"Well, I think you'll start with one orange, just to kind of hint to the old works that something good is coming. Then--lemme see"--she considered gravely. "Then I guess about two soft-boiled eggs--no, you can stand three--and some dry toast and some coffee. Maybe a few thin strips of bacon wouldn't hurt. We'll see can you make the grade." She turned to give the order to a waitress. "And shoot the coffee along, sister. A cup for me, too."Her charge shivered again at the mere mention of coffee. The juncture was critical. He might still be dreaming, but in another moment he must know. He closely, even coolly, watched the two cups of coffee that were placed before them. He put a benumbed hand around the cup in front of him and felt it burn. It was too active a sensation for mere dreaming. He put sugar into the cup and poured in the cream from a miniature pitcher, inhaling a very real aroma.
Events thus far seemed normal. He stirred the coffee and started to raise the cup. Now, after all, it seemed to be a dream. His hand shook so that the stuff spilled into the saucer and even out on to the table. Always in dreams you were thwarted at the last moment.
The Montague girl had noted the trembling and ineffective hand. She turned her back upon him to chat with the waitress over by the food counter. With no eye upon him, he put both hands about the cup and succeeded in raising it to his lips. The hands were still shaky, but he managed some sips of the stuff, and then a long draught that seemed to scald him. He wasn't sure if it scalded or not. It was pretty hot, and fire ran through him. He drained the cup--still holding it with both hands. It was an amazing sensation to have one's hand refuse to obey so simple an order. Maybe he would always be that way now, practically a cripple.
The girl turned back to him. "Atta boy," she said. "Now take the orange. And when the toast comes you can have some more coffee." Adread load was off his mind. He did not dream this thing. He ate the orange, and ate wonderful toast to the accompaniment of another cup of coffee. The latter half of this he managed with but one hand, though it was not yet wholly under control. The three eggs seemed like but one. He thought they must have been small eggs. More toast was commanded and more coffee.
"Easy, easy!" cautioned his watchful hostess from time to time.
"Don't wolf it--you'll feel better afterwards.""I feel better already," he announced.
"Well," the girl eyed him critically, "you certainly got the main chandelier lighted up once more."A strange exhilaration flooded all his being. His own thoughts babbled to him, and he presently began to babble to his new friend.
"You remind me so much of Tessie Kearns," he said as he scraped the sides of the egg cup.
"Who's she?"
"Oh, she's a scenario writer I know. You're just like her." He was now drunk--maudlin drunk--from the coffee. Sober, he would have known that no human beings could be less alike than Tessie Kearns and the Montague girl. Other walls of his reserve went down.
"Of course I could have written to Gashwiler and got some money to go back there--""Gashwiler, Gashwiler?" The girl seemed to search her memory. "Ithought I knew all the tank towns, but that's a new one. Where is it?""It isn't a town; it's a gentleman I had a position with, and he said he'd keep it open for me." He flew to another thought with the inconsequence of the drunken. "Say, Kid"--He had even caught that form of address from her--"I'll tell you. You can keep this watch of mine till I pay you back this money." He drew it out. "It's a good solid-gold watch and everything. My uncle Sylvester gave it to me for not smoking, on my eighteenth birthday. He smoked, himself; he even drank considerable. He was his own worst enemy. But you can see it's a good solid--gold watch and keeps time, and you hold it till Ipay you back, will you?"
The girl took the watch, examining it carefully, noting the inscription engraved on the case. There were puzzling glints in her eyes as she handed it back to him. "No; I'll tell you, it'll be my watch until you pay me back, but you keep it for me. I haven't any place to carry it except the pocket of my jacket, and I might lose it, and then where'd we be?""Well, all right." He cheerfully took back the watch. His present ecstasy would find him agreeable to all proposals.
"And say," continued the girl, "what about this Gashweiler, or whatever his name is? He said he'd take you back, did he? A farm?""No, an emporium--and you forgot his name just the way that lady in the casting office always does. She's funny. Keeps telling me not to forget the address, when of course I couldn't forget the town where I lived, could I? Of course it's a little town, but you wouldn't forget it when you lived there a long time--not when you got your start there.""So you got your start in this town, did you?"He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town and his life there, of the eight-hour talent-tester and the course in movie-acting. Of Tessie Kearns and her scenarios, not yet prized as they were sure to be later. Of Lowell Hardy, the artistic photographer, and the stills that he had made of the speaker as Clifford Armytage.
Didn't she think that was a better stage name than Merton Gill, which didn't seem to sound like so much? Anyway, he wished he had his stills here to show her. Of course some of them were just in society parts, the sort of thing that Harold Parmalee played--had she noticed that he looked a good deal like Harold Parmalee? Lots of people had.
