The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [134]
His glance lingered on her as he stood by the door, and impulsively she ran to him and kissed him.
He put his hand to his lips, then he smiled and said good-bye, closing the door quietly behind him.
She listened to his footsteps on the stairs and the sound of the hall door closing, and then she ran to the window, watching as he disappeared down the street.
Zev paced his room all that night, occasionally picking up a newspaper, to read and reread the advertisement. It promised that a man could make a fortune overnight in the flourishing new movie industry in Hollywood. It said that people were flocking from back east to live the life of Riley in the land of perpetual sunshine and oranges; it said that everybody had a turquoise-blue swimming pool of his own and all the girls were beautiful. And that a man of integrity with a small sum to invest could become part of that scene simply by calling this number.
He stared down at the words that promised him everything. He knew that if he were ever to win Missie O’Bryan, he would have to become a different man, a man of substance, a man in charge of his own destiny. And this was surely the way to do it.
The next morning, instead of opening his shop as usual he turned the sign to “Closed” and went around to the offices of the Ghetto News, where he placed an ad of his own. “Business for sale,” it said. “For details apply to Mr. Abramski, Orchard Street.”
Missie lingered on the sidewalk in front of the theater, staring at the glittering marquee with its red, white, and blue lights spelling out “The New International Ziegfeld Follies. Starring from America, Fanny Brice. From Paris, Gaby Delys, from England, the Arcos Brothers” and in smaller letters, “Featuring the gorgeous Ziegfeld girls with the beautiful Verity Byron.”
She wasn’t a star yet, but her name was sparkling in lights on Broadway, people were gazing at her photograph displayed out front, and in a few short hours she would be onstage. Her stomach sank at the thought. It had all seemed so easy until now.
Then she thought of the money and cheered up. For two hundred a week she would smile the brightest of any girl, she would pose in her filmy chiffon robes and not mind that the men were staring at her legs and her bosom, artfully half revealed in Elise’s draperies.
And anyway, the past two months had been the most carefree she had known since they had fled from Russia almost three years before. Everyone treated her like a precious object, and for publicity purposes she was also expected to be seen in smart restaurants with Mr. Ziegfeld and his friends; she had already had one proposal of marriage from a middle-aged titled Englishman fascinated by her newly created other-worldly good looks.
“You are a creature from a Scheherazade tale,” he had whispered to her when she permitted him to escort her home after supper at Imogen Wensleyshire’s Manhattan penthouse, but she had laughed and told him that her father was a professor and Oxford was a long way from Arabia, and that had soon dampened his ardor.
The move into the new apartment had been easy; there was nothing much to move, just herself and Azaylee, the dog and the two old suitcases, one with their few possessions and the other with the jewels. Azaylee’s tears had turned to cries of delight when she had seen her new room with the big bed under its pretty pink-and-white quilt and her closet full of the pretty new clothes Missie had bought for her, and the parcels of new toys she had ransacked the stores for, squandering money lavishly and feeling like a princess herself as she told them happily, “Deliver them all, please.”
Even Viktor had a new collar with a silver bell and a proper red leather leash as well as a silver bowl with his name inscribed on it, and she had filled it with prime steak and tasty dog biscuits that he had devoured in two gulps.
She had felt very proud that first night when she had walked around her new home; she had peered into her larder stocked with good things and laughed out loud to think she would never have to worry about going