Nothing but a Smile Read Online Free Page B

day of dismal luck. An orangey glow washed across the sign and the oily-looking rooftop supporting it and the El track just beyond where a train was whisking all of those employed Chicagoans away from the Loop, home to their dinners and loved ones after a job well done.
    The coy squint and chipper, toothy grin on the beaming, painted majorette, dressed up like Uncle Sam, seemed precisely calculated to make her just slightly naughty, implying she just might be a “victory girl,” one of those notorious stateside gals who felt it was her patriotic duty to sleep with any red-blooded serviceman, whether just returned home or about to ship out.
    Sure, her legs were bare, but for a legitimate reason: she was no doubt leading a war-bonds parade. And the striped stovepipe hat was tipped over one eye only because it was too large, not to be sexy, and the hand cocked on her hip was standard to twirlers and marchers, not a streetwalker stance, a come-on. But that wide, wet smile—brother, better look twice!
That
made his pecker jump, despite his glum state. Which meant the artwork was doing its job—hats off to the illustrator and art director!
    Lucky employed bastards …
    His list of prospective contacts had dwindled even faster than his meager savings (nine dollars and seventy cents). He'd crossedthe last off his list today, with nothing more promising than a lot of hearty thumps on the back and words of admiration for the work in his portfolio he could no longer duplicate and the standard
welcome home, soldier!
guff. One creative director he met with, Rollo Deininger, did say that there was a
chance
he could start him off managing the in-house production studio at LD&M, and then see if he could eventually work his way up into an art director position—if Wink weren't able to eventually return to his real calling, illustration work. Production studio manager wouldn't be a great job—not much better than the near possibility of the day before at that other agency, stock boy for the art supplies. It would be a hell of a step down, in terms of pay and prestige. He'd essentially be gluing campaign comps onto presentation board and constructing one-off in-store stand-up displays and that sort of thing, along with overseeing a crew of the ad world's truly underpaid—art students and interns—as they put together all the layouts and did all the grunt work to make the creative teams look good when they pitched a client. What was worse, Deininger wasn't even actually offering him the job yet, just informing him that it
might
be a possibility.
    Great to know,
he thought.
So might the end of the war and my marriage to Betty Grable and the return of full function to my drawing hand—all possibilities …
    On that score, Deininger had come right out and asked. He seemed like a blunt man, but Wink understood the need to know.
    He assured him the lame hand would present no problem in the event of either job becoming available—art director or production studio manager. The truth was, he could work an X-Acto knife and bottle of mucilage and boss around the production kids even if he had a hook for a hand. Art director, he was less sure of—it would be hard to entirely avoid drawing with that one.
    But he could tell that even the crummy production room possibility was just a lot of bunk. The guy was just being upbeat about it because he was a veteran; thought he was doing him a favor by blowing sunshine up his ass.
    And now he was looking out at the end of a day that felt only marginally different from the end of everything, and he couldn't for the life of him get a bead on how to make it better. Sure, he could go get sauced. Crawl in a bottle somewhere. Except the amount of lubrication he would need to feel better about his prospects would mean digging pretty deep in the kitty.
    There was a place back in the PTO where they'd had no real PX, so some of the boys had thrown together a hooch speak— part Quonset hut, part grass mat, under the