"All right. All right. There's still enough in it for me. Twenty-five per cent. Meet me tomorrow morning at my—"
"That's if I decide the idea is worthwhile," Jeanne said, pushing him across the door-sill and watching him retreat reluctantly down the walk to the street.
When Mom and the others asked Jeanne later, she was the picture of co-operation. She told them everything about Mr. Lubrano and his pleasant interview. She told them nothing about Dan and his not-so-fantastic plans.
Jeanne excused herself after dinner, her mind seething with proposal and counter-proposal, and went upstairs to her room, but found sleep impossible. Was it fair to Tom, capitalizing on whatever feelings they had for each other? Was it fair to herself? If Lubrano had his way, a glorified Hollywood love would result. Jeanne and Tom would be adopted by the nation as its favorite lovers. Their faces would grace pop-bottles, sipping cola together in an infinite regress of progressively smaller bottles. Their forms would loll on all the beach billboards, proclaiming in the latest, brightest colors that the Man in the Moon and his girl-friend insisted on Sunburst bathing suits. And Jeanne would be waiting with her Chlorogate toothpaste smile for her lover to return from the infinite distances.
When he returned, nothing would be left. Commercial love, exploited love, hounded love, a cheap, impossible, publicized and doomed-to-failure marriage, if Tom ever allowed it to go that far.
"Phooey on you, Jeanne Peterson!" Jeanne said aloud, and sat up in bed, surprised at the loudness of her own voice. She was imagining things. It wouldn't be as bad as all that. Exploitation for a few months—and a small fortune, if not the great wealth that Dan promised. And the physical comforts made possible by whatever she earned would, over a period of time, smother Tom's anger.
Still, the one honest emotional experience which somehow had penetrated deeper than the veneer she exposed to the world had been her relationship with Tom. But she could make money, make herself happy, make Tom happy—if not immediately on his return then eventually. But....
Soon after the milkman pulled his truck to the curb down on the corner, Jeanne fell asleep.