It is hard to look full into cross-eyes, but I managed it. "Go back to her," I bade him, "and tell her I'm not taking charity from somebody who threw me down."
Jake caught my arm and shook it earnestly. "But that ain't true, Gib. It's only that she's been so successful she makes you look like a loser. Gib, you know as well as you know your own name that it was you that threw her down—so hard she ran like a silver dollar."
"I won't argue," I said, "and I won't have charity."
I meant that. It hurt to think of Sigrid and myself as we had been five years ago—she an inspired but unsure newcomer from Europe, I the biggest star on the biggest lot in the motion-picture industry. We made a film together, another, became filmdom's favorite lovers on and off screen. Then the quarrel; Jake was wrong, it was Sigrid's fault. Or was it? Anyway, she was at the head of the class now, and I had been kicked away from the foot.
The counterman set our sandwiches before us. I took a hungry bite and listened to Jake's pleadings.
"It would be you doing her and me a favor, Gib. Listen this one time—please, to give Jake Switz a break." His voice quavered earnestly. "You know that Sigrid is going to do a stage play."
"I've read about it in Variety," I nodded. "Horror stuff, isn't it? Like Dracula, I suppose, with women fainting and nurses dragging them out of the theater."
"Nurses!" repeated Jake Switz scornfully. "Huh, doctors we'll need. At our show Jack Dempsey himself would faint dead away on the floor, it's so horrible!" He subsided and began to beg once more. "But you know how Sigrid is. Quiet and restrained—a genius. She wouldn't warm up, no matter what leading man we suggested. Varduk, the producer, mentioned you. 'Get Gilbert Connatt,' he said to me. 'She made a success with him once, maybe she will again.' And right away Sigrid said yes."
I went on eating, then swallowed a mouthful of scalding coffee. Jake did the same, but without relish. Finally he exploded into a last desperate argument.
"Gib, for my life I can't see how you can afford to pass it up. Here you are, living on hamburgers——"