Miss McGovern was bewildered. She wondered what were the hundred
thousand things that Mrs. Patch would sacrifice for her palace. Dollars,
she supposed--yet it had not sounded exactly like dollars.
THE MOVIES
It was February, seven days before her birthday, and the great snow that
had filled up the cross-streets as dirt fills the cracks in a floor had
turned to slush and was being escorted to the gutters by the hoses of
the street-cleaning department. The wind, none the less bitter for being
casual, whipped in through the open windows of the living room bearing
with it the dismal secrets of the areaway and clearing the Patch
apartment of stale smoke in its cheerless circulation.
Gloria, wrapped in a warm kimona, came into the chilly room and taking
up the telephone receiver called Joseph Bloeckman.
"Do you mean Mr. Joseph _Black_?" demanded the telephone girl at "Films
Par Excellence."
"Bloeckman, Joseph Bloeckman. B-l-o--"
"Mr. Joseph Bloeckman has changed his name to Black. Do you want him?"
"Why--yes." She remembered nervously that she had once called him
"Blockhead" to his face.
His office was reached by courtesy of two additional female voices; the
last was a secretary who took her name.
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