Looking for a Love Story by Louise Shaffer

Author:Louise Shaffer [Shaffer, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary Women, Family Life, Sagas, General
ISBN: 9780345521774
Google: G-2qgEvSukgC
Amazon: 0345502108
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2010-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Joe found Benny in their dressing room, leaning back precariously in a chair with his feet propped up on the makeup table, his eyes closed. Benny hadn’t taken off his dashing white suit, and he hadn’t even put a towel on the chair to protect it. Benny’s mother had spoiled him for so long that now, even though she was gone, he still acted as if he had someone doing his laundry for him. At this rate, his suit was going to need cleaning before they left New Rochelle, which would make a dent in their carefully calculated budget. Joe was the one who had done the calculating, and normally he would have yelled at Benny for being a careless jerk, but Joe was about to propose something that was going to make a much bigger hole in their finances. So he didn’t scold his feckless partner—not even for resting his dirty shoes on their makeup table.

Instead, he put on his own suit for the curtain call, doing it fast, while, in his head, he ran over the idea he was about to propose. Then he sat in the chair next to Benny and plunged in. “I been thinking,” he began.

Benny sat up. “Me too,” he said. “We’re getting nowhere in this business, kiddo.”

It was the same complaint he’d been making, but this time it seemed to Joe that there was something more urgent about it. Momentarily dropping the speech he’d been about to make, he said, “It’s our material. When we finish this tour, we need to rewrite it. That’s all, Benny. We’re a good team onstage. Our timing is great, and the way we look and sound—all that works.”

For a second Joe thought Benny was going to argue, but he seemed to think better of it. He began patting powder on his nose. “If you say so,” he said.

But that didn’t mean he agreed. And the tricky thing about Benny was, if he ever did quit the act, he’d give his partner the news in his own sweet time, if he bothered to do it at all. Benny hated any kind of unpleasantness. When he was finished with something he just walked away—as dozens of girls around the country had learned the hard way. His favorite method of telling a lady the romance was off was to send her a good-bye note and a red rose to remember him by. That was his signature—one red rose. He gave them to his girls at the beginning of a courtship—and at the end. And whenever he could manage it, the final rose and the accompanying note were delivered after he was safely out of town.

Joe studied Benny out of the corner of his eye. Given his mood, this was the wrong time to make the suggestion Joe had in mind. But if he didn’t say something now, Ellie and her sisters would be packing their trunk and heading back to New York City. “I’ve been thinking maybe we should add something to the act—until we can rework it,” Joe said.

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