Read The Only Girl in the Game for Free Online Page B

evening reading something uplifting.”
    He stared skyward for strength, wiped his hand slowly across his face, then glowered at her and said, “Why, O why do you give me hell on Wednesdays?”
    She giggled. “No girl wants to make things too easy.”
    “Skulking is splendid exercise, Miss Dawson.”
    “But should you really be so smug about all this, Hugh?”
    “Smug?” His expression changed. “I’ll be serious for once, without you changing the subject. Now shut up and listen. Not smug, Betty. Eternally, quietly, humbly grateful. And not quite able to believe my own luck. I didn’t know there was such a thing as this kind of a relationship between a man and a woman. I thought there always had to be love or it was just a sort of cheap opportunism. But there’s a special, wonderful honesty about this. You are a hell of a nice guy, Betty. We became good friends before … we added the physical part. And now this whole thing of … giving and receiving pleasure seems to be such a logical extension of friendship and affection that it seems a damn shame more people can’t find it the way we have, without tension and friction.”
    “That’s right. You’re unbearably smug. I’m just another fool woman. You are using me, you cad.”
    “Sure am,” he said, grinning. “Couldn’t possibly stop now. Don’t you ever want to say anything in a serious vein?”
    “You, my managerial friend, are serious enough for both of us. Let’s not pick at things and analyze them and make a lot of goopy comparisons, Hugh. That bird over there in that bush will never need psychiatry. He just busts his throat singing, and takes things as they come.”
    “And so should we?”
    “Don’t you think so?”
    “Of course I do, Betty. Like this is Wednesday night, so let’s take it.”
    “Trapped,” she said. “Outmaneuvered again. Ah, sir, you are too clever for stupid broad in entertainment field, no? Broad condemned to career of skulking to save reputation. But may humble girl ask favor from mighty manager?”
    “Anything your shriveled little heart desires, cutie.”
    “Honestly, I am exhausted, Hugh. So, with your permission, I’ll sneak into your room about seven or maybe a little later, and please see if you can keep yourself busy long enough so I can have a long nap. May I say, solemnly, that it is one of those little favors you won’t regret?”
    He looked at her eyes and her lips. “Damn this secrecy kick. I’d like to brag about you. Take ads in the paper. Buy air time.”
    “Let’s just keep it to ourselves, hmmmm?”
    He stood up. “I’ve got a five o’clock date with some gift-shop people who don’t like our standard lease.”
    “Give ’em hell, Mr. D. Tell them what for.”
    “You have a happy nap.”
    She winked at him. He turned and walked away from her. When he reached the service-alley gate he looked back and waved from the distance. She lifted one long leg in sardonic salute. When he was gone she said, moving her lips, making no sound, “I love you, I love you, I love you with all my heart, Hugh Darren.”
    And that is the message I cannot give you, ever. And it is that love, you dull darling, which keeps it all from being cheap. I wrap everything in my love, all for you, and it is all right if you call it friendship, because I’m going to take all of it I can get, drink deep and fast of it, because I know it is going to end and I just don’t know how soon.
    A man hairy as a bison, and almost as large, moved in on her, bringing his chair and planting it next to the chaise, facing her. “I certainly admire your work, Miss Dawson. I caught your midnight show last night.”
    She saw, with weary amusement, that his eyes were tracking back and forth from her ankles to her throat as though he watched a midget tennis match. “Ummm,” she said.
    In a soporific drone he began to tell her all about himself. She thought about her nap in Hugh’s bed and she thought about Hugh with great precision of