~ After a piece in the Feb 7th, 1923, San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram

         

         On the big screen, Ginger’s character refuses to listen to Fred’s explanation that the other woman didn’t mean anything; he loved her.

          In the theatre, Peter chortles at all the wrong moments; Linda squeezes his knee in perfectly synchronized response.

          On the screen, Ginger’s puddled eyes remain fixedly away from Fred, who sings of the ways she sips her tea, sings off tune, and haunts his dreams. Only when he dances with a multitude of women wearing her face as a mask does she believe he loves her. He unmasks the women one by one until he uncovers her. The others fade. She alone dances the happily-ever-after.

          “A happy ending,” Peter states the obvious as he’s done the past fifteen years.

          They’d met through an agency that promised for ten dollars a night to provide lonely men with dinner and theater companions who had intelligence, a pleasing personality, and were good to look upon. They also promised youth, harder and harder to deliver in 1923, when younger women had their pick of men who’d survived the Great War and Spanish Flu.

          The men were required only to pay their fee. They weren’t required to be interesting or intelligent. So, Peter qualified.

          Peter hadn’t been the first Linda had been partnered with, but he was the only one to respect the agency’s suggestion that the young lady shouldn’t be expected to accompany the man home. He requested her again. He said he liked her smile.

          Peter never did learn her real smile. She’d lost it somewhere along her way. By the time he’d found her, she’d learned to act her part. Any part. Men have ideals, the agency explained, and they encouraged the men to state their preferences: accomplishments they desired, height, frame, the color of lipstick and hair. Peter was unimaginative, but very, very specific.

          When, ring on her finger, Linda had finally found her way into his home, she discovered the box with pictures and letters. The specter of the woman Linda still performed.

          Now, as the curtain drops, Linda places her gloved hand on his arm and turns toward him, allowing her lips to move with the hint of a smile, cheek tensed to uplift a cheekbone, head tilted to hide the soft sagging that had, of late, begun to encroach under her jaw.

          “Of course.” She reminds herself to use the even tone he favors. “Happy ending, indeed.”