“Ah!” she blew her breath out with enormous relief.
Then we had to have another shot of brandy.
“You see, I am most awfully the coward,” she said when the third dose of liquor was in her. “But, ah, I have had so much trouble. It is a wonder that I am not insane.”
I could have told her she wasn’t far enough from it to do much bragging, but I nodded with what was meant for sympathy.
She lit another cigarette to replace the one she had dropped in her excitement. Her eyes became normal black slits again.
“I do not think it is nice”—there was a suggestion of a dimple in her brown cheek when she smiled like that—“that I throw myself into the arms of a man even whose name I do not know, or anything of him.”
“That’s easy to fix. My name is Young,” I lied; “and I can let you have a case of Scotch at a price that will astonish you. I think maybe I could stand it if you call me Jerry. Most of the ladies I let sit in my lap do.”
“Jerry Young,” she repeated, as if to herself. “That is a nice name. And you are the bootlegger?”
“Not the ,” I corrected her; “just a . This is San Francisco.”
The going got tough after that.
Everything else about this brown woman was all wrong, but her fright was real. She was scared stiff. And she didn’t intend being left alone this night. She meant to keep me there—to massage any more chins that stuck themselves at her. Her idea—she being that sort—was that I would be most surely held with affection. So she must turn herself loose on me. She wasn’t hampered by any pruderies or puritanisms at all.