that matter) and they seemed to be real. Her eyes were the same color blue as her robe.
“Culture lover, huh?” she said. “Take off your hat, and pull up a chair. I like your white suit.”
I took off my hat, pulled up a chair. “I feel like an ice-cream man.”
“The ice-cream man cometh, huh? What did you find out for me?”
A little fan—an electric one, not the kind Sally hid behind—was whirring on a table over to the left, turning in a little half-circle, blowing streamers in the air.
“Your sugar daddy may be a gold digger.”
She looked disappointed, but only mildly. “Oh?”
“He’s in oil, all right. He owns a gas station.”
“The lying little weasel.”
“These are hard times; he used to own a dozen of ’em, all over Oklahoma. He may have been worth a little dough, once. Hell, he still is. A little dough.”
“But he doesn’t make two grand a week like yours truly.”
“Ouch,” I said. “Don’t say that to a man you’re paying ten bucks a day and expenses.”
“Maybe you’re in the wrong business.”
“I’ve been told that before. But so far nobody’s offered me two grand to prance around in my birthday suit.”
She smiled wryly and leaned forward, folded her hands; her silky blue robe fell open, just a little. One well- formed, large but not-too-large breast was half-exposed. I crossed my legs.
“You might look pretty good in your birthday suit,” she ventured.
I shook my head, grinned. “Not two grand worth.”
She lit a cigarette. “You want one of these?”
“No thanks. Not a habit I ever picked up.”
She shrugged. “They say it’s good for you. Anyway, Heller, why haven’t you made a pass at me?”
