U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [461]
It made her feel like she was acting in a play living
-275-with Tony again. She was kind of fond of him after al , but it sure wasn't what she'd planned. As he began to feel better he began to talk confidently about the magnificent act they could put on together. Maybe they could sel it to the cabaret she'd signed an engagement with in Miami. After al Tony was a sweettempered kind of a boy. The trouble was that whenever she went out to get her hair curled or something, she'd always find one of the bel hops, a greasylooking blackhaired boy who was some kind of a spick himself, in the room with Tony. When she asked Tony what about it he'd laugh and say, "It is nothing. We talk Spanish together. That is al . He has been very attentive.""Yes, very," said Margo. She felt so damn lousy about everything she didn't give a damn anyway. One morning when she woke up Tony was gone. The rol of bil s in her pocketbook was gone and al her jewelry except the solitaire diamond she wore on her finger was gone too. When she cal ed up the desk to ask if he'd paid the bil they said that he had left word for her to be cal ed at twelve and that was al . Nobody had seen him go out. The spick bel hop had gone too.
Al that Margo had left was her furcoat and fifteen cents. She didn't ask for the bil , but she knew it must be about fifty or sixty bucks. She dressed thoughtful y and careful y and decided to go out to a lunchroom for a cup of coffee. That was al the breakfast she had the price of. Outside it was a warm spring day. The sunshine glinted on the rows of parked cars. The streets and the stores and the newsstands had a fresh sunny airy look. Margo walked up and down the main stem of Jacksonvil e with an awful hol ow feeling in the pit of her stomach. She looked in haberdashery store windows and in the windows of cheap jewelers and hockshops and read over careful y al the coming attractions listed at the movingpicture. houses. She found herself in front of a busstation. She read the fares
-276-and the times buses left for Miami and New Orleans and Tal ahassee and Orlando and Tampa and Atlanta,
Georgia, and Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, Cali-fornia. In the busstation there was a lunch counter. She went in to spend her fifteen cents. She'd get more for the ring at a hockshop if she didn't barge in on an empty stomach, was what she was thinking as she sat down at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a sandwich. NEWSREEL LVIII In my dreams it always seems
I hear you softly call to me
Valencia!
Where the orange trees forever scent the
Breeze beside the sea
which in itself typifies the great drama of the Miami we have today. At the time only twenty years ago when the site of the Bay of Biscayne Bank was a farmer's hitchingyard and that of the First National Bank a public barbecue ground the ground here where this ultramodern hotel and club stands was isolated primeval forest. My father and myself were clear-ing little vegetable patches round it and I was peddling vege-tables at the hotel Royal Palm, then a magnificent hotel set in a wild frontier. Even eight years ago I was growing tomatoes Valencia!
SEEK MISSING LOOT
WOMAN DIRECTS HIGHWAY ROBBERY
Lazy River flowing to the southland
Down where I long to be
RADIUM VICTIMS TIPPED BRUSHES IN
MOUTHS
-277-this peninsula has been white every month though there have been some months when West Florida was represented as only fair
GIRL EVANGELS AWAIT CHRIST IN
NEW YORK
When the red red robin
Comes bob bob bobbin' along along
We