A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Dance It Off!

Wally Walters had been told more than once that he was a cake eater. Now a cake eater is one who having arrived at years of discretion toils not neither does he spin. In other words he lets the bread and butter of life go by him and concentrates on the cake — sugar icing and all. How he gets away with it is nobody’s business. But Wally Walters, in particular, wore a three-cornered, low-crowned hat down over his eyes and nose with a little green feather stuck in the band. Being unable to fasten a bow-tie himself, he wore his on a rubber band under the collar of his shirt. It looked just as good anyway. His trousers hung about his legs in folds; they extended to the tips of his shoes, and when he walked he looked elephant-footed. The funniest thing about him, though, was his raincoat. When it rained, and sometimes even when it didn’t rain, Wally came out in a soapy looking yellow slicker with a little strap around his throat like a dog-collar. On his back he had a drawing of a bobbed-haired flapper in a pink chemise and black silk stockings, and underneath was the legend “Ain’t we got fun” for all the townspeople to marvel at. The blonde cashier at the candy store had done it for him. She had also done some six or eight others. All the boys told her she had a great deal of talent going to waste. She agreed with them.

It is only fair to mention in passing that although Wally Walters was undeniably a cake eater, he never touched cake, or pie either for that matter. He dined in cafeterias whenever he did dine, which wasn’t as often as it sounds, and he ate things like ham sandwiches and custards because they cost less and were far more substantial. Several evenings a week he devoted to billiards, but on Saturday nights he was always to be found at the Rainbow, the local dance center, where they took the precaution of searching you for liquor as you went in. Some of the brighter ones got around this by carrying it internally. On Saturday nights Myrtle and Rose and Lily were always to be found there, outdoing one another in the grotesqueries of the Charleston. All that was needed was plenty of room, a pair of strong ankles, and lots of terpsichorean ambition; and these were the very things that Wally Walters seemed to have most of. Consequently he was a howling success and always in demand — as Rose and Myrtle and Lily thought that the cleverest Charleston contortionist was bound to make an ideal husband, in which case they wouldn’t have to go out any more but could do their practicing right at home.

But not for Wally. He knew too much about girls. Girls were a necessary evil, nice under Japanese lanterns at twelve o’clock with all their bagatelles and war-paint on, but not so nice at nine the next morning over the cereal and the coffee pot. Wally was an idealist. He had dreams and he hated to see them spoilt. He got a little older and he got a little older and finally he put his trust in one girl and one girl only, a girl in a castle of dreams.

There was Carfare Connie. They called her that because she would ride in anything from a limousine to a mail truck, but she always took along about a dollar and a half for spending money. She called it her emergency fund. She’d had the same dollar and a half for three years now and still her luck kept up. She used to read the motto engraved on the silver half dollar, “In God We Trust,” and smile knowingly to herself, and perhaps rub it on her sleeves to brighten it up a bit. Carfare Connie hadn’t had any trouble on automobile rides — much — but she believed in being prepared. Every Saturday night she put on a big floppy white picture hat which was nothing but wire and gauze and wended her merry way to the Rainbow, greeting all passers-by en route. She was very fond of Wally Walters. He and she would invent dance steps together.

“Look, cake, how about this one? I thought it up on my way to work this morning.”

“Show us it.”

“Tum tum, te ta ta,” said Carfare Connie with great gusto.

“Yeah,” he said, “I see what you’re driving at. Only look — tum tum, te ta ta — doesn’t that work out better?” Giving his version of it.

“Yeah, you’ve got it ezactly; that’s ezactly what I meant.” And a girl has to care a good deal for someone before she’ll let him change her pet ideas to suit himself.

Now there were six Lucilles all in a row until one was sent out on the road and there were only five. Lucille was one of those musical comedy heroines who have to wear gingham and tickle dust-mops and scrub floors in the first act, but then in the second act they bob up all covered with sequins and grab the nearest millionaire’s son and sing a song all about a platinum lining. And everybody goes home happy.

In this case everyone went home happy except poor Lucille herself. Lucille hated being sent on the road. It put her in bad humor for weeks and weeks at a time. She missed her gorgeous roof bungalow with its mirrored bath, she missed her Hispano-Fiat with its little green baize card table. She missed her borzoi with its concave stomach. Lucille in this instance was Mimi Travers of New York and Philadelphia, but decidedly not of points west. The whole trouble was the producers seemed to think otherwise. All day long on the train she said things about them not meant for little children to hear; and when night came she sat in her dressing-room with shoes scattered all about her and delayed getting dressed for the performance until the curtain of that particular theater was three quarters of an hour late and the stage manager threatened to wire New York. Then she slapped on a make-up helter skelter at the last possible moment and made them omit the “Primrose Path” number from the second act, saying she was fed up on it and didn’t give a damn.

And it was this same evening that Wally Walters came north along River Street looking like a million dollars going somewhere to get itself squandered. A brand new electric sign caught his eye and he paused to reflect upon it, giving the dimes, quarters, and halves in his pocket a vigorous shaking up.

The lights went on and off, on and off. There was something fascinating in the arrangement of the letters. Lucille, the Hit of Hits. Lucille. What a pretty name. He stood in line to buy a ticket, the six brass buttons on his powder-blue Norfolk gleaming in the light of the lobby — that powder-blue Norfolk that was the pride of his silly, disordered life, that he always wore to the Rainbow on Saturday nights and to the chop suey palaces. And though he wasn’t exactly thinking about her just then, there was always this girl in a castle of dreams and bubbles in his heart — which was a good heart as hearts go but all smothered with confetti.

He walked down the aisle to his seat just as the overture was getting under way. A girl in an upper box smiled when she caught sight of him and made some comment to an older woman beside her. He imagined she wanted to flirt with him, so he treated her to one of his studied gazes of approval and smiled wickedly out of the corners of his mouth. For a few seconds she returned his look with impudent disdain; then she and the older woman both laughed in his face. The lights went out like a whip and he sat down, wondering what had been the matter with those two.

The curtain went up on a sea of legs — the musical comedy had begun. Five minutes, ten minutes, twelve minutes passed. It progressed well beyond the first half of the first act with still no sign of Lucille. Who was she anyway, Wally wondered. What was she waiting for, what was it all about?

Up on the stage a garden party was in progress. A bevy of girls with parasols and aigrets and lorgnettes and feather fans made shadows play up and down their legs. They stood in battalions and fluttered their fingers from their feet up over their heads. Then all at once he saw her.

She was in the midst of them. The spotlight picked her out. She was like a guinea-pig among peacocks and flamingoes. Her hair was drawn back into a knot at the top of her head, the way they draw them in the comic strips, and there was a ridiculous little hat perched on top, stabbed with a long pin. Her stockings were red and white wool, striped like sticks of peppermint candy. She had on impossible shoes that buttoned half way up her calves — yellow shoes. She had a little old Irish terrier under her arm; it had been trained to try and get away from her and she had to struggle with it to hold it. The people screamed with laughter. The auditorium fairly rocked with it. It dashed itself against the footlights like spray, wave after wave of it. In the balconies people were standing up to get a better view of her.

But Wally Walters never cracked a smile. He sat there staring out at Lucille’s pitiful talcumed face, her clownish face with its blued-in eyes and its blacked lips. The stage beauties circled about her, gorgeous with Titian hair and peach bloom make-up. They studied her through lorgnettes and flicked her with their fans and turned their shoulders on her in contempt. They drew back, leaving her standing alone. Even the little terrier had abandoned her at the first opportunity. There was a hush. A thick shaft of very white light fell on her, powdering her ridiculous padded leg-of-mutton shoulders. She began to sing. She sang about a castle of dreams and how it had come tumbling down. And there was nothing left, she said, nothing; she spread her hands and let them fall sidewise with a slap and sobbed drily deep down in her throat. Then she went shuffling off in her absurd shoes and striped stockings, and on her way out she pretended to trip over something. That brought the entire house down again.

But Wally couldn’t laugh, somehow. He knew how it felt; you bet he knew how it felt. His eyes were stinging him. He pulled his hat from beneath the seat and went trudging up the aisle. People wondered why he was leaving so early. Once he looked back over his shoulder. She hadn’t come out again. They were doing a Charleston to the little tune she had sung so wistfully; they were clodhopping among the ruins of her dream castle. It didn’t matter to him that she was to come back later with a diadem in her hair and paradise tufts on her shoes. He knew how it was when you felt that way. Who would know better than he, always hungering for something out of reach — and not cake either. He stood out in front of the theater, looking aimlessly up the street without seeing anything. He lit a cigaret and tried to pretend that it was the smoke getting in his throat that made it so dry.

He went home to his room — the “budwa” he called it — and lay on the bed, shoes and all. It was a true image of his life, that small room. Disarranged, meaningless, pitiful, choked with trifles, trying hard to be gay but sad at heart. There was a picture of a motion picture actress, Clara Bow, clipped from a magazine and pasted to the wall. There was a tambourine hanging on a nail and a gilt false-face hanging from its elastic on another. There were girls’ telephone numbers scribbled everywhere although the landlady was furious about it. On the dresser there was a ten cent store doll with blue cotton batting for hair; someone had penciled a mustache along its upper lip. There was in addition a nickel-plated pocket flask lying on its side, a feathered bamboo tickler from one of the Chinese restaurants, several menus, a bottle with a little hair grease turned rancid in the bottom of it, and the remains of a package of cigarets. Also a copper ash-tray with chewing gum stuck to it, and one of orange clay with collar buttons and a toothbrush in it.

Somebody was knocking on his door. He bobbed up. “Who is it?” he demanded. He scratched the back of his head.

“You’re wanted on the telefoam,” cried the lady of the house through the panel. He heard her go away again.

He unlocked the door and went down to the foot of the staircase. The receiver was hanging on its cord, so low that it almost touched the floor. He had to stoop to pick it up.

“Yeah?” he said constrainedly.

“Oh, hello!” said a girl’s voice. “This is Connie. Connie speaking.”

“I know,” he remarked dispiritedly, fishing the while through several pockets in the effort to locate a cigaret. When he had found one he held it between his lips without lighting it — a dry smoke — and it bobbed up and down each time he had anything to say.

“I’m up at the Rainbow,” she said. “Why didn’t you show up tonight? Anything wrong?”

“Na,” he said, closing his eyes for a brief moment. He felt he couldn’t stomach Connie this evening, nor any of the others either. The sound of a band, infinitely small and far away and blurred with other noises, came through the receiver.

“Hear that?” said Connie. “Doesn’t it make you itchy?”

“Hm?” he said, not caring much.

“I’ll keep my eye open for you,” she went on. “How long will it take you to get here, cake?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not coming. No, not for tonight. I’m all fagged out.”

“Why, what’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” she demanded in surprise. “Are you trying to kid me? You know yourself you couldn’t keep away from here even if you wanted to.”

“That’s what you say.”

He shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against the wall.

“They’re going to have a Charleston contest and everything,” Connie was saying. “I entered your name for you. You better see that you get here. The leading lady from ‘Lucille’ is coming up after the show to award the prizes—”

“Hell she is!” he burst out.

“What’s the matter,” protested Connie angrily, “are you trying to crack my eardrum?”

“Wait for me,” he cried. “I’ll be over in a jiffy. Meet you in the foyer—” and hung up.

“Men sure are changeable,” sighed Carfare Connie, powdering her nose with a puff the size of a postage stamp.

Meanwhile in Wally’s room a toilette was in full swing. He crowded his number eight feet into number seven dancing shoes, with spats to cap the climax; he soaked his hair with glycerin — oh, there’s no use denying Wally tossed a mean toilette once he got going. And as he went out, carelessly banging the door shut after him, the draft brought the movie star’s picture fluttering down from the wall.

There was a taxi standing in front of the Rainbow with its engine going, waiting for someone. It was unusual for a taxi to be here at that hour. Most patrons of the place arrived on foot, or if they rode at all it was in trolley cars and the front seats of moving vans. Wally knew who had hired it without being told. He bought his ticket of admission at the box office and went in. At the inner door he was frisked for possible concealed liquor and brushed by them impatiently. He checked his coat and hat and bought twenty-five cents’ worth of blue dance tickets at a nickel a dance. The lights were all swathed in yellow and orange gauze, and from each corner of the gallery a colored lens was directed against the dancers below. Connie was sitting waiting for him at a tiny table which held her elbows, an imitation rhinestone purse, a limeade with two straws, and a zigzag of undetached blue tickets. She waved and he went over to her.

“Hello, cake. How are you, honey?”

“’Lo.”

She looked at him happily. “I saved all my tickets until you got here.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I bought some.”

“You didn’t need to, honey. That’s what I kep’ these for.”

His glance wandered all around the place. “Did that girl from the show get here yet?” he wanted to know confidentially.

“Yeah,” said Connie. “The manager took her over to introduce her to the leader. She’s going to award the prizes.”

Wally looked down at his feet.

“You’ll make it,” nodded Connie, reading his thoughts. “You have it cinched.”

“What is it, a singles or a doubles?”

“Singles. That’s why I stayed out of it. I didn’t want to go against you.”

He pressed her hand under the table. “Good kid,” he said, which was as close as he ever got to tenderness with her.

Connie felt herself tingle with loyalty. She offered him a straw.

“Let’s finish this drink together,” she said.

They bent down over the glass, their faces close together. Connie’s eyelids fluttered with the nearness of it but she didn’t dare look up. They made a slight gurgling sound. “You take the cherry,” said Wally generously.

There was a crash of cymbals from the gallery upstairs. Connie and Wally raised their heads. The orchestra leader was holding a megaphone to his mouth. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed, “the Charleston contest will now begin. Entries are by name only. Each contestant will be limited to a five-minute performance. Miss Mimi Travers of the ‘Lucille’ company has consented to act in the capacity of judge of this contest. The winner will be awarded a silver loving cup, donated through the courtesy of the United Barber Shops’ Association.” He held the cup up by one handle and a round of applause followed.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” beamed Connie, craning her neck. She put her arm around Wally’s shoulder. “It’ll be pie for you, honey. They might as well hand it over to you right now.”

He smiled — but the smile wasn’t meant for her. It was for Mimi, standing beside the orchestra leader. Mimi was beautiful — she was almost too beautiful to live.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Mimi Travers.” She and the orchestra leader took a bow apiece. With an almost imperceptible movement Wally freed himself of Connie’s encouraging arm. He was clapping his hands vigorously. “Yea, Mimi!” he shouted.

The contest began. Rose and Myrtle and Lily took turns twisting their legs into unbelievable positions while the band played on.

“Faster and funnier,” called the onlookers. “Spread yourself. Do that thing!”

Rose and Myrtle and Lily spread themselves. They did that thing. They did a lot of other things with it. They skipped like devils. Mimi Travers had come out on the floor to get a better look at them. She was sitting gazing over the back of a chair with her chin resting on her arms. There was a gold bracelet around one of her ankles. Rose and Myrtle and Lily were through now. They were panting like grasshoppers. Also they were considerably disheveled.

“Mr. Wallace Walters,” shouted the orchestra leader. The music began again.

“Oh boy, Wally,” Connie was saying excitedly, “go out there and tear that floor to splinters.” She gave him a push between the shoulders as he got up.

Wally was out there now and the whole hall was spinning around him like a merry-go-round. He could hear them chanting:

Wally saw red. He’d show them whether their baby did that Charleston! Mimi was beating time with her hands. Clap-clap, clap-clap. “I never saw anyone like him,” she turned and said to somebody. “Where did he get that from?”

Wally began to skate as though he were on a pond. A tinkle of small sleigh-bells immediately followed from the musicians.

Connie was almost following him around the floor. “Come on, cake! Eat it up, eat it up!”

“Give him room!” they cried.

“Get that girl out of the way,” ordered Mimi imperiously. “What does she think she is, the tail of his shirt?”

Wally was hopping around like some funny little three-legged animal. He went down gradually like a corkscrew going into the neck of a bottle. Then he straightened up and the music stopped sharply.

Connie was waiting right beside him. She threw both her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Bless your little soul!” she cried ecstatically.

“Bless both my little soles,” he panted.

Mimi Travers was talking very animatedly to the orchestra leader. Everyone was watching her curiously. “Hurry up, make up your mind,” growled Connie under her breath.

Finally Mimi stood up and took the leader by the arm as though they were going to head a cotillion together. “Miss Travers wishes me to announce,” intoned that individual, “that the prize goes to Mr. Wallace Walters as winner of this contest. Will Mr. Walters kindly step this way?”

“Boy, oh bay-bee!” hissed Connie, and she pinched him on the arm. “Do you get that?”

There was an explosion of handclapping. Wally made his way across the floor from group to group, showered with complimentary remarks. Rose and Myrtle and Lily came over to congratulate him — not that they were any the less envious.

“I liked it!” said Rose.

It was a cake eater’s triumph. But Wally, who had had many such moments in the course of his career, was thinking of Mimi and her castle of dreams. They were standing face to face now. He could see a golden flame quivering in the depths of her heliotrope eyes. She handed him the ice-cold silver cup and for a moment their warm fingertips touched over its frosty surface.

“Good luck,” she said. “You did beautifully.”

“Thank you,” he answered. “Glad you liked it.” He bowed from the hips.

“Hold it up so everyone can see it,” she said, taking in the entire assemblage at a glance.

When it was all over, he found himself seated with Mimi at one of the little tables, somehow. And on the table there was an empty glass with two broken straws in it, and someone’s rhinestone purse, and a string of blue tickets. Mimi extracted a perfumed cigaret from a small tortoise-shell case and moistened it with her lips. Now almost anyone at all could have told Mimi that smoking was against the rule, but it so happened that the unpleasant task fell upon Wally.

“I don’t think they let you do that here,” he mentioned as casually as he was able.

Mimi didn’t like being told what not to do. “Let you do what — smoke?” she demanded coldly.

He nodded dolefully and made an unpleasant face.

“Oh, yes they do!” she assured him. “They do me at any rate.”

He looked rather doubtful and shrugged his shoulders, having had more than one fair companion separated from her nicotine just when she was beginning to enjoy it. “Well,” he said, “if you think so, go ahead—”

“I don’t think so. I know so,” remarked the fiery Mimi. “I’ll tell you what; call the proprietor and we’ll see.”

He tried to grin his way out of it but this time Mimi was out for blood — that and publicity. “Very well,” she said, “then I will!” She stood up and beckoned. “Call Mr. Nathan,” she told one of the hostesses.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Nathan a moment later. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Yes,” said Mimi in a clear voice. “I’d like to smoke this cigaret. Have you a light by any chance?” She stared at him defiantly.

Mr. Nathan saw a neat little sign tacked against a post. It read “Absolutely No Smoking.” But “Certainly, certainly,” said Mr. Nathan, and dug a little gold lighter out of his pocket. When he tried to light it, though, it shed sparks all over the place.

“Be careful of my dress,” cautioned Mimi sharply. Wally, sensing his opportunity, whipped out an everyday case of matches and accomplished the thing in no time at all.

“Thanks,” she said, with a sullen look at the proprietor.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with it,” he apologized. “It never stalled like this before.”

“No,” she agreed cynically, “never.”

“Something must be wrong with the tinder,” he mumbled to himself as he moved off with his neck bent over it. Wally and Mimi looked at one another and smiled pityingly.

“Isn’t he the wet one!” said Wally. “He’s dripping,” she agreed.

At this juncture Connie appeared before them with a decided pout on her face.

“I’m ready to go now, cake,” she announced, pulling the rhinestone bag from underneath Mimi’s nose.

“Well,” he said ungraciously, “and what am I supposed to do — break out in a rash?” And Mimi, guessing that the dance tickets were also Connie’s property, pushed them angrily off the table with her elbow. They fell to the floor.

“Say, look out what you’re doing,” snapped Connie, bending over to pick them up.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mimi haughtily.

“You certainly should,” Connie told her. She turned to Wally. “Well, make up your mind,” she advised him.

“What’s all the rush about?” he remarked. “What do you think you are, my time-table? Wise up to yourself.”

“All right, cake,” she said easily, almost tenderly. “You’ll get over it in time.”

She turned her back on the two of them. At the door Mimi saw her crumple the tickets in her fist and throw them away from her. But Wally only had eyes for his Mimi. She was the same and yet she was not the same. The clown make-up was gone. She was neat and restful to the eyes. She had lavender silk stockings; she had a gold ring around her ankle; she had a bang slicked down to the bridge of her nose. But he couldn’t forget how she had looked with the little terrier clasped in her arms. He couldn’t forget that she had stood there on the stage and everyone had laughed at her while her heart was slowly breaking. He kept telling himself that her castle of dreams had come tumbling down just as his had, over and over again. Therefore they were brother and sister under the skin.

“Don’t take it so hard,” laughed Mimi, thinking he was worried about Connie. “She’ll come back; they all do.” She stood up, and she was very tall and slim. “Afraid I’ll have to go now.”

“Can I see you to the door?” he asked.

“Only to the door?” she said, and her eyelashes swept him good-naturedly up and down.

“I meant to your door.”

And as they went out, he could hear the band playing softly and sweetly:

The following evening the fun-loving Mimi Travers, of New York and Philly but still not of points west, was the center of interest of a very lively group of friends who had gathered in her dressing room before the beginning of the show.

“He thinks,” she was telling them, “I’m really the way I’m supposed to be when I sing that song. Sort of dumb and weepy, know what I mean?”

“He must be goofy,” they chorused. “What a sap. What a bone.”

“He is,” Mimi assured them. “Probably he likes them that way. So when I found that out, I started right in to emote. Last night when we were coming out of the dance hall a stray cat came along and began rubbing itself against me so I broke down and cried for his benefit—”

Screams of laughter drowned her voice. The idea of Mimi crying about anything seemed to strike them as being extremely funny.

“You should have heard me,” she protested. “All I kept repeating was ‘What’s the use, what’s the use, ’s a cruel world,’ and he dried my eyes and called me his Cinderella. How’s that for a riot?”

“Horses!” they gasped hysterically, burying their faces on one another’s shoulders. “Oh, you Red Riding Hood! Little Eva!”

There was a warning knock on the door. “Curtain goes up in five more minutes.” Mimi quickly wheeled round and began rouging her cheeks with a rabbit’s paw. But she was still smiling at the huge joke.

At the end of the one week stand Wally was walking on air and living up in the clouds. But Mimi was all packed and ready to leave with the rest of the company. He was sitting out front again the night of the farewell performance — he had seen the show every night that week — and as the house lights went on, he edged his way out through a side door and around to the stage entrance. Backstage everything was in an uproar: sets being taken down and moved about, people getting in each other’s way, stagehands in overalls rubbing shoulders with girls in gorgeous evening gowns. He found Mimi’s door and knocked.

“Hello?” she called out. “What do you want?”

“It’s me, Mimi.”

There was a slight hesitation in her voice as she answered. “I’m busy right now. Can you wait?”

He noticed the drop in her voice. He opened the door and went ahead in.

She was in a tailored traveling suit with a red patent leather belt which made her look about fifteen. Her baggage was piled in a heap in the center of the room, and she was sweeping things from the dressing table into the last open suitcase.

“Didn’t you hear me tell you I was busy?” she said angrily. “What’s the grand idea? What do you take this place for, a corner drug store?”

“I’ve got to talk to you,” he said.

“Haven’t got time to talk.”

“I thought you were coming up to the Rainbow with me. It’s Saturday night.”

“I wouldn’t care if it was Christmas Eve. I’ve got to make that train.” She saw the look on his face and it softened her for a moment. “What’s the matter with you, cakie? You knew this was a one-week stand all along. We’re due to open Monday night—” And now the castle of dreams really came tumbling down, with a terrible crash that no one could hear but himself. He stood there dazed while a couple of stagehands came in and carried her baggage outside for her.

“Get a taxi if you want to take me to the train,” she said shortly. Her one moment of sentiment was over and gone.

They got into the taxi and drove to the railroad station. He looked out of one window and she looked out of the other. Neither of them spoke. When she was comfortably installed in the Pullman, she took off her hat and straightened her hair without paying any attention to him.

“Stay over just one more day—” he pleaded.

“My reservation’s paid for.”

“I haven’t told you, but can’t you guess why — why I hate to see you go?” he faltered.

“Sure I can guess,” she said confidently. “You’re keen on me, is that it?”

“That doesn’t begin to describe it. All my life I... waited... wanted... dreamed... about someone... like you are... Oh, if you’d only let yourself be the way you seemed to be the first night I saw you!”

“That’s sweet and pretty,” she told him, “but what good does it do to think about things like that? Castles in the air never did anybody any good — not so you could notice it.” She patted his hand. “There goes the whistle, sugar. The best thing for you to do is go back and dance it off.”

Outside on the platform the conductor was swinging a green lantern back and forth. “All aboard!” he wailed dolefully. “All aboard!”

“Kiss me good-bye,” exclaimed Mimi, “and forget all about me.”

Their lips met for the first and last time. The cars started to move. “I’ll go with you!” he cried, swept by a wild momentary impulse.

“What? And me lose my job?” answered the prevaricating Mimi. “I should say not. Jump or you’ll never make it!”

He ran to the lower end of the car and swung clear of the steps. The sound of his voice came trailing back to her: “’Bye, Mimi.” She pressed her face against the window pane, but it was too dark outside to make out anything. She gave a little sigh.

He picked himself up and watched the red tail-light on the rear car grow smaller and smaller until finally it disappeared altogether. Mimi was gone and he would never see her again. He dusted himself off and went back to his room.

But when he opened the door to the “budwa,” he found Connie sitting there reading a magazine.

“How did you get in here?” he asked listlessly.

She looked up. “Did you see your friend off?” she wanted to know innocently.

“Yes,” he said, “she’s gone away. Let her go.”

“I been waiting for you to come back,” Connie said. “There’s going to be a big masquerade at the Rainbow next Sa’ddy night. They’re going to give prizes for the best costume. How about us going?”

He didn’t answer. For a long time he stood looking down at her as if there were something about her he’d never realized before.

“Cake,” she said, “are you angry at me?”

“No,” he said. “Something’s just come over me. I didn’t see how I was going to stand it... I thought it was going to be lonely... I thought it would kill me.”

“Sure, honey,” she said gently. “I know how those things are. I have it myself—”

Suddenly he sank down alongside her and buried his head in her arms. “But it was you all the time, Connie. It was you all the time.”

She caressed his hair with the tips of her fingers.

“Cake,” she murmured.

“Connie,” he said softly. “Dreams do come true... sometimes.”