lets him help her with her coat before telling him. "Jake's picking me up."

"That back-stabbing pop peddler again!"

"Jake doesn't talk that way about you."

"Oh, no."

"Jake's always telling me how he's afraid you won't get enough sleep every night to be on the job all day so you'll make good here."

"Ha, ha. I'm laughing."

"Oh, is that what that is?"

Frankie struggles manfully for the dignity befitting an employer and capitalist. But there's a swish of tires on gravel and headlights flash through the window. A customer, perchance?

Oh-lee, oh-lay, too-loo! A so-called musical horn tootles.

And by the interior brightness of Link One fanning into the night Frankie watches his employee skip into the long convertible and park herself beside the character at the wheel.

"Be seeing you with a load of pop, pappy!" And the District General Manager of National Carbonated Beverages, Inc., guns his buggy around, rear wheels spraying gravel at Frankie and Link One.

"Dames!" Frankie says. "Bah."

The night has no answer for that, so Frankie climbs into his roadster behind Link One. He steps on the starter. Things whimper under the hood and finally the motor churns like it's got asthma. Also now, different sections of the car begin sounding like somebody's shaking a string of tin cans. Yeah, the buggy's ready to go, but where's there to go now? Frankie shuts the thing off.

In the grateful silence of the night Frankie eases himself off the sharp spring that keeps poking him through the seat. He also turns a knob. There's a whining, a mess of sputtering, and from under the dashboard there's music and words. Maybe it sounds different where it begins at but the whole thing arrives here like it's being run through a loose drain pipe.

Well, when a guy's sunk every dollar he can beg, borrow and legally lay hands on into his business here, what can he expect—Vaughn Monroe in person? But at least the music's company. So Frankie sits with his head parked back on the seat. 

 Prev. P 2/12 next