All for a Story (33 page)

“Page one?”

“Maybe four.”

“I’ll take it.”

Max opened the door to reveal Zelda standing there, about to knock.

“The telephone. It was for Miss Monica. I take name, not wanting to interrupt.” Her subtext was so clear, Monica dared not look up at Max.

“Who was it?” Monica asked, dreading that the next word out of Zelda’s mouth would be
Charlie
.

“It was Mr. —” she brought the slip closer —“Everett Bentworth. At the bank.”

Monica took the slip. “Uncle Everett? What would he want? I’m not due to visit him until next week.”

“He says only that you need to visit him. Sooner rather than later.”

Monica thanked Zelda, folded the slip of paper, and put it in her purse. She looked up at Max. “Any chance I could take the key to Edward’s safety-deposit box? I might need a drink after this.”

“Let me know, and we’ll see,” he said, giving her about as much hope as Mary Alice Murray had a right to claim.

He followed her to the front door, where he once again faced the gathering of potential receptionists, asking if there were any new names to add to his list.

“I am,” a female voice said.

Monica ducked underneath Max’s arm and would have passed by the girl entirely if she hadn’t felt a hand on her shoulder and heard that same voice say, “Maxine?”

Oh no.

There was no sense hurrying away. She’d been seen,
recognized, called out. The best she could do was rely on Max’s participation in one more lie.

“Well, hello, Emma Sue. What brings you here?”

“Same as you, I suppose. Applying for the job.”

“Well, good luck to you.”

“Nice of you to say, since you just came out of an interview.”

“She’s not here for an interview,” said Tarzan girl, looking victorious at the opportunity to respond to Monica’s previous attack. “She says she’s a writer here. We happen to think she’s Miss Monkey Business herself.”

“Don’t be silly.” Monica ducked her head and tried to walk away, but Emma Sue’s friendly touch turned into a viselike grip that stopped her midstep. She looked beyond her to Max. “Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Moore.”

The shake of Max’s head might have been imperceptible to the other girls in the hall, but Monica couldn’t miss it. In it was an apology —for suggesting this story, for allowing the ruse, for the fallout that was surely to come.

“Emma Sue, I can explain.”

She watched the girl’s face change. Her normally soft, heart-shaped lips stretched, as if barely containing the seething within. Her pinkish skin inflamed, making Monica want to duck away from the onslaught of some anticipated rush of anger.

“Explain what, exactly? How you played us all for fools? After everybody tried to be so nice to you. Then you write about us like we’re a bunch of old sour apples?”

“I’m so sorry —”

“We should have known, you with your flapper hairstyle and all that makeup on your face. You’re not a nice girl, Maxine. If that is your real name. Not a nice girl at all.”

At this, Monica found herself slapped into uncharacteristic
silence. She wanted to run back into the safety of the office, if only to grab her article and prove her change of heart, even if that meant admitting to the ugliness of the ruse. Then again, what was there to admit? Emma Sue stood there as accuser, judge, and jury.
“Not a nice girl.”
A sentence delivered by a peer.

“I can explain,” she said once she’d found her voice.

“Don’t bother. How would we ever know you weren’t just spouting out another bunch of lies?”

“Now just a minute,” Max said, stepping in, garnering Monica’s appreciation and pity. He’d obviously had little experience dealing with an enraged woman. The term
fair
when applied to her sex was nothing if not misleading.

“You!” Emma Sue let go of Monica’s arm and pointed an accusatory finger. “You’re just as bad! This is not a nice paper at all! Never has been, and I don’t care if you are turning over some new leaf; you’re deceptive. Didn’t even list the name of the company on the sign downstairs. And no wonder. Who would want to work for a rag like this?”

“Now just a minute,” Monica said, her intervention exactly as effective as Max’s had been.

“All of you girls —” Emma Sue turned to the row of shocked faces lining the hall, undaunted in her rant —“you’d do good to stay clear of this place. They’re liars. And betrayers. And just, just —”

Depleted of words, Emma Sue burst into tears and ran the length of the hopefuls, her sobs and her footsteps echoing as she clattered down the stairs in retreat. A few of the girls silently gathered their things and followed, though Tarzan girl wasn’t one of them.

“So you are the Monkey,” she said, full of unrestrained admiration.

“Guilty,” Monica said, not feeling a bit of irony in the word.

The girl glanced briefly at Max before pointing to herself, saying, “Me, Jane. And I love your column. I read it every week.”

“Really?” It was Monica, then, who glanced back at Max. “Hire this one.”

“And of this place,” thought she, “I might have been mistress! With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own.”

JANE AUSTEN,
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

HE’D LEFT MRS. OVENOFF with instructions to take the names of the girls interested in the receptionist’s job and caught up with Monica around the corner. It meant running at a good clip, clutching his hat to his head while his coat flapped behind him, but as he closed in on her small, unmistakable frame, he slowed himself to a long, loping walk, barely breathing hard as he pulled up beside her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, more with surprise than suspicion.

“Needed a breath of fresh air.”

She accepted that as explanation.

“So I guess I’ve been found out. Maybe it’s time to give me a byline.”

“It’s a good piece of writing. You should be proud.”

“I should send a note to Alice Reighly before Emma Sue gets to her.”

Max thought about the fury in the girl’s face. “Oh, I’m thinking it’s probably too late for that already. But I think a note’s a good idea.”

“Maybe in the paper? Right under my column. An apology of sorts.”

He considered it for just a few seconds before responding. “Not in the paper.”

She looked up. “What about all that ‘whatsoever things are true’ stuff?”

“Journalistically,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “you did nothing wrong. At all. You were investigating. If it makes you feel better, write the note to clear your conscience, but what you submitted to me already is mea culpa enough.”

“Well, well . . .” She nudged him with her shoulder as they walked. “Look at you and me on common ground.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not getting too comfortable. I have a feeling it’s a tiny island.”

They walked in companionable silence for the rest of the way, and when they arrived at the bank, he opened the door for her in grand style, then stood back as she signed her name in the ledger.

“Here to see Everett Bentworth,” she said to the ancient man behind the desk.

“Very good,” he said, giving no indication he would quit his post to announce her.

Monica turned around. “Coming with?”

“Family business,” Max said, backing into one of the benches in the waiting area. “I’ll wait here.”

She grabbed his hand in both of hers, tugging. “Please?”

Certainly she knew the effect she had on him —on men in general, he assumed. But there was no flirtatiousness to her plea. Rather, a genuine need —that tugging again —to have him by her side. And so, hat in hand, he followed her into Bentworth’s office.

She gave only a courtesy knock before letting herself in, making Max want to apologize for her boldness, but she was welcomed with affection as Bentworth came out from behind his desk to take her in a fatherly embrace.

“There’s my Monkey,” he said, regaining some professional composure when he noticed Max in the room. Keeping Monica wrapped under one arm, he extended the other in greeting.

“Mr. Moore.”

“Mr. Bentworth.”

“I’m not due to get my allowance for another week, Uncle Everett,” Monica said as he guided her to one of the leather seats facing his desk. Upon invitation, Max took the second. “And you’ll be proud to know I still have nearly three dollars left. Do you want me to take you out to lunch?”

Bentworth’s smile was hiding something —good or bad, Max couldn’t tell. Eyes wide open, he sent up a prayer on Monica’s behalf. The girl had suffered enough for one day.

“Well,” Bentworth said, “the good news is you’re about to become a modestly wealthier young woman.”

It was the kind of news that should have elicited a joyful response, but when Max turned to offer his congratulations, he saw Monica profiled in shocked defeat and silence. He looked from one to the other for explanation.

“Her mother’s house sold. She’s due to inherit the proceeds.”

“The Baltimore house? I didn’t think it would ever sell. I
had no idea . . .” Her voice trailed away as she studied the deed Bentworth placed in her hands.

“It’s a largely abandoned neighborhood, about to be destroyed. The developer bought all of the properties, including yours. Your mother didn’t list it in her will —”

“She never looked back,” Monica said, her eyes lost in the legal writing on the page.

“But as you are her sole heir, the money goes directly to you.”

“When?” There was only one word to describe the expression on her face. Hunger.

“As soon as the sale is final.”

“How much?”

He named a modest figure. “It’s not a lot of money, but since it’s not tied up in the trust, you can have it now. It may be enough for a small place here or at least a sizable down payment. I could help you secure a mortgage —”

“What do I have to do?” Monica broke in. “Do I have to sign something?”

“Not today.”

“Then why am I here?”

Bentworth cleared his throat and proceeded with a compassionate caution. “They have hired a crew to clear the house for demolition, and there are a few items —perhaps of personal significance —that I thought you might want to see before they are taken away.”

“What kinds of things?”

He consulted a list. “Papers, mostly; a few books. Some furnishings that you might want to have. It’s all gathered neatly and may have even belonged to the interim renters, but I thought you’d like to know.”

“Burn it,” Monica said. Her tone could have lit the match.

“Wait,” Max said. “It wouldn’t hurt to take a look. There might be something there, some kind of memory. I know what it’s like to have nothing left from childhood. Everything from my life
did
burn.”

“I’m sorry,” Monica said, chagrined. “That was a thoughtless thing for me to say.”

Max waved her off. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is, you have a chance, however slim it might be, to find something. Have something.”

“The two of you could be on a train within the hour and back in time for dinner.”

“You’ll go with me?” Monica said.

Of course he would. And he said as much.

Monica turned to Bentworth. “Do I need anything? A key or something?”

“I’ll make a phone call and tell the company you’re on your way. I’ll instruct them to leave the door unlocked rather than have someone meet you there, so you can have your privacy.”

There was something about Bentworth’s assumptions, lumping them together as one, each an equal part in the sharing of privacy, that loosened a stony resolve within Max. Never had he been so intimately connected with another person, let alone a woman. He found his hand reaching for hers in clear disobedience of his sleepless promises not to touch her again. But here, within the formality of a banker’s office, surely he could bridge the distance between them. She closed her fingers over his, anchoring him in every way.

Bentworth opened his top desk drawer, producing a long, narrow box, which he unlocked with a little key.

“We’ll call this official bank business,” he said, producing a few crisp bills. “To cover your train fare.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Max said, standing. “I’ll cover it.”