Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 28, 1928 — page 127: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUST RELAX, PLEASE. day!’ She laid a firm, slim hand on the woman’s forehead. “‘ Now just re- lax, please,’’ she ordered, with calm young authority. The woman’s chatter ceased. An- nette buzzed another electrical appli- ance over the wide cushiony shoulder and her eyes wandered beyond the white-curtained booth to the mandolin clock above the reception room mantel. Four fifteen. In ten minutes she'd have this appointment finished. If the other woman didn’t come promptly at half past Annette could let her go. But then, what difference did it make, Annette questioned in gloomy afterthought. She didn’t have any- thing to do but ride uptown in the subway, grab a bite to eat in some noisy cafeteria and then go to her room and go to bed. “ Anyway, the bed’ll feel good,” Annette told herself wearily. In another white-curtained booth Miss Benjamin patted, massaged, buzzed an electric roller. Madame was out shopping that afternoon. Annette and Benjie were alone and they had been rushed to death. After the last customer had disap- peared they would have to wipe oft bottles and jars and glass. shelves. They would have to change the water in the flower vases, dust mirrors and chairs and polished table-tops, leaving the place in immaculate order, with its exquisite green and rose luxury, its atmosphere of perpetual youth and springtime. Once Annette had enjoyed fussing over the elegant furnishings. To-day she loathed them. She loathed herself and Benjie and handsome Mme. Rejan who was fifty-five or so and looked thirty-five. She loathed the expensive, glass- stoppered bottles, the padded chairs, the piles of clean towels, the pink roses and yellow jonquils in the expen- sive vases. Most of all she loathed Dr. Jerry B. Thomas, the carefully groomed young man on the floor below. 507 who had been taking her to dances and theaters and out to dine and then, all of a sudden, had dropped her cold. All of this loathing she hid, of course, under her tranquil professional manner. A beauty shop is no place for nerves, and Annette was a good stoic, Like the Spartan youth who had his vitals gnawed by the fox, she took her punishment without whining. She even smiled, discreetly, so as not to make lines. But she sometimes felt that she would explode. She visioned herself going suddenly violent and smashing the everlasting bottles in some aston- ished customer’s face. She was sick of the eternal posing and lying and flattery that kept up the illusion of youthful beauty, sick of pat- ting the wrinkles out of aging faces and trying to pretend that there was no such thing as Father Time. And all she could do was to curse silently. Annette’s deft fingers worked auto- matically while her mind roved among her woes. She finished the fat woman, escorted her to the elevator, returned and removed all soiled towels and daubs of absorbent cotton in the white- curtained booth. She straightened the bottles and jars on the green table and received the next “appointment.” A nervous, haggard woman who jumped every time anything touched her. {T. As Annette was unusually late that evening she got into the worst possible jam in the subway. Mobs swept about her and fairly knocked her off her feet and into the Broadway express... - They pulled and mauled and pushed. They gouged her ribs with their el- bows and bumped against her knees as she hung precariously to a strap that three other people were hanging to. The air was so close that it made her want to hold her breath. Her feet comicboolks (C@)