We Can't Have Everything Part 14

"You're awful fresh, seems to me, on short acquaintance," was Kedzie's stinging rebuke.

Skip laughed. "Didn't you see the special-delivery stamp on me forehead?

But I guess you're a goil can take care yourself."

Kedzie guessed she was. But she was in need of help. Where else could she turn? Whom else had she for a beau in this mult.i.tude of strangers?

So she laughed encouragingly.

"All right. You're elected. Gimme the address."

Skip wrote it on one of the business cards of the bakery. He added:

"Another thing: I know a good expressman will rustle your trunk over from--Where you boardin' at now?"

Kedzie flushed. She could hardly tell him that she had boarded in a park up-town somewhere.

Skip saw that she was confused. He showed exquisite tact.

"I'm wise, goilie. She's holdin' your trunk out on you. I been in the same boat m'self."

Kedzie was willing to let it go at that, but Skip pondered:

"But, say--that ain't goin' to make such a h.e.l.l of a hit--scuse me, lady--but I mean if you tell your new landlady about your trunk bein'

left on your old one, that ain't goin' to get you nothin' but the door-slam in the snoot.... I tell you: tell her you just come in on the train and your wardrobe-trunk is on the way unless it got delayed in changin' cars at--oh, any old place. I guess you did come in, at that, from Buffalo or Pittsboig or some them Western joints, didn' you?"

Kedzie just looked at him. Her big eyes lied for her, and he hastened to say:

"Well, scuse me nosin' in on your own business. Tell the landlady what you want to, only tell her it was me sent you. That's as good as a guarantee--that she'll have to wait for her money."

Kedzie laughed at his excruciating wit, but she was touched also by his courtesy, and she told him he was awful kind and she was terrible obliged.

That bowled him over. But when she rose with stateliness and, reaching for her money, offered to pay, he had the presence of mind to snarl, amiably:

"Ah, ferget it and beat it. This meal's on me, and wishing you many happy returns of the same."

He certainly was one grand gentleman. The proprietor was away, and Skip could afford to be generous.

Kedzie left him and found the landlady and got a home; and then she found the store and got a job. For a time she was in Eden. The doleful proprietor's doleful wife was usually down-cellar making ice-cream while her husband was out in the kitchen cooking candy. Kedzie was free to guzzle soda-water at her will. Her forefinger and thumb went along the stacks of candy, dipping like a robin's beak. She was forever licking her fingers and brushing marshmallow dust off her chest. She usually had a large, square caramel outlined in one round cheek.

But the ecstasy did not abide. Kedzie began to realize why Mr. and Mrs.

Fleissig were sad. Sweets were a sour business; the people who came into the shop were mainly children who spent whole half-hours choosing a cent's worth of burnt sugar, or young, foolish girls who giggled into the soda bubbles, or housewives ordering ice-cream for Sunday.

If a young man appeared it was always to buy a box of candy for some other girl. It made Kedzie cynical to see him haggle and ponder, trying to make the maximum hit with a minimum of ammunition. It made her more distrustful to see young men trying to flirt with her while they bought tributes of devotion to somebody else. But Kedzie also found out that several of the neighborhood girls accepted candy from several gentlemen simultaneously, and she drew many cynical conclusions from the candy business.

Skip Magruder was attentive and took her out to moving pictures when he was free. In return for the courtesy she took her meals at "The Bon-Ton Bakery by Joe Gidden." Whenever he dared, Skip skipped the change. He could always slip her an extra t.i.tbit.

On that account she had to be a little extra gracious to him when he took her to the movies. Holding hands didn't hurt.

Not a week had gone before Skip had rivals. He caught Kedzie in deceptions. She kept him guessing, and the poor fool suffered the torments and thrills of jealousy. A flip young fellow named Hoke, agent for a jobber in ice-cream cones, and a tubby old codger named Kalteyer, who facetiously claimed to own a chewing-gum mine, were added compet.i.tors for Kedzie's smiles, while Skip teetered between homicide and suicide.

Skip was wretched, and Kedzie was enthralled by her own success. She had conquered New York. She had a job in a candy-store, a room in a flat with the family of a delicatessen merchant; she had as many flirtations as she could carry, and an increasing waiting-list. What more could woman ask?

And all this was in far upper Third Avenue. She had not yet been down to First Street. In fact, she was in New York two weeks before she got as far south as 100th Street. She had almost forgotten that she had ever dwelt elsewhere than in New York. Her imitative instinct was already exchanging her Western burr for a New York purr.

Her father and mother would hardly have known her voice if they had heard it. And they would hardly meet her, since they had given her up and gone back home, far sadder, no wiser, much poorer. They did not capture the insurance money, and they had no rewards to offer for Kedzie.

Now and then a Kedzie would be reported in some part of the country, and a wild paragraph would be printed about her. Now and then she would be found dead in a river or would be traced as a white slave drugged and sold and shipped to the Philippine Islands. The stories were heinously cruel to her father and mother, who mourned her in Nimrim and repented dismally of their harshness to the best and pirtiest girl ever lived.

Meanwhile Kedzie sold candy and ate less and less of it. She began to see more pretentious phases of city life and to be discontent with her social triumph. She began to understand how cheap her lovers were.

She called them "mutts." She came to suffer agonies of remorse at the liberties she had given them.

Mr. Kalteyer, the chewing-gum prince, in an effort to overcome the handicap of weight and age which Mr. Hoke did not carry, told Kedzie that her picture ought to be on every counter in the world, and he could get it there. He'd love to see her presented as a cla.s.sy dame showing her ivories and proving how "beneficiary" his chewing-gum was for the teeth as well as the digestion.

Kedzie told the delicatessen merchant's wife all about his glorious promises, and she said, very sagely:

"Bevare vit dose bo'quet fellers. Better as so many roses is it he should brink you a slice roastbif once. Lengwidge of flowers is nice, but money is de svell talker. Take it by me, money is de svell talker!"

Kedzie was glad of such wisdom, and she convinced Mr. Kalteyer that it took more than conversation to buy her favor. He kept his word under some duress, and took Kedzie to Mr. Eben E. Kiam, a manufacturer of show-cards and lithographs, with an advertising agency besides.

Mr. Edam studied her poses and smiles for days before he got her at her best. An interested observer and a fertile suggester in his office was a young Mr. Gilfoyle, who wrote legends for show-cards, catch-lines for new wares, and poems, if pressed.

Gilfoyle had the poet's prophetic eye, and he murmured to Mr. Kiam that there were millions in "Miss Adair's" face and form if they were worked right. He took pains to let Kedzie overhear this. It pleased her.

Millions were something she decided she would like.

Gilfoyle developed wonderfully in the sun of Kedzie's interest. He told Kalteyer that there was no money in handling chewing-gum in a small way as a piker; what he wanted was a catchy name, a special selling-argument, and a national publicity campaign. He advised Kalteyer to borrow a lot of money at the banks and sling himself.

Kalteyer breathed hard. Gilfoyle was a.s.sailed by an epilepsy of inspirations. In place of "Kalteyer's Peerless Gum," he proposed the enthralling t.i.tle, "Breathasweeta." Others had mixed pepsin in their edible rubber goods of various flavors. Gilfoyle proposed perfume!

Kalteyer was astounded at the boy's genius. He praised him till Kedzie began to think him worth cultivation, especially as he proposed to flood the country with portraits of Kedzie as the Breathasweeta Girl.

The muse of advertising swooped down and whispered to Gilfoyle the delicious lines to be printed under Kedzie's smile.

Kiss me again. Who are you?

You use Breathasweeta. You must be all right.

Kalteyer was swept off his feet. He ran to the bank while Kiam raised Gilfoyle's salary.

The life-size card of Kedzie was made with a prop to hold it up. It was so much retouched and altered in the printing that her own father, seeing it in a Nimrim drugstore, never recognized it. Nearly every drug-store in the country set up a Kedzie in its show-window.

The Breathasweeta came into such demand that Kalteyer was temporarily bankrupted by prosperity. He had to borrow so much money to float his wares that he had none for Kedzie's entertainment.

Mr. Kiam took her up as a valuable model for advertising purposes.

He aroused in Kedzie an inordinate appet.i.te for pictures of herself. All day long she was posed in costumes for various calendars, as a farmer's daughter, as a society queen, as a camera girl, as a sausage nymph, and as the patron saint of a brewery.

In a week she had arrived at cla.s.sic poses in Greek robes. One by one these were abbreviated, till Kedzie was being very generally revealed to the public eye.

The modesty her mother had whipped into her was gradually unlearned step by step, garment by garment, without Kedzie's noticing the change in her soul.