Love Comes Calling (9 page)

T
he supervisor finally tapped me on the shoulder and excused me for lunch. I nearly fell off my stool in relief. She walked past me and then tapped Doris as well, who proceeded to thread an arm through mine and pull me down the hall. As we walked, she reached a finger behind her ear, pulled something out, and popped it into her mouth.

“Is that . . . ?”

She blew a bubble and sucked it back in, popping it. “Chewing gum. Can't chew it while I work, and it's a shame to let a good piece go to waste.” She led us back to the bathroom, where she pulled a sack from the shelf. “Aren't you going to get yours?”

“Isn't there a lunchroom?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Sure. But why would you want to eat that slop?”

“I didn't bring anything else to eat.”

She shrugged. “So you'll know better tomorrow. Might not taste good, but it won't kill you.” I followed her out the hall and up a flight of stairs.

“I thought . . . isn't the lunchroom supposed to serve lunch to everyone?” That was something Father was so proud of, that everyone had the chance to eat a hot lunch every day.

“They do. But that doesn't mean we have to eat it.”

“But . . . maybe people think the food is just fine.” My father sure did. “You should tell someone about it.”

“Who's going to listen to us complain? With that strike a few years ago, everyone figures we already got what we were after.”

“But that's not fair!”

She smiled as she slapped me on the arm. “Fair? You're funny! Only people that got nothing else to do worry about what's fair.”

But it still didn't seem right, and I didn't understand why Father hadn't heard about the food being so bad.

As we walked on, I heard music playing. It was a lively song that sounded like a rendition of “Yes! We Have No Bananas.” Doris threw open a door. “See? It's not so bad if you don't count the food. We even got a piano.”

She was right. It wasn't so bad, although it was unfortunate it smelled of cabbage. But the room was large and bright. At one end was a kitchen fronted by a long counter, which was staffed by several women wearing large white aprons and hairnets. There were round tables scattered about the center of the room, and a bulletin board at the back was plastered with a multitude of papers.

“We've even got a phonograph. And crossword books and a stack of magazines.”

“Crosswords?”

“You like them too? You should talk to Ethel. She's a real brain. Did one last week in fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes!” That was impossible. Even Martha at the dormitory took at least half an hour.

“We got a dictionary too. Word is, they're all sold out in the city. But we pooled our money, and Dottie knows someone who works at Brattle Book Shop. It's an old one, but it's got all the words in it.”

“You pooled your money for a
dictionary
?” At school we pooled our money for mah-jongg sets or magazines. Some of the girls pooled theirs for cigarettes.

“Oh sure.” She snapped her gum. “Lots of the girls take correspondence courses. Although they're talking about buying their own dictionary. On account of the girls doing crossword puzzles keep taking it.”

I liked crossword puzzles, although I wasn't crazy about them the way some people were. But had she mentioned magazines? “Do you think there's a
Photoplay
? Or a
Movie Weekly
?”

“Don't know. But there's a
True Confessions
and a
True Stories
and a
True Romance
!” She winked at me. “I know because I bring them in.” She walked over to a pile sitting at one end of a table. “Oh. And look:
Real
Confessions
.” She turned the pile over. “And
Real Stories
and
Real Romance
too.” But she turned up her nose at them and fished
True Confessions
out of the jumble. “Read this one. It has ‘Kidnapped by a Gypsy Lover' and ‘Confession of a Chinese Slave Girl.'” She fanned her face with it as she recited the articles.

“I'm not sure I . . .” A flush of horror swept my face. I
wasn't supposed to be me—I was supposed to be Janie! How could I have forgotten so easily? “Does
Janie
read these?”

She thrust it at me. “
Everyone
reads these.”

I tried to see past her to the table. “Are you sure there aren't any
Photoplay
s?”

“
Photoplay
! Movies are pretend. These—” she waved the magazine beneath my nose—“these are
real life
.” She pointed to the kitchen behind me. “Better go get your lunch. It's all right if it's still hot, but if you let it get cold . . .” She shuddered.

I tucked the magazine under my arm. Janie. I was supposed to be Janie. Weaving around the tables, I rolled my shoulders forward and kept my eyes on the floor as I approached the counter.

“Your ma ain't cooking for you today, huh?”

Startled, I glanced up at the woman serving up lunch.

She looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You're looking peaked.”

Peaked? Then I must be doing something right. Janie never wore rouge. At least not that I had ever noticed. I took the plate the woman offered me and turned around, working my way back to Doris's table. There were several other girls sitting there by the time I'd returned.

“So she's
not
Janie?” They were speaking to Doris though they were looking at me.

Doris was beaming. “No. But she's doing good, isn't she?”

One of them peered up at me as I sat.

I glanced over at her.

The girl addressed me. “You got a name?”

“Janie.”

“You got a other name?”

“Janie
is
my other name.” At least for the time being.

“Oh! That's funny. Imagine there being two of you and looking just the same.”

I ate. It wasn't too bad considering I couldn't really tell what it was. Only . . . “Doris, how come so many of us are eating now? Isn't anyone patching through calls?”

“There aren't that many that come in. It's lunchtime. Everyone's eating. It'll start to get busy again after one. Don't worry.”

Worry! I hadn't worked this hard since I'd tried to study for my economics test.

One of the girls got up and went over to the piano. Her fingers took a walk up and down the keyboard and then launched into “Ma! He's Making Eyes at Me.” As some of the girls finished lunch, they went over and sat down or stood beside her and started singing. Someone began a game of Old Maid, and over at a table in the corner, a cluster of girls sat poring over some books.

“Don't know why they bother.” Doris saw me looking in their direction.

“What are they studying for?”

“Couple of them want to be secretaries and work in one of those fancy offices, but how can you practice without one of those typewriters or Dictaphones? The only way to be a secretary is to . . . be one, you know? And they got to work here, so they can't just quit, but if they don't quit, then how are they ever going to be secretaries?”

Very good questions.

“Couple of them even want to go to school.”

“High school?”

“College.”

“Then why don't they?”

“You really
are
funny! They don't have the money. They got to work in order to save up money for school, but even once they save up the money, they can't quit working to go to school because they got to have money in order to keep paying the bills. See? You got to have money in order to do something.”

“But . . . you all get paid. You must have
some
money.”

“Well, sure we do. But then there's rent and food and clothes. And after that, there's not much left.”

“But . . . what about amusement parks, and movies, and . . . and everything else?” That's what was so glamorous about working. Working girls were liberated and independent. They were thoroughly modern. “Working girls are supposed to be the ones having all the fun.”

She looked at me askance. “Fun! You think working is
fun
? I only work because I have to. That's the only reason any of us are here. Being a hello girl is better than most jobs, I guess, but I'd rather not have to work at all. I'd almost rather get married. Any of us would.”

I just assumed they were living the life I'd always dreamed of. That's what it seemed like from the movies anyway.

“Here.” Doris pushed her magazine back in my direction. I took it up and started on the gypsy kidnapping story, but I kept imagining Rudolph Valentino as the gypsy and couldn't really understand why anyone would want to try to escape from him. Even Agnes Ayres in
The Sheik
had eventually succumbed to his charms.

“Ready?”

I looked up to find Doris staring down at me, hand on her hip. At some point the girl at the piano had stopped playing and the room had emptied. “Oh!” Was it time to go back to work already? “I suppose so . . .”

“You suppose!” She laughed. “You'd
better
be ready. You got Janie's job to keep for her.”

“Do we get a break later?” Maybe then I could finish the rest of the magazine article.

“Sure we do. When we go home after our shift, we can have all the break we want!”

I stopped by the bathroom as we passed and pulled an old receipt from my pocketbook and begged a pencil from Doris. If I wrote down each number as it was given me, then maybe I wouldn't make so many mistakes. As long as I didn't let the supervisor see what I was doing, then it might just work. I turned it over and folded it into a small square so I could hide it in my palm.

Lights started blinking on my board just as soon as I wiggled my way back up onto the stool. I pulled the headset down, chose a cord, and plugged it in. “Number, please.”

I wrote it down, remembering to throw my beads over my shoulder before I reached for the second cord. And I remembered to flip the switch on that first call too . . . and the second, and pretty soon I got into a good routine.

But then the calls started coming in too quickly.

That's when I forgot to flip the switch. I was reaching to plug in another cord when I was startled by a voice in my headset.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“That you, Paddy?”

“Sure it's me. You sounded worried last night so I thought I should call. What's eating you?”

I was reaching to flip the switch when a third light started blinking. Should I . . . ?

“I don't think that Phillips kid is going to play along.”

“Don't worry. You got all summer to take care of it.”

“But I get the feeling he could cause a lot of trouble. That Prince has turned out to be a royal pain.”

The man had a distinct way of speaking, saying
rile
instead of
royal
. I mouthed it once before I realized he was talking about a prince.
And
he'd mentioned “that Phillips kid.” Were they . . . were they talking about Griff?!

“Don't worry. King's already got a plan to take care of everything.”

What did they mean,
take care of
everything
?

“What do you mean, take care of everything?”

“He's ready to do what he has to.”

“Do you mean . . . is he planning on taking the kid out of the picture?”

That was funny. He'd said
pitcher
instead of
picture
. I tried the phrase out too before the meaning of the words hit me. Out of the picture? I felt my mouth drop open.
Out of the picture
meant—!

“That kid don't know what's good for him. King's just gonna knock him off that throne, that's all. In plain sight of everybody so there's no mistake about it. But if what you say is true, he's got to do it soon. In order to send a message. If
you're not going to play along, then you're not going to get to play, see? It's the principle of the thing.”

I heard myself gasp. “What are you saying? You can't just go around threatening—”

“Hey! Who's that on the phone?”

I clapped a hand to my mouth.

“Who's there?”

I flipped the switch with a trembling hand and the voices went away.

Who were those people? And what were they planning to do to Griff?

B
y the time my shift was finished, I'd misconnected a dozen calls and failed to pick up a few others entirely. What was it Griff had gotten himself into? And how were those men planning on stopping him? They said they were going to put him out of the picture. When people said that in the movies, it meant they were planning to
kill
someone!

If I hadn't opened my mouth, I could have listened in longer, but I had. So now I had to figure it all out from what I'd overheard. It was like a crossword puzzle. The kind where you didn't know the word going down, but you hoped if you could fill in the word going across, it would give you enough to get by on.

I ran straight up the stairs to my room once I got home. I had to think.

Griff was doing something someone didn't like.

But that wasn't possible, was it? School had just gotten out, and he'd said he was working on some commission all summer.

And who were those people anyway? They'd talked about
someone they called the king and their accents were definitely Irish.

Maybe . . . would the operator who'd passed the call to me remember the telephone number? If only I could just apply myself and buckle down and think! There had to be some way to work it all out. I nibbled a fingernail to the quick as I paced across my bedroom floor. I didn't know where the call had come from, but I
had
patched it through. That had to mean something.

But what!

“Ellis?” I heard my father's call float up from downstairs.

Oysters and clambakes! It must be time for supper.

“Rather quiet with just the two of us,” Father said as he looked around at the empty chairs.

There was something niggling at the back of my mind. Something about that telephone call.

“How was your day?”

“Hard.”

His brows rose.

“Hard. It was hard because . . .” I took a drink of water. “It's very sad to be an orphan.”

He nodded. “Quite. I think it's quite admirable, what you're doing.”

Admirable? Was he talking about me?

“You have a gift, Ellis, and it's gratifying to see you put it to good use for a change.”

Gratifying? Admirable? For once, I was doing something
right! Except . . . I wasn't, was I? I mean, I
was
doing something right. I was helping Janie out. And I was going to try to help Griff out as well. So I was doing something right even though Father was talking about the wrong thing and didn't really know it. But why should the particulars matter? What my parents didn't know couldn't hurt them. They'd never find out I wasn't really working at the orphan asylum, and it was rather nice to think my father thought I was admirable. I liked the feeling. “Do you think . . . could I go over to the Phillipses' after supper?” Maybe I'd be able to figure out what Griff had gotten mixed up in.

“Tonight?” My father was frowning. “I don't know . . .”

“Griff said he was working in the city this summer too. Since I don't think he'll be going to the shore, I thought I'd just . . .” I shrugged.

“I suppose. Sure. Why not?”

That's why I liked my father. Mother would have asked “Why?” instead.

I only had to wait a few minutes in the parlor before Griff came down. Their parlor looked like ours, with a large bay window framed by black shutters. But theirs was painted in the mustardy yellow Griff's mother had preferred, while ours was decorated in the burgundy and dark green colors my grandmother Eton had liked. I walked past a table. They had a collection of spoons in a cabinet on the far wall. I was looking at one done in gold with a strange triangular shape to its bowl when Griff came up behind me. “Ellis?”

I turned around, spoon in my hand.

He caught it as it dropped from my fingers, then put it back in the cabinet. “It's from Siam.” Dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of white flannel trousers, he didn't look at all the way he did on the Yard: like some football hero or campus royalty. He looked . . . tired.

“How's your job?”

“Hard.”

Then that made two of our jobs. I glanced up into his eyes. How was I supposed to ask if he was doing anything that might be making some king mad? Or if he knew any Irish? “Well . . . how?”

“How what?”

“How is it hard?”

“Oh. I don't know . . .” He shrugged. “It's a lot of numbers.”

Numbers? How could numbers get him into trouble with Irish people? “Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure. That's all I did all day. Sit in the commission's office and add up a bunch of numbers that didn't seem to want to be added up.”

They sounded like the numbers in my mathematics class.

He sighed as he sat in an armchair and stretched out those long legs of his. “How's
your
job?”

“My what?” How did he know what I was doing?

“Your job. Your mother said you were working down at the orphan asylum.”

“My mother said that?” I went back to the spoon collection. I really didn't see how a triangular spoon worked. Did people in Siam have different-shaped mouths than we did?

“I think it's really terrific, what you're doing.”

“You do?”

He rose and came to stand beside me, resting his arm on the top of the cabinet. “I do.”

His eyes were truly blue. You couldn't really say they were gray or hazel or anything else but a clear, strong, deep blue.

He leaned toward me.

The evening light touched his hair, sparking it into a golden fire. He reached out and pried the spoon from my hand.

I hadn't realized I was holding it again.

After he set it back on the shelf, he kept hold of my hand.

“Do you know any Irish, Griff?”

He blinked. “What?”

Oysters and clambakes! This figuring things out might be trickier than I thought it would be. Should I just tell him what I'd heard?

He was looking at me, puzzlement clouding his eyes.

No, I shouldn't. I
couldn't
tell him. He was the one person who never despaired of me, and I didn't want him to start now. If I told him I suspected he was about to be murdered, I just knew I'd hear him say, “Oh, Ellis!” He'd wonder how I'd managed to hear it, and I'd have to tell him about my real job, and then he wouldn't think I was terrific anymore . . . even though I didn't really need him to think I was more terrific than he already did because that's why I was leaving in the first place. The truth was I'd never been as terrific as he seemed to think I was.

No, I'd figure it all out by myself and then I'd save him . . . and maybe I wouldn't even ever have to tell him about the telephone call and he'd be able to go on thinking I really was terrific. I wouldn't feel so bad about ducking off to go to
Hollywood, then. Saving his life would be like . . . a going-away present. My gift to him.

“What were you saying about Irish people?”

Irish people? Oh! “Do you know any?”

“I don't—I don't think so.” He rocked back onto his heels, leaning against the wall. “Although, now that I think about it, the cook is Irish. And the driver.”

“Have you ever done anything to make them mad at you?”

“When I was little . . .” He looked away and then looked back. Was he blushing?

“You remember, Ellis! We used to sneak cookies from the kitchen all the time. But I don't think Mrs. O'Malley ever got
mad
at us.”

No. She hadn't. In fact, I suspected she used to leave those plates in a place where we didn't have to stretch too far to reach them.

“Why are you worried about Irish people?”

“Um . . . well . . . don't you ever worry about people?”

“I worry about you. About us. I was thinking . . .” He put a hand down into his pocket.

Oh dear. This was headed toward dangerous territory. I could tell by the look in his eyes. He had the pin there in his trousers, didn't he? “What's to worry about?” I turned and walked over toward the divan, running a hand across that nice, scrumptious, glossy wood framing on its camel back.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” I walked on, putting a chair, as well as the divan, between us.

“You're running away again.”

I was. But not in the way he thought. Or maybe I was run
ning away
in addition
to the way he thought I was. I was running away from him and his fraternity pin, and I was also running away from Boston. Just two more weeks.

He brought his hand out, fist closed around something.

It seemed far more important to hurry up and leave than to figure out if he knew anyone else who was Irish. “Well . . .” I made a dash toward the entry hall. “Good luck tomorrow. I hope the numbers add up. Bye.”

“Ellis, wait!”

Waiting is what I'd been doing for far too long. I'd save Griff—with or without his help—and then I was finally going to leave.