-"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Mark Twain
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Rose threw her clutch down on the table. It sent glasses rattling and silverware clattering. She sat down in a huff next to Millie, who merely scooched over in the booth and continued to grimace into a compact mirror, scraping the last bit of glue off her canines. Rose glared at her, then at the other women around the table who all suddenly seemed very interested in anything else.
"Well?" She questioned no one in particular.
"Well what?" The only person to respond was the haggard waitress doomed to the grave yard shift in the truck stop café.
"Wellington!" Rose snapped, "Beef!"
"You got so you think this is the Ritz or something, lady?" The waitress grumbled back. "I got a hamburger patty on white bread with brown gravy. Will that satisfy yur ladyship?"
"Yeah, and don't go skimpin' on the gravy," Rose mumbled. "And coffee - black as hell! Got it!" The waitress merely blinked, popped her gum and walked away.
"Someone's got her panties all in a twist." Millie said primly, closing her compact with a decided snap.
"As the only one who got a date, you can pay for breakfast," Rose practically snarled.
"It's only 11:30 at night. I'd still call it dinner," Minnie said primly.
"Dinner, breakfast? What's it matter? You also called this dead-end 'up-for-grabs' with all the service boys in town. I don't think you can call 'em anymore, babe."
"It's not my fault," Millie whined, "They had a Dogfight on okay? Ugly chicks only. You should feel happy that you didn't get picked up!"
Rose remembered Millie explaining the Dogfight to her, but hadn't believed it at the time. Then she'd seen it for herself in the fact that even as the young bucks had seemed to take an immediate interest in her as she flirted her way down the street, they had just shaken their heads in disappointment and walked the other way.
The waitress clapped rose's coffee down on the table with a ticket marked paid.
"Compliments of the gentlemen." She said the word like it was contaminated.
Some rather grungy truckers leered at the small group of "ladies" from across the café.
Suddenly, Rose had an idea.
"If you can't beat em'-" she said slyly, taking a sip of coffee and batting her eyes in the direction of the other booth. "-join 'em."
##
"Let me get this straight," quipped Claire, a very buxom member of their group, some time later. "We're picking them up? And they got to be the plain type? What's the catch? They still gotta pay to play, right?"
"Yes," Rose said matter-of-factly taking a drag on her morning cigarette. They were seated in the parlor of a bed and breakfast, complete with doilies, ruffles, and four ladies-of-the-night in transparent and silky negligee.
"We wine and dine 'em and they are so grateful, they agree to pay double! I mean, it shouldn't be too hard. Our targets are the boys to shy to go out and get 'em some. If we bring it to 'em, they would surely show us some gratuity." She smiled slyly at the pun.
##
Rose sauntered into the public library and immediately drew stern looks from the librarian as she clomped across the polished floor in her inappropriately high heals. She looked, in her rather tight cocktail dress, like she was headed to a late-night party with plenty of drinks. It was 11 am on a Monday.
Rose headed to the quiet areas near the back stacks.
Study tables were lined up against the wall – anyone sitting in one would have his back to the bookcases. Rose instantly had a victim in her cross-hairs.
A rather heavy young man sat at one of the tables pouring over a book full of some sort of diagrams. His wallet happened to be laying open beside him as he jotted down mumbo-jumbo and tucked the bits of scrap paper into one of the pockets. Rose could just see the edge of a certain card peaking out and she smiled to herself.
He might have weighed 300 pounds, but he was dressed in such a way as to compensate for his bulk and he carried it with a good posture. He had a clear and open face and neat hair. Though they were going for the non-usual customer type, Rose still had taste. She could handle a big boy as long as he wasn't disheveled and sloppy looking. This man was not attractive in any convention terms, just a flabby nobody who would have to really have points in the personality department to get and keep a date.
Rose sidled into a row of books just behind him and chose a volume off the shelf. It looked like poetry. Poetry was good – flowery, romantic. She flipped it open and found the beginning of a poem.
"My first thought was…" she sighed the words amorously.
Her target looked up, blinking out of the absorption of the diagrams he'd been studying.
"…he lied with every word." She almost stumbled, not expecting something quite so harsh to end the line.
The young man swiveled to look at her. She made brief eye contact through her lashes, then went to the next line.
"…that hoary cripple…?" Rose really did come out of the singsong recitation and the line sounded like something of a horrified question. She attempted to continue, hoping the poem would get more florid.
"...with malic…malicus…malish…something in his eye…" She snapped the book closed at that point and smiled becomingly at the confused gaze of the man focused on her.
"Poetry is the food of love," she said, pursing her lips coyly.
The silence stretched for a moment.
"Ah," he said, clearing his throat uncertainly. "Ah...music?"
"What about it?" Rose almost snapped. Small talk was not her forte as she was a more business minded kind of woman.
"Music…is the food of love?" He made it sound like a question. "That's sort of how it goes, I think. Shakespeare?"
Rose tried not to make a sour face. She didn't have a clue where the words were from or how they went. She had only heard the line in passing while attending to a client in a dark theater alcove. Sighing to herself and beginning to regret her choice of a library and the bookish sorts that could be found there-in, Rose plastered on her come hither smile and pushed onward.
"Speaking of food," she said, getting right to the point, "Would a swell hunk like you know any place to get a good bite to eat?"
The young, hefty soldier stared at her for a beat, then actually turned in his chair to look behind him for the "swell hunk" she was apparently talking to. Rose took the opportunity to accidentally drop the heavy volume of poetry. It landed on the floor with a truly resounding thump in the quiet.
"Oops," she said innocently after the echoes had subsided. Leaning over to pick up the book, she made sure he got a good look at her cleavage. Glancing up at him though her lashes, she could see that his mouth was actually hanging open.
Rose stood up and began to lever several more heavy volumes off the shelf and, locking eyes with the young man, pile them on the small desk.
"I have so much reading to do," she pouted. "Be a doll, handsome, and help me carry these to the checkout?" With that, she picked up one slim volume from the top of the pile and sauntered toward the front of the library, making sure to bob her hips and waggle her bottom as she went.
A moment later, she heard the young man huffing and scrambling with the stack as he hurried to catch up with her.
###
"You didn't … um … you didn't check anything out?" The big man followed Rose out the door.
Rose had let him pile the books on the front counter. Then, she'd given the librarian a don't waste your time kind of withering smile while delicately lifting the corner of one volume's cover. Sniffling haughtily at what she read on the title page, Rose dropped the cover closed and, twiddling her fingers as if something had rubbed off on her, said "Not my style." She'd turned and sauntered out the door into the late afternoon.
"You look famished!" She came around suddenly on her quarry and flashed him that winning smile. "Tell me where a gentleman of your…stature…and bearing…would eat if he were to be treated to lunch for helping a poor lady like me?"
"Um…" he started to sweat. "The cantee…" The suggestion trailed off when Rose told him with a look that the answer he was about to give was not the right one.
She ponderously lit a cigarette and delicately blew smoke in the air while he thought.
"The… ah…Continental Club?" he finally offered, wiping the nervous rain of sweat from his brow.
Rose turned on her heal and began to walk. He would, she hoped, take up the trail and lead them in the right direction in a moment.
"So, Mr…?" It was her turn to end a sentence as a question.
"Daniel…ah…Danny," he stammered, lumbering on rather small feet to catch up.
What kind of name was that for a grown man? Danny? Why wasn't he "Dan" or fully "Daniel"? Rose had a vision of his mother, probably a plump farm-grown woman, leaning over him at the dinner table saying "Have some more mashed potatoes! There's my big, strong Danny-boy!"
"Mr. Danny. You seem to have a very pronounced awkwardness in your elocution." Let him chew on that for a minute, she thought. Mr. Shakespeare if you please. She'd read just enough to sound uppity if the situation required it.
His face worked through a few strangled expressions as they walked before he finally settled on the banal. "The...um...Club is on Market and Powell... over there?" He pointed down the block.
They walked the rest of the way in un-companionable silence, Danny looking up just once and mumbling "New vigor and strength in every drop." He was reading a Rainier Beer billboard just to fill the space.
##
"Can I help you?" the Maître d' asked them snidely when they got inside the restaurant, looking the odd couple up and down.
"Yeah, excuse me," Rose spoke up when Danny just looked at the floor. "Table for two."
"Do you have a reservation?" The man tapped a pencil on the obviously empty listing in front of him.
"Yes, my husband's secretary called in," Rose stated. Danny turned so red and raised his eyebrows so high she thought he might actually croak. "It should be under Gilmore. Not that it should matter," she said, looking behind him at the un-crowded dining room. "Being it's lunch and there's plenty of room."
This was an unforeseen circumstance of her little plan. She'd been to plenty of nice restaurants on the elbow of a paying customer, but had never encountered what might happen when in the company of such a one as her date. Danny wasn't obviously slovenly and was clean-shaven and neatly dressed. It was just that, they didn't look like they belonged together or should be visiting such as establishment as the this. Rose could practically see the scene in the ally that would take place later. "Man, you should have seen this floozy that came in dragging a fatso that probably paid out the ass to get her to talk to him. I was about ready to run and put a lock on the dessert display AND hide the china when I saw them walk in!"
"Yes, Ma'am," the Maître d' made the honorific actually sound like an insult. "But I'm afraid the lunch buffet is only for-" he looked dubiously at Danny again, "-service men this afternoon."
"Oh good," Rose announced loudly enough to gain the attention of the other diners. "Captain Goodman always looks forward to these exclusive little put-togethers, don't you dear?" She turned to Danny and found him drenched in sweat. He mouthed Gilmore at her desperately.
Realizing he now had an audience (which was obviously not made up of service-men unless the geriatric senior was a General and the group of matronly women were battle-ship switchboard operators) the Maître d' asked rather quietly: "Do you have identification, sir?"
Danny fumbled in his pocket. Rose had seen the military ID he had on him - which would say nothing of his rank. He held out a damp card to the man at the podium who merely glanced at it (not noticing the name discrepancy) before picking up his obligatory drink tray and saying, through gritted teeth, "right this way."
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To be continued...