The Sorrows of a Show Girl

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

"Ain't it appalling," demanded Sabrina, the Show Girl, "ain't it appalling the way the show game has gone to the morgue this season?

"I never seen nothing like it since I been in the business, and while I ain't going to flash no family Bible that's been some time. Why, shows that were making money if they played to thirty-two dollars on the day just naturally died. Me? You know I wasn't hep to the outlook. I come prancing into town fresh from doing one-night stands through the uncultured West. We did bum business for fair, but shucks, there ain't five dollars' worth of real money in all of Southern Kansas at no time. Salaries! Huh! I had to send home for money to pay my fines with. I cavort gaily out to hunt a job and find a line from Mr. Seymour's office that made the run on the Knickerbocker Trust Company look like the nightly window sale of 'The Evangelist.' I never seen so many of my friends in town at one time in my life, and if you make a noise like a dollar-bill anywhere between the two Flatirons you're liable to be the center of a raging mob. I heard it breathed that all the theatrical storehouses in town were playing to S.R.O.

"I got a chance to shake down a little change as prima donna with a turkey show. What do you know about that? I played with one last Thanksgiving, and—excuse these tears—it was a college town and the show was on the blink. 'Nough said. The manager hasn't left there yet.

"Oh, Listerine, have you heard the news? Alia McGraw has turned poetess. You know she always was peculiar. I was visiting her the other evening in her dressing room when she declared that she was going to give up her dramatic art and go to painting word pictures. Whatever they are. You see it was this way: She had a boob on her staff who was paying her his devoted attention. According to her statistics that's all he ever did pay for. Well, he commenced doing advance work about a present he was going to give her until he got poor Alla to thinking that it was nothing less than an automobile, and she treated him accordingly. One morning a messenger boy makes his entrance into the flat and hands her a book. Can you beat that? The only thing that kept Alia from foaming at the mouth was because she was combing her Dutch braid. It—the book—was called a Rubaiyat by Omar Quinine, or something like that. This Omar party never wrote a comic opera in his life. But Alla wasn't discouraged, for she looked through every page in hopes of finding a Clearing House certificate, but not a leaf stirred. All she came across was a marked verse that went something like this:

 "A book of verse underneath a bough,
    A Jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou
  Beside me sitting in the wilderness—
    Oh, wilderness is Paradise enow.

"Did you ever hear of such a short sport? Wanted to buy it by the keg and go sit under a tree in Bronx Park. As soon as Alla run out of language she sat down and in less than three hours doped out an answer. I got it here on the back of her laundry list:

 "A book of verse is not what I can use,
    But give me, if still my love is thine,
  A wine list from which to pick and choose....