"If that's what they want, give them the photo file."
"Now is no time to make with the temperament," Al said. "Look, you've been a good girl up to now. Just this once, please."
"It's O.K., Al." Bonner's voice came from behind him. "If Jennie doesn't want to change, she doesn't have to." He smiled his pleasantly ugly smile as he came into the tiny dressing room. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I think it might be a welcome change for Life's readers."
Al looked at him. "O.K. if you say so, Mr. Bonner," he said.
Bonner turned to her, smiling.
"Well, you did it." She didn't answer, just looked at him. "I’ve been thinking about you," he said, his eyes on her face. "You're going to be a big star." She didn't say anything. "The Sinner is going to be a tough picture to follow."
"I hadn't thought about it," she said.
"Of course. You haven't and neither has Jonas." Bonner laughed. "But why should you?
That's not your job. It's mine.
All Jonas does is what he feels like doing. If he wants to make a picture, he makes a picture. But it might be another eight years before he feels like it again."
"So?" she said, meeting his eyes levelly. He shrugged his shoulders.
"It's up to me to keep you working.
If you go that long between pictures, they’ll forget all about you." He reached into his jacket for a package of cigarettes. "Is that Mexican woman still working for you?"
"Yes."
"Still living in the same place?"
"Of course."
"I thought I might drop by one evening next week," he said.
"I’ve got some scripts we might go over." She was silent. "Jonas is going away," he said. "To Canada, on a business trip." He smiled. "You know, I think it's fortunate he hasn't heard any of the stories about you, don't you?"
She let her breath out slowly. "Yes."
"I thought maybe Wednesday night."
"You'd better call first," she said through stiff lips.
"Of course, I forgot.
Nothing has changed, has it?"
She looked up at him. "No," she said dully. Then she walked past him to the door.
A great weariness came into her.
Nothing had changed.
Things turned out the way they always did for her.
Nothing ever changed but the currency.
2.
She awoke to the sight of white linen floating in the wind on the clothesline outside the window.
The rich aroma of corned beef and cabbage, wafting into her room on the heavy summer breeze from the kitchen next door, told her it was Sunday.
It was always like that on Sundays, only when you were a little girl it had been more fun.
On Sundays, when she'd returned from church with her mother, her father would be awake and smiling, his mustache neatly trimmed and waxed, his face smooth and smelling of bay rum.
He tossed her into the air and caught her as she came down, hugging her close to him and growling,
"How is my little Jennie Bear this morning?
Is she sweet and filled with God's holiness fresh from the fount in the back of the church?"
He laughed and she laughed and sometimes even her mother laughed, saying,
"Now, Thomas Denton, is that the proper way for a father to talk to his own daughter, sowing in her the seeds of his own disobedience to God's will?"
Her father and mother were both young and filled with laughter and happiness and God's own good sunshine that shone down on San Francisco Bay.
And after the big dinner, he dressed himself carefully in his good blue suit and took her by the hand and they went out of the house to seek adventure.
They first met adventure on the cable car that ran past their door.
Holding her in his arms, her father leaped aboard the moving car, and waving his blue-and-white conductor's pass, which entitled him to ride free on any of the company's cars, pushed forward to the front of the car, next to the motorman.
There he held her face up to the rushing wind until the breath caught in her throat and she thought she'd burst with the joy of the fresh, sweet wind in her lungs.
"This is my daughter, my Jennie Bear," he shouted to all who would listen, holding her proudly so that all who cared to look could see.
And the passengers, who up to now had been engrossed in their own private thoughts, smiled at her, sharing somehow in the joy that glowed like a beacon in her round and shining face.
Then they went to the park, or sometimes to the wharf, where they ate hot shrimp or crabs, swimming in garlic, and her father drank beer, great foaming glasses of it, bought from the bootlegger who operated quite openly near the stands. But only to wash away the smell of the garlic, of course.
Or sometimes, they went out to the zoo and he bought her a bag of peanuts to feed the elephant or the monkeys in their cages.
And they returned in the evening, and she was tired and sometimes asleep in her father's arms.
And the next day was Monday and she couldn't wait until it would be Sunday again.
No, nothing passed as quickly as the Sundays of your childhood.