It never ceased to amaze him how closely life paralleled fiction—even the most realistic, hard-boiled kind of fiction, the Hemingway sort of thing. A struggling young writer and the landlady's daughter—brother, it sure could be made to fit. Anywhere, any place, any time, which meant, of course, that the hard-boiled writers were basically incurable romantics who took their cue from the way life always has of duplicating romantic patterns all over the place—every hour of every day and night. Especially every night.
Not that he'd slept with her or wanted to particularly. She was a forlorn, pathetic, over-effusive, well-meaning girl of nineteen, who could not speak grammatically for more than three sentences at a stretch, but whose syntax was colorful enough at times to arouse the interest of most protective males. A man with a Pygmalian complex would have been instantly drawn to her, would have seen tremendous possibilities in her.
"Darling, I'll make you over completely. You don't realize what tenderness, affection, understanding can do. You're a rare and unusual woman, but you've never had a chance to develop."
Perhaps he should have felt that way himself. But somehow he couldn't. She just wasn't physically attractive enough. Not bad looking, exactly, and a beauty parlor could have done wonders for her. But he had other things on his mind—at least for the moment.
She stood facing him in the doorway, looking more forlorn than usual, as if she regretted the slightly mocking way she'd called out to him through the door, calling him "silly" and all that—he had been too drowsy to take in the words, but he had an obscure feeling that she'd said something she was now regretting and her first words made him sure of it.
"I guess this story just wasn't liked by one of those stupid editors you're always saying don't know their—it's a word I don't like to use—from a hole in the ground. Do you want me to open it for you?"
"No, I'll open it," he said. He took the large, bulky envelope from her, and started to close the door, half-blocking the aperture with his body, but she squeezed past him into the room.
She crossed the room with a slow, self-conscious undulation of her hips and sat down on the edge of his bed. He felt a sudden stab of compassion for her. She was doing her pathetic best to entice him and he was in no mood to be enticed.
The bulky envelope had given him a jolt. It wasn't the worst jolt he'd ever experienced—he'd sold fifteen stories to the small-circulation quality magazines and two to the slicks, and you had to expect rejections now and then—but he had counted heavily on this particular story going over big.
It was an unusual story, a powerful story. He'd put virtually everything he had into it. And now—it had been slammed, thrown back in his face, with probably a miserable, printed rejection slip. Editors just didn't give a damn how much they hurt you—or insulted you. Quite famous authors occasionally got printed rejection slips. He knew that, but it didn't make the outrage even slightly more palatable or easy to accept.