The Only Girl in the Game Read Online Free PDF

taste.”
    She huffed on her fingernails, looked at him with disdain, and pretended to buff them on her bare midriff. “I’m on duty out here, sir. Part of my employment contract, decorating the pool area.”
    He looked at her meaningfully. “Any smaller suit than that one, Betty, and you’ll be running competition to those bare broads in the Safari Room. You’ll be taking business away from our headline talent—two shows nightly.”
    “That mess is taking business away from itself. Max must have had holes in his head when he booked that crew into the big room. It’s so bad it’s giving free material to every comedian in town. And what do you mean, a smaller suit than this? There’s no such thing.”
    “Don’t go away,” he said. He dropped his towel and went to the pool and dived in. She kept her head turned and watched him do his fast laps and the racing turns, watched the long arms reaching, the muscles of the shoulders sliding and meshing under his red-brown tan. She could sense the complete way he was expending himself. He came back to her, winded and gasping, and spread his towel beside her chaise and stretched out there.
    When his breathing had quieted down, she lit a cigarette and reached down and placed it in the corner of his mouth.
    “How went the battle last night, mother?” he asked her.
    “My four exciting performances? The midnight and the two o’clock were square, so damn square I had to back away from my own stuff and do them ballads, which I do poorly and which I despise doing. The four o’clock was empty. Twodrunkey couples, not together. But the five-thirty aye em was a warming thing. Old fans rolled in, a party of fourteen, by gosh, with requests for this and that, and the excitement even brought some spooks in off the casino floor, jangling their silver dollars. So I had to nightcap my old buddies, and I didn’t get into the sack until seven, or out of it until two-thirty. Tonight I’m off, but tomorrow night if you could hang around for the midnight, I’ve got a new one I want you to catch. I’ll lead off with it right after the standard opening, so you won’t lose too much time.”
    “What’s it about?”
    “I won’t tell you much because I don’t want to spoil it. It is a lament-type thing, about a young girl who has grown up in the sports-car era, and who had adjusted well to love in Jaguars, M.G.’s, Triumphs, Mercedes and so on, but now she is in love with a guy who loves classic cars and he drives an ancient sixteen-cylinder Cad, and she just doesn’t know what the hell to do with all that space.”
    “It sounds choice.”
    “I’m saving it for a time you can catch it, Hugh.”
    He sat up and grinned at her, and she couldn’t let him guess the weird way it made her heart thump to see that crooked wonderful grin. “I am so damn glad,” he said, “that the entertainment around here is entirely a casino operation and Max Hanes handles it with Al Malta’s help and advice, and nobody asks me anything about it.”
    “So you don’t have to face up to the sad job of firing me?”
    “Hell, I’d give you a single in the Safari Room.”
    “And that would be a gasser, lad.”
    “I mean I like it because I can be with you with no stress and strain, Betty. I know you’re under no obligation to be pleasant to me. Maybe you’ve never thought of it, but the job I’ve got is lonely. If I set up any teacher’s pets, it starts cliques and jealousies.”
    “Some of those waitresses would make dandy pets.”
    “Yes indeedy.”
    “You don’t have to smack your chops like that. Jerry Buckler doesn’t have your scruples, Mr. D.”
    “And I wouldn’t hire Jerry to throw water if I was on fire. He bitches me every chance he gets.”
    “Don’t buck him too hard, Hugh.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “I’d like to keep you around for a while, that’s all. I’m a fixture here, dear. Two and a half years. Good ole Betty Dawson and her little songs of love and stuff.