Girls In 3-B, The (21 page)

I have everything,
she thought
. A home, and love, and the chance of a raise at the Store.
More would be too much.

"I'm so happy."

Ilene said softly, "Are you, baby?"

"Yes." She turned from the stove. Ilene had on her favorite lounging pajamas, blue and gold; her eyes were sleepy and her hair tousled. Love rose in Barby. She crossed the kitchen floor and laid her head against Ilene's shoulder, too full of contentment to need words.

"Really happy?" Ilene persisted.

"I think it's the first time in my life I was ever really happy."

Ilene's arms closed around her.

Barby shut her eyes. "I love you so much," she whispered. She had never said that to anyone before. The words, hanging on the still morning air, had a perfect lightness that nothing else in her life had ever possessed.

"I love you too. All the time, not just at night. But the toast is burning." She reached to shut it off, keeping one arm around Barby. "You might rumple your bed a little. This is the cleaning woman's day."

Barby blushed. Technically, the small bedroom was hers. Her clothes hung in the closet and her cosmetics stood in tidy rows on the mirrored dressing table. But she had yet to spend a night in the single bed. She said, to cover her confusion, "We're going to be late for work."

Ilene buttered her slice of toast and sat down, pushing her cup and plate into easier reach. "We can take cabs. You can't afford to be late when you're bucking for a raise."

"Do you think anybody suspects
?
"

"They always do. As long as nobody can actually prove anything it's all right" Ilene tasted her coffee, added cream. "You need spring clothes. The best will come in around the middle of this month
--
by February everything's picked over. I'll have a couple of outfits laid away for you."

"But I want to start paying board."

"Don't worry about that."

The telephone rang. Barby jumped. "Who on earth
--
“

"Answer it and find out"

"I'm afraid to."

"Don't be silly. It's probably for me anyway. You didn't change your address on the payroll records, did you?"

"Then you answer."

Ilene raised her eyebrows and stepped into the living room, toast in hand. The shrilling stopped. Her voice, low-pitched and calm, reached Barby. "Hello. Oh, hello. Yes, she's right here. Just a minute, please." She put the handset down quietly. "It's your father."

The color drained from Barby's face. Her eyes widened. She put her hands behind her back, a childish gesture of refusal. "Do I have to?"

"Afraid so." Ilene made a gesture indicating,
We'll talk about it later.
She picked up the phone and handed it to Barby, who took it unwillingly.

"Don't go away."

Ilene came to stand behind her, both hands on her shoulders.

"Hello." At a standstill, she listened, looking at Ilene's fingertips for courage. "Why, I don't know. I'll ask her." She put a hand over the mouthpiece. "He wants to take us to lunch. Do we have to?"

Ilene nodded.

"Sure, but
--
Well, all right, what time
?
No, it's against the rules. We'll meet you somewhere." She listened again, her head bent, her hair touching Ilene's right hand. "All right, we'll be there at one. I have to go to work now."

Ilene said, “You could have been politer."

"He wants us to meet him at the Brevoort, one o'clock. Some salesman took him there once and he thinks it's the absolute end."

Ilene said reasonably, "Well, it is nice. Expensive, too."

"Do we have to go?"

"You can leave five minutes early. I'll follow." Automatic caution, necessary to keep private affairs from the public. "It could be worse, you know. He could have wanted to come up here."

Barby looked around, horrified. Their home, the place where they were together with the rest of the world shut out. "You wouldn't let him, would you?"

"No." It was a complete promise. Ilene asked curiously, "Do you hate him so much?"

Barby's eyes widened. "I don't know. I've never thought about it like that." She considered. "I've been afraid of him. Because he's the only one that knows
--
"

"What?"

"Nothing."

Ilene patted her cheek, moved away. "Okay. Now hurry up, or you will be late."

Barby's glance at the clock was perfunctory. It struck her, however, that ten short minutes ago she had been looking at Ilene across the breakfast table, happier than she had ever been in her life
--
happy for the first time in her life. She thought,
I wish I could die. No, I wish he'd die. I do hate him. Why didn't I ever think about it before?

Because you were never a real person before
, a small inner voice suggested.

"You know something? I haven't had migraine since I left home. Except once."

Ilene's voice drifted back from the bedroom. "Then you better stay away."

She dressed carefully, to look older and more sophisticated than she was. The good black dress Ilene had given her, hand-hammered earrings from a little shop on Michigan Avenue, dark lipstick. Betty Pelecek took it in with one jealous look. "Man?" "A special date," Barby lied, not caring. Ilene was always mentioning that she ought to date, or pretend to date men, in order to avoid suspicion of being queer or different. Barby saw Betty's eyes widen with respect, and a feeling of cool self-assurance filled her.

Ilene passed, murmuring, "Remember, leave early. Take a cab. I'll meet you there."

Her father, waiting in the lounge at the Brevoort, looked familiar and yet strange in this setting. He stood up when he saw her, and she saw that he looked nervous. She had never seen him less than self-contained, and it gave her a feeling of mastery. She smiled at him, seeing the two of them as the onlookers must
--
charming young girl, attractive older man.

"I thought you girls might like a steak."

"That sounds good."

"Bet you don't get one very often."

"No, we go in more for hamburgers." She didn't know how to tell him that Ilene wasn't a girl. A moment later the door swung open again and Ilene was there, trim and composed as always. Barby analyzed her father's expression
--
surprise, approval, and the fatuous wish to please of the middle-aged married man. "Well, this is mighty nice."

Ilene's glance at Barby evidently reassured her. "It's a pleasure to meet Barby's father. We think she has a real future at the Store, you know. I'm quite proud of her."

His gun knocked out of his hands, as it were, Robert Morrison was silent for a moment. Barby looked from one to the other, aware that something she couldn't follow was happening. Ilene wore her Store face
--
determined, thoughtful
--
with a social smile on top. Whatever it was, she was in there fighting.

Robert Morrison said, "Her mother and I were kind of surprised when she left the other girls. They were chums all through school, pretty much."

Ilene shrugged. "Barby's outgrown them. She has a real talent for merchandising. Inherited, maybe. She's told me what a fine business you've built up."

"Well
--
" Robert said. The arrival of the headwaiter saved him from having to sound modest. Barby followed him to the table, relaxing almost visibly.
It won't last much longer,
she promised herself.
One hour. You can stand anything for an hour.

Morrison said, when he had seated them, "We've never taken Barby's job very seriously. I thought maybe she was getting enough of it, by this time."

Ilene leaned forward, smiling. "Oh, it would be a pity if she quit now. She's lucky to have such understanding parents. Such an up-to-date father." Barby ventured a look over her menu; could Ilene possibly get away with this
?
But his expression was pleased. "She has a real future. You're going to be proud of her."

"Her mother can't see that."

"Some women can't."

His thoughts were as plain as if they had been printed on his face in large type. This was a damned attractive woman, and she seemed to like him. Older than he'd expected, with enough experience of life and men to know a winner when she saw one. Barby turned away to hide a small smile, remembering some of Ilene's comments on the male sex. She had a good job in a Loop store, so she was smart as well as good-looking. He shifted his gaze from her face to his daughter's, and Barby gave him back a facsimile of Ilene's bright courteous smile.

You take a bunch of young kids in an apartment, away from grownups,
Robert Morrison was thinking
, and the first thing you know they're running around with boys, staying out late at night and eating all kinds of crazy stuff in drugstores. But a woman like this--even if she was young enough to speed up a man's reactions--had more sense.
He smiled at her. "I feel better about Barby with you looking after her."

"Believe me, I'll take care of her as well as I can."

Barby, surveying a small bruise at the edge of her sleeve, said nothing.

He said cagily, "I suppose you two go out in the evening, now and then? Both too good-looking to stay at home."

Ilene's eyes met his candidly. "Not very often, I'm afraid. Both of us keep pretty busy. Then too, most of the men you meet in merchandising are married
--
all of the nice ones are." She made it sound like a compliment to him. "I'm afraid Barby hasn't done much dating since she began work."

"Well, that's all right too. She shouldn't run around nights, wear herself out."

"How right you are."

The waiter set down their drinks. Barby seized hers and took a deep swallow, thinking,
If I can get just a little fuzzy it won't be so bad. Ilene will fix everything.
She had never trusted anyone before. She wasn't sure, listening to the give and take between the other two and watching her father melt into acquiescence, what she ate. The empty plate was whisked away and a dessert, sugary and elaborate, set down before her. She dabbed at it with a spoon. Through the gentle warm haze that liquor always induced in her she heard her father
--
like any other man, being flattered by a woman
--
telling Ilene in boring detail how he had built up his store, while she listened with parted lips and shining eyes. The question of her going home dropped out of sight somewhere along the way; and while she knew it would come up again, sooner or later, she felt sure that it was settled for this time.

He shook hands with them at the door. "I wish you girls would let me give you a lift back, if you really have to work this afternoon."

Ilene smiled at him. Her face must be tired, Barby thought. "Thank you so much, but I have an errand in the neighborhood."

"What errand
?
" Barby asked curiously when they were free again, walking arm-in-arm down the street.

"I want to buy you a flower. Not an orchid this time. Something different." A look like a caress passed between them.

Robert Morrison, looking out at the rushing streets as his car sped back to Union Station, was wondering how he had been made to change his mind so deftly.
That damn woman,
he thought, smiling pleasantly at the recollection of her admiring look. There was no question about it, he'd made a hit with her. He would have to come back soon, see how Barby was getting along. Although she'd be all right with a woman like that keeping an eye on her.

I don't suppose she sees many men,
he thought
. Too busy making a career. Well, that's all right. I don't want Barby running around with fellows.

He hummed a little, the nameless tune that indicated he was contented,

Weather in Chicago has its mean aspects. In summer the tar in the pavement cracks, melts and sticks to the heels of shoes, and the wind off the Lake is sticky and humid, and little typists in sleeveless dresses and flat sandals collapse quietly when they emerge from their air-conditioned offices. The heat rises in visible waves from the pavement and hits pedestrians in the face. Then in the winter it gets down to Eskimo-and-igloo temperature, and an arctic wind blows sixty miles an hour. The pavements are slick with dirty ice, and taxis turn corners on one wheel. Oil heaters set fire to slum apartments on the South Side, killing families of eleven in their sleep, and even the Loop cops with their beefy red faces look cold.

In spring and fall the wind blows, and girls walking down Michigan Avenue find their skirts whisked over their heads; debris whirls up out of the gutters and into the eyes of passers-by. And then it rains, out of a gray and chilly sky, and the El drips rusty water on everybody's shoulders, and the foyers of office buildings are crisscrossed gloomily with muddy footprints.

But in February, sometime between Groundhog Day and Washington's Birthday, the sky turns blue and the sun comes out, and the air takes on a sweet wild tang that induces romantic thoughts in middle-aged secretaries walking back from Toffenetti's after their soup-and-pie lunch. The benches on the grounds of the Art Institute fill up with unshaven thin boys and skinny girls with straight hair and those lumpy cotton knee socks. They sit with their arms around each other, looking ecstatic. This lasts two or three days, and then it snows again, but while it goes on almost anything can happen.

Pat sat at her desk in the reception room of The Fort Dearborn Press, with a pencil in her hand and a stack of copy paper so that anyone who came by would think she was working. It was the kind of day when nobody feels energetic. Pat's chignon was askew, and there was a carbon smudge on her chin. And she was tired
--
not tensely so, but pleasantly tired and drowsy from hard work, a relaxed mind, and the consciousness that she was on top of her job.

"My God," she said happily, "what a week! I was up till midnight every night getting Annie's stuff packed and ready to ship, you never saw so goddam much junk in your life, and she wasn't any help either. Jackson's working nights now so you might have thought she'd pitch in and help, but no, all she does is sit around and look dreamy. It wouldn't surprise me any if she's pregnant." She glanced at Phyllis and changed her mind about her next sentence. "Anybody'd think she was crazy about the country, and all I've heard out of Annice Harvey all the time we were in high school was how she hated living out in the sticks. It burns me."