Nothing but a Smile Read Online Free Page A

past-due back payment. Which was fine—a minor setback. And anyway, they were all set on developer, just running a little low on fix. Not that they were developing enough film these days to make the shortage an imminent crisis, exactly—that was the crux of the problem, after all: lack of customers—but if she had to dilute it much more, the quality would begin to suffer, and besides, it just felt unprofessional, running low on something so basic. Not to mention the fact that it made the shop look bad to the chemical company, an outfit that had been supplying her pop for two decades and with whom, until now, they had yet to welsh on a tab.
    The second factor driving her to consider renting to Wink was the break-ins. As unpatriotic as it struck her, it being wartime and all, there'd lately been a rash of petty robberies in the neighborhood. It was probably juveniles—too young for the draft, too unsupervised with all the men away. She'd even felt nervous a few times walking home alone from the movies. Most of the other shops were dark at night, and there were sometimes groups of young boys sniffing around in the shadows, probably mostly trying to act tough to one another, having their jokes, but you never knew. It felt threatening, and the emptiness of her pocketbook was no safeguard. It was enough to keep her moving, glancing over her shoulder, and some nights, even with the doors locked and the windows grated, it got pretty spooky up above the shop. Every little sound, all the way down Adams—a distant trash can rolling or the tinkle of glass—could sometimes jangle her nerves, make her go for the radio and crank it up, let them know there were folks,
plural,
living there.
    She didn't write Chesty about this second concern, either. There was no sense giving him the Tokyo Rose treatment, gettinghim worked up. But it
was
further reason to consider this idea of renting to Wink.
    The biggest argument against it, of course, would be how it might look. As desolate as it seemed some nights, she still knew a few other people on the block—not only fellow shopkeepers but also several dear old busybodies living a few doors down, in particular, Mrs. Brablec and Mrs. Mulopulos, and she expected they'd get a lot of mileage out of a tall handsome mystery man coming and going as if he lived there, using his very own key at the door of the shop, pocketing it, and whistling on his way to work, bold as can be. They'd sprain their tongues.
    One solution, of course, was to put out a sign in the window that said ROOM FOR RENT, let them get the idea ahead of time that she didn't have a boyfriend or anything like that. No, better still: APARTMENT FOR RENT. Sure. Make it clear it was a whole separate living area.
    She'd do that for a week or so—hang it out there and sort of let the concept sink in. Also, she could give him a key to the back, so it would appear even more separate. Even folks working and living right on the block probably didn't know the upstairs apartments were only divided by a hallway. They might assume it was completely separate and walled off, with its own rear stairway and everything.
That
would certainly be upstanding and proper enough, if it were true.
    The only other flaw in the idea would be Wink himself. He might not want to rent the apartment, even if it was at a cut-rate price. Maybe he hadn't really enjoyed talking to her that much. Maybe his visit had been entirely out of obligation—a chore to check off the list, done only out of respect for his pal Chesty— and he would rather find a place more exciting, where the action was. Maybe a place with a lot of other veterans as tenants, where you could get a poker game going at all hours or toss around amedicine ball in your undershirt. A place where unmarried, available women might be living next door, not some boring married lady.
    And, of course, she needed to get her husband's okay.

9
    The sun was setting on the war-bonds billboard—setting, too, on another