"Don't pay any attention to her, Lucy darling, she's jealous because her name's Sadie," said Edmond D'Arcy, that cute chorus boy everybody called Edna.
Edmond and Max Windsor were fun after the show when they came to the hotel and ate sandwiches with her and Mother. Wonderful enormous New York sandwiches on caraway seed rye bread cut slantingly in three parts because they were so big and thick. Turkey, Swiss cheese, coleslaw and Russian dressing. Or shrimp salad with lettuce and tomato. Tomatoes even in December! Edmond and Max were sweet, like two girl friends. Then Peggy said why. Lucy had watched fascinated for clues between them of Edmond's and Max's relationship. All she could notice though was that they acted and talked more like girls, expecially Max when he acted very masculine and smoked a big cigar, and they seemed devoted to each other.
"But they are very fickle with each other," Peggy contradicted. "Haven't you noticed backstage how they change off into different pairs, or society stage-door Johnnies go off with one of the boys? And you can always tell when they want to pick up a boy on the street because they say 'Got a match, Jack?'"
For a few weeks Lucy had suspected every man in search of a cigarette or match before concluding that this approach was not an infallible symbol, and that Peggy was not omniscient.
Mother was too innocent to be told of these fascinating discoveries. So was Vida in a letter.
Having one's picture in Mode didn't mean you were a star. You could fouetté yourself dippy and not be a star unless your name drew at the box office. Even Marilyn Miller had to sing and speak lines. At Master's a thirteen-year-old kid can do thirty-six fouettés and the most I can manage is twenty-four so far and I'll be fifteen soon.
"My goodness," she said to Mae, "here we've been in New York four months, my picture is outside the theatre and in Mode, and we haven't been anywhere except for that first bus ride. I always thought a mansion was a great big place with lawns, like a park, not just narrow houses smack against each other. One of these days I'm going to walk right up and ring a doorbell on Fifth Avenue just to see what's inside."
Startled, Mae looked up from sewing a blue satin garter. "Oh no, Pussy, that's not ladylike." She saw a brown smudge at the corner of Lucy's mouth and frowned. "You're eaten another chocolate bar and that's 375 calories. You know you shouldn't. My goodness, De-
