by Steve Amick
“And in the ‘okay to pursue the widow of category?”
“Exactly,” he said, and that was the last he said for a very long while.
75
He'd never enjoyed the “aftermath” all that much. He usually felt like getting up and moving around. Maybe not fleeing, but doing something else, going out for a bite or walking the girl home. But he didn't mind this at all, this time, just lying there with Sal, her body still warm and tingly against his. In fact, he was kind of hoping he could just lie there till he fell asleep, even if it meant waking up in her bed in the morning and facing what they'd done. Already, in his heart, he knew he'd done the right thing.
She said, “I imagine we're going to probably skip a few steps, you and me. The normal rituals.”
He wasn't sure he necessarily wanted to skip the rituals with her. But maybe that wasn't what she meant.
“I mean … the slow getting-to-know-each-other part. We've done that. And we get along … and it turns out you're attracted to me.”
“Very,” he said.
“And you don't seem to be playing the field with other women lately. You seem to have knocked off fooling around with my friend …”
“On account,” he said, “of I'm in love with you.”
She adjusted the covers and rolled over on top of him, her hair falling in his face. He'd noticed, already, even when they were doing it, that her hair made him itch. All that time he'd known her and been so close to her, relatively, and yet he'd never had an inkling her hair would make him itch. Something about it being so fine and a little wavy, maybe. He'd never known a woman to make him itch with just the touch of her hair to his skin, but he imagined he could get used to it.
She stared down into his face. There was little light coming in from the alley-side window, but he could feel her breath. “Everything you're telling me?” she said. “Same here, pal. Why do you think that's any different for me?”
“No fooling?”
“Honor bright. All of it. Well, except for looking at your picture and thinking of you and waxing my—not sure what I wax. Touching myself, then.”
“Right. Of course not.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I don't look at your picture while I think of you and touch myself. But, hey, two out of three …”
For a second, he couldn't breathe. He'd never known another woman to make both his heart and his pecker leap at the dead same instant.
76
Packing her suitcase for their long weekend alone in Reenie's brother's hunting cabin up north in the Wisconsin Dells, she dug deep in her pile of old sweaters, knowing the warmer and woollier the better—patches and moth holes and unraveling be damned—and so even included the tight, slightly shrunken turtleneck she'd owned since senior year in high school. She stopped, examining the old monogram on the breast, constructed from her maiden name Dean, and realized the initials fit again; acknowledging, for the first clear moment that day, that her name was now Dutton. Sally Ann Dutton.
A few of the other girls growing up teased her about this a little—her initials spelling out SAD—but she'd never been particularly morose growing up, except the year her mother got sick and died, and she certainly wasn't feeling sad now. Far from it.
They'd taken care of the whole thing, in a civil service devoid of all frills, earlier that morning, down at city hall. Reenie and Keeney were the official witnesses, but Chesty's aunt Sarah had attended as well, sneaking away from her husband Whitcomb by coming downtown in a regular taxi, of all things. Sal was moved, seeing her there, touched that she would go to the bother, both logistically and emotionally, of showing. She appeared markedly older and frailer, despite the smart suit and new hat, and it was hard not to think it had a lot to do with the loss of her “young William” a little more than a year before. But she smiled sweetly through the whole proceeding. And though it seemed a little awkward, introducing her to Wink for the first time, out in the lobby, the grand old gal showed her true breeding and grace and took them all to lunch at the Palmer House.
“William would be happy for you, dear,” she said. “I'm certain.”
It was hard not to bust out crying, hearing this. “They liked each other a great deal,” Sal told her, “my two husbands.” The phrase made her laugh, despite herself, and it came out as a silly little hiccup.
Mrs. Chesterton patted Sal's white-gloved hand with her own white-gloved hand, and it felt as close as she'd felt, in a long time, to having an actual family alive and walking around on the earth.
Or perhaps the feeling had come from the glimpse she'd just caught of Wink and Reenie and Keeney, whom her friend had, thankfully, stopped calling the pirate (a sign, Sal felt, that meant something), all beaming with mischief, up to something conspiratorial with the waiter. Those nitwits were certainly her family, too.
Chesty's aunt told her then that she thought her father would have liked Wink as well, and Sal had to admit, she was probably right—Pop was no fool—and soon their surprise arrived, wheeled in on a dessert cart. They would be served cherry pie, not wedding cake, out of deference to Chesty.
“A toast to my friend,” Wink said, raising his champagne to Sal, “and to my friend who has gone on—no cake, buddy—”
“Well, except maybe cheesecake,” Reenie said, making a naughty. They all laughed—even Mrs. Chesterton, whom Sal figured didn't actually get it—and then Wink continued, turning to Reenie and Keeney
“And to my friends now and evermore: may you find the riches I have found and the patience to find it. Dig in!”
There were hear-hears and gulps of champagne and then they dug in, and when she lay her fork into the flaky crust and down into the rich red goo, Wink already had a bite held out on his fork before her, offering her his in that traditional, first-bite barter, and they fed each other, and she thought of the rite of communion.
77
He watched Keeney wave off the old German bartender when he brought up the two beer bottles, insisting on opening them himself with his prosthetic hand.
“Very impressive,” Wink said. “If we'd ordered wine, could you flip out a corkscrew on that thing, too?”
It had been Reenie's idea, about a week after they got back from her brother's cabin, to double-date at the Berghoff, and they'd split off, the men heading to the bar, the women waiting at the table for their salads. He watched them in the mirror behind the bar, back at the table giggling, no doubt about the honeymoon he and Sal just had.
It seemed clear halfway through the first beer that Keeney had a few declarations he wanted to make. Number one seemed to be that he had an open mind about Reenie's “moonlighting,” meaning her posing, and that Wink wasn't in danger of losing “one of the Sallys” on his account, “at least not anytime soon.”
He wondered if Keeney assumed Wink had already lost “one of the Sallys” by marrying her, and frankly Wink hadn't even thought about that yet.
Keeney said, “Someone else less well adjusted than myself, maybe he'd get it stuck in his craw, his girlfriend doing that kind of work, but no. I figure she doesn't knock me for being the way I am”—he gestured with his hook, jabbing at his own necktie— “you know, a Republican and only half Irish. So I gotta accept her.”
This guy … Wink slapped him on the back. He was damn glad they'd found this crazy bastard.
“At least for a little while,” Keeney said. “I can't really feature her peeling for the cameras once she starts having my kids.”
Wink kept smiling automatically, but inside he was wondering what the hell Keeney was thinking. Didn't he know Reenie wasn't a settler? And if she did settle, the plan was to at least settle for someone who could either give her riches or a career as an art director. She wouldn't be going through art school and trying to make it at some ad agency while also making babies with this poor deluded sap.
Of course, he hadn't had a solid talk with Reenie for some time now. Maybe her plans had altered, maybe the situation had changed. But he seriously doubted it.
>
Keeney straightened a little in his stool. “You should know, also, we're jake, you and me. No grudge here.”
“Jake on what?” He had a feeling he was talking about Reenie. “The photo in the Trib, you're talking about?” He knew he'd made that jake already—especially once he got him work indoors before snowfall, actually having managed to talk that grump Sunshine State into hiring him at his news shop.
“Uh-uh.” Keeney jerked his thumb back toward the table behind them, which Wink took as a confirmation of his suspicion. “We're jake about the ‘crossed swords,' if you'll pardon my Latin. Most situations like this, knowing another guy used to …” He raised his eyebrows. “You know. And then that guy moves on or whatever, the next guy might feel he's getting leftovers, like he turned his nose up or she got passed over, like what the Jesus this guy see wrong with her? But I'm saying no, I don't feel that way. I mean, just get a load of her … !”
They swiveled on their bar stools, taking in the two striking girls back at the table, the wavy-haired blonde and the dark brunette, whispering and laughing like honest-to-God starlets.
“Does she look like leftovers to you?”
Wink told him that she absolutely did not. He liked this guy a lot and hoped she'd somehow decide to give him a half a chance.
Keeney elbowed him, nodding back at the table again, meaning now, as Wink took it, to indicate Sal. “You just had other good things already on your plate you just weren't aware of all that time.”
78
Sal took a plate of her best ranger cookies to the old coot at the news shop.
Keeney wasn't working, and she wasn't sure the owner recognized her, and so she asked.
“Sure, sure,” he growled, gesturing to the pinup on the wall behind him with the stub of his cigar. She noticed the one she'd signed, actually of Reenie, had been replaced, probably by Keeney, with this one of Sal herself holding two milk jugs in front of her otherwise bare bosom. “The lady what gets her tits out.” He held up his meaty paws as if not wanting to offend. “On occasion.” Then he affected a small, almost motionless, and completely seated bow. “Salutations.”
Ignoring this, she told him she'd been curious about how some of their S&W titles were selling, and she'd come by to look around.
“You're here to window-shop?”
She reminded him again of the cookies—that bringing them for him was half the purpose of her visit—and opened the tin for him, insisting he try one.
He took one bite and didn't so much spit it out as let it fall from his mouth, leaving a wet splotch on a newspaper bundle at his feet, obliterating what she thought was probably Pogo Possum.
“Christ!” he barked. “Coconut?”
“You don't care for—”
“Coconut gives me the screaming yips! You want I should crap my pants, lady? I wouldn't feed that to a duck …”
This was it, she realized. She could turn tail right now and give up, or she could face this ogre.
“I want you should,” she said, imitating his ignorant grammar, “I want you should consider better placement for our titles, okay, maybe even a face-out now and again, and I want you should consider perhaps some sort of in-store promotional appearance, meet Winkin' Sally, something like that. And I want you should consider we did you a huge favor finding you Keeney, a guy who probably does ninety percent of the heavy lifting around here now while you no doubt sit on your wide bottom thinking up wise remarks. And while you're at it, I want you should stop being so fucking rude!”
He stared at her for so long, so still, she thought for a second he'd had some sort of small seizure. But then he just said, “Fair enough.”
“Fair enough meaning you'll give us better placement?”
“No, but I will try to work on the rude. What's that going to cost me, right? As for better placement, I'm afraid I don't want to tangle with a certain Mr. Price. Things can get hot with a gentleman like that, and when I say hot, I mean like fire hot. So you can either take him a bunch of your coconut what-have-yous here, or you can always buy me out and put me on a train to the Sunshine State, and I'll be all set. Otherwise, sorry, ma'am.”
On her way out, she heard him say, so quietly perhaps it wasn't meant for her to hear, “And really—I really am gonna work on the rude.”
79
In February of ‘47, Wink got a message from Bob, the photo editor at the Trib, that he wanted him to come in. He had no idea what the guy wanted.
He told Sal he was being summoned to the Tower the next day, but she claimed she knew nothing about it, either. It had been a long time since she'd moonlighted there as a darkroom tech.
All the way up there, Wink tried to confine his guesses to the mundane—maybe Bob was offering him some darkroom work or, at the most, a freelance assignment, though probably on spec. He tried to keep it out of his head that it could be anything more than that.
After waving him into his office, throwing out a “Congrats on the recent nuptials,” and pointing to a cluttered leather hump Wink assumed was a love seat, somewhere under the papers, the exhausted-looking Bob leaned back in his massive desk chair and stretched, saying, “Real interesting, the way reactions to that photo of yours went, huh? The back and forth of it? Provocative.”
Wink agreed that it was.
“Good stuff, all in all. Real good stuff.” Bob sat forward now and began shuffling papers on his desk as if he'd actually made some kind of a clear statement. It felt, for a moment, as if Wink had been dismissed or at least forgotten.
But then the guy produced a slip of paper, signed it, and handed it over, explaining that he was now officially on staff.
“Yeah, but—”
Bob waved him off. “Think of it as on retainer. You don't even have to show up. You'll receive a weekly paycheck, and this is for back pay, we'll call it, back to May of ‘46. We're going to backdate the books, in terms of taxes and such.”
He didn't fully understand. And he wasn't sure he'd actually said he accepted a job.
“Don't worry,” Bob said, rising with a groan. “No meetings, no time card. You got something good in the pipes, give me a jingle. Otherwise …”
He had his hand out to shake, like it was over.
Wink shook it, not clear at all what had just happened, too thrown to offer his left instead. It sounded, frankly, too good to be true. The numbers on the piece of paper in his hand accounted for nearly nine months of salary.
Still, it was free money, really. He'd already been paid a flat fee for the photo. And it sounded like he was going to be better than a staff photographer, some sort of special photographer with a direct line to the top. This was, possibly, his big chance to finally do the sort of creative things he'd been striving to do all along.
All the way back to the shop, he felt like a respected artist.
80
Sal felt herself being jostled awake. She opened her eyes to a hand—too slender and long to be Wink's mangled right—being thrust inches from her face. “Shake, sister!” someone whispered, a woman. “Shake hands, toots, with your ol' pal Mrs. Reenie Keeney”
She forced her eyes open. It was Reenie, all right, kneeling beside the bed, grinning like someone deranged, offering her her hand. Trying to sit up a little, she started to reach out drowsily and then saw the ring and grabbed instead.
“I know, I know!” Reenie's normally husky voice now sounded like a leaky balloon. “It's very, very fast, and it's crazy, and I always said the main reason I'd ever get hitched was to shed this ridiculous name, and I think maybe I made it worse, but there you are—from Reenie Rooney to Reenie Keeney Doesn't that just hand you a laugh? I know you two are going to bust a gut over that so go ahead and get it over with! Let's hear it!”
Sal turned to her husband beside her, just starting to roll over and focus. He looked about as amazed and disoriented as she felt. “What state were you—?”
“We were just a little tipsy, if you must know, Mr. Nosy-pants. He doesn't drink quite like you d
o, you know. We were perfectly in our right minds, so—”
“Indiana,” Sal said, explaining it to Wink. “There's no waiting period.”
“Right,” Reenie said, then sourly, “So gee, where's the hug? Don't everybody throw rice at once, for Pete's sake!”
Sal hopped out of bed and threw her arms around her friend. She felt bad for hesitating. Of course she was happy for her. She stroked her back a little and whispered as much.
When she let her go, Reenie next turned to Wink, like he was supposed to come over and hug her, too. But he was staying put, with his knees up under the covers. “You're going to have to, uh”—he gestured for her to come around to his side—”I'm not really …” He held out his hands like he wanted to hug her, but he wasn't going to stand right now.
“Oh yes, of course,” Reenie said, clicking around to Wink's side in her high heels. “The private stands at attention for reveille.”
It felt a little strange, her pal so casually expressing her familiarity with her own husband's morning erections, but Sal supposed they were all well beyond that at this point.
Reenie bent over him, and he gave her a little shoulder hug, their bodies not coming into contact much below the chest. He was trying to be discreet. As she patted his back, Sal noticed she still wore long opera-length gloves from the night before. They probably hadn't been to sleep.
