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  Three’s a Crowd

  Cherry knew what was going to happen, what had to happen. She glanced at Millie and saw the hungry light in the other woman’s eyes.

  “You’re a darling,” Millie said.

  Cherry’s head started to pound. She was breathing heavily.

  “Afterward I’ll have nothing but contempt for myself.”

  “Will you? You know that this is love-the greatest love of all!”

  Cherry sat down, leaving her drink untouched.

  Millie came to her, her lips wet.

  They kissed. Millie kept saying odd things, things Cherry didn’t understand. But Cherry no longer cared whether she understood.

  Finally Cherry was half insane with the wonder of it, her body twisting, pleading.

  They were entwined when the door opened…. And Tom walked in.

  SIN DOLL

  Orrie Hitt

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Three’s a Crowd

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pushover

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  CHERRY GORDON sat alone in a center seat on the nearly empty bus; she was going home. Today, at four o’clock, she had quit her job at Lester Photographic Studios. She smiled as she remembered the conversation with Tom Lester. When she told him she had taken a job at Channing and Bright Advertising for twenty more a week than he paid, he got very angry.

  “I thought you had a dentist’s appointment,” he said. “I would never have let you off otherwise.”

  “Sorry,” Cherry said, but she really didn’t care.

  She had read about the opening in the morning paper, gone for the interview, and had been hired for the position with no trouble. The man who had interviewed her kept looking at her legs and body, a body full and warm-looking in a tight white summer dress.

  The bus lumbered along, stopping occasionally to pick up some passengers and discharge others. Cherry closed her eyes, hoping to get some rest. She would have to sing at Downing’s Café that night and the next. She had been working there for nearly a year and every week she hoped some important agent would hear her and she would get a break. A lot of big shots came up from the city to Northtown but so far her wish had not been realized. She often dreamed of Hollywood, of New York, of becoming a star. Percy Stevens, the orchestra leader, said she had the right ingredients for becoming a hit in show business but how did a singer get herself heard and seen by the public? In recent years she had won three beauty contests but that had done nothing for her. During the last contest a wealthy old man offered a big fee to take her to bed. She had refused; it was disgusting.

  Not that she didn’t go to bed.

  She did.

  With Joe Black.

  Joe was twenty-five and he had a bakery route in the best section of the city. He picked up his load early in the morning and on most days was through by four-thirty. He made a hundred and ten dollars a week, clear, and every night that she went out with him he asked her to marry him.

  “It wouldn’t be bad,” he always said. “A lot of fellows make less than I do.”

  “But I’m not sure.”

  “Yet you let me — ”

  “It isn’t that, Joe. You know it isn’t. Ever since I started work I’ve been paying for singing lessons. I want to do something with my voice.”

  “And the acting course you took?”

  “That was to help build my poise and confidence.”

  There was, she reflected, little point in arguing with him. He didn’t understand. Nobody understood. The desire to make something of herself, to become somebody, was in her blood. Other girls had done it with less equipment and there was no reason why she couldn’t. All she had to do was work and save her money and plan ahead. Some day Joe would understand what she meant — and so would her parents.

  “Marry Joe and settle down,” her father often told her. “Get these crazy notions out of your head.”

  Other girls she had known in high school were now married. And what did they have? A baby carriage and bills. At the moment, Cherry wanted no part of them. Perhaps she would some day, but she was in no hurry. A girl didn’t have to be clever to have a baby and live in poverty. It only required a man and no ambition.

  “I don’t want you to leave us,” her mother often said. “I hope you never save enough money to get away from here.”

  Oscar and Rita Gordon weren’t her real parents, of course. They had adopted her at the age of three and when she had reached fourteen they had told her. Sometimes, like now; she wondered about her real father and mother. Who were they and where were they? Had they been married or had her mother been caught and found no one to help her?

  “There’s no sin in putting a child up for adoption. It’s the best thing, if the parents don’t think they can do a proper job of raising the kid.” Oscar would often tell her this.

  Still she couldn’t stop herself from wondering about her father and mother. She had known single girls in trouble and whenever she heard of one of these she thought of her mother. Had her mother been like that? A lot of the girls kept their babies, but some of them didn’t. There was a girl on Orange Street, the street where Cherry lived, who had had a little boy the summer before. The girl had given it away and now she wanted it back. That must be terrible.

  The bus stopped at Orange Street and Cherry got off. It was about two blocks to the Gordons’ white frame house and she took her time walking there. Oscar Gordon would be home, sitting on the porch, probably on the top step and smoking a pipe. He was fifteen years older than his wife and he had been retired from the railroad for about six or seven months. Sitting around and talking about all of the work he had done was his only occupation now. He had few interests except the railroad and nights he usually walked to the local tavern and talked with the men still running the trains. He never got drunk — he drank only beer — and he seldom stayed late.

  The houses on Orange Street were old, a few going back as many as a hundred years, but the owners kept them in good condition. The maple trees were big and plentiful and it was nice to walk through the shade they cast on the ground. A few children were playing ball in a vacant lot. As Cherry passed she stopped the ball before it rolled into the gutter. An older boy sitting in the weeds whistled when she threw the ball toward the plate and she felt her face turn hot. She didn’t understand why she reacted that way. At the club she wore revealing gowns and the stares of the men there never bothered her.

  She walked on, suspecting that she had broken one of her bra straps. Not that she needed the strap — or the bra. Her breasts were firm and high. Joe told her once that he had never seen anything like them.

  Nearing the house, Cherry saw Oscar Gordon sitting on the top step of the porch, smoking his pipe. Rita Gordon sat on a rocking chair
near the door.

  “You’re early,” Oscar said to Cherry. “Tom close up at four?”

  She walked up the steps and sat down beside him.

  “I got another job,” she answered.

  “Another job?”

  “At sixty a week.”

  “I thought you liked it where you were,” Rita said.

  Cherry turned her head as she spoke.

  “I liked it, all right, but what can you do On forty dollars? By the time taxes and other stuff are taken out I have about thirty left. Then I pay fifteen here. What can I save? If it wasn’t for my singing I wouldn’t have a dime in the bank.”

  She got fifteen dollars a night at the café but some of this went for gowns. She was lucky if she could put ten or twelve dollars into her savings account every Monday.

  “You should have asked Tom for a raise,” Oscar said. “It isn’t nice to quit a job.”

  “He wouldn’t be able to pay more. He has that big house on Bowling Drive, an expensive wife and a new Caddy.”

  “When his father died five years ago he didn’t have a dime,” Oscar said. “I don’t know how Tom did it.”

  “Nor does anybody else.”

  Part of her duties at the studio had been keeping the books and she knew that Tom’s income didn’t match his expenditures. He had married some girl from the city who was always buying new clothes and Tom himself must have owned a dozen different suits. And now there was that new Caddy. Of course, he worked many nights and some of his payments might have been in cash, but Cherry still couldn’t figure it out.

  “Joe mowed the lawn,” Rita said.

  Joe had a power mower and he mowed the lawn every week. Oscar said his back hurt him so much that he couldn’t do it himself.

  “He would make a good husband,” Oscar said. “He’s a fine boy.”

  There it was again. They were always trying to push her into marriage to Joe. Hardly a night went by that one of them didn’t mention the subject.

  “You have to love a man before you marry him,” Cherry pointed out.

  “You’ve gone out with him often enough,’” Rita observed.

  “Maybe I have but you don’t have to be in love with a boy to go out with him. I’ve gone out with lots of fellows.”

  “And some I didn’t approve of,” Oscar commented.

  It took all of Cherry’s will power to keep from laughing. What would they say if they knew that almost every night she went out with Joe she let him make love to her? She guessed they wouldn’t think he was such a fine fellow.

  “I’ve got to get dressed,” she said, rising to her feet.

  “That café again?” Rita wanted to know.

  “Well, it’s Friday night.”

  “I wish you would give that up. There might have been a reason before, but now that you’ve got a better job there isn’t any reason.”

  “The more I make the more I can save.”

  Oscar shifted the pipe from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “You can’t wait until you can leave Northtown, can you?” he asked.

  “There isn’t any opportunity here.”

  “And there won’t be anywhere else. You’ll find that out. How many thousands of girls want to be actresses and how many of them fail?”

  “The least I can do is try.”

  “You’d be better off getting married and raising a family.”

  “That can come afterward.”

  “Can it? You don’t know whether it can or not. Joe is patient but he won’t wait forever. You can’t blame him for that. If you go away he’ll find another girl.”

  “Then what we have isn’t love.”

  “Love is a delicate thing,” Rita said. She looked fondly at her husband. “Oscar and I found it and we have shared it with you. Now we’re both getting older and we want to keep you near. I would worry myself sick if you were miles and miles away.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “At your age?”

  “I’m twenty.”

  “Twenty is so young,” Rita said. “It’s the age when you can be young and foolish.”

  “Especially foolish,” Oscar agreed.

  Cherry entered the house. She didn’t want to continue the discussion. The subject was one that came up time and time again. She couldn’t blame them. They had done a lot for her and they were only saying what was in their hearts. They were good people but she simply couldn’t see things their way. Perhaps someday she would but until then she had to live her life as she thought best.

  Her room was on the second floor, directly over the front porch, and it was nicely furnished. In fact, the whole house was nicely furnished. Oscar had had a good job on the railroad before his retirement and Rita had spent the money wisely. They had also saved a few thousand dollars, money which they now drew as they needed it. Often Cherry had wished that some of this money was hers and once she had asked for a loan. They had refused her, saying that she was chasing a dream that would never come true.

  She undressed and, as she crossed the room, noticed her reflection in the mirror. She stood still for a moment, looking at herself.

  She was five inches over five feet, thirty-eight at the bust, twenty-one at the waist and thirty-six around the hips. Looking at her well-packed hundred and fifteen pounds, Cherry knew she had nothing to be ashamed of.

  She tossed her head and studied her face in the mirror. There was a slight pout to her red lips — she never had to use lipstick — and her eyes were as blue as a summer sky. Joe said that her eyes changed, expressing her inner feelings.

  “They tell me when you want me, Cherry.”

  She walked to the bed and sat down. She felt that she was wrong in her association with Joe but she couldn’t help herself. If he had been some other man, the relation probably would have been the same. There were times when she felt an irresistible urge to love and be loved.

  She lay down on the bed, thinking of Joe, and of some of the others who had known her. There had been that man, married, who had brought her home from the café one night. Joe usually brought her home but that night he hadn’t been able to wait for her. The man had seemed nice — she had had a couple of drinks with him at the bar — and he had said he just wanted to talk. On the way home she had found out that he wanted to do more than that. He had tried to get her to go to a hotel with him and she had said no. Then he had offered her money and she had refused that.

  “Don’t tell me you’re not available,” he had said.

  “I’m not.”

  “The hell you aren’t. Every girl is.”

  He had parked on a lonely side street and tried to paw her. She had finally fled from the car and caught a cab on the corner. After that she hadn’t accepted rides from strange men. A girl could get herself in trouble that way, real trouble.

  But there had been others who had been successful, mostly boys she had known in school. She made an attempt to remember their names and she couldn’t. Harry? Yes, one had been Harry somebody-or-other. He had picked her up at the bus stop during a heavy rain and had driven to the park. She had been soaked, her dress sticking to her and revealing every contour of her body.

  “You’re stuff,” he had said.

  She had had a fight with Joe the night before, a silly fight over nothing, and she had felt lonely, desperately lonely. Before she had realized what was happening Harry had been kissing her and the kisses had led to something else. Now as she lay on the bed she remembered the pain that had filled her, the hot breath from his mouth.

  She rolled over on the bed and closed her eyes. These things were in the past and there was no point to worrying about them. She wasn’t the first girl to have made a mistake and she wouldn’t be the last. Girls did it every day, every night. Most of the girls she had known in high school had lost their virtue before graduation. It didn’t have to mean anything. You were just more careful, maybe more particular, the next time.

  She was still thinking about Joe and what he would w
ant from her that night when she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Two

  JOE DROVE her to the café shortly before nine. She was wearing a blue dress with a high neckline and she carried the gown on her lap.

  “That gown,” Joe said. “I wish you would throw it away.”

  “Why?”

  “Because nobody listens to your songs when you wear it. All the guys do is look at your body.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “You don’t know how it makes me feel.”

  She glanced at him. He had dark hair and dark eyes and he was big all over.

  “How do you get anywhere without selling sex?” she wanted to know. “You might not like it and I might not like it but that’s the way it is.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Show me one girl out of ten who got ahead on something else.”

  Downing’s Café was on Mercer Street which was Northtown’s nightclub belt. There were five or six clubs in the same block and one of them featured a stripper who, it was said, took off everything she wore, using a table in the middle of the floor to better display her wares. Carl Downing, who owned the café where Cherry worked, said it was crazy to go that far, that some night the cops would show up and the owner would get a heavy fine, and run the chance of losing his liquor license.

  “I’ll stick around tonight,” Joe said as he parked the Plymouth at the curb.

  “Don’t get loaded at the bar.”

  “I won’t.”

  She was afraid to ride with Joe when he was drunk. He was all over the road and once they had hit a tree. He had almost lost his license and that would have been serious because he had to have a license to continue running his bread route.

  There were several people inside the café, most of them at the bar. The bartender, Harry, smiled at Cherry and Joe as they came in.

  “Boss wants to see you,” Harry told her.

  “Okay.”

  She left Joe at the bar and walked toward the office, which was at the rear and near the rest rooms. By ten o’clock the orchestra would be working and the place would be full. Her agreement with Carl called for three numbers a night and it was easy money. The rest of the time she usually spent with Joe at the bar. Some nights she got feeling a little high but not so much that she didn’t know what she was doing.