"I want to know."
Jerry sighed. "I told you I was married before, didn't I? It didn't take."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm not really from Columbus. That is, my home town is nearer Columbus than to any other city, but it's just a hick village in the sticks." She told her story in very few words. High school, and then three years at the State University, and then marriage to a small-town high-school principal some years older than herself. After five years of small-town married life, Jerry came into a small inheritance, left the schoolmaster, and went back to get her degree. "I wanted to study medicine," she said, "but I didn't have enough money, so I took up nursing instead. The idea was to earn enough as a nurse to go back to medical school."
"What happened?"
"New York happened. I couldn't take hospital regimentation, and some of the doctors were so anxious to sleep with me that they got me some snap jobs. You know, sitting up with rich lushes and hanging onto the girdles of deserted dowagers who wanted to jump out of windows and handing the right scalpel to society surgeons while they carved out a million-dollar gut."
"It must have paid well."
"Too well."
"And so you became a glamour girl."
"That's a pretty cruel way to put it, Matt. I'm not really a dope, you know."