Chapter 7
seven
On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me . . . seven swans a-swimming.
San Diego
“Maggie makes egg salad the same way Ethel did,” Bill Curtis said.
“It’s good.” At the little kitchen table, Prescott took another bite of his sandwich and resisted the impulse to feed a morsel to the gray-and-white beggar beside his chair.
“Every Sunday, Ethel and I used to have egg salad and go to the zoo.” Mr. Curtis separated a peeled orange and handed Prescott a fragrant slice. “The San Diego Zoo is one of the finest in the world.”
“I’ve never been there.” Prescott let the slice of California sunshine squirt in his mouth. He’d never been to any zoo. Yet another thing that didn’t fit in the worlds of either poverty or glamour.
“It’s still open. One of the few parts of Balboa Park unoccupied by the Navy.” Sad longing clouded Mr. Curtis’s eyes.
Maggie chuckled. “What would the Navy do with gorillas and hippos and flamingoes?”
Prescott smiled at the thought of a flamingo in a sailor hat. “If you miss it, Mr. Curtis, you should go.”
His mouth pursed as if the orange had molded. “In my wheelchair? Never.”
“I don’t mind pushing,” Maggie said.
Mr. Curtis hoisted himself up with one cane and took his plate to the sink. “I’m not making a fool of myself.”
As Prescott chewed the last of his sandwich, the same pressure built as during his first USO hospital visit. “After my accident, I didn’t go out in public unless necessary. I hate the stares. Worse, the pity.”
“See, Maggie.” Mr. Curtis ran water in the sink. “He understands.”
“I do.” Prescott stepped around Tobias and brought his plate to the sink, where Mr. Curtis took it. “I also understand it was killing me, avoiding all the things I loved.”
“I get by.” The man’s voice came out gruff.
Prescott leaned back against the cabinet, so he could see both Maggie and her grandfather. “I know you do. So go to the zoo. I’ll go with you. They’ll be so busy gawking at me, they won’t even notice you.” He winked at Maggie.
She leaned her elbows on the table and grinned. “Can I go too?”
“Of course.” He caught Mr. Curtis’s eye. “All the men will be distracted by your granddaughter’s beauty, and the women will be whispering to each other, ‘Is that Prescott Duke? No, he was such a handsome fellow. Don’t stare. It’s rude.’ No one will even notice you.”
Maggie’s smile wiggled.
Mr. Curtis harrumphed. “You two are ganging up on me.”
“Of course,” Maggie said. “What’s the matter? You aren’t chicken, are you?”
“Are you done with that?” Mr. Curtis took Maggie’s plate without waiting for an answer. “It won’t work. I can’t take the wheelchair on the trolley.”
Maggie gestured to the side. “It fits in your truck. You have a full tank of gas.”
Mr. Curtis scrubbed at a plate with a rag. “I’m saving for an emergency. Gas is rationed, you know.”
“Three gallons a week,” Maggie said. “You haven’t used three gallons in the past year.”
Prescott shrugged. “Sounds like a lousy excuse to me.”
“Fine.” Mr. Curtis wiped the last plate under the faucet. “Next Sunday, then.”
“No.” Maggie raised one finger. “Not until Press finishes his script and I finish typing. It’ll be our reward.”
It was Prescott’s turn to harrumph. “Now I’m being ganged up on.”
“Absolutely. Get to work, young man.” Maggie lifted a black typewriter case onto the kitchen table.
“Yes, ma’am.” Prescott relished the familial teasing. But this wasn’t his family.
Maggie sandwiched carbon paper between pieces of white paper and rolled the layers into her typewriter. “Have you decided where to pitch it?”
“I’ll show it to Valentine Ruben.” Prescott pulled his script out of his attaché case. “He’s with my old studio and produced several of my films. The serious ones. We’re pretty good friends. He visited a few times when I was in the hospital.”
“This is a perfect fit for him.” Maggie held out her hand for the script.
Prescott frowned at it. “This could be my swan song.”
“You mustn’t talk like that. This will be a glorious swan dive.” She made a pretty swooping motion with one arm.
“‘I forgive you the praise.’”
Maggie gave him a cute smile that said she recognized her Shakespearean cue. “‘Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ’t is poetical.’”
Once again, all Prescott wanted to do was to kiss her. But if he hadn’t kissed her after dancing the night away at the Del, he certainly wouldn’t do so in front of her grandfather.
Instead, he pulled a chair around beside her. “Can you decipher the first page?”
“This is where I’m stuck.” Prescott stood, leaning his elbows on the chairback across from Maggie, his necktie and jacket long abandoned, his top buttons undone, his hair mussed. He’d never looked more attractive.
Maggie had just typed the scene where Charles Anthony despaired at the piano. “You don’t know what Charles is going to do with his life?”
“No, I do. I do.” Prescott pushed back from the chair, scooped up Tobias, and leaned against the wall near the window peeking into the living room. “Charles has money, he knows people with money and influence, and he’s good at persuading people.”
“A true politician.”
Prescott rubbed Tobias behind his floppy ear.
“Yes, but he used it all for his own power, at the expense of the woman and children he loved. Now he’s going to use it to help women and children.
He’ll open a day care center, for free or cheap, for children of widows or women with disabled husbands.
They need to work, but who’s going to watch the kids? ”
Maggie’s fingers drifted from the keys to her lap. “I love the idea. Some of the factories provide day care now.”
“Yes, but what about waitresses or salesgirls or maids? Who helps them? That’s what Charles will do. He’ll start it with his own money, recruit his pals to help. Charles won’t take a penny himself. Not after the scandal.”
“It’s perfect. Why are you stuck?”
“How to get there.” Prescott blew out a breath that ruffled Tobias’s fur. “Her name is Laura Holt. She’s a war widow, two little kids. She’ll work for Charles, inspire him, challenge him.”
“Fall in love with him?”
Prescott flicked up a smile. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll let them fall in love. But only near the end.”
“His reward. Yes. This is going to be so good. How do they meet?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out.” He walked toward the kitchen door. “I thought she was a waitress, but I want her to be unemployed. Or at church—but it lacks drama.”
“A car accident?” Grandpa called from the living room.
Tobias wriggled, and Prescott set him down. Then Prescott’s eyes widened, and he spun to the window. “You’re a genius, Mr. Curtis.”
“Finally, someone recognizes it.”
“Hush, Grandpa.” But Maggie loved that he was as caught up in the story as she was. “The real genius is at work.”
Pacing, mussing his hair. He circled behind her chair, leaned over her shoulder, tapped the paper. “Exterior. Next day, late morning. City street.”
Maggie’s fingers went to work.
“Charles walks down the sidewalk, distracted, still in despair. He crosses a street against the light. Laura is driving a beat-up car, going too fast, children in the back. She turns. Charles doesn’t see her. She swerves, hits a lamppost.”
“Oh no.” Keys clacked. “Is she hurt? Is he?”
“Charles dives out of the way, rolls, a few holes in his suit.” Prescott’s breath brushed Maggie’s cheek. “He runs to the car. Her front end is smashed. She has a cut on her forehead. Charles presses a handkerchief to the cut. ‘Are you hurt?’”
“She breaks down in tears.”
“No!” Grandpa roared from the living room. “She’s fierce, Maggie-mine. Fierce.”
“Yes,” Prescott said. “She has to be fierce to challenge Charles. But she’s angry, scared. She swipes him away, checks on the kids. They tumbled to the floorboards, but they’re okay.”
“Oh, good.” Maggie cleaned up Prescott’s speech as she typed.
“She jumps out of the car, checks the front end, turns on Charles. ‘Why don’t you watch where you’re going? Look at my car.’”
“Now she’s late.”
“Yes.” Prescott clapped his hand to Maggie’s shoulder. “Yes, now she’s late. She’s on her way to a job interview. That’s how I’ll connect it.”
Maggie wanted to face him, but he was so close. “Why would she take her children to an interview?”
“Yeah, why? Why? She—she has no family—no one she trusts to babysit, anyway. She knows it’ll hurt her chances in the interview, and she has no idea what to do with the kids if she gets the job. But what choice does she have? She needs the money.”
Maggie poised her hands over the keys. “Ready?”
“No, let me think.” He patted her shoulder, over and over, surely unaware he was touching her. “He’ll offer to pay to fix her car. She’ll turn him down.”
“She doesn’t want his charity. She wants a job.”
“Yes. Charles argues she can’t get a job without a car. Laura argues she can’t get a job without a babysitter. Is he offering?”
“Oh, I like her. She’s spunky. He offers her a job right then.”
Prescott murmured. “Not yet. He hasn’t come up with his idea. He’ll talk her into taking the money, tell her to call if the cash doesn’t cover the repairs, give her his card, take her number.”
“There you go. You have your next scene, and it’s a peach.”
Prescott turned and grinned at her, so close she could touch his cheek and pull him in for a kiss.
If only.
With a dramatic flair, she set her fingers on the keys. “All right, Duke. Dictate away.”
Tuesday, November 30, 1943
Prescott and Vi finished act 1, scene 4, and they left the taped-off stage in the gymnasium.
In the other wing, Jack chatted with Albert, and Carol fussed with her fingernails.
“Scene 5,” Maggie prompted.
Prescott tensed. Opening night was only ten days away, and too many players were still missing lines, cues, and marks.
“Carol, Jack,” Maggie said. “Scene 5.”
“Oh, sorry.” Carol grabbed Jack and darted onto the stage.
Vi rolled her eyes at Prescott. She had memorized her lines long ago.
“Maggie!” Nan ran into the gymnasium with Ria on her heels, clutching at the red velvet dress hanging off one shoulder. “I can’t possibly wear this. I’m swimming in it.”