Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.) -- Fiction; Motion picture industry -- Fiction
He was gone while she reached for her purse, hurrying along the
eucalyptus-lined street of choice home sites to the nearest drug store.
He was fearing someone else might bring the little woman another remedy;
even that her headache might go before he returned with his. But he
found her still suffering.
“Here they are.” He was breathless. “You take a couple now and a couple
more in half an hour if the ache hasn’t stopped.” “Bless your heart!
Come around inside.” He was through the door and in the dimly lit little
office behind that secretive partition. “And here’s something else,” he
continued. “It’s a menthol pencil and you take this cap off--see?--and
rub your forehead with it. It’ll be a help.” She swallowed two of the
magic wafers with the aid of water from the cooler, and applied the
menthol.
“You’re a dear,” she said, patting his sleeve. “I feel better already.
Sometimes these things come on me and stay all day.” She was still
applying the menthol to throbbing temples. “Say, don’t you get tired
hanging around outside there? How’d you like to go in and look around
the lot? Would you like that?”
Would he! “Thanks!” He managed it without choking, “If I wouldn’t be in
the way.”
“You won’t. Go on--amuse yourself.” The telephone rang. Still applying
the menthol she held the receiver to her ear. “No, nothing to-day, dear.
Say, Marie, did you ever take Eezo Pain Wafers for a headache? Keep
‘em in mind--they’re great. Yes, I’ll let you know if anything breaks.
Goo’-by, dear.”
Merton Gill hurried through a narrow corridor past offices where
typewriters clicked and burst from gloom into the dazzling light of the
Holden lot. He paused on the steps to reassure himself that the great
adventure was genuine. There was the full stretch of greensward of which
only an edge had shown as he looked through the gate. There were the
vast yellow-brick, glass-topped structures of which he had seen but the
ends. And there was the street up which he had looked for so many weeks,
flanked by rows of offices and dressing rooms, and lively with the
passing of many people. He drew a long breath and became calculating. He
must see everything and see it methodically. He even went now along
the asphalt walk to the corner of the office building from which he had
issued for the privilege of looking back at the gate through which he
had so often yearningly stared from across the street.
Now he was securely inside looking out. The watchman sat at the gate,
bent low over his paper. There was, it seemed, more than one way to get
by him. People might have headaches almost any time. He wondered if his
friend the casting director were subject to them. He must carry a box of
the Eezo wafers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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