The Sorrows of a Show Girl: A Story of the Great "White Way"McGaffey, Kenneth
General
The Sorrows of a Show Girl: A Story of the Great "White Way"
McGaffey, Kenneth
Theater -- Fiction
"Waiter! Waiter! Garsong! Thish gentleman has a few words to shay to
you, an' don' take no for an answer. Oh, yes, you arch your eyebrows in
sus-sus-picioning and shay that I have been two-stepping around the
juniper bowl and I will answer, 'Right O!' Just like that.
"I make it a rule to cel'brate all suspicious occasions by revelry and
goo' cheer. Oh, won' I have a head in the morning! But now.
"Behold I appear as Columbine! I toil not neither do I spin. Listen, my
dear. The last two days have been fraught--whatever that is--with
incidences that would bring gray hairs to the head of much stronger
women than I.
"It came off last night. I was out to supper with a couple of
gentlemen--Wilbur and an-another gent. We were so busy talking things
over that I didn't get to the theater until the middle of the first act.
My, I never saw a man so peevish as that stage manager. I had no more
than exchanged the courtesies of the day with the stage doorkeeper and
asked after his sick child than that mut-faced sneeze that calls himself
a stage manager had the nerve to rush up an fine me five dollars. Wha'da
you think of that?
"I told him that I positively refused to appear the rest of the evening.
Then he told me that I was fired? What do you know about that? I said,
calm and dignified, like the perfec' lady I am, 'All ri', you can do as
you please with your old show, I don't care, I don't care, nothing
bothers me,' and with those kind words I caper up to the dressing room
and take that expensive gown I wear in the third act and stuck it in the
wash bowl and turned on the water. It needed cleaning anyway. Then I put
a few things that oughta belong to me in my makeup box and beat it.
"I had to kiss everybody in the company goo' bye and that made the stage
wait and the manager came chasing around without any goat and tol' me
never to darken his door again. That's all ri' with muh. His blooming
door was dark enough anyway. Then I waltz back to where Wilbur and the
gentleman are and break the news. Wilbur gets sore, for since I
commenced wearing those pink tights he doped out a great dramatic career
for me. And naturally he was vexed. For he saw no show of being able to
lay off work.
"Wilbur started to chide me. I was in too gra' a nervousness state to be
chid' an' I tol' him sho. Did he have compassion and pity on muh in my
vis-vis-situdes? No! Abso-o-o-lutely no! I says all ri' old top, if you
look at it that way I guess I can bear up through the heat of the day
without your assistance, an' if it's just the same to you I will toddle
ri' along and peddle my matches.
"Wilbur pricks up his ears at those few words and tries to copper his
remarks, but not for a minute could I see through the fog.
"I just gather up my skirt and sweep majestically out of the room, jump
into taxicab and proceed to hunt pleasure and relaxation. What do you
know about that?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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