It was five o'clock when she got back to her dressing room. She snapped the lights on around the oldfashioned mirror so that all the little light bulbs made a cheap necklace around it. She smiled to see her image in that frame. It was right when the smile came back to her, filling her with a confident pleasantness that women know. She breathed deeply to feel the smell of grease paint in her lungs. Paula Winters should be here in another five minutes.

Hennie lifted the lid of her traveling trunk, wrinkling her nose at the faded aroma of orchids-perhaps twenty-six in all. One for every night. She closed the lid of the trunk carefully. 'My treasure chest,' she thought, and patted the trunk. Glancing over at the clock again she fumbled for a cigarette; held it between her lips for a moment: snatched it from her mouth then threw it on the dresser-it fell close to the edge and rolled off to the floor.

"All you have to do, Baby," he'd said, "is sing our song when she gets back here with that orchid. Then," he'd snapped his fingers, "the signal, and I'll do the rest. It'll be a cinch. 'Blue Moon' our song, Baby doll. Never thought a song would pay off so good and so easy. Give it all you got. It's gonna give right back."

'What's there to be nervous about?' Hennie thought. 'There's none of the dirty work for me to do. Just sing. God, how I'm gonna sing! No more one or two week club engagements and no more endless weeks looking for them.' All she needed was the breaks. 'Without half trying' she thought, 'here it is, right in the palm of my hand.'

She walked to the chair, put her knee on it and leaned over to reach for the window behind it. Raising the window all the way up she breathed deeply of the night air. It

seemed alway to help stifle any rousing tension she might have, as on most opening nights. But in the midst of completing this function she stopped; held her breath. She might have known. The cricket sound, like the winding of a cheap pocket watch ceaseless, timeless. She shuddered and slammed the window shut; turned abruptly so that she was sitting on her leg. "Damn," she muttered. "Those damn crickets." Long ago she had promised herself not to think why the winding of a pocket watch gave her the creeps as when her father wound his watch before one of his sudden fury-outbursts.

When the knock on the door came, Hennie jumped, walked quickly to the dresser; fumbled to pick up her

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hair brush-set it down again heedlessly-glanced at herself in the mirror; loosened a tight curl expertly at her temple-"Come . . . . come in," she said, and took a long pull of air.

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