Fala Factor by Stuart M. Kaminsky

sang,
then might not the noose, come
for a tune that you hum?’
Brought on by hysteria,
the queen then sang an aria
but a black-hooded fella
cut short her a capella,
as a voice from the crowd
shouted angry and loud.
‘Not a moment too soon,
she can’t carry a tune .’”
    The turkey neck looked puzzled while another guy in the crowd applauded and a voice from the back said critically, “It got no goddam onomatopoeia for chrissake. A poem gotta have onomatopoeia.”
    I backed away from the coming debate, wondering what a kid would make of Jeremy’s creation and if he and Alice were planning to illustrate their book. I also filed in the back of my mind the possibility of bringing Mrs. Plaut and publisher Alice Palice together. Object: publication, and my own curiosity.
    On the way back to Burbank for another try at Jane Poslik, I turned on the news and found that it was Saturday, which I already knew. What I didn’t know was that the sugar shortage had gotten worse. Hoarding syrup was now a crime and ice-cream manufacturers were being limited to twenty flavors of ice cream and two of sherbet. Beyond that, Laraine Day was engaged to army aviator Ray Hendricks, who used to sing with Ted Fio Rito. Shut Out had won the Kentucky Derby, and a Japanese transport and six fighter planes had been destroyed in an attack on enemy bases in New Guinea.
    I had time for about ten minutes of Scattergood Baines before I pulled up in front of Jane Poslik’s apartment in Burbank. My workday had begun in earnest.
    Jane Poslik was home. She didn’t want to open the door at first, but I dropped some names like Olson, Roosevelt, and Fala, and she let me in. Her apartment was small and neat and so was she. There were sketches on the wall in cheap, simple frames, more than a dozen sketches of women in a variety of costumes. My favorite was a pencil sketch of someone who looked like Lucille Ball in a fancy French dress all puffed out, white and soft.
    â€œLooks like Lucille Ball,” I said, nodding at the drawing.
    â€œIt is,” she said, watching me carefully with puckered lips.
    Jane Poslik was somewhere in her late thirties, hair cut short. She wore a brown dress with a faint pattern. She was not pretty and not ugly. If her nose had been less chiseled, her chin a little stronger, she might have come out all right, but if she was one of the Pekin, Illinois, beauty pageant runners-up or an actress who had played the second female lead in a Dayton theater company production of Street Scene , she wasn’t going to be any competition for the hundreds who tripped over each other coming to Los Angeles every week.
    â€œYou an actress?” I said, taking the scat in the small kitchen she pointed to.
    â€œDesigner,” she answered, filling a pot with water. “Coffee or tea?”
    â€œCoffee,” I said. “You work for a studio?”
    â€œNo,” she said, hugging herself as if she were cold and turning to look at me. “Not yet. So far I’ve managed to design for a theater company in Santa Monica. I’ve had to take a variety of jobs.”
    â€œLike working for Dr. Olson,” I said.
    â€œLike working for Dr. Olson,” she agreed, fishing a package of Nabisco graham crackers out of a cabinet and placing them on the small table in front of me. “Right now I’m doing part-time work for Gladding, McBean, and Company in Glendale. I’m designing some mosaic tiles. If it goes well, I’ll be put on full time.”
    â€œSounus good,” I said.
    â€œIt’s good,” she agreed, standing near the coffee pot. “But, it’s not designing.”
    â€œOlson,” I said.
    â€œOlson,” she sighed. “You work for …”
    â€œA private party close to someone quite high in the government,” I said, nibbling a graham.
    She looked at me for a long time trying to decide whether to trust me or not.
    â€œI know about the