Why not? Wouldn’t it be perfectly easy to walk up and ask her out to lunch? No, it wouldn’t; that was the trouble. An unspoken rule of the Fifteenth Floor divided the men from the girls on all but business matters, except at Christmas parties. The girls made separate arrangements for lunch in the same inviolable way that they used a separate lavoratory, and only a fool would openly defy the system. This would need a little planning.
He was still in the middle of the IN basket when a thin smiling face and a round solemn one appeared above the glass wall, looking in from the next cubicle. They were the faces of Vince Lathrop and Ed Small, and this meant it was time to go down for coffee.
“Gentlemen,” said Vince Lathrop. “Shall we dance?”
Half an hour later they were back in the office, having heard at some length about Ed Small’s difficulties with grass seed and lawn care in Roslyn, Long Island. The coffee had helped to strengthen Ordway, though it was clear now that what he really needed was a drink, and to prove how much better he felt he was pacing up and down the cubicle and going through his impersonation of Bandy, wobbling his head and repeatedly sucking at a side tooth with little kissing sounds.
“Well, but I wonder if we’re really being effective, that’s the thing (kiss). Because if we really want to be effective, then we’re going to have to get in there and be more, be more (kiss), be more effective…”
Frank was trying for the second or third time to read the top paper on his current work pile, which seemed to be a letter from the branch manager in Toledo; but its paragraphs were as opaque as if it had been typed in a foreign language. He closed his eyes and rubbed them and tried again, and this time he made it.
The branch manager in Toledo, who in the Knox tradition referred to himself as “we,” wished to know what action had been taken on his previous correspondence with regard to the many serious errors and misleading statements in SP-1109, a copy of which was attached. This proved to be a thick, coated-stock, four-color brochure entitled Pinpoint Your Production Control with the Knox “500,” and the sight of it brought back uneasy memories. It had been produced many months before by a nameless copywriter in an agency that had since lost its Knox account, and had been released to the field in tens of thousands of copies marked “Address all inquiries F. H. Wheeler, Home Office.” Frank had known at the time that it was a mess—its densely printed pages defied simple logic, as well as readership, and its illustrations were only sporadically related to its text—but he’d let it go anyway, chiefly because Bandy had confronted him in the aisle one day with a kiss of the side tooth and said, “Haven’t we released that brochure yet?”
Since then the inquiries addressed to F. H. Wheeler had come in slow, embarrassing streams from all parts of the United States, and he was dimly aware of something particularly urgent about those that had been coming from Toledo. The next paragraph reminded him.
As you will recall, it was our intention to order 5,000 additional copies of the brochure for distribution at the annual NAPE Convention (Nat’l. Assn. of Production Executives) here June 10–13. However, as stated in previous correspondence, the brochure is in our opinion so inferior that it does not fulfill its purpose in any way, shape, or manner.
Therefore please advise immediately re our inquiry in previous correspondence, namely: what arrangements are being made to have a revised version of the brochure in our office not later than June 8 in the required number of copies?
He looked quickly at the upper left-hand corner and was relieved to find that the letter had not carried a carbon to Bandy. That was a piece of luck; but even so, this had all the earmarks of a Real Goody. Even if there were still time to arrange for a new brochure to be produced (and there probably wasn’t), he would have to clear the job through Bandy, and Bandy would want to know why he hadn’t been told about it two months earlier.
He was in the act of laying the thing on his secondary pile when the beginnings of a bright idea came through his confusion; and suddenly he was out of the cubicle and walking toward the front of the office with his heart in his mouth.
She was at her desk in the reception area with nothing to do, and when she looked up her eyes were so full of pleased expectancy—of complicity, it almost seemed—that he nearly forgot what it was he had to pretend he’d come for.
“Maureen,” he said, moving up close and taking hold of the back of her chair, “if you’re not too busy here I wonder if you’d help me find some stuff in the central file. You see this?” He laid the brochure on her desk as if it were an intimate revelation, and she leaned forward from the hips to examine it, so that her breasts swung close to his pointing hand.
“Mm?”
“The thing is, it’s got to be revised. That means I’ve got to dig up all the material that went into it, right from scratch. Now, if you’ll look in the inactive file under SP-1109 you’ll find copies of all the stuff we sent to the agency; then if you check each of those papers you’ll find another code number referring you to other files; that way we can trace the thing back to original sources. Come on, I’ll help you get started.”
“All right.”
As he moved up the aisle behind her hips he felt the promise of triumph in his expanding chest, and soon they were alone together in the labyrinth of the central file, enveloped in her perfume as they fingered nervously through a drawer of folders.
“Eleven-oh-what, did you say?”
“Eleven-oh-nine. Should be right there somewhere.”
For the first time he allowed himself to scrutinize her face. It was round and wide-nosed and not really very pretty—he could afford to admit that now—and its too-heavy make-up was probably there to hide a bad complexion, just as the little black tails she had drawn at the corners of her eyes were there to make the eyes look larger and farther apart. Her carefully arranged hair was probably her greatest problem—it must have been a shapeless frizzled bush when she was a child, and must still give her trouble in the rain—but her mouth was wonderful: perfect teeth and plump, subtly shaped lips that had the texture of marzipan. He found that if he focused his eyes on her mouth so that the rest of her face was slightly blurred, and then drew back to include the whole length and shape of her in that hazy image, it was possible to believe he was looking at the most desirable woman in the world.
“Here,” she said. “Now, you want all the folders relating to all these other code numbers. Is that it?”
“That’s it. It may take a little time; I hope you weren’t planning on an early lunch.”
“No. I didn’t have any special plans.”
“Good. I’ll stop back in a while and see how you’re doing. Thanks a lot, Maureen.”
“You’re very welcome.”
And he went back to his cubicle and sat down. It was a perfect arrangement. He could wait here until the rest of the floor had emptied out for lunch; then he would go back and get her. His only problem now was to think up an excuse for not going out to lunch in the usual way, with the usual crowd—an excuse, if possible, that would cover him for the rest of the afternoon.
“Eat?” a deep masculine voice inquired, and this time three heads hung above the partition. They were the heads of Lathrop, Small, and the man who had spoken, a gray mountain of a man with heavy eyebrows and a clenched pipe, whose bulk rose high enough above the glass to reveal that he wore a defiantly unbusinesslike checked shirt, hairy wool tie and pepper-and-salt jacket. This was Sid Roscoe, the literary and political sage of the Fifteenth Floor, a self-described “old newspaper guy” who contemptuously edited the employee house organ, Knox Knews. “Come on, you characters,” he said heartily. “On your feet.”
Jack Ordway obeyed him, pausing only to murmur “Ready, Franklin?” But Frank held back, inspecting his watch with the look of a man pressed for time.
“Guess I won’t be able to make it today,” he said. “Got some people to see uptown this afternoon; I’ll probably stop for a bite up there.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Wheeler,?
?? Ordway said, turning on him. There was a disproportionate amount of shock and disappointment in his face, a look of But you’ve got to come with us; and it took Frank a second to realize what the trouble was. Ordway needed him. With Frank along for moral support, it would be possible to steer the group to what Ordway called the Nice place, the dark German restaurant where a round of weak but adequate martinis came floating to your table almost as a matter of course; without him, under Roscoe’s leadership, they would almost certainly go to the Awful place—a bright, mercilessly clean luncheonette called Waffle Heaven where you couldn’t even get a glass of beer and where the cloying smells of melting butter and maple syrup were enough to make you retch into your tiny paper napkin. There would then be nothing for Jack Ordway to do but sit and hold himself together until they brought him back to the office and set him free to slip out again for the couple of quick ones he would need to survive the afternoon. Please, his comically round eyes implored as they led him away, please don’t let this happen to me.
But Frank sat firm, thumbing the edges of his current work file. He waited until they were safely in the elevator, and then he continued to wait. Ten minutes went by, and twenty, and still the office seemed much too crowded; then at last he half rose from his chair and peeked out over the surface of the partition-tops in all directions.
Maureen’s head moved alone above the waterline of the central file. There were a few other heads bunched near the elevators and a few others scattered in far corners, but there was no point in waiting any longer. The office would never be emptier than this. He buttoned his coat and stalked out of the cubicle.
“That’s fine, Maureen,” he said, bearing down on her and taking the batch of folders and papers from her hand. “I don’t think we’ll need any more than that.”
“Well, but it’s only about half the stuff, though. I mean didn’t you want all of it?”
“Tell you what: let’s not worry about it. How about some lunch?”
“All right. I’d love to.”
He was all action as he hurried back to his desk to drop the papers and dodged into the men’s room to wash up, but when he went to stand by the elevators, waiting for her to come out of the ladies’ room, he was all worry. The small crowd around the elevators was beginning to include people coming back from lunch; if she didn’t hurry up they might run into Ordway and the others. What the hell was she doing in there? Standing with her arms around three other girls in a paralysis of laughter at the very idea of going out with Mr. Wheeler?
Then suddenly she was walking toward him in a light coat, and the elevator door was sliding open and the operator’s voice was saying “Down!”
He stood a little behind her and held himself in a rigid parade rest as they dropped through space. All the restaurants for blocks around would be loaded with Knox people; he would have to get her out of the neighborhood, and as they moved through the lobby he touched her elbow as hesitantly as if it were her breast. “Listen,” he mumbled. “There aren’t any decent places to eat around here. You mind taking a short trip?”
They were out on the sidewalk now, jostled by the crowd, and he stood smiling like an idiot for what seemed a full minute of indecision before the word “taxi” popped into his head; then all at once it made him feel so fine to see one slowing down under the command of his wagging arm, and so splendid to see her smile and bend and climb gracefully into its deep seat, that he didn’t give a damn about what he saw from the corner of his eye at that moment: the unmistakable bulk of Sid Roscoe in the crowd, flanked by the familiar shapes of Lathrop and Small and Ordway, coming from the direction of the Awful place. It was impossible to tell whether they’d seen him or not, and he instantly decided that it didn’t matter. He slammed the door and allowed himself one more glance through the window of the cab as it pulled away from the curb, and he wanted to laugh aloud at the sight of Jack Ordway’s orange loafers flapping along through the forest of legs and feet.
SIX
“EVERYTHING’S sort of going out of focus,” she said. “I mean I feel fine and everything, but I guess we’d better eat something.”
They were in an expensive brick-walled restaurant on West Tenth Street, and Maureen had talked for half an hour in a breathless autobiographical rush, pausing only once to let him telephone Mrs. Jorgensen and arrange for one of the other girls to take the reception desk for the afternoon. (“The thing is,” he had explained, “I had to borrow Maureen to help me locate some stuff here in Visual Aids, and it looks like we’re going to be tied up here for the rest of the day.” There was no department or subdepartment anywhere in the Knox Building called Visual Aids, but he was reasonably sure that Mrs. Jorgensen didn’t know it, and that anyone she’d be likely to ask would not be certain either. He had handled the call so adroitly that he didn’t realize how close he was to being drunk until he came within an inch of upsetting a tray of French pastries on his way back from the phone booth.) The rest of his time had been devoted to steady drinking and listening, with mixed emotions.
These were some of the things he’d learned: that she was twenty-two and came from a town far upstate, where her father owned a hardware store; that she hated her name (“I mean ‘Maureen’s’ all right but ‘Grube’ sounds so awful with it; I guess that was one reason I was so crazy to get married”); that she’d been married at eighteen and had it annulled six months later—“It was completely ridiculous”—and had spent the following year or two “just moping around home and working at the gas company and feeling depressed” until it struck her that what she’d always really and truly wanted to do was to come to New York “and live.”
All this was pleasing, and so was the way she had shyly slipped into calling him “Frank,” and so was the news that she did indeed have an apartment with another girl—a “perfectly adorable” apartment right here in the Village—but after a while he found he had to keep reminding himself to be pleased. The trouble, he guessed, was mainly that she talked too much. It was also that so much of her talk rang false, that so many of its possibilities for charm were blocked and buried under the stylized ceremony of its cuteness. Soon he was able to guess that most if not all of her inanity could be blamed on her roommate, whose name was Norma and for whom she seemed to feel an unqualified admiration. The more she told him about this other girl, or “gal”—that she was older and twice divorced, that she worked for a big magazine and knew “all sorts of fabulous people”—the more annoyingly clear it became that she and Norma enjoyed classic roles of mentor and novice in an all-girl orthodoxy of fun. There were signs of this tutelage in Maureen’s too-heavy make-up and too-careful hairdo, as well as in her every studied mannerism and prattling phrase—her overuse of words like “mad” and “fabulous” and “appalling,” her wide-eyed recitals of facts concerning apartment maintenance, and her endless supply of anecdotes involving sweet little Italian grocers and sweet little Chinese laundrymen and gruff but lovable cops on the beat, all of whom, in the telling, became the stock supporting actors in a confectionery Hollywood romance of bachelor-girls in Manhattan.
Under the oppressive weight of this outpouring he had called for round after round of drinks, and now her meek announcement that everything was sort of out of focus filled him with guilt. All Norma’s brittle animation had fled from Maureen’s face; she looked as honest and as helpless as a child about to be sick on her party dress. He called the waiter and helped her to choose the most wholesome items on the menu with all the care of a conscientious father; and when she had settled down to eat, looking up now and then to assure him that she felt much better, it was his turn to talk.
He made the most of it. Sentences poured from him, paragraphs composed themselves and took wing, appropriate anecdotes sprang to his service and fell back to make way for the stately passage of epigrams.
Beginning with a quick, audacious dismantling of the Knox Business Machines Corporation, which made her laugh, he moved out confidently onto broader fields of damnation until he had la
id the punctured myth of Free Enterprise at her feet; then, just at the point where any further talk of economics might have threatened to bore her, he swept her away into cloudy realms of philosophy and brought her lightly back to earth with a wise-crack.
And how did she feel about the death of Dylan Thomas? And didn’t she agree that this generation was the least vital and most terrified in modern times? He was at the top of his form. He was making use of material that had caused Milly Campbell to say “Oh that’s so true, Frank!” and of older, richer stuff that had once helped to make him the most interesting person April Johnson had ever met. He even touched on his having been a longshoreman. Through it all, though, ran a bright and skillfully woven thread that was just for Maureen: a portrait of himself as decent but disillusioned young family man, sadly and bravely at war with his environment.