The Other Typist (27 page)

Odalie was too busy to talk to me for the rest of the day; otherwise I might’ve lost control of myself and chastised her in front of everyone—an event that, in the long run, would’ve ultimately humiliated me as much as her. In retrospect I have to say I’m still very glad I didn’t do this, as it probably would’ve served as yet another piece of evidence to be used against me in my current situation. Instead, the minute hand moved twice around the clock during Odalie’s absence, and as I watched it from the corner of my eye I devised another way to teach her a lesson . . .
I would withdraw my friendship!
Yes; ever so quietly I would pack my suitcase that very evening and let myself out the front door in the middle of the night, unobserved. The next morning Odalie would notice my absence, and upon checking the room where I regularly slept she would no doubt see all my things had gone missing during the night and she would intuit why I had left. As I typed up a stack of reports, I thought of the letter I would leave on my tidily made bed for her to discover, composing several rather dramatic drafts of it in my imagination and making several typing errors in the process. I debated which tone would shame and therefore hurt her more: an anguished one that expressed my heartsick disapproval of her, or a disconnected, indifferent one that would signal my superiority and disdainfully suggest that her transgressions were of a rather tawdry, cliché nature. Then I considered leaving no note at all, and decided perhaps that would hurt her most of all.

As for the Sergeant, I supposed there was no need to punish him. I cannot explain why, as I do not precisely know, but after witnessing their interlude in the hallway I did not have the same feelings toward both perpetrators. Waves of white-hot anger washed over me when I thought of Odalie; there was a sense of urgency in my feelings for her, a desperate need to punish her, to show her how incorrect her behavior was. Meanwhile, I felt nothing for the Sergeant but a cold, soggy sense of disappointment. In my mind, he had come down from Mount Olympus, and he had come down to stay. When I thought of him, I could only see his hand traveling up the length of Odalie’s sleeve.

Of course now I see that while I had lost one god in the Sergeant, I had nonetheless gained another in Odalie, as I was more obsessed than ever with the uncharted depths of her manipulative powers, which I was beginning to believe had no bounds. She was not the clean, regimented sort of idol the Sergeant had been to me. Instead, she was something else entirely, something I could not yet name, for at that time I still lacked a panoramic comprehension of Odalie and of the effect she would ultimately have on me. I had no inkling then of how her most terrible power would show itself not in her own actions, but in what she was capable of driving others to do. Of what she was capable of driving
me
to do.

But all that would come soon enough. That evening, I went home with Odalie according to our regular routine. I made a point of being rather stiff and chilly with her, but I do not think she took much notice of my cool reserve. I decided it was simply best to bide my time until I could slip out unseen and protest Odalie’s misdeeds with my absence. Gib slept at the apartment that night and was surlier than usual. Shortly after the dinner hour they disappeared together into Odalie’s bedroom. I noted the date and his name in my little journal. I also wrote
Sergeant Irving Boggs,
then scribbled it out, and finally wrote it in again with a question mark next to it. Then I played a record on the phonograph on my nightstand. I opted for some tidy Bach concertos in an attempt to infuse the atmosphere with some manicured civility, and I began to pack my things. Through the wall, I could hear Odalie and Gib quarreling. And then I could hear them . . . not quarreling. Their passion turned to conversation, and the hum of their voices rose and fell like a tide until eventually, when it had grown quite late, they fell silent altogether. The last record I had put on finally ended, and the needle began to skip, threading into the final groove only to be pushed into the center of the disc over and over and over again. I lifted the phonograph’s thick brass arm and switched the contraption off.

By that point my bags were packed—or rather my
bag,
I should say, as I had arrived with a sole suitcase and I intended to take exactly only what was mine. Of all the things I now had to part with, the clothes were the most difficult. It surprised me how attached I’d grown to the furs, the beaded dresses, the satin gowns. But if I was going to hold myself to a superior moral standard, I couldn’t very well traipse around in Odalie’s finery knowing it had all likely been gained via her improper behavior. I pulled open a dresser drawer and ran my hand over a pile of embroidered silk undershirts as though stroking a beloved pet one final good-bye. I lifted the diamond bracelet from where it lay cradled in the plush pile of a sable mink stole and shut the dresser drawer with an air of finality. I unclasped the bracelet and laid it lengthwise on my pillow, in the vacant place where my head would no longer rest. With a pang I thought of the brooch, still in my desk drawer at work—you see, I’ve always liked to be absolute in my measures. Oh, but that couldn’t be helped now. I looked again to the suitcase where it sat on a chair in a corner by the painted Oriental screens. I had tidied the room with the utmost care, so as to make the space appear more noticeably denuded. I wanted my disappearance to have the maximum effect. As I surveyed the barren room with approval, I knew it was finally time to make my move. I stood to go and lifted my bag from the chair.

But then I hesitated. With my suitcase in my hand and dressed in my plainest calico blouse and long skirt, I stared at the door before me and swayed almost imperceptibly over my rooted feet. Some unnameable doubt was holding me back from following through with my intended departure. I considered the possibility Odalie might not even notice my absence for some days, or worse yet, not care. I pictured her poking her head into my empty room in that breezy perfunctory way she had, shrugging her shoulders, and going about her business as usual. I worried that while she mattered plenty to me, there was a chance I did not matter quite so much to her. I looked down at the suitcase where it dangled from my arm. Already it was heavy, already the trip wearied me, and I hadn’t even taken my first step toward the door. I realized that in my eagerness to punish Odalie with my absence, I had not yet worked out where I was going—my mind had only gotten so far as to imagine the leaving.

I put my suitcase down and sat on the bed with a sigh. I was going about this all wrong. I wanted to send a message to Odalie, but I wanted something else from her, too. I wanted her to be sorry.

I decided to stay. At least for the time being. Slowly, meticulously, I dispatched the items in my suitcase and restored them to their proper locations in the room. Then, once dressed in a nightshirt, I crawled into bed. Now I was resolved to go to sleep and awake tomorrow to confront my new task—the task of loving Odalie and therefore forcing her to face the crucial fact she had wronged her most devoted friend, that her scheming and her risky behavior had to stop.

O
n Friday of that same week, an unexpected visitor came into the precinct looking for Odalie. As luck would have it, Odalie had gone to run some errands on her lunch hour. Exhausted and wary after my unexpected introduction to Dr. Spitzer, I didn’t ask any questions about her errands this time. In any case, all this is to say she had a visitor that day, yet wasn’t available when her visitor came to call upon her. I was seated at my work station, eating a sandwich and drinking coffee that had already gone cold, when I saw Teddy approach the receiving desk. Involuntarily, I gave a little yelp, which of course only alerted him to my presence. His youthful face lit up.

“Hullo, Rose!” he called in a cheerful voice across the room. He waved in my direction. I got up from my desk quickly, spilling the paper cone of coffee I’d been drinking down the front of my blouse as I did so. I didn’t care; it was a blush-colored silk charmeuse number I had borrowed from Odalie and now it was probably ruined, but if I had learned nothing else by then I knew Odalie went through clothing the way other people went through talcum powder or toilet tissue. I hurried across the room toward Teddy. All eyes in the precinct lifted to see what the commotion was about.

“Shh! Keep your voice down,” I said to Teddy. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I . . . I thought I might talk to Odalie.”

I gripped him by the upper arm and steered him out the precinct entrance and down the stoop so we might talk on the street. “Honestly, Teddy,” I mumbled as I tried to shepherd his lanky, adolescent body. As an obedient and loyal friend, I knew it would be ideal if I could get rid of him now, before Odalie ever caught wind of the fact he had come to find her. It’s funny, but I swear I can recall thinking at the time, and rather prophetically, too,
That way nobody will get hurt
. Once safe on the street, I shook him and repeated my question.

“What are you doing here?” I released him and waited. He didn’t respond straightaway. His eyes went wide, and when he looked down at his shoes, he shuffled his feet sheepishly. I took all this in and felt something soften in me. You see, I recognized my likeness in Teddy. There was an element of earnest urgency in his behavior toward Odalie I had to admit was not so different from my own.

The long and short of it is Teddy and I were both trying to make sense of Odalie’s code of conduct. We were trying to get
the
truth
from her, of all things! Teddy was trying to get the factual truth of her history, while I was trying to get the sentimental truth of her heart, but really we were not so very different creatures. We had both chased after Odalie and were now waiting for her to dictate the circumstances and outcome of the interaction.

As he looked at me with that pleading in his eyes, we had an unspoken exchange. I felt a tremor of sympathy ripple through my extremities. But then I collected myself. “Teddy,” I said in a stern voice, “You can’t be here.”

His brow furrowed as though he were uncertain this was true. “I can tell she recognizes me, Rose,” he said. “It’s her. She’s changed some things about herself, but it’s
her
. I know it in my bones. What I have to ask her . . . it’ll only take but a minute.”

I surveyed him with a long and thorough stare, and it dawned on me that he might never give up. Convinced she was Ginevra, Teddy would not rest until Odalie had answered his questions to his satisfaction, a feat I wasn’t sure she could accomplish, not ever. I thought through the long list of false stories Odalie had given me during our time together and about the number of times she’d purposely misled me. I thought, too, about Odalie and the Sergeant as I’d seen them standing in that hallway together. A tiny flare of indignant anger went up from somewhere deep inside my chest. As I looked at Teddy’s face, still marked with that faint stippling of peach fuzz and acne so typical of adolescent young men, I realized I was approaching yet another fork in the road.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” I finally said, having made my decision. I produced a little pencil and note-card from my purse. “I’ve got to get back inside now,” I said, writing down an address and a quick instructional paragraph with careful penmanship. “But here. Take this.” I handed Teddy the note-card.

I left him standing there, perplexed and staring at the card, as I turned to trot back up the stairs of the stoop. “Thank you!” he called after me, once he’d gotten over his confusion. “Thank you, Rose.” Halfway up the stoop, I froze.

“Don’t mention it,” I replied.

I suppose if there was any time I should have fretted about what I’d just set into motion—about what kind of potentially horrific collision I’d just initiated—it would’ve been then. But I didn’t feel anything of the sort. Instead, I was peculiarly relaxed and calm.

As I remounted the last few stairs, I noticed the shape of Marie ducking away from the windows. So, we’d been observed. I knew that meant I’d have to endure Marie perpetually inquiring,
Who was that chap? And wasn’t he a little young to be my boyfriend?
I pushed through the precinct door and decided not to care. At the time I couldn’t have anticipated how Marie’s having glimpsed this scene might one day affect my future.

•   •   •

THAT NIGHT,
we went to the speakeasy as was our routine. It began as one of those evenings wherein the moon loomed big and balloonlike, rising upward from one horizon before the sun had a chance to fully dip below the other. I remember standing on the apartment terrace and watching the moon make its slow, plodding ascent, a dusty pink half-crescent pocked with gray craters.

It had been another warm and sticky day, but now a cooling breeze was pushing the dirty haze of the city farther out to sea. The leaves would start turning soon, I realized, and I was surprised this meant that in a few months, I would’ve known Odalie for a full year. I mused on this revelation and must’ve gotten lost in my reverie, for I jumped when I heard her voice calling me to get dressed for our evening out. I rarely came out to the terrace, but when I did it was easy to be hypnotized by the way the electric lights of the city took on a supernatural glow as the sun ceded his territory to the sensuous moon and twilight turned to dusk.

When I came inside, I found Odalie had laid out a pair of outfits for us. To this day, I don’t know if the resemblance of style between these outfits was a coincidence, or whether it was achieved on purpose. I can’t imagine how she could have known the similarity would come in handy. Odalie is many things, and she has an impressive capacity to anticipate human behavior, but I do not believe she is an all-out clairvoyant. Nonetheless, presumably without knowing how it would help her cause, she dressed us that night in similar black evening gowns adorned with silver beading. Although one dress (mine) had a square-cut neckline and the other (hers) was strapless, the beading on both dresses was such that the silver beads gradually intensified as the pleated skirt flowed downward to skim the knee, giving the pair of us a crested-wave, mermaid-like appeal.

She also put hair cream in my mousy brown hair to darken it and make it shine, and pinned it under so it would swing at an angle along the line of my jaw—just as her bob did. I recall catching a glimpse in the mirror of us standing side-by-side just moments prior to leaving the apartment. We looked ever so slightly like twins. A beautiful, shining woman and her slightly duller, slightly dowdier counterpart. In an eerie final touch, Odalie had insisted we wear the two matching diamond bracelets—a peculiar twist indeed, as up until that point we had never worn them outside of the apartment. Once we slipped them on, our toilet was complete. Odalie promptly called downstairs and put in a request for one of the doormen to procure a taxi, and just like that, the evening had been set into motion.

Over the course of the last nine months I’d spent with Odalie, I had discovered the speakeasy—
her
speakeasy, that is—moved around sporadically, but mainly made use of about three or four regular locations. On that night (which was to reveal itself to be our last night) I suppose there was some sort of poetic circularity in the fact we found ourselves right back at the selfsame location as the first one I had ever attended. This time I felt like an old hand when the taxi drove to the Lower East Side and let us out upon a deserted street lined with darkened storefronts, and I barely batted an eyelash. As expected, one storefront still glowed with electric light. Upon pushing through the door of the wig shop, we found the same boy wearing the same pair of oddly colored suspenders sitting at the register. And he asked exactly the same question, a question I realized from the tone of his voice had long since become threadbare from overuse.

“Can I help you find sompin’, ma’ams?” His voice delivered the rote line so the word
help
had been dissected of all trace elements of original meaning. He pushed a long greasy lock out of one eye and waited. Odalie ignored him altogether, taking out her compact and dusting her nose with talcum. I realized it was my turn to spring into action.

“Yes,” I said, looking around for the iron-gray wig done up in an elaborate Victorian bun. They always relocated the wig to a different shelf in the store, so it was never in the same place twice. Perhaps this was part of the test to further separate the initiated from the uninitiated, or perhaps the boy simply did it out of boredom. Finally my eyes alighted upon the object in question. Truly it was a wretched-looking thing. I lifted it from the mannequin’s unsuspecting head. “I hear this is lovely in chestnut, but mahogany’s twice as nice.” I knew when I said it that it did not come off sounding nearly as seductive as when Odalie had said it in times past, but nevertheless it proved effective enough. The boy plugged away at the cash register keys, and soon enough a loud
clunk
sounded and the wall panel behind the front counter sprang open.

“You may enter, ma’ams.”

Odalie went in first, and I followed. Once again, as the wall panel clicked shut behind me, I felt my eyes suddenly peering into absolute darkness, working diligently to make out the shape and path of the hallway. The sounds of a lively party echoed all around us. I sensed Odalie moving in front of me, and I trailed blindly in her wake until together we pushed through a velvet curtain. We stood there for thirty seconds, but before we’d even had a chance to fully take in the scene, a woman rushed over and kissed Odalie on both cheeks.

“
There
you are!” the woman exclaimed.

“So good to see you again,” Odalie replied with equal enthusiasm. I recognized the woman from my long-ago session with the bohemian group, but I could tell Odalie did not remember the woman.

“I was just saying to Marjorie—oh! See Marjorie over there? Wave, dear!—I was just saying to Marjorie, ‘I wonder when she’ll get here,’ and right away you appeared, poof! Like magic—here you are!”

“Here I am,” Odalie echoed. People were always coming up and talking to Odalie in this manner, and as a result she had developed a very graceful but vague manner of responding.

“You really
must
come over and say hello,” the woman said, her breath washing over us in a hot whiskey-scented wave. Her arm was already linked through Odalie’s in a manner that suggested she would not take no for an answer. She flinched with a silent hiccup and tenaciously pressed on. “There’s a man by the name of Digby who’s a downright wag of an impressionist. He’s got some real funny stuff you really shouldn’t miss! And of course the painter Lebaud is over there, too, telling all about how he plans to paint you in that new modern style where it’s you but it doesn’t look like you at all, where the features are all funny and out of order . . .”

The woman’s dogged persistence was a success, and I suddenly found myself standing alone. I spotted Redmond from across the room, and he nodded in my direction. The misunderstanding that had occurred the night of the raid had never been discussed, but rather it melted between us a little bit at a time; a rigid ice cube slowly turning back to easy-flowing water that (I hoped) might soon run under the bridge. I watched as he toddled over to take my drink order. It was a terse exchange, but one I knew signified that we were progressing in a positive direction.

As I waited for Redmond to return with a champagne cocktail, I took a sweeping look around the room. A woman with a gardenia tucked over her ear was singing in a flirty voice that brimmed over with a sort of cheerful sarcastic glee, moving her hands at the wrists as she sang. It was one of those perky-sounding songs that turned out to be somewhat deceptive; it had a jaunty enough melody, but upon closer observation it was actually characterized by a spate of fashionably cynical lyrics. Couples that seemed impervious to pessimism danced in the center of the room, happy to ignore the lyrics and keep time instead with the upbeat tempo of the melody.

It’s funny how that night things already felt changed. Perhaps I’m only imagining this now that I have the advantage of hindsight, but I swear that’s the way it goes in my memory: Somehow I had the distinct impression a portion of the magic was already gone forever. Perhaps I am only remembering my sensitivity to the changing seasons. Who knows. After all, summer was over. It had abandoned us, leaving behind a feeling of dissatisfaction, and taking with it all those too oft unfulfilled beach-day aspirations of a brown-skinned, primitive freedom. The weather would turn cold before we knew it and drive us back into the cramped and stuffy steam-heated rooms we called civilization.

But I looked around me and felt there was something greater informing my feelings that night than simply summer’s annual eulogy. In a flash it came to me, and I suddenly understood something about my own generation. It was the kind of comprehension only granted to a true outsider as she is looking in, and it was this: The couples dancing in the center of the room had seen many summers and many winters; they would reconfigure themselves many times, and had tacitly agreed to forget the waltz in favor of the foxtrot and then forget the foxtrot in favor of the Charleston. They would act as though each whirl around the dance floor marked the hilarious advent of something new; each kiss they gave out they would pretend was their first. In short, their youth was not an act, but their innocence most certainly was. Their youth was what kept them moving, a sort of brutal vitality lingering in their muscles and bones that was all too often mistaken for athleticism and grace. But their innocence was something they were obligated to go on faking in order to maintain the illusion something fresh and spontaneous and exciting was just around the next corner. I began, for the first time that night, to dimly perceive that the relative electricity in the air all hinged on this illusion. Somehow we had gone off to war and had come back world-weary . . . yet at the same time we’d managed to make a generational career out of pretending virginal adolescence. In short, I had come to the conclusion the whole pack of us were fakes.