“Oh, she’s a scenario writer I know. You’re just like her.” He was now drunk—maudlin drunk—from the coffee. Sober, he would have known that no human beings could be less alike than Tessie Kearns and the Montague girl. Other walls of his reserve went down.
“Of course I could have written to Gashwiler and got some money to go back there—”
“Gashwiler, Gashwiler?” The girl seemed to search her memory. “I thought I knew all the tank towns, but that’s a new one. Where is it?”
“It isn’t a town; it’s a gentleman I had a position with, and he said he’d keep it open for me.” He flew to another thought with the inconsequence of the drunken. “Say, Kid”—He had even caught that form of address from her—“I’ll tell you. You can keep this watch of mine till I pay you back this money.” He drew it out. “It’s a good solid-gold watch and everything. My uncle Sylvester gave it to me for not smoking, on my eighteenth birthday. He smoked, himself; he even drank considerable. He was his own worst enemy. But you can see it’s a good solid—gold watch and keeps time, and you hold it till I pay you back, will you?”
The girl took the watch, examining it carefully, noting the inscription engraved on the case. There were puzzling glints in her eyes as she handed it back to him. “No; I’ll tell you, it’ll be my watch until you pay me back, but you keep it for me. I haven’t any place to carry it except the pocket of my jacket, and I might lose it, and then where’d we be?”
“Well, all right.” He cheerfully took back the watch. His present ecstasy would find him agreeable to all proposals.
“And say,” continued the girl, “what about this Gashweiler, or whatever his name is? He said he’d take you back, did he? A farm?”
“No, an emporium—and you forgot his name just the way that lady in the casting office always does. She’s funny. Keeps telling me not to forget the address, when of course I couldn’t forget the town where I lived, could I? Of course it’s a little town, but you wouldn’t forget it when you lived there a long time—not when you got your start there.”
“So you got your start in this town, did you?”
He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town and his life there, of the eight-hour talent-tester and the course in movie-acting. Of Tessie Kearns and her scenarios, not yet prized as they were sure to be later. Of Lowell Hardy, the artistic photographer, and the stills that he had made of the speaker as Clifford Armytage. Didn’t she think that was a better stage name than Merton Gill, which didn’t seem to sound like so much? Anyway, he wished he had his stills here to show her. Of course some of them were just in society parts, the sort of thing that Harold Parmalee played—had she noticed that he looked a good deal like Harold Parmalee? Lots of people had.