The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by F. Scott Fitzgerald & Bryant Mangum & Roxana Robinson

Author:F. Scott Fitzgerald & Bryant Mangum & Roxana Robinson [Fitzgerald, F. Scott & Mangum, Bryant & Robinson, Roxana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Literary, Fiction, United States, Short Stories, Fantasy, Short Stories (Single Author), Classics, Nineteen Twenties, Scribner's
ISBN: 9780684842509
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1951-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

Hannaford put his hand over the mouthpiece. "What am I supposed to do?"

Schroeder snickered and Hannaford hesitated, smiling and suspicious.

"Who do you want to speak to?" he temporized into the phone.

"To George Hannaford, I want to speak to. Is this him?"

"Yes."

"Oh, George; it's me."

"Who?"

"Me—Gwen. I had an awful time finding you. They told me "

"Gwen who?"

"Gwen—can't you hear? From San Francisco—last Thursday night."

"I'm sorry," objected George. "Must be some mistake."

"Is this George Hannaford ?"

"Yes."

The voice grew slightly tart: "Well, this is Gwen Becker you spent last Thursday evening with in San Francisco. There's no use pretending you don't know who I am, because you do."

Schroeder took the apparatus from George and hung up the receiver.

"Somebody has been doubling for me up in Frisco," said Hannaford.

"So that's where you were Thursday night!"

"Those things aren't funny to me—not since that crazy Zeller girl.

You can never convince them they've been sold because the man always looks something like you. What's new, Pete ?"

"Let's go over to the stage and see."

Together they walked out a back entrance, along a muddy walk, and opening a little door in the big blank wall of the studio building entered into its half darkness.

Here and there figures spotted the dim twilight, figures that turned up white faces to George Hannaford, like souls in purgatory watching the passage of a half-god through. Here and there were whispers and soft voices and, apparently from afar, the gentle tremolo of a small organ. Turning the corner made by some flats, they came upon the white crackling glow of a stage with two people motionless upon it.

An actor in evening clothes, his shirt front, collar and cuffs tinted a brilliant pink, made as though to get chairs for them, but they shook their heads and stood watching. For a long while nothing happened on the stage—no one moved. A row of lights went off with a savage hiss, went on again. The plaintive tap of a hammer begged admission to nowhere in the distance; a blue face appeared among the blinding lights above and called something unintelligible into the upper blackness. Then the silence was broken by a low clear voice from the stage:

"If you want to know why I haven't got stockings on, look in my dressing room. I spoiled four pairs yesterday and two already this morning. . . . This dress weighs six pounds."

A man stepped out of the group of observers and regarded the girl's brown legs; their lack of covering was scarcely distinguishable, but, in any event, her expression implied that she would do nothing about it. The lady was annoyed, and so intense was her personality that it had taken only a fractional flexing of her eyes to indicate the fact. She was a dark, pretty girl with a figure that would be full-blown sooner than she wished. She was just eighteen.

Had this been the week before, George Hannaford's heart would have stood still. Their relationship had been in just that stage. He hadn't said a

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