The Sunday Gentleman by Irving Wallace

talk to you on that phone, while I stay on this one. I hope you two get along without having met. Well, hold on—”
    I waited, bracing myself for Aida, the unknown, and suddenly, a voice much younger than Minna’s, a voice soft-spoken and well-modulated and faintly Southern addressed me. This was Aida Everleigh, and she was charming. After an introductory exchange, I mentioned the play I hoped to write. Aida said that her sister, Minna, usually took care of business matters. She wondered how I was enjoying my winter in New York, and she listened with interest as I related my reaction to the city.
    When I was through, Aida gave me her own impressions of New York. “We’ve been in New York for twenty-five years, and we’ve seen it change. It’s far too crowded now. I’m sure that’s all right for the young. They like crowds. But it’s difficult for us. I’ve been out to your Los Angeles many times. I love that climate. The last time I was there I went to see my brother. He died right after, in 1935.”
    Minna, who had been listening to us on the other telephone, now entered into our conversation. She did not like Los Angeles because Hollywood was in Los Angeles and Hollywood was full of actors. “I don’t like actors, as a rule,” said Minna. “You’re not one, are you?”
    “No, thank you.”
    “Well—actors—they all have a little of Jack Barrymore in them, you know, all of them assuming a hundred different guises. I was something of an actress myself in my youth. But now I’m writing, and I hope someone will publish what I write. Irving, you will become known with your own writing. I suppose—I suppose we all want to leave something behind… Anyway, I have a feeling that a new literature is going to grow out of this war. You know, just as Hemingway and the rest came out of World War I, this second war will produce something completely new.”
    After a while, it was Aida Everleigh who closed the conversation. She said, “You have a lovely voice, Irving. Do you have a snapshot of yourself? If you have, please send it to us. It’s wonderful to see people you’ve never met, people you’ve just spoken to or corresponded with…Be sure to have a merry Christmas, and the main thing to watch out for in the new year is your health. We’ve managed quite well with ours. You look after yours.”
    Christmas Day, of that year, fell on a Tuesday. Many of us in the army were given a leave, and I had decided to spend my holiday in my hotel room, resting and reading and catching up on correspondence. At one o’clock in the afternoon, my telephone rang, and as I went to answer it, I hoped that it would be Minna Everleigh. My wish was granted. She was cheerful, and she spoke to me for more than thirty minutes, and it was mostly a monologue.
    “I’ve just finished breakfast with Aida,” said Minna. “We only had coffee. We don’t eat on sacred days, not even between meals, which is perhaps why I feel so good today. But on December twenty-ninth we begin to celebrate New Year’s. I have a bottle of wonderful 1926 champagne, and we open it and drink it…I was reading at breakfast when we received your two Christmas presents— Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. By God, sweetheart, I’m wild about those editions. I really must apologize for the books I sent you because they’re only Little Blue Books. That Haldeman who publishes them is a queer, eccentric old man. He’s published one million books, and I’ve bought at least one thousand of them…Aida came to me at breakfast, after I opened your gifts, and I said I must call you, and she said, ‘Minna, you’re not going to bother that Sergeant Wallace on Christmas Day.’ I said that I wouldn’t promise not to. But I just don’t talk to anyone. I talk to you, I give you my time, Irving, because I like you. Anyway, thank you again for the books. They’re cast in such a beautiful dye. I’ll