The Best of Everything (3 page)

"Radcliffe. And I did major in English." Caroline smiled.

"I suppose you think it's easy to be an editor."

"I'm not even sure it's easy to be a secretary."

Miss Farrow looked at her sharply to determine if she was being sarcastic or serious. Caroline tried to keep a very bland, amused and slightly humble expression on her face, and not to look frightened.

"It's not easy to be my secretary," Miss Farrow said finally.

"I'll try to do the best I can until your regular secretary comes."

"How much are you making now?"

"Fifty dollars a week."

"No experience, eh?"

"I've just finished six weeks of a business and secretarial coiu-se. So my shorthand is better than a girl's who hasn't been working for a while."

"Private secretaries start here at sixty-five, you know. Are you ambitious?" What a look of dislike and mistrust this woman has on her face, Caroline thought with surprise. What in the world does she think I might do to her?

"Well, sixty-five sounds a lot better than fifty," Caroline answered gently.

The look of mistrust softened a little. "I haven't looked for a permanent replacement for my other girl yet. Maybe I won't have to. We'll see if your typing improves."

It will if you stop peering over my shoulder, Caroline thought. "I have some letters at my desk for you to sign," she said. "I'll bring them in. Is that all for now?"

"Yes," Miss Farrow said with a little half-smile. "That's all for now."

The rest of the afternoon went by as rapidly as the morning had, with Miss Farrow firing her disjointed commands and Caroline trying to follow them as weU as she could. She felt like a girl who knows she is going to be invited to a dance by the football hero who also happens to be the notorious class wolf, and has to decide what she really wants. She didn't know what she wanted. A pleasant job, yes, but to be in a rut like Mary Agnes, no. Something in between would be ideal, but she was already beginning to realize that the working world was more complicated than she had ever dreamed. She knew that although right now she found the office routine exciting and tiring, that was only because it was new to her, and in a few weeks she would find it boring. Her mind wanted more creative work. But most important of all, if she found herself mired down in a job that bored her, she would be thinking about Eddie and what might have been, and that was what she had come here to escape.

At a quarter to five Miss Farrow came out of her oflBce pulling on her gloves. "There's an editorial report on my desk," she said. "Type it up for me, double-spaced. That's all for today unless you have some work left over. Good night."

"Good night. Miss Farrow."

"Ooh . . . what next?" Mary Agnes whispered in righteous indig-

nation. "She's the only editor who doesn't type her own reading reports. She's probably afraid she'll mess up her nail polish."

Caroline laughed and went into Miss Farrow's oflBce. It was already dark outside the huge window that made up the entire fourth wall, and through the opened blinds Caroline could see the lights of the city. She pulled up the bUnd and stood there for a moment. Every square of light was an oflBce, and in every office all over the twilit city there were girls much like herself, happy or disappointed, ambitious or bored, covering their typewriters hastily and going o£E to meet people they loved, or delaying the minutes of departure because home meant the loneliness of a long dark night. Suddenly her throat hurt so that she could hardly swallow. She turned to Miss Farrow's desk and picked up the manuscript.

It was a heavy manuscript, of loose sheets of white typing paper held together with a thick rubber band. She leafed through the first few pages curiously. The top sheet was headed Derby Books. Comment Sheet.

She read Miss Farrow's comments, which had been scrawled in a large, ostentatious hand. It was a rave review: "Clever writing, plot held me from beginning to end." She typed the review neatly on a clean comment sheet and attached the typed copy to the manuscript. From St. Patrick's outside, bells were chiming five o'clock.

Mary Agnes opened the office door and looked in. She was already wearing her sweater and coat and was carrying her pinrse. "Good night, Caroline."

"Good night."

"Don't stay here all night. Ha-ha." Mary Agnes waved and started to leave.

"Mary Agnes . . ."

"What?"

"Do you think it would be all right if I took this manuscript home with me tonight to read? I mean, are there any rules about it?"

"You want to read it? On your own time?"

"I think it would be exciting—to read a book that's this good, before it's even been published!"

Mary Agnes shrugged. "Help yourself. There are some big red envelopes in that filing cabinet."

"Thank you."

"So long."

The door shut and Caroline found an envelope and put the manuscript carefully into it. Then she gathered her things together and walked to the elevator. At five minutes past five the bullpen was empty; it had cleared out as rapidly as if an air-raid alarm had sounded. From a lone office down the hall she could hear the sound of a typewriter. It had been a long day, and she was just beginning to realize how tired she was. She remembered, riding down in the elevator, that Miss Farrow had never gotten around to taking her on the introduction tour Mary Agnes had promised. It didn't matter. She'd had quite an introduction anyway. And she could hardly wait to read the novel she'd found. She hugged the manuscript unde>' her arm as she walked quickly to catch the five-twenty-nine.

Chapter 2

New York is a city of constant architectural change, buildings lading torn down, new ones being put up in their places, streots being torn up, fenced off, signs proclaiming politely Sorry! We aioe making WAY FOR A GROWING New York. Its inhabitants, more likely than not, live in recently converted houses—converted brownstones, converted whitestones, converted rococo mansions, all partitioned off into two- and three-room apartments and what is euphemistically called "the one-and-a-half." April Morrison, waking up in her new apartment at seven o'clock on a Thursday morning in January, lived in a "one-and-a-half." Her apartment building was a converted tenement, just north of Columbus Circle.

It was a walk-up apartment, three stories above what the landlord called a "winter garden," which was really a kind of small enclosed courtyard with metal chairs piled upside down on one another and going to rust, and a patch of dirt where someone might someday plant flowers. It consisted of one large room with a kitchen that was in a closet and a bed that came out of the wall and had an uncoiled spring that made her sleep in a fetal position. The uncoiled spring did not bother her sleep particularly, however, because April was an extremely relaxed and healthy girl. There was also a bathroom in

this apartment, with a makeshift shower in the bathtub, and a fair-sized closet.

On this morning the moment her alarm clock went off April was out of bed and standing on her feet. The day before had been the first day of her first job in New York, and excited as she was she had forgotten to set her alarm and had gotten to tlie office at noon. It wasn't going to happen again.

Heating water for her instant coffee in a pot from the five-and-ten, April sang a little song she hadn't remembered in years. It was a song she had learned in Sunday school. Her two older sisters back home in Springs had both been Sunday-school teachers before their early marriages, and when April had announced that she wanted to go to dramatic school instead, they had laughed. After all, there were thousands of pretty girls with long gold hair who wanted to go to Hollywood, they had told her, and even though she'd always had the lead in the high-school plays, if she had any sense she would forget that nonsense in a hurry. "Why?" her father had said. "Why shouldn't April be an actress?" But fathers always thought their youngest daughters were rather special.

In junior college she had studied speech, ballet and singing, and, to appease the family, t)'ping and shorthand. For a graduation present her parents gave her a train ticket to New York and five hundred dollars. She was to stay in New York for as long as the money lasted and do as she pleased—go to the theater, sight-see, go to museums, look up a high-school classmate of her mother's who had married a man from Brooklyn and had gone there to live. April arrived just after Thanksgiving and did all these things for three days. On the fourth day she read in the newspaper of a chorus call for girl dancers for a new musical. She went to it, with mingled hope and terror, had her turn with what seemed like at least five hundred other girls, and was told politely that she would hear. She never heard anything. At the end of the second week she had been in New York she answered a call for girl singers.

Most of the singers were quite unattractive, she noticed with private hope, they seemed much less pretty than the dancers had been. Why were tlie singers in shows never as pretty as the dancers? She discovered why very soon. With their trained voices, these girls did not have to be pretty, you could listen to them and you didn't have to look too closely. With her semi-trained voice (chrurch choir

and the two years at junior college) April didn't stand a chance. She was thanked for coming and told politely that she would hear. The next day she went to a chorus call at the Copacabana. At least she could walk straight.

When she got to the Copa she felt like a midget. All the girls were six feet tall, or at least they looked that large to her. April was five feet three in her bare feet. They didn't even ask her to show her legs, for which she was just as glad, because she decided at the last minute that she would never be able to explain it at home if she became a showgirl. Her parents thought aU night-club chorus girls were kept women on the side.

What should she do? The five hundred dollars was not lasting as long as she had thought it would—there was that hansom-cab ride (who would have thought it would be so expensive?), and having a facial, and that bottle of perfume she couldn't help buying, and then all those taxis. She had a feeling the taxi drivers took her on a longer route than was absolutely necessary. She knew one thing, though. She was going to take the subway, and eat at the Automat, and stay in New York if it meant being a sales clerk at the five-and-ten. The hotel was too expensive, so she found this small apartment.

How she loved New York! She had never seen anything like it in her entire life. It wasn't as if she would die if she couldn't become an actress. Back home in Springs being an actress had seemed both glamorous and obtainable, because it had been part of a dream world. She had read all the plays of Eugene O'Neill and J. M. Barrie and Kaufman and Hart, and she had said the hnes aloud in the privacy of her own room. That didn't give her any more right to be a successful actress, she realized, than cutting out recipes gave one a right to be a chef at the Waldorf. Being an actress had been part of a fantasy, a picture, which had included tall buildings in the blue twilight and the fountain in front of the Plaza, seeing Marlene Dietrich buying handkerchiefs at Bonwit's, and Frank Sinatra coming out of Lindy's, and beautiful women no one had ever heard of wearing white mink and diamonds and being escorted by handsome older men. The body of the fantasy was true, she was walking in it and looking at it, breathlessly. And the actress part of it? She hadn't realized until she had actually been walking past those tail buildings in the blue twilight how insignificant she really was. Where could she ever begin to attack a fortress like New York? She didn't even

want to. She only wanted to stay there until she herself was part of it, one of those well-groomed, well-attended women, and she half realized that was a fantasy too. She only had to walk up the three flights to her dingy room to know what a fantasy it was. Nevertheless, she was very happy, and every moment brought something new and exciting. Nobody else back home had been rejected in person by Mr. George Abbott.

An employment-agency ad in The New York Times interested her. She went to the agency, and was sent to Fabian Publications. She had wanted one of the ninety-dollar-a-week jobs, but this was her first, and she was told to take it and be glad for the experience. Everyone at home had read My Secret Life avidly in high school-she herself had outgrown it only three years before. To tell the truth she was quite thrilled to be working at the very source of a magazine which had helped build up much of her present misinformation. Her grandmother read The Cross, too. She wrote home about her new job immediately, and also broke the news that she was not coming back, at least not for a long time.

She drank her coffee standing up and dressed hastily. Here it was eight-thirty and she had been daydreaming again. As she emerged into the street she caught sight of her reflection in the window of a dehcatessen next door to her apartment house. Her coat was too short—or was it? She remembered the girl in the tweed suit with the raccoon collar who had been working at the desk next to hers yesterday afternoon at Fabian. What a sophisticated-looking girl! Something about her looked—right. Was it the leather gloves? Perhaps white cotton gloves looked terrible in January. They were her best gloves, and so she had never given them a second thought. She looked down at them and noticed for the first time the hole in the finger. She pulled them off and stuffed them into her purse and walked quickly to the subway.

She was still rather frightened of the subway and never could bring herself to run for a train the way the other people did, for fear one of the huge doors would close on her and leave her half in and half out, screaming as the car bore her away to a mysterious and horrible death in the darkness of the tunnel. She watched the people scurrying and pushing one another as the sound of an approaching train grew louder, and she delayed for a moment in front of the change booth counting out her money for a token.

"Good morning," she said pleasantly to the man behind the bars. He was one of the few people in New York whom she had seen more than once, and this gave her a rather friendly feeling toward him. She always said good morning to him, it made her feel less lonely.