Letty Fox Read Free Page B

Hollywood contract, wanted a young woman secretary: she had to be pretty, sophisticated, smart, with a knowledge of languages, and enough physical charm and social manners to make a good mistress. Gallant Stack had already mentioned my name and recommended me, and he asked my mother if she would pass on the offer as I was just the girl needed. My mother mumbled something about its being up to me, but Gallant Stack, wishing to oblige his friend, also came next day direct to me. “ ‘The three R’s and Romance are her racket,’ is what I said,” said Gallant Stack to me, reporting his colloquy with the Hollywood writer. “I will think it over,” said I. Shocking and unsavory as this proposition may appear when written down but not when said, it differed little from many a proposition I had received. My position with most of my employers had been just that; and let’s face the facts, I liked it. It did not require any new kind of impudence for the author to send a crier round town in this way. My acquaintances in camp often sent their friends to me, and, of course, to any good-looking, smart girl they knew. It is the custom of the town. As for Gallant Stack—as he had seen some MSS., attempts of mine to get into literature, and had heard my complaints at failure, he felt he was acting the part of a friend. A writer has his time to himself, and has little to do, while I had to slave day and night to keep the favor of my bosses—and crush opposition. Stack was just a realist, a man without prejudice; and I am certain he would have taken care of me in any way if I had been in any kind of trouble. His boast was that no woman ever suffered from him; even his cast-off mistresses were helped to a new mistress-ship, a new job, or a husband by him. As for the Hollywood writer, he was not a bad man either; in this hurried world, no one has any time to seek and try out, and so one buys everything readymade. I do not even see a scandal in this, for wide-awake women. In other times, society regarded us as cattle or handsome house slaves; the ability to sell ourselves in any way we like is a step toward freedom; we are in just the same position as our Negro compatriots—and they would not go backwards toward their miserable past. One must take the good with the bad and, unmoved by the titles of things and worn-out prejudice, one must look toward the future. I feel, though, that this can’t go on for a lifetime. We must bear the burdens of society on our backs just a certain way, then must set them down for someone else to pick up. This was very much my feeling at that time. I had carried the burdens of society just as far as was good for me. I was really tempted to take this chance, go to the Coast, and find a position in one of the studios.
    But I was tired of work; and furthermore, I am fond of New York. It is hard to leave friends and old lovers, even when the latter have deserted. There are always the occasional dinners and the fondness that outlasts an affair that’s done with. These castoff lovers are my best friends, in a way; I have to explain myself to others, but there is nothing these men do not know. I wonder at the simplicity of people who think these affairs are bad for a woman. As for men—I don’t answer for them. Men are easily debauched because they think of every woman they have had as a conquest, although it is clear that it is a mutual conquest and that each loses what each gains.
    On this Friday night I was enduring that second half of living which is pure suffering. My friend of those days was Captain White, who was then situated in Washington, though his business brought him every week to New York. There was no question of marriage between us and I had agreed to leave him when his mother and fiancée came here from the Coast. The family had arrived, but I was finding it very hard to break it off; he, too. We had scenes, reconciliations; and his doubts about