Free King Cole by W.R. Burnett

saw the usual bunch milling about to the radio music, laughing, singing, gesticulating.
    “Governor, I don’t believe you remember me.”
    “Now wait. Don’t tell me,” said Read, smiling, very friendly.
    “No, really. I only met you once. Gregg took me to lunch at Louis’s and we saw you there.”
    “Of course,” said Read, not remembering at all. “Shall we dance?”
    “Yes.”
    Read was really a very good dancer and was rather proud of this social accomplishment, but dancing was almost out of the question in that small, noisy, brilliantly lighted, smoke-filled living-room. Gregg’s Old-Timers waved at Read and smiled and told him they were all going to vote for him and asked him where he had been keeping himself. It was a mixed group, representing about all there was of Upper Bohemia in Midland City. There was Lou Edwards, associate editor of the Examiner, dancing with Vivian Paul, who had a little money and messed with wet clay, calling herself a sculptress, but not taking it very seriously. There was Bob Crail, who wrote dramatic and music criticism for the Independent,  dancing with Alice Tod, who was somebody’s secretary at Meadows, Hannum and Company and was trying to get started as a writer. There was Pat Garrison, former Ohio State football player, now assistant director of the State Highway Department, dancing with Georgia Carter, a professional beauty, who had been Miss Ohio ten years ago, and was now a rich widow with literary leanings. And finally, there was Ace McCord, a rather disreputable rich young man who played polo and piloted airplanes and thought he could sing, dancing with Charlotte Blair, a distant relative of the Meadows family, who had married the wrong man, divorced him, and was now slowly descending the social scale.
    Read smiled and nodded and tried to guide his partner through this frolicking bunch without collisions. But finally he had to give it up.
    “This isn’t a dance,” he said; “this is a riot. Let’s sit down.”
    Just then Gregg’s Jap boy, Bobby, came in with a tray of drinks. Darting away from Read, the blond woman took two glasses from the tray, then came back. She and Read sat down on a big red lounge. She gave him one of the glasses and he began to sip a very strong gin drink.
    “I don’t take any chances,” she said. “I got left out last time. Funny, but I’ll bet you don’t even know my name.”
    “I can’t quite…”
    “Oh, stop pretending, Governor. I’m Ina Dodson. Pleased to meet you and all that sort of thing. I’m surely glad you came. We’re short a man. Imagine the Governor walking in at the psychological moment, or something. Gregg’s terribly drunk.”
    “Really?”
    “I never saw him worse. He walks all right and he looks all right. But, my; he wants to argue with everybody about everything.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Well, it’s a long story…”
    Pat Garrison came over to shake hands, bringing Georgia Carter with him. She was very good-looking, but tried to appear too young. So far as she was concerned, she was still Miss Ohio at thirty-three. She smiled a practiced, seductive smile at Read.
    “Hello, Governor,” said Pat. “Gregg will be back in a minute. We got to arguing and he…”
    Ina shooed them away.
    “Go dance. I want to tell about Gregg.”
    They danced off, laughing. Then Ina said:
    “Well, we all got to arguing about women. You know. Pat said Georgia was the best-looking woman he’d ever seen. Naturally, she didn’t disagree with him. But a lot of people did. They were just tight enough. Lou said his idea of heaven was to be married to Dolores Del Rio. Only that isn’t what he said, exactly. And so it went, as it says in the storybook. Gregg got pretty offensive, but for a long time we didn’t know what he was talking about. So finally he says: ‘All right. You don’t believe me. I’ll go get her.’ It seems there is a very lovely lady some place in Midland