Nothing but a Smile (21 page)

Wink fished out the flask he'd been carrying to loosen Reenie up for the shoot—not that she ever needed anything to loosen her up, but it made the thing more fun for both of them, especially since they'd lost Sal. He wasn't sure how he could go back up there now.

There was an old wooden display counter down there, smack in the center of the cellar, that was missing all its glass sides and now served as storage for stocking cardboard boxes, keeping them off the damp floor. Rearranging the row on top so the boxes were all relatively level, he took off his jacket and spread it out for a makeshift navy bunk. For a pillow, he propped up the busted bellows from a portrait camera he estimated as old enough to be Mathew Brady's, climbed up, and stretched out.

Lying there in the dark, staring up at the low beams, he tried
to imagine what his hero would have said to him, if he'd faced him.

Maybe he'd be polite. It was possible. Maybe he'd say,
Say there, fella, I saw a few illustrations of yours that ran in
Yank
and
Stars and Stripes
and I recognized the name and I was proud to recall that you'd studied with me …

Maybe he'd call him son or kiddo or my good man— something more encouraging than smutmonger. Maybe he wouldn't tell him he was a disgrace.

Sure,
Wink thought, pulling back on the flask.
Dream on, pal.

Gnawing,
Wink thought, opening his eyes in the dark. He supposed he'd nodded off. He didn't think he heard anyone moving around up there. Feeling around, he couldn't put his hands on the flask and couldn't remember if there was much left but backwash.

There'd been laughter, hadn't there? Hearty
good nights
and shuffling and footfalls and the jangle of the shop bell on the door?

He couldn't be certain and so wasn't going anywhere yet, just to be safe.

Easing himself down to stretch, he found his way carefully to a nearby filing cabinet where he'd hidden a stash of black market Glenlivet that one of Reenie's brothers had acquired for him.

It was in behind the unclaimed wedding photos, which had their own drawer. The file went back a few decades, but it still seemed surprisingly large, and he'd wondered, when he'd discovered them, how many were unclaimed out of an inability to pay or pure forgetfulness and how many because things had all gone to smash.

Quietly slipping the bottle out and unpeeling the seal, he climbed back onto his nest. Lying there waiting, with nothing to
do but imagine, put him in mind of the year he got scarlet fever, and how he thought his mom was still out there in the other room. At least then, he was able to draw his Rube Goldbergs to pass the time. Plus, he could turn a light on.

Pathetic,
he thought.
And if that man caught you here, he'd tell you so to your face.

The scotch burned beautifully, and he made it a double.

No, he wouldn't,
he corrected himself.
He wouldn't say that. This is
my
make-believe, damn it. I'll cook it up any way I see fit, thank you very much.

The gnawing was some critter off in a corner. He wanted to fling something over there, get it to back off, but he remembered he was hiding and so lay still.

Listen,
Elvgren would tell him, slurring just a little, because, in his mind, Wink had joined him for dinner and drinks. Good ol' Gil had treated.
I know about your hand,
he'd say
. I know about these naughty pictures you're doing, and no, it is not what you had in mind, I'm sure … And it's not necessarily what I'd have in mind for any of my students—ideally. And if you could still paint and draw, I'd say get to it! What's keeping you? But …

It was a significant
but,
looming there like the low beams overhead. He'd take this moment to pull out his pipe, tamping down the cherry tobacco, and Wink decided he would smoke one, too. They'd draw on their twin pipes like respectable bankers knocking back a few at the country club … no! Better yet—chaired professors emeritus hobnobbing in the oaken faculty lounge. Some ivy-covered ivory tower where they could look out through stained glass and watch coeds crossing campus in tight sweaters.
But you ready for the speech?
Elvgren would say
. Here it is, friend. There can be a little art in
anything
you do. Even stuff you do because you have to do it, there's no other ready option … The thing is, that little bit of art isn't just in there, au
tomatically,
rising and bubbling like yeast in a loaf of bread. You have to go to the trouble of
putting
it in there.

He could see the crackling fireplace, the wingback club chairs, their wool blazers with suede patches on the elbows.
Hear, hear!
Chesty would chime in, and how swell it was that he was there, too, to hear this pep talk, hardly looking even the least bit blown up.
The putting-it-in-there step! Indeed! Quite crucial!

They'd nod together, gesturing with their meerschaums as the great man elaborated:
If you get up and do something every day— even if it's working a camera, even if it's shooting snapshots of Ree-nie's very pretty legs and immaculate keister, you're still doing more than some blowhard who's decided he's Rembrandt but is holding out for a patron of the arts to come calling—some sponsor nobler than a razor blade company or bottler of soda pop or the makers of in-home laundry machines …

Now he'd clamp his solid hand on Wink's shoulder. (And in so doing, not really look all that different from his uncle's neighbors back in St. Johns, the simple farmers of German, Dutch, and Swedish stock. Pry them out of the barn coat or overalls, catch them in town on Sunday—sure: hardworking, God-fearing men, all. Elvgren included.) His former teacher would pause a moment, either for effect or because he was slightly wobbly on his feet, a little in his cups, and, finally, give the command,
Now say “Amen” and get to work.

“Amen,” Wink said now, barely a whisper, though he knew no one was still upstairs to hear him. The little coffee klatch had no doubt broken up very soon after he'd started drinking. Even the girls, he imagined, had given up on him for the night.

He was going to have to hang out down there and sleep it off. And unless he cared to go up and face them, he realized that if he needed to water his horse or get sick, it was all probably going to have to happen in the laundry tub.

“It's like going to a candy store, nowadays,” Reenie said, “coming in here.”

This comment, said to her, not the butcher, nonetheless seemed to get his attention. Through the display case, Sal saw his gaze move from the veal he was scooping onto a little paper boat to the long loveliness of her pal, who was digging through her pocketbook, waiting her turn along with Sal for the fat German-looking lady to get her makings for her Wiener schnitzel.

Sal knew what she meant—it was a treat just shopping for meat, no longer having to hassle with ration stamps. The restrictions for buying meat and butter had finally been lifted around Thanksgiving.

The butcher gave them a wry smile when it was their turn, pointing a big thick finger at Reenie. “Candy store, huh? That's a hot one.” Then he cocked his head to one side like the RCA Victor dog. “Hey, I think I know you …”

Sal spoke up, pointing out that she came in here all her life. “Well, more before the war, of course.”

“No, no,” he said, leaning on the glass case, revealing the marine insignia, a bluey splotch, tattooed on a hairy forearm.
“You
I recognize, sure. How you doing, ma'am? Nice to have your trade once again. But your friend here—
her
I think I know maybe …”

Reenie gave a little saucy shake of her head, and for a second, Sal thought she might actually strike one of her sexy poses. “You
think
you know me,” she said with a broad wink, “or you think you
wanna
know me?”

The butcher laughed hard, big stevedore-style
har-hars,
jabbing that thick finger in Reenie's direction again. “Don't you start with that, doll! Believe you me, the missus can handle a cleaver better than yours truly, so we gotta scuttle any of
that
talk!”

Sal bought sirloin, and Reenie said she wanted the same. When he was ringing it up, Sal tried to indicate
What the hell was that?
with her eyes, nodding toward the butcher with his back turned to them, but Reenie was acting oblivious. So she said something to her instead about how Wink was really going to get his fill of beef, only Reenie explained that the steaks were in fact for another gentleman—her old partner at LD&M, a copywriter named Cal. She was going to make him dinner that night.

Sal wondered to herself if Wink knew about this, but then again, it had been clear for a while that their relationship ran pretty catch-as-catch-can, so who was she to judge?

Reenie went on to say she was going to see if she couldn't get the skinny from this Cal on some so-called after-hours clients they could possibly steal away. “Maybe take one of their big calendar deals,” she said. “Fix that old goat Deininger's wagon.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sal said, unsure if it was. She was watching the butcher over her friend's shoulder, and he was definitely checking out her figure like she was different from all the other respectable lady customers whose trade he depended on. He just
had
to know who she was. Reenie, that is—he wouldn't have known Sal from a veal. In fact, when they left, he gave Reenie a big wink right back at her.

Out on the sidewalk, Sal had to let her have it. “That man completely recognized you. From the … you know!”

“No, he didn't! He was just handing me a line, flirting with me a little.”

“Maybe.” Though she wasn't buying it, she decided to drop it for now. And she didn't raise, as pretty damning evidence that he
had recognized her, the fact that he had clearly given Reenie the better cut of meat. Which, besides being a little alarming—men on their block possibly drawing the connection to the girlies—it just wasn't fair. So she hadn't posed for a while—she had done it
first,
after all. It wasn't as if Reenie had become a Hollywood starlet. Lord love a duck, didn't she have just as much right to the good steaks?

It was around this time, the spring of ‘46, that a wave of mail descended on the camera shop. Most of it had been delayed some time. Both
Stars and Stripes
and the civilian places they'd appeared—
Wink
and
Titter
and
Giggles
and
At Ease
—were still playing catch-up with much of the correspondence received from soldiers back when the war was still on. The military censors had loosened their restrictions, and so, like an unclogged drain, the mailbags now arrived with stacks of forwarded fan mail. “My, my!” the mailman said.
“Someone's
popular!”

But it was unclear who. Half of them loved Weekend Sally. The other adored Winkin' Sally. It still wasn't clear to Sal who was whom in the minds of either the editors or the readers or if they even knew there were sometimes two of them. The editors had been playing so fast and loose with the titles and “copy,” as Reenie called it, who
knew
what the fan mail meant—other than they'd done something right.

Looking at it all, piled up like bags of loot, she started to feel as if she owned something—something beyond the camera shop. There was something here that belonged uniquely to her. And to Wink and Reenie, of course, but no one else. Not even, really, the publishers of these magazines.

She wasn't certain she had the right word when it first hit her, but trying it on, mulling it over, then walking up to the library
on Michigan Avenue and looking it up in the big dictionary in the reference section, she was pretty sure this was what she was talking about:
franchise.

The Kilroy shoot was Reenie's brainstorm. Kilroy had been popping up everywhere in the past year, mostly since the boys started coming back—that enigmatic announcement
KILROY WAS HERE!
sometimes with a snout-nosed creature peeking over a straightedge, implying a fence or rim of some kind.

He'd first started noticing the graffiti on the trip to fetch Chesty home—it was all over the naval yard, on crates and even buildings—and then coming back, he saw it on the train, left by troops heading home, inland, scratched on the walls when he visited the head.

He wasn't a big fan of it, as unbelievably popular and widespread as it was, never being particularly fond of unsigned art. He'd always admired that about Gil Elvgren—signing all his pinup illustrations with a big swooping
Elvgren,
right up in the meat of the canvas, not the slightest bit timid or cautious about it.

It was true that he himself had used pseudonyms for the girlie photos—when they'd bothered to ask for credits. But that was different: he could tell by scanning the masthead of all those girlie mags that none of those contributors' names were real— Ima Wolf, Lenny Lens, Mr. Snapp, O. G. Whillikers, Barry Medeep, I. C. Lovelies, Scopes Magillicuddy … Besides, he was saving his actual name—both Winton S. Dutton and Wink Dutton—for his real work, for the legitimate photography and,
if he ever got his hand working properly again, illustration work. So he used things like W. S. Dee or Win Studdon or Winston St. Johns or just Mr. Winston or Mr. Wink for photo credits. Often the editors just made something up on their own (once it was Dusty Sink), but at least he provided a name when asked. It wasn't like cave drawings, like this Kilroy crapola.

But beyond the anonymity angle, this Kilroy business, at its core, maybe also didn't grab him the way it seemed to grab so many others because, if he were to be completely honest about it, he really just didn't get it. It felt, a little, like an inside gag or like he'd stepped away too soon from a group of jokers yucking it up at a cocktail party and missed the big punch line. It reminded him, frankly, that he'd been discharged early. Maybe if he hadn't injured his hand, this would be yet another thing he would have been included in, and though he suspected most of the vandals and scribblers out there were just as in the dark about what the galloping Jesus it meant, unreasonably, when he saw it growing around him like a spreading mold—on the alley wall beside the camera shop, on a drainpipe at the corner, scratched into the side of the cigarette machine at the Zim Zam—he couldn't help but feel as if he'd been left out; that he hadn't served the way the other guys had.