As if he didn’t deserve it. The guy was plainly out for one thing: one night of fun, one roll in the hay before deployment. An obvious deduction in hindsight.
Then again . . .
If a one-night companion was all Morgan had wanted, he wouldn’t have bothered asking Betty to write. Maybe he wasn’t as insincere as he’d appeared. Perhaps his initial attraction to Liz was genuine, but a single glance at the stunning blonde had cured his interest.
Another reason to decline.
Liz was about to do just that, more firmly this time, when Betty continued her plea.
“I already started his letter. I just need your help with the ending, and to make sure the rest is okay.” She pouted her lips. “You know what an awful writer I am.”
Liz couldn’t argue. Had she not rewritten all of Betty’s essays in high school, the girl would still be there.
“And since you’ve met him,” Betty went on, “you’ll know exactly what to say.”
“Wrong,” Liz countered. Clearly she had no clue what he wanted to hear.
Betty held up her right hand, taking an oath. “If you help me with this, I’ll never ask you to write anything for me again. Scout’s honor.”
Julia chimed in, “Don’t you have to be a Scout to make that pledge?” She smiled, straightening the seams of her stockings.
“Come on, Liz.” Desperation spilled from Betty’s eyes. “You and Julia already have beaus. Don’t I deserve to be happy too?”
Liz groaned helplessly. How could she dispute that kind of logic?
“Besides,” Betty elongated the word, “need I remind you about an incredibly boring play I attended for a certain friend?”
Liz narrowed her eyes. “You mean the one you slept through?”
“One measly act,” Betty snipped. “Even so, I went, didn’t I? And without a solitary complaint.”
Truth be told, Liz herself had come close to drifting off during the student-directed play; verses from the overdramatic actors had dripped like sap off their tongues. More relevant to Betty’s request, however, was Liz’s unwillingness to explain the real cause of her hesitation. Which left her little choice.
“All right, I’ll do it,” she gave in. “But just this once. No exceptions.”
“Thank you, thank you!” Betty dropped Christian’s letter while clapping with glee. Julia swooped up the pages from the floor and carefully added them to the drawer of her nightstand.
“I’m not fooling, Betty.” Liz mustered the sternest voice she could. “No V-mail, no notes, nothing.”
“Okaaay. I’ll even write my own obituary.”
Julia giggled as she slipped into her black pumps and fastened the ankle straps. From her lace collar to her tailored mid-length skirt, she was as stylish as Ava Gardner. “I’m heading out, girls. Either one of you want to join me and Dot for a triple feature? The Tivoli’s playing Cover Girl again.”
Ah, yes. Hollywood’s cure-all for the perpetually glum. A perfect example of why talkies weren’t always better than the silent pictures. At least in Casablanca the tragic ending was scripted out of realism, and the stars didn’t belt out lines in melodramatic show tunes.
“I wish I could,” Betty moaned. “I swear, if I have to take Vera’s shift again this week, I’m quitting once and for all.”
“What about you, Liz?”
Any activity sounded better than ghostwriting a letter to Morgan, even suffering through a silly musical. But completing the task, purging the soldier from her system, also had its appeal.
“I’ll take a rain check,” Liz replied with eyes that told her, Thanks for getting me into this.
Julia grabbed her pillbox purse, missing the glance. “See you tomorrow, then,” she said, and turned for the hallway.
By the time the front door slammed, Betty had sidled up to Liz, cross-legged, pillow on her lap, armed with a pile of stationery. “Here’s what I have so far.” She held out the page for Liz to read along, and cleared her throat as if preparing to give the State of the Union address.
Dear Morgan,
It was nice talking to you, you seem like a terrific guy. I definately wish we could’ve spent more time together. Where did the Army ship you to?
The glaring grammatical and spelling errors seized hold of Liz’s eyes. She fought every urge within her not to seek out the nearest colored fountain pen to circle what her father would call “blasphemous mistakes.”
Betty looked up. “What do you think?”
Liz aimed for diplomacy, a specialty of Dalton’s. “It’s, um . . . not bad.”
“I knew it,” Betty whimpered. “It’s dreadful.” She buried her face in the pillow.
“No. It’s not dreadful. It’s just that—” Liz chose to limit her critiques to the misguided content. “I don’t think the Army will let him say where they’re going.”
“So what can I write?” Betty rumpled the letter into a ball and pitched it at the woven wastebasket, falling a foot short.
Liz set her glass on the nightstand. She reminded herself this wasn’t a hundred-page dissertation. With just a few intelligible sentences, life could return to normal. “How about something like . . .” She threw out the simplest opening that came to her. “Dear Morgan. Although our time together was brief, it was a pleasure meeting you at the dance—”
“Oh, that’s perfect. I love it!” Enthusiasm shot through Betty like an electrical current, straightening her posture, widening her eyes. “Now, what was that again?” She held up her pen, a stenog-rapher ready for dictation—with no knowledge of shorthand.
Already Liz felt exhausted. She opened her mouth to repeat the phrase when the tinkering notes of her grandfather’s cuckoo clock rang out from the living room.
“Cripes. What time is it?” Betty rotated the alarm clock on the nightstand. “Shoot, I’m gonna be late.” With the speed of a fireman preparing for a five-alarm blaze, she jumped into her carnation-pink diner dress and pinned on her name tag. At the vanity, she smoothed Julia’s styling lotion over her pageboy hair.
Relief and aggravation rivaled within Liz at the postponement. Now that they had started, she wanted nothing more than to rid her thoughts of Morgan McClain; him and all the “what-ifs” that had tangled her mind like ivy.
“I really gotta go,” Betty addressed Liz’s reflection in the mirror, “but could you please finish the letter while I’m gone?”
“Finish?” A laugh of disbelief snagged in Liz’s throat. “We haven’t even started it.”
Betty applied her Victory Red lipstick in one circular motion. “I wouldn’t ask, but I won’t be home till late. And then I’ll be with Suzie all weekend visiting her family.”
Liz was about to refuse, needing to draw a line somewhere— wavering and faint though the line may be—when Betty produced a scrawled address on a napkin.
“Pretty please?” She knelt by the bed with clasped hands. “A couple more lines is all it needs.”
This was ludicrous. “Don’t you think he’ll know it’s not from you?”
“He’s a guy. He won’t have any idea,” Betty said, as if reporting the sky was blue. “Besides, what’s the difference? I’d just be writing down everything