Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

It said her father was a ward leader who had borrowed money from Louie to put her through college. Louie, quite by accident, met her and his interest became more than academic. He offered her a job when she finished college. She accepted and inside a year was visiting him at home, on demand.

Three weeks ago she had learned she was pregnant. She went to Louie. He gave her a thousand bucks and told her to make tracks — for keeps.

She decided to solo into eternity. But as a lasting memento to Louie, here were a few items the newspapers might be interested in.

Sweat erupted on the back of my neck. The story was mine, exclusive. It would be spread all over page one, under my by-line. There would be a bonus, journalism awards. I would be famous.

I dashed to the street, looking for a car...

I was smiling as I slowly returned to the bus station, put the brief case back in a locker, dropped the key in an envelope, addressed it to myself and mailed it.

Then I headed for Louie’s office.

The Housemother Cometh by Hayden Howard

They had to sneak the blonde in quietly. If Mrs. Danielson caught on, nobody knew what might happen...

* * *

The bottle-blonde’s elegant and unsteady shape was plastered between the two sophomores. They precariously buoyed her against gravity. But her terrifyingly loud giggles they could no more suppress than bubbles rising in uncapped beer.

To their frantic whispers she giggled happy responses while they maneuvered her under their housemother’s window and up the backstairs to the dorm rooms.

Fred peered down the empty hall. As he listened to Mrs. Danielson’s footsteps rapping back and forth on the floor below, he discovered he was not so heroically inebriated as he had imagined.

The mating of key with lock seemed endless in Beau’s trembling hands. Whispering angrily, the two sophomores wrestled with the key and knob. The door sprang inward with a bang.

“Oh gawd, she’ll hear,” Beau moaned.

The woman whinnied as Fred snatched her into their room. He could hear doors opening curiously up and down the hall as Beau closed theirs and clicked the light switch.

“Turn it off, you fool,” he gasped.

Stumbling in the redoubled darkness, they pulled down the shades while Fred’s bed creaked beneath the settling weight of the woman.

Under the harsh electric light, he saw her neck was laced with pink, powdered creases he had not noticed in the blue glow of the bar. She was smiling juicily at Beau; his room-mate’s baby face glistened with tiny jewels of perspiration.

“Who has a drinkee?” Her curly-lashed, mahogany and slightly pied eyes wrinkled at their corners in twin smiles as she struggled her white shoulder out of her coat.

Beau gawked as though he was watching the opening of his induction notice. Fred twisted the pint from his coat pocket, filled his toothbrush glass and handed it to her. She barely acknowledged it.

Smiling helpfully at Beau, who sat down weakly on his own bed, she burbled: “Beau, honey? That short for Beaumont? You talk like a Texas boy.”

“Yes, ma’am. Gawd, Fred, pour me more than that.”

“He’s from Fort Worth though,” Fred croaked, clutching the bottle against his blue shirt with one pale, hairy-backed hand. “He’s majoring in Econ.” His voice died uncertainly as, dimpling, she fluttered her eyelids at Beau.

“You come sit by me, honey. You’re the cutest thing I’ve seen from Texas.”

His hand left his glass standing precariously on the bed as tentatively he began to rise. But his wide blue eyes deserted her for Fred.

“We were going to flip a coin,” Fred’s voice bullfrogged, then leapt shrill as Beau fumbled a hand into his pocket. “No, you go right ahead, Beau. I’ll step out. I can be studying for my—”

But Beau reversed his rising, upsetting the glass. Jaw agape as its dampness reached his skin he rose again as her whinnying giggle brought a warning hiss from Fred.

“Keep it down. Mrs. Danielson hears every little sound.”

She giggled more gently, recrossing her knees, bemusedly watching Beau’s scrubbing motions with his handkerchief until he raised his face, red-eared.

Fred’s lips winced. Red ears fading, Beau stared at the closed door. They listened with their mouths open.

“Beau dear,” she tittered unabashed. “You and your roommate better give me the thirty little green men for my purse.”

“Thirty?” Fred squawked. “You said twenty-five for the two of us.”

“Did I now?” Her blonde head wagged on its rubber stem. Crossing her plump arms, she hitched herself inward and upward. “That was when I thought you boys had an apartment or a car. Let’s have it boys, or mama starts screaming.”

Fred glared at her face while he fingered backward for his wallet. His hand hesitated between two powerful emotions.

“You said twenty-five. Didn’t she, Beau?” But he counted fifteen one dollar bills onto the patched coverlid.