The Other Typist (9 page)

I stayed out for several hours, dithering here and there, and didn’t return until long after the dinner hour had come and gone. Once upstairs, it was obvious that Helen had retreated somewhat. I couldn’t see her, as she was completely obscured by the sheet that divided the room, which I noted had been drawn so as to achieve maximum privacy. But I knew she was there; I could hear her sniffling a bit—leftovers, I presume, from the drama-filled “good cry” she’d likely had while I was out on my walk. I tucked the gloves away in a dresser drawer (certain only that they would disappear again very soon, as Helen was an incorrigible little thief) and crawled under the covers of my bed to resume the book I had been trying to read earlier.

I assumed it would be more relaxing now that I’d confronted Helen and a small measure of justice had been done, but it remained difficult to concentrate. Once more, I found myself turning pages without really seeing them. I could sense Helen on the other side of the sheet, probably thinking she’d been done a grave wrong. She would tell Dotty first thing in the morning—if she hadn’t already, of course. She would probably even take the trouble to embroider the story here and there. They both would. I got up from bed and, with a vague tyrannical impulse, switched off the only electric lamp in the room. Helen did not protest. I crawled back under the covers and closed my eyes. I knew I was not likely to get much shut-eye for the night, but one thing was certain: This was no place for me anymore. Something had to be done.

Several weeks passed before Odalie and I grew to be close enough friends for me to confide my complaints about Helen to her in full. But once I did, everything changed.

T
his Helen girl sounds like an absolute ninny. I don’t see why you put up with it. You ought to just move into the hotel with me,” Odalie decreed in her cheerful, bright manner when I recounted the story to her some weeks later. She gave me a girlish smile that was at violent odds with the thin stream of smoke she immediately blew from her lips. It hung for a moment, seductively coiling and recoiling itself much like that infamous original serpent, and finally rose to the airy vaulted ceiling of the restaurant. She detached her cigarette from an elegant bone ivory holder and crushed out the smoldering butt in the crystal cut ashtray, all the while completely ignoring the
tsk-tsk
sounds emanating from a pair of silver-haired biddies glaring at her from across the room. I knew, as it was, the cigarette holder represented as much of a concession as Odalie would ever make to such ladies, preferring as she did to smoke her cigarettes with no holder at all. With the cigarette snuffed out now, she looked up at me, fresh-faced, her eyes shining with such a gleam, I thought perhaps she was feeling rather moved by the idea of the two of us living together. My heart leapt.

Oh! But I am getting it out of order; I should explain how Odalie and I got to be friends in the first place. How she won me over finally and all that. The doctor I am seeing now tells me I should concentrate on telling things in the proper order—chronologically, he means, of course. He says that telling things in their accurate sequence is good for healing the mind.

And now these events should be easy to tell, as I can see them so clearly from the vantage of hindsight. The door to our friendship was initially cracked open in a very simple manner. She allowed me the luxury of rhapsodizing at great length about one of my favorite subjects: the Sergeant. I wonder, now that I know more about Odalie’s character, whether she detected my weakness for the Sergeant and plotted to exploit it, or if she simply blundered onto the subject and was astute enough to see how much it pleased me.

I know I have already given a few of the Sergeant’s particulars—his handlebar mustache, his sturdy stature, his intolerance for tomfoolery, his polite deference to general gentility. But even the sum of these qualities nevertheless fails to describe the essence of what I believed truly defined the Sergeant.

Of course, the Sergeant and I had a special understanding from the very first. When the typing school sent me to the precinct, it was the Sergeant who interviewed me.
I can read over the contents of this file,
he said, flipping open a cardboard folder the typing school had delivered to the precinct earlier that day via a messenger boy,
and allow these pages to tell me all about who you are. That you were raised in a convent, that you made decent marks in school, that despite being an orphan you lack the usual record of stealing or cheating
 . . .
or
—he flipped the folder shut and tossed it on his desk, then leaned back in his chair and twisted one side of his mustache between his left thumb and forefinger—
I can simply sit across from you now and see quite plainly you are a lady of good conscience and honest disposition.
That was it. Our special understanding was established, and I was hired. As though to illustrate how certain he was of my vocational value, the Sergeant did not even check with the Lieutenant Detective or the Chief Inspector before pumping my hand and welcoming me aboard.

Minutes later, when he walked me to the exit, he put one hand on my shoulder and gave it a small squeeze.
I can
’
t imagine it
’
s been easy for you,
he remarked. I didn’t know what to say, so I simply gave a slight nod. The Sergeant smiled, his paternal hand warming the curve of my shoulder through the artificial silk of my best blouse.
I can assure you, Rose, no one will give you trouble about your breeding here. I can see that even though you are just a woman, you know very well how to make yourself useful, and your industriousness will not go unappreciated in this office.
I was surprised by how well I liked the weight of the Sergeant’s heavy, pawlike hand on my shoulder. I also recall feeling a sense of great reassurance. Not just reassurance in the fact that I had successfully obtained the job, but reassurance that good and fair-minded people—people who believed in administering a grounded, impartial justice—still existed and held sway in this world.

This is not to suggest the Sergeant is a timid, watered-down sort of man. Quite the contrary. He is a man of extremes. Even physically speaking, the fiery red hue of his perpetually ruddy complexion strikes a dire contrast with the icy blue of his eyes. But there was always—
is
always, I should say—an overall sense of equanimity about the Sergeant, an impression that all the contrasts in him are pulling in equal opposition.

At that time, Odalie’s desk at the precinct was positioned directly opposite my own, and in this manner, one might think a natural rapport would arise between us. But at first there was only silence. As I said, I had a peculiar, uncanny feeling about the girl from the first moment I encountered her, but this did not equal an instant friendship. And when she took up with Iris (and then, to add insult to injury, dallied a bit with Marie’s friendship), I took her for a fool and very pointedly turned a cold shoulder, which I was certain did not go undetected.

So I was surprised one day when Odalie emerged from the interrogation room and exclaimed, “He is just absolutely the law itself, isn’t he?” As we were not in the habit of making conversation, I looked around to see who she could possibly be talking to. The days were getting noticeably shorter by then. We were headed into the long black nights of winter, and although it was only four o’clock, outside a cloudy sky was already turning from ash to soot. And yet inside the office there was still something vital, the peculiar sort of kindling that comes from human activity buzzing away in the falling dark of dusk. The electric lights still glowed, and the office thrummed with the sounds of telephones, voices, papers, footsteps, and the syncopated clacking of many typewriters all being operated at once. It could very well be day
or
night outside for all anyone cared; at that exact moment, everyone was quite busy, absorbed in what they were doing. And there was Odalie—still standing in front of her desk, facing me, her question (rhetorical though it was) still hanging in the air unanswered. I looked up at her and I remember—I remember this image quite clearly—the bare electric bulb that dangled above her cast a perfect shimmering halo around the crown of her head, a perfect corona of light caught in the sheen of her silky black bobbed hair.

“Yes,” I stammered after a while. “The Sergeant is an excellent man.”

Odalie cocked her head at me. Her eyes inspected me with a feline ferocity. “I’m curious,” she said. “What can you tell me about the Sergeant?”

“Well, I suppose . . . he always gets his man, as they say,” I said. I leaned my chin on my hand, pondering a longer answer, and ultimately happy to continue. “He’s quite incorruptible, and his instincts are impeccable as a result. Whenever we have a stubborn criminal who is so very
obviously
guilty, we always leave it to the Sergeant; he has yet to fail.”

“But I mean, what do you know about the Sergeant’s personal life?” I stiffened, and Odalie, attuned to such things, noticed. “I hope you don’t think me crude,” she hurried to add. She lowered her very long black eyelashes. “It’s just . . . you seem so . . .
perceptive
to the goings-on in this office.”

“I wouldn’t know about the Sergeant’s personal life,” I said curtly, and returned my attention to the report on my desk that wanted transcribing.

“Ah, it’s just as well. I suppose it’s exactly as one would imagine. A lovely wife and lovely children and all that.”

“Well . . . ,” some reflex within me prompted me to volunteer. “It’s not
exactly
that way. . . . The Sergeant is very upright and morally correct, but if you ask me, I would venture to guess his wife is not exactly what one would call
appreciative
of such qualities. Can you believe, the Sergeant came in
twice
last week without his lunch tin? I suspect they were having some sort of row and she didn’t pack it on purpose. Why, I can’t imagine treating a virtuous man like the Sergeant with such utter disregard! If it were me, I would never—” I stopped short. Odalie’s smile had changed from something charming and soothing into an amused, cynical little thing, and the shift made me feel quite self-conscious. “I only mean . . . It’s just that . . . Well, you know how people can tend to undervalue a man like that . . . such a shame.”

Luckily for my sake, we were interrupted by the Lieutenant Detective, who wanted me to trot over to the stationer and put in an order for all the paper, stenotype rolls, typewriter ribbons, and other sundries our office needed delivered for the month.

“And I suppose after the order’s been put in you can go home for the day, Miss Baker,” he said, looking at his wristwatch and observing the hour. He began to retreat to his own desk, then had a second thought and turned back. “And take Miss Lazare with you, so you can show her how it’s done.” Odalie smiled at me and tidied her desk, then went over to the coatrack and slipped into her coat, hat, and gloves.

Together we took the subway to Times Square, where the buildings suddenly rose into the sky, the tempo of the street skipped a beat, and reporters scurried about the sidewalks, hurrying back to their offices for the evening, where they would sit feverishly typing their stories before the midnight deadline, when all the newspapers went to press. The streets were still dry, but the dark sky was thick with rain clouds, and as we came up out of the subway a ripple of thunder echoed overhead.

At the stationer I put in the monthly order and listed aloud for Odalie all the details of how it was to be done. To my surprise, she did not take out the little notebook and golden pencil I knew she carried about in her purse, which I felt was a mistake—she was not the type who was likely to remember anything without taking notes—but rather stared at me the entire time with a pair of glassy, vacant eyes. After several minutes I gave up trying to give Odalie instructions and simply filled out the stationer’s order form in silence and returned it to the clerk. He nodded, took the form, and thanked me distractedly.

Back out on the street we found ourselves caught in an unexpected downpour. Both of us were without an umbrella, and together we engaged in a game of trying to dodge about under the eaves and awnings of the buildings around us. But skyscrapers—those symbols of progress, with their sleek lines and soaring heights—nonetheless provide very little in the way of street-side shelter, as you might know. Soon enough we both found ourselves looking like a couple of drowned rats. We were forced to pause for a changing traffic light at a street corner, and a grocer’s truck came along and mercilessly splashed me where I stood on the curb with a spray of filthy gutter water. Odalie began laughing hysterically. In a state of great annoyance, I turned to part with her. “Good night, Miss Lazare. I shall see you tomorrow at the precinct.”

“Hang on,” she said, catching my wrist. Her eyes quickly ran from my head to my feet. “What a shambles we are!” she exclaimed. Still laughing, still clutching my wrist in her hand, she stepped off the curb and raised her opposite arm to hail a taxi. “I think I may know a good remedy.” Considering taxi-cabs a very lavish expense and rarely taking them myself, I briefly struggled to demur. But my instincts for economy were quickly overcome by my instincts for survival and comfort, and as the taxi slowed to a stop in front of us, I felt a wave of desperate gratitude wash over my cold, wet, tired body. Before I knew it, I had gotten in of automatic accord and listened as Odalie gave the driver the address of a hotel only slightly farther uptown.

I had heard of girls who lived in hotels before, but in my experience they had all either been very rich or else very improper. It made me nervous to realize Odalie might be either—or both—of these things. If I am being completely honest, I should admit it likely made me a little excited, too. When we pulled up to the curb, she paid the driver and allotted a generous tip. I followed her out of the cab door in a daze.

“Stay dry, misses,” the driver said in a kind, grandfatherly tone as we exited from the cab. But he needn’t have worried—we emerged under an electric-lit awning and walked the length of spongy red carpet that led up the stairs and into the gilded revolving door of the hotel. Inside the lobby, Odalie strode confidently over to the elevators, which looked to me like a pair of elaborately wrought birdcages. Stunned by the unexpected luxury of my surroundings, I followed her like a fawn staggering on new legs. Once the elevator had made its descent to the lobby, we got in and Odalie purred in a friendly voice, “The usual, Dennis.” Evidently, “the usual” was the seventh floor, for it was at that floor that Dennis put the brake on and slid open the golden birdcage doors.

“Ma’am,” he said cheerfully, and turned to smile at Odalie, who returned nothing but a grimace.

“Ugh,” she said as though he were not still in earshot. “I hate it when they call me
ma’am
.” She touched a hand to her hair, which was drooping and damp with rain. “Thank you, Dennis,” she said to the now very distressed Dennis.

“Ma’am—I mean, miss?” he said, disconsolate. His dejection was short-lived, interrupted as it was by the demands of hotel business. Abruptly a tin bell sounded, and he retreated back into his gilded cage and cranked a lever. Odalie turned to me and smiled a rather rare, frank, thin-lipped smile.
“The young man carbuncular,”
she said with a roll of her eyes, as though explaining something, and I suddenly had the impression that she was quoting something, although I didn’t know exactly what.

She ushered me briskly down a long corridor. The carpet beneath my feet was plush, thick, red. My ankles wobbled ever so slightly as I walked on it, adding to the unsteady feeling that had already been building in my legs. I began to feel overwhelmed; it was all a bit too much, and the steam heat in the hotel was turned up rather high. But lured on by some entranced impulse, I followed Odalie as she drew up to a door, unlocked it, and threw it open. Inside was a large sitting room with fashionably modern green-and-white-striped furniture. Even the carpet was a deep, vibrant green and stretched wall to wall. I remember thinking there was something very clean and crisp-feeling about that particular shade of green. It was the color of a freshly mown lawn—and not just any lawn; the kind of lawn belonging to a golfing green or to the kind of wealthy estate I’d only ever read about in books. It was the color of money, in more ways than one.