Gentleman's Agreement (17 page)

“Those are the toughest fights,” Dave said dispassionately, “the ones about ideas. Suppose Carol was a faithful party-line girl—can you imagine our life? Or suppose she’d been an isolationist in the old days or pro-Franco? Families break apart over ideas. In hot times like these, anyway.”

“Like the Civil War. Pro-North husband and pro-South wife.”

“Like anything that’s explosive inside.”

The waiter put large menus before them. They ordered. “Damn it,” Phil said loudly, “let’s cut the gloom.” Asperity edged his manner as though it were all Dave’s fault.

“Sure. I feel like blowing people to drinks. Know anybody to get?”

“Might try Minify.” He laughed. “Not what you had in mind, hey? Trouble is—say, there’s Anne, I’d forgotten her. Anne Dettrey, on the magazine, smart as hell. She’s always fun.”

“Give her a ring, why don’t you?”

In the booth, feeling stealthy, he tried Kathy first. Then he called his house. There were no messages. He found Anne’s number in the book.

“Nonsense, Phil,” she said, “I’m putting my one New Year’s resolution to its first test.”

“I can imagine.”

“To go to bed early—and alone—three times a week.”

“You wouldn’t want to go into a thing like that too easily?” His spirits rose. This was just anything-for-a-laugh talk, yet it seemed exceptionally important to argue her into coming. He explained about Dave and his first night back.

“By golly, patriotism,” she said, and asked where they were.

He watched Dave and Anne as if he were years older, remote forever from the business of flirtation and attraction. Instantly she set in motion a campaign to appeal to Dave; instantly Dave changed, as if he’d peeled off a layer of personality and emerged younger, cleverer, more alive. Phil felt shoved aside. Odd sensations of pride mingled with the thin stridency of jealousy in him. Toward Anne he felt pride that he’d produced Dave; toward Dave it was the reverse. Deftly Dave was managing to inform her that he was a married man with two kids even while he announced that he’d be wanting to catch up on theaters and night clubs while he stayed on in town. She knew he didn’t mean to go alone. She immediately accepted the situation and the invitations to come. They’d have a fine lighthearted time together, Phil thought, and again envy squeaked in his heart. High spirits, carefree hours, distance from loneliness and solemnity—perhaps those were the great desiderata of life after all.

He thought of Kathy.

It’s
more
than just having fun. All at once he knew she was at no movie. She’d known he would telephone sooner or later; she’d wanted that unanswered ringing to assault him. She’d meant it to bash him, teach him a lesson, bring him to terms. Women knew their weapons well. He glanced across the table. Anne and Dave were laughing about something he’d missed. Two young men in new dark suits, their haircuts still GI, were passing the table, weaving a bit.

“I don’t like offishers,” one announced and stopped uncertainly. Dave looked up, indulgent. The long-suppressed resentment, he thought, to army brass. The young man raised his voice. “An’ shpecially if they’re yids.”

Dave’s arm reached. His hand had the speaker’s wrist before he’d shoved up out of his chair. His free hand was a fist, pulling back for leverage. Phil was up too, fury tearing through him. And yet he had time to notice the control in Dave’s impassive face.

“Sorry, sir,” the other young man cried. “He’s terrible when he’s tanked up, sir.” He pushed angrily at his friend; the loss of balance was too much for the uncertain legs; the buckling body began the slow collapse the expert dancer simulates to get a laugh. Somewhere near, a girl tittered nervously.

Dave’s grip was twisting the arm. As the body crumpled floorward it was only his hold which checked the descent. Waiters were hurrying up; heads were turning. Dave let go, brushing his fingers off against each other as if they were fouled. Anne urgently said, “Please, Phil, Dave.”

They sat down. Anne muttered, “Horrible little fool,” and Phil thought, You’re mad, sure, but you’re out of it. Then it was as if his whole mind gulped. My God, I forgot again.

Around them talk burst forth while a waiter and the mortified friend struggled to lift the drunk. Heads were averted as if near them on the carpet were a sour pool of vomit. Limp as a hammock the drunk was carried off. Anne asked for another drink.

Phil looked over to Dave; their eyes met. Dave’s were hard, but his mouth bore a sardonic twist. “Take it easy, boy,” Dave said.

“Let’s don’t even talk about it,” Anne said. “This isn’t just antisemitism; it’s battle fatigue, too.” Dave laughed, and Phil said, “I told you,” with a gesture toward her as of the producer of a hit show toward its star.

Like a spitting rain, it was over. The new drinks came; their talk moved on to other things. Secretly, though, a core of rage burned inside Phil. There was that sudden need to crack your fist into bone when it happened; only that sagging, falling body had stopped Dave. You couldn’t punch an unconscious man. You had it and you were left brutish when you were balked. He’d read the story about Rankin in Congress; he’d had it; he’d punched no jaws, yelled at no applauding House. Always there were reasons; only rarely was the circumstance so arranged that you could fight back. The rest was this pouring of your adrenalin and this futile dammed-up fury.

He knew. Now he knew. In his own guts and veins and muscles it stood intimate and exact. It wasn’t Dave alone who’d been called “yid.” Anne was the outsider and onlooker, but not he. Once it would have been he as well as Anne. Not now. Not ever again. Identification. Dear God, yes.

“Don’t be grim any more,” she said suddenly.

“Who, me?”

He glanced at her and then again at Dave. Composed and indifferent he looked, but his pulse jumped like a nerve at the side of his throat, just above his collar. The anti-semite offered the effrontery—and then the world was ready with harsh yardsticks to measure the self-control and dignity with which you met it. You were insensitive or too sensitive; you were too timid or too bellicose; they gave you at once the wound and the burden of proper behavior toward it.

“I was thinking we might go somewhere where there’s music,” he said to Anne.

“Not for a while,” Dave said. “I like it here.”

Anne leaned forward so that she addressed both of them impartially. “Tell me why,” she said plaintively, “every man who seems attractive these days is either married or”—she looked at Phil—“barred on a technicality?”

Her woebegone look and exaggerated sigh made them all laugh. Dave patted her hand. “Your timing is lousy,” he said, “but your instincts are just great.”

After an hour they did go on to a night club and later to another. They took turns dancing with Anne; they all laughed a good deal at their own wit. After they’d taken her home, Phil said, “Coffee?” and knew Dave would agree before he could nod. There was something about wanting to stay on together even though they talked of nothing that mattered. In the Third Avenue all-nighter, brilliant with white tile and hundred-watt bulbs, noisy with taxi drivers’ talk and dance music from Hollywood, they hardly bothered with each other, but they stayed for a second mug of the hot black chicory-flavored coffee. The night blurred by. Somewhere there was sleep in it, and then Phil was awake and at once in a sharp hurry to get to the office. He would telephone from there. In his bedroom, Dave was sleeping so deeply that Phil dressed without fear of waking him. He would call Kathy without belligerence, without apology. But he wouldn’t be able to back down either.

Miss Wales greeted him. “Mr. Minify’d like you in there, Mr. Green. It’s some sort of meeting. They’ve already started.”

The personnel manager, Jordan, was there, and Mary Cresson with her dictation book open on her knee. John looked formal, aloof. The round of “Morning’s” was without friendliness.

“I’ve asked Mr. Green in,” Minify said to Jordan, “because he might pick up some detail for his series. You know what he’s working on?”

“Yes,” Jordan said. “But, Mr. Minify, you’ve really got me wrong. I never think about what a person is.”

“It’s what’s done or what’s not done I’m interested in.” He gestured toward Phil without looking at him. “Mr. Green would do well to devote a page or so of his series to me for never thinking to check down the line in my own outfit.”

“If Mr. Green had come right to me—”

Minify turned so sharply in his swivel chair, Jordan stopped.

“My niece told me about Miss Wales,” he said coldly, “so don’t imply that Mr. Green did. She brought it up just to twit me. For a minute I didn’t even catch—then it hit.”

“But I told Mr. Minify’s niece,” Phil said. He stared with hostile eyes at Jordan. “You think that if a bright kid like Wales has to change her name to get a job, nobody should talk up about it?”

Jordan looked back, conciliatory, awkward. But he looked away quickly from Phil’s steady examining, and his shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. “Of course
you’d
talk up,” the gesture spoke in Phil’s mind. Instantly he doubted his reading of it.

He glanced at John Minify and knew he’d caught the same thing. The lightness of Minify’s eyes above the dark sockets was startling as he looked directly at Jordan. His face looked older. He sat erect and imperative before them. Then he picked up a pencil and began to write on a memo pad as if he’d forgotten they were there. He wrote several words rapidly, read them, changed them, and then turned the pad face down and went on as if there’d been no span of silence.

“Big talk comes easy, Jordan, and my editorials, too. I’ve been a fool to assume they’d mean what they say in my own office. Now I’ll see they do.”

“But really, Mr. Minify, I’ve never made it a matter of policy just to hire—why, it’s just, well, personality.” He brightened. “If a girl’s personality is the type that fits in, I’d never ask—”

“It’s just by chance, you mean, that we haven’t one secretary named Finkelstein or Cohen? In the city of New York?” His voice was soft. “Come off it, Jordan.”

Phil looked over curiously. Jordan was a man you’d never notice if there were other people about. Medium tall, medium color, neat as to clothes, haircut; even the wrinkles about his eyes seemed neatly rayed out in even, definite lengths. Now his face wore tension and fear. He was expecting to be fired. And he’d hate Jews for it.

“Mary, take a help-wanted ad, will you?” Minify picked up the small pad, read what he’d written, then ignored it. “Upper case, ‘EXPERT SECRETARY,’ and a couple lines white space. Then, lower case, ‘for editorial department, national magazine, exacting work, good pay.’ Then single line white space. Then, ‘Religion is a matter of indifference in this office. Write full experience to Box—’ Got that, Mary?”

For the first time since he’d met her, Phil saw expression appear in her prim face. She likes this, he thought, and was surprised to find within himself an odd sense of occasion. “Better state the salary, Mr. Minify,” Mary said matter-of-factly, “instead of just ‘good pay.’ ”

“O.K. O.K. You fix it.
Times, Trib?”

“Both. And they don’t allow white space in want ads— they’ll put that special line in caps, though.”

“Right.” With finality he turned to Jordan. “And in case you have to fire Miss Wales on any ground whatever at any time, please remember that I wish to review the case myself first.”

The neat mouth opened, relief shone in the eyes. Minify’s nod was as curt as the bang of a gavel. Jordan went out.

“Think I should fire him, Mary?”

“I don’t know. I thought you were going to.”

“I argued it out with myself for a long time.” He looked at Phil. “Confusing, isn’t it?” Phil said nothing. He knew Minify wasn’t expecting an answer. “But till I do decide, he’s not to interview applicants any more, that’s sure.” He stroked his tan scalp as if he were smoothing down ruffled hair. “Mary, you too busy to take on some personnel management?”

“No Mr. Minify.”

“That’s the tone that means you’re dead from overwork.” They all laughed. “Tell you what. This ad. Get yourself a crack assistant for your regular stuff. Then take over on all new office help. I’ll tell Jordan.”

She stood up, robust, stolid, but she flushed like a young girl over her first tribute from a man.

“Yes, Mr. Minify.”

“In any other ads you run, use that line, please.” Vigorously he turned to Phil. “High time heads of firms took public positions on it.”

Minify watched her decorous progress across the office and through the door. Then, as if the episode had sped up his metabolism, he embarked at once on a spirited harangue with invisible opponents. Once Phil thought, He isn’t as calm and journalistic about it all as he was a few weeks ago, and instantly added, Lord, neither am I. Minify was half shouting at him now. “—the sloppy, slovenly notion that everybody’s busy with bigger things. There just isn’t anything bigger, as an issue, than beating down the complacence of essentially decent people about prejudice. Not what Stalin’s up to, not the bomb or the peace. Because if hatred and bigotry just go on rotting the basis of this damn country”—he glared at Phil—“all the rest is pious hypocrisy.”

He lit a cigarette and clamped it into the corner of his mouth as if it were a cigar. “How’s your stuff coming now, Phil?” While he listened, the cigarette angled upwards, and above it he squinted one eye against the flaring smoke. It gave him the look of a man persistently winking. When the square box on his desk hoarsely announced a caller, Phil was reluctant to quit this lively office for his own.

In the corridor, his way was blocked by Frank Tingler, the fiction editor, the small neat figure of Bill Jayson, and a tall man with a vaguely familiar face.

“Morning, Phil,” Jayson said, and Tingler, “Hi, Green, know Rick Dohen? Mr. Green.”

“ ’Do.” Mr. Dohen said, and offered his hand.

“How do,” Phil answered, and disliked him. They shook hands heartily while Tingler explained in his flat voice, “We’re running Mr. Dohen’s new serial in the first April issue.”

“Oh, yes,” Phil said. “That new illustrator McAnny found in the army—”