Lucy burst out laughing. "Looks more like yellow crepe paper."
"You're absolutely right." The little dope always made him feel silly. "How's the dance coming along?"
"Fine, except there isn't much room to practice tours jetés and fouettés."
"Ever heard of The Starlings."
"Who?"
"Couple of Nebraska kids hitting the big time."
Semy's newly acquired Broadway phrase impressed her more than any poetic one. Oh dear me, she thought, here I am wasting my time posing while even Nebraska kids are on the stage. Omaha—over there toward Chicago—loomed, a metropolis. Maybe Mother and she could move to Omaha.
"Ballet dancers?"
"No. Soft shoe and singing."
"Oh." Relief. Not real dancers.
"Perhaps you ought to see them—I've tickets for Friday night." He paused. It should be her idea that he take her.
Why didn't he hand over the tickets? She really ought to see what those kids from Omaha did to get an Orpheum job. "I'll probably go with Mother Saturday afternoon."
He'd have to risk a turndown, damn her. "Why spend money when you can go with me and sit down front? We could eat at the Bohemian Cellar before. You might learn something from them."
To learn was irresistible. "I'll have to ask Mother." A safeguard in case she didn't have to go with him.
She didn't like being alone in the building with him and invented a reason for going upstairs. But he started to accompany her and stood aside for her to go first, saying he wanted to get a book he'd left in the studio.
"Then you go first so you can't look up my skirts again."
He crimsoned angrily at her bluntness in saying what was in his mind. He'd get even with her.
During a rest period from posing Lucy bent forward on the edge of a paint-spotted chair, her knees opened to an almost horizontal line, forcing the vertical arches of her feet. Rest from posing was time to practice.
How could she get out of going to see The Starlings with Semy?
