“No. I gave her a ring, last week. I suppose she’s been airing it.”
“Sure.—You big calf,” the old man said with gloom, “you always act so kind of surprised when one of ’em brags of you. You ain’t but twenty-nine and you’re a fine lookin’ jackass. Of course, she’ll show off her solytaire! A gal’s as vain as a man, any day. One of ’em’ll get you married, yet.—Yell at that cab, son. My legs are mighty tired.—See you at eight sharp. Now, mind, I won’t have nothin’ to say to Cora Boyle.”
Mark waited until the opening night of “The Merry Widow” for more news of Cora Boyle. She deserted her manager, Loeffler, while “Red Winter” was in the first week of its run at the 45th Street Theatre. Mark saw her lunching in the Knickerbocker grill with her young husband and a critic who always touted her as the successor of Ada Rehan. A busybody assured Mark that Cosmo Rand was twenty. Cora was thirty one. All three of her husbands, then, were younger. The oddity of theatrical marriage still alarmed Mark. In Fayettesville it was a fixed convention that girls should be younger than their husbands. But she was luscious to see at the “Merry Widow” opening. Mark thought how well she looked, hung above the crowd in the green lined box. She found novel fashions of massing her hair. That night it rose in a black peak sustained by silver combs. She kept a yellow cloak slung across one bare shoulder concealing her gown. Against the gentle green of her background appeared three men. Rand wore a single eye-glass that sparkled dully when the outer lights were low. Through the music and the applause Mark was conscious of the box and of Cora’s red feathered fan. Her second husband, a thin Jewish comedian, went up to shake hands in an entr’acte. Women behind Mark giggled wildly. He wandered into the bronze lobby where men were already whistling the slow melody of “Velia.” He was chaffed by an Irish actor manager born in Chicago whose accent was a triumph of maintained vowels.
“An’ why don’t you go shake hands with Cora, bhoy?”
“Shut up, Terry. Come have a drink?”
He steered his friend to a new bar. The Irishman was rather drunk but vastly genial. He maundered, “A fool Cora was to let go of you, bhoy. They’re tellin’ me you’ve made money in the stockmarket, too.”
“A little,” Mark admitted.
“I’ve had no luck that way. Well, a fool Cora was.—And how’s it feel bein’ a manager, lad?”
“Fine.”
The Irishman looked at Mark sidelong over his glass, then up at the gold stars of the ceiling.