The Best of Everything (7 page)

By the time she had ridden up in the elevator at Fabian, Caroline had forgotten the blind date and was caught up again in her working-world feeling—half thrill, half uneasiness. As she passed through the reception room she noticed a girl about her own age sitting nervously on the edge of one of the couches, wearing a hat. She must be job-

hunting, Caroline thought. The hat gave her away. Caroline and the girls she knew wore hats for only two occasions: going to a wedding or looking for a job. As soon as they were hired they put their hats back in the closet and did not wear them to the office again until (and if) they had attained the eminence of a Miss Farrow, and then they wore them all the time in the office.

I wonder if that girl out tliere will be Miss Farrow's next secretary, Caroline thought, putting a fresh comment sheet into her typewriter. Because I sure hope it won't have to be me.

She put the manuscript with Miss Farrow's and her own comments on Mr. Shalimar's unoccupied desk quickly, before she lost her courage, and returned to her desk. The girls in the bullpen were engaged in their morning coflFee ritual. She wondered whether any of them ever ate breakfast at home, especially the married ones, or whether even those never had time to feed their working husbands and themselves in the mornings. Brenda, who was currently buying her trousseau, had brought in the latest purchase, a white lace nightgown, and had put it on her desk in its open box so that all the other girls could see it.

"Look at that," Marv Agnes whispered. "She must have forty-five nightgowns by now. She buys something new every lunch hour and always puts it on her desk for everybody to ogle at. I don't know who's interested in her trousseau anyway."

My goodness, Caroline thought, tlie frantic buying, the storing up, the preparations! She won't have any money left for after she's married, but she's probably spent her whole life building up to her wedding and never thinks about all the time that goes on afterward. She had known girls like Brenda in Port Blair, the girls who thought life stopped on their wedding day in that one moment of perfect achievement, like the figures in Keats's poem about the Greek vase. She thought for an instant of the girl Eddie had married and wondered what Helen Harris was doing right now. She forced the thought out of her mind. She wasn't going to think about Eddie and Helen, it was over for her, it was none of her business. Let them do what they wanted, wake up, go to sleep, make love, she wasn't going to sit here and say to herself. What time is it in Dallas? What are they doing now? That was a good way to make yourself morbid. She had her own life now too, she was working, she was trying to work her way up to a more interesting job. She would sit here and

wait for Mr. Shalimar to come in, and look at Brenda's new nightgown looking so out of place alongside her typewriter and filing cards, and amuse herself wondering what kind of man Brenda was buying all these goodies for. Some moose face, probably.

The usual procession of late-comers was straggling in through the door. Mr. Rice, in tliat wonderful camel's-hair overcoat, with his clear-cut profile beginning to fade away a little at the edges. His eyes were slits this morning, and there was a little cut with dried blood at the corner of his mouth. He paused as usual for a long drink at the water fountain and found his way to his oflBce like a sleepwalker.

"Psst . . . look at that!" Mary Agnes prodded her, shocked.

"Our eminent religious editor," Caroline whispered, "after a struggle with the devil." She didn't know, a moment after she'd said it, why she had felt compelled to make fun of him. Actually, he fascinated her, in a way. Perhaps that was why she had said it.

"The devil?" Mary Agnes whispered back scornfully. "He hangs around in those Third Avenue bars all night, drinking and reciting poetry and talking to ever)' stranger he can lay his hands on. One of them probably hit him."

"Doesn't he have a home?" Caroline asked. "A \vife?"

"He had a wife, but she left him. It's very sad. He lives in a real run-down hotel on the West Side. He's divorced and he has a daughter ten years old who he never sees. He writes to her all the time. I know because his secretary told me. He used to dictate these long, long letters, all about life and love and people and stuff. Sort of advice for when she grows up. That's because he thinks he'll never see her again. I can just imagine the kind of advice he'd give to a child."

"Ten years old seems young for a child of his," Caroline said.

"How old d'you think he is?"

"About forty-eight, I would guess."

"He's thirty-eight. He looks that way because he lives such an unhealthy life," Mary Agnes added disapprovingly. "If he was married and lived with his wife and child he wouldn't look that way."

"Marriage solves everything?" Caroline asked.

"What a funny thing to say."

"Why is it funny?"

"Well . . ." Mary Agnes said, "there are only two ways to live, the right way and the wrong way. If you live the right way you're

happy, and if you live the wrong way you're miserable. If you get married it doesn't mean positively you're going to be happy, but if you get married and walk out on it then you cant be happy. You'll always know you gave up on a responsibility."

"What if the other person walks out on you?"

"Mr. Rice should have tried harder."

"How do you know he didn't?"

"Well, that's a funny thing to think," Mary Agnes said. "You don't even loiow him."

"I know it," Caroline said. "Maybe he was a beast. I'm only saying I know about being walked out on. Sometimes trying doesn't make the least bit of difference. It's almost as if there aren't two people involved at all."

Mary Agnes looked at her, her eyes widening. "Were you married?"

"No. Engaged."

Mary Agnes glanced at Caroline's left hand. "Oh, how terrible. How terrible."

"Well, don't you get upset about it," Caroline said, smiling.

"You poor thing," Mary Agnes said. "I'll never talk about it again, unless you bring it up. If you ever want to talk about it, you just tell me."

And you'll tell everyone else on the thirty-fifth floor, Caroline thought, amused. Mary Agnes' air of tragedy made her begin to feel that her problems really weren't so pitiable after all. There is something to be said for someone else's exaggerated sympathy. If it happens to fall a little far afield it makes the original problem seem a bit remote and not quite worth it. Or maybe that's the first sign of health, she thought. If you get hit in the stomach it has to heal, and if you have a concussion that takes time too, but at least you can watch the progress. It's very hard to watch the imperceptible mending of a broken heart. Maybe this is the first sign of mending: the fact that Mary Agnes' pained solicitude for me this morning happens to strike me as amusing.

It was a relaxing day, because Miss Farrow disappeared directly after lunch and did not come back for the rest of the afternoon, but Caroline kept glancing nervously at Mr. Shalimar's closed door, half expecting him to come roaring out of it like a bull into a ring, waving her comment sheet in fury. It was odd that she had thought of a buU,

she mused, but perhaps it was because Mr. Shalimar, from the few ghmpses she had had of him, looked to her like an aging matador. The stiff posture, shoulders straight, the dark skin, and oddest of all that air he had of someone who has been through a great deal and still has some inner feehng urging him on but knows that he cannot answer it any longer. He struck her as a troubled man, and not just because of his responsibilities at the office, which would make anyone in charge look bemused at times. It was funny, she thought, that before she had ever had a job she had always thought of an office as a place where people came to work, but now it seemed as if it was a place where they also brought their private lives for everyone else to look at, paw over, comment on and enjoy. The typing pool in the center of the thirty-fifth floor at Fabian was like the village square, and the offices that surrounded it were like people's homes. Late in the afternoon she saw something that astonished her. Walking past one of the offices she noticed through its nearly closed door a girl leaning against the wall of the adjoining office with a water glass pressed against the wall and her ear to the other end of the water glass. On her face was a rapt and gloating expression, of an eavesdropper who is hearing what he expected he would hear. Then Caroline realized that the girl was in the office next to Mr. Shalimar's. The girl evidently didn't care who noticed her, since she had not bothered to lock her door, which was probably because she intended to educate everyone in the office later in the day. Caroline wondered whether it was office politics, secrets about the work, or Mr. Shalimar's private life that held her so.

At five o'clock April came out of Mr. Shalimar's office and began to put her things together. "Where do you want to eat?" she asked Caroline.

"Where do you?"

"You know, I'd like to go to Sardi's," April said. "I've heard a lot about it."

Caroline looked at April. She was wearing that shiny baby-blue gabardine suit again, and tonight because she was going out she was even wearing a hat, a dreadful Httle white felt hat that made her look like Sunday Morning in East Cozyville. Caroline felt a pang of self-consciousness at the thought of being seen with her at a good restamrant. It was bad enough to have to go there without dates, but

with April in that outfit, with that hair . . . "Hey," CaroKne said, "I'll bet you've never been to the Automat."

"Wouldn't you rather go to Sardi's?" April said, sounding disappointed.

"Well, it's a little too expensive for me," Caroline lied.

"Oh, of course." April's face lighted up with instant sympathy. "I know just what you mean. I shouldn't even go there myself, I have about four dollars to last me till payday. I'm so impractical, I guess I'd starve if people like you didn't look out for me."

"You'll love the Automat," Caroline said encouragingly.

Mr. Shalimar came out of his office with his arm thrown around Mr. Rice's shoulder. They were laughing together. As they passed Caroline's and April's desks they paused, "Want to stop downstairs for a short drink, April?" Mr. Shalimar said. He glanced at Caroline. "You too."

April immediately began to blush. "Oh, we'd love to," she said very softly. "Wouldn't we, Caroline?"

"See you downstairs at the Unfriendly Irishman," Mr. Rice said. "Step fast, girls." The two men went ofiF together to the elevator and April began stuffing her make-up back into her pocketbook, dropping some of it on the floor in her hmrry.

"The Unfriendly Irishman," April said. "That's what he calls the bar in this building. Isn't he a cJmracterF'

It was the first time Caroline had ever been in the bar, and she peered through the gloom looking to see whom she could recognize. The room was about two thirds full, all with people she had noticed in the elevators and halls of the building. This seemed to be the unofficial Fabian Publications bar, refuge, gathering place and five-o'clock social club. Mr. Shalimar and Mr. Rice were seated at a corner table, with drinks in front of them, and they had pulled up two extra chairs for Caroline and April.

"What'll you have, girls?" Mr. Shalimar said.

"Scotch," said Caroline. It was the first tiling she could think of.

April looked as though she was going through a mental battle. "Me too," she said then, very quickly and softly. She nibbled on a pretzel and began to blush again.

"Well, what do you do around here?" Mr. Rice said to Caroline.

"I'm working for Miss Farrow this week," she said.

He rolled his eyes in mock horror. He had a perfectly deadpan

face with a light touch of cynicism on it. "That's hell week for the sorority," he said. "We only save it for specially lucky girls."

How funny! Caroline thought. That's exactly the phrase I used when I was telling Mary Agnes about it.

"So you're Caroline Bender," said Mr. Shalimar.

"Yes." Suddenly her mouth was dry.

"I found a little report of yours on my desk," he said.

"I know." Why did her voice sound like a croak? She took a sip of her drink.

"I read the manuscript this afternoon," he said. He paused and looked at her. "You know something, Miss Bender?"

"What . . . ?"

"I happen to agree with you."

"Oh, my goodness," Caroline said, weak with relief.

"I don't think I'll buy that book," he said.

"My goodness," she said again.

His eyes narrowed. "Make no mistake. I am the editor here, and I buy what I like and reject what I don't like, regardless of what any of my editors say. But I like having a bright, young reader who agrees with me, it makes me feel a little better."

"I hope someday to be a reader," Caroline said.

"All right. For the next week or two I'll give you a manuscript every night to take home and read. You give me a report on each one. After I see what you can do, maybe I'll let you be a reader."

"Oh, that would be marvelous!"

Mr. Rice smiled wryly. Even with the smile his face did not change much. 'The enthusiasm of youth," he said. "If old man Fabian had only known, he wouldn't have bothered to pay these kids for working here. He would have charged 'em."

Mr. Shalimar was looking piercingly at Caroline across the table. "The most valuable commodity in business today, if people would only recognize it, is enthusiasm, I'm not interested in deadheads. You get the same old trite comments from the deadheads, they don't even care any more. I want editors who think that every book we put out is an important book. I don't care if it's the worst piece of crap in the world; if the author who wrote it believes in it, and the editors who help him revise it believe in it, then the people who buy it will care about it. The thing that was wrong with the manuscript you read last night was that it was phony. The author thought he

was fooling his readers. Well, they never fool me. And he didn't fool you. Do you want experience?"

"Yes," she said.

"I'll give you experience. I'll teach you. I've been forty years an editor, I've taught some of the best writers in the business. I knew Eugene O'Neill years ago, and I gave him advice."