Pals, pinups, and the picture of propriety

Still, at its heart, this novel is really a love story. It features Wink Dutton, an Army illustrator discharged in 1944 after permanently maiming his drawing hand in a foolish accident. Wink stops in Chicago to look for work. His Army buddy, Chesty, a photographer still in the Pacific, has asked Wink to "check in" on his wife, Sal.

Wink's friendship with Sal starts sweetly. When he meets her, she is barely hanging on to her family's camera shop. She owes money to her dark-room suppliers and the city's tax collectors; at night, the downtown neighborhood where she lives above her shop is threatened by young hoodlums. Frightened and broke, Sal invites Wink to move into her dead father's apartment above the shop, but first she asks Chesty for permission to live in such close proximity to a single man. From the Pacific, Chesty writes that the move is "aces w/me." Wink's luck improves, too, when he begins work at an advertising agency. Coincidently, Sal's good friend, Reenie, is a junior art director. Soon Wink and Reenie are dating.

The novel firmly establishes Wink as an all-around 1940s good guy. He enjoys a "good stiff belt," but resists his natural pull toward his friend's wife. He uses words like "lollygagging" and is happy to be "laughing it up with two great, spunky women." He heroically sacrifices his job to defend Reenie against the advances of her lecherous boss. Establishing Sal's innocence is a little harder. She has begun experimenting with a new income stream, posing for girlie photos which she takes herself, using a "timer gizmo" of her husband's devising. When Wink finds the photos, Sal pledges him to secrecy. She explains that she will never "cheat" on Chesty, but she will "lie" to him since if he knows about their financial condition, he will worry. Wink joins the enterprise, and Reenie soon signs on, too. There is no need to hire outside models, since Sal is "well endowed," and Reenie looks like a pinup.