Evening star., 1941-02-02
II Short Story Complete in This Issue

NIillie, stars of the floor show at the
- Silver-Plaza Grill, did polite imita-
tion of President and Mrs Roosevelt You
might not have seen any resemblance to the
First Lady in the small, plump, pink Millie,
but Matt was really convincing, for he wore
eyeglasses and said MY friends" and what
more could you expect?
They closed their number with an old-time
dance olio, buck wing and cakewalk
- slim little Matt and fat little Millie, both
of them spry at sixty, leaning backward
almost to their heels and solemnly kicking,
arm in arm, Matt gesturing with star
spangled gilt hat as though this were SOL
emn wedding procession in an insane asylum.
Herman Beagle manager of the Grill, noted
that there was fairly good applause, and that
the Carnivals knew their earnest and highly
technical business of being joyful idiots. They
were a picturesque pair, Matt in dinner
clothes with canary-yellow waistcoat and
Mile in purple creation with green beads,
as they retired to their dressing room -
which, at the Grill, was also the storage room
for empty bottles, extra tables, and nasty
little gilt chairs
With astounding speed they changed to
garments more suitable to their secret social
status as Wisconsin chicken farmers: Matt
to sneakers, with duck trousers and sweat
shirt that may once have been gray; Milie
to an orange sweater and slacks in which her
nimbIe legs were certainly no simmer. They
talked happily the good talk of dressing
rooms:
Il see where Jack Grimpus has been en-
gagged for the gangster part in Behind the
Eight Ball always did like Jacks gangsters
better than his doctors or even his bishops"
DO you remember when he was doing the
country doctor in Eroded Fields in 1923 -"
mo, in "a it was"
mo it wasn't! They rehearsed in the Van
derbilt Theater in January '23 - don't you
remember - his old lady and him had the
pink room with the rubber plant at Ma
Samplers. on Forty-Eighth Street - don't
you remember"
That's so. 1923 it was. Gracious, how time
does fly
Not many married couples could talk as
engagingly and learnedly as the Carnivals.
i HE Silver-Plaza is on the East Coast
of Florida, at Splendid Springs, healthful
and thriving little city which contains the
worlds most dazzling collection of Moorish
villas, dog races, sazerac cocktails, real Eng
lish dukes, mortgages girls practically in
bathing suits, cabanas like tiny Mount Yer
mons and minuscule Warwick Castles, quiet
gentlemen who were once hijackers but have
reformed and gone into policy numbers,
schools for young New York gentlemen whose
minds are not vigorous enough for northern
winters, villas so modernistic that they look
like sawed-off glass bottles, Olde English bars,
Cuban bars, Mexican bars, Alt Heidelberg
bars, and bars.
But the Carnivals did not reside In this
residential worlds fair, between shows. They
lived in beach shack on an island ten miles
out of town. Sweetly singing that newest fav-
orite of the far-fiung radio millions, 'Rasp-
berry pie, jazzberry pie, nobody loves his
sweetie like l." they sped down palm-hid
roads and across a causeway to their island
estate.
1t was now near to dawn, which for them
was the beginning of evening and of restful
loafng. They rode in the Tenbrink Six station
wagon in which they had driven to Florida
from their Wisconsin farm II was very nice