She smiled. “I’m booking a new road show for Sally. Burst My Bubble it’s called. Sally’s putting her name on it, but she’ll only join the show in major cities. It’s a real hinterland tour, thankless schedule and salaries to match. I’m having a lot of trouble booking talent for it. Anyway, I got a call from this girl with the cutest Georgia drawl who said she was a friend of Ann Pederson, a very reliable dancer who at the moment is ridiculously pregnant somewhere in Mexico. This girl from Georgia says she has great credentials and wants to do the tour in the worst way but can’t meet me in San Francisco because she works as a switchboard operator in the Brogan Building, that’s this building. She implored me to meet her here. I told her what I’d be wearing and that I’d either be alone or with a good-looking man in his thirties.”

She had always tossed off thoughtful little compliments this way, saying that they cost her nothing. I put my hand affectionately over hers and said, “And you, being the person you’ve always been, came all the way across the bay just to meet with a hoofer who’s desperate for work.”

Nancy conferred briefly with the tabletop again. “Well, not exactly. I suspected you’d be at the Claremont and I thought this would also be a chance to talk to you about—. Well, that’s why the trip to this luncheonette is in no way a waste if she doesn’t show up.” She looked at the Bulova watch I had given her for her twenty-first birthday. “Miss Georgia Peach is already ten minutes late, so the heck with her.” Nancy was kindhearted to a fault, but she was also pragmatic enough to know that someone who was late for a first interview, especially when Nancy was doing the girl such a big favor, would certainly show up late for the job itself. In Sally Rand’s world, that was not allowed.

“What is it that you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked, not unwarily.

She leaned forward. “Ray, I’d like you to consider being Sally’s orchestra leader at the Music Box. Fourteen pieces. She’s doing very well here on the West Coast, and when the fair at Treasure Island is over, she’s doing a new show in a big way. It’s going to be racially mixed, too. The Nicholas Brothers are going to be in it, and I know how much you’ve always loved them. It’s going to be a good show. I think it’ll have a long run.”