Louise's Gamble by Sarah R Shaber Read Free Book Online Page A

the bedroom wearing a blue sweater set and pearls that made her look like a schoolgirl.
    I went down to the bathroom to put on my face. The only make-up I wore was powder and lipstick, even though, as Ada often remarked, I looked the thirty years old I was. I didn’t see the point to foundation, since it seemed to slip right off my skin, and my glasses hid the thickest eye make-up I could apply.
    Myrna sent Sandy and me downstairs ahead of her. ‘I’ll do my thing in the bathroom and be down in a minute,’ she said.
    I found out why later when she made her entrance.
    There were fifteen male trainees at ‘The Farm’ with us. Every one turned and gawked at Myrna when she walked into the dining room. I didn’t blame them; I admired her looks too. The woman was so gorgeous that she reminded me of Rita Hayworth.
    There were two large round tables in the dining room. Sandy and I had saved a seat for her at our table, but she swept right past us and sat down at the other, where she’d be the only woman.
    Two colored boys in naval stewards’ uniforms brought platters of pork chops, sweet potatoes, stewed apples, and rolls through the swinging doors of the kitchen. We were hungry from all that outdoor exercise and fell on the food like starving refugees.
    After dessert and coffee one of the young men at our table, Harry from Topeka, turned to Sandy.
    ‘One of the outbuildings here is tricked out like a cabaret,’ he said. ‘There’s a juke box and three-two beer. Want to go over for a while?’
    ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘If Louise comes with me.’
    ‘I hope she does,’ said the older man with a lovely British accent sitting next to me wearing tweed and, I swear, gaiters. ‘I’m Sam,’ he continued, offering me his arm.
    After bundling up against the November cold we found ourselves at the door of what used to be a smokehouse, reading a home-made sign on the door – Absolutely no alcoholic beverages will be sold to majors and colonels under twenty-one years of age unless accompanied by their parents – which was an inside joke about the youth of our officer corps.
    Once inside the door of the cabaret I was brought up short by a vulgar display on one of the walls. Humiliated would be an adequate word for how I felt, but I kept my embarrassment to myself. I knew I had to be a ‘sport’ to be accepted within OSS, no matter what unpleasantness I had to contend with. I’d be evaluated at the conclusion of my stay here at ‘The Farm’ and I intended to pass.
    The wall in question was plastered with posters of half-naked pin-up girls draped over jeeps, airplanes, and tanks. A brunette clothed in panties, a bra, and a sailor’s hat saluted a seaman on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Another luscious model in a bikini and heels rode astride a flying jet, long blonde hair flowing in the wind. The models’ faces and figures were airbrushed and enhanced to the point they looked like cartoons instead of real women.
    The government encouraged the display of pin-up girls. Supposedly, they placated thousands of randy men in uniform and reminded them of what bliss waited for them at home after the war was won, but none of them resembled any living woman I knew.
    But I kept my irritation to myself and accepted a beer from Sam. Someone put coins in the jukebox, and the Andrews Sisters’ latest, ‘Here Comes the Navy’, filled the room with their usual close harmony. I checked the jukebox’s contents. No hillbilly music. No Roy Acuff, no Carter family. I longed to hear a real country song, like Bob Wills’ ‘Dusty Skies’, but I resigned myself to swing and crooning for the rest of the evening.
    Then I marveled as Myrna took advantage of the shortage of girls – the very shortage that encouraged men to leer at pin-ups. The woman was a natural OSS ‘glamour girl’ already. She nursed one beer throughout the evening. Whenever she crossed her legs she left her skirt above her knee, and while talking to a man she tended to