by Packer, Vin
“Huh? What’s the matter with it? I like it!”
“No, wait a minute. I really used to be sensitive about it. When I was a kid I used to think I’d never get married because I wouldn’t want anyone to know about-having a wart there. It used to bother me. You don’t know!”
“Well, gosh, I didn’t mean to make fun of it. I think it’s swell.”
“Oh, I’m not mad, Charlie. That’s just it. You make it seem so — natural. I mean, I never even talked about it before with anyone … I just — think — well, gee, Charlie — gee — ”
“Aw, gee, Mitzie,” Charlie murmured, crushing himself to her, “gee, baby, oh g-gosh — ”
• • •
Ten minutes after the dream had begun it became a nightmare.
Neither one of them were aware of the persistent clicking of the needle of the phonograph as it played endlessly in the final groove; and for the same reason, neither heard the turn of the key in the lock.
What was heard was a rowdy chorus bellowing:
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, dear —
And by that time, Charlie had leaped from Basescu’s bed and stood white with shock, facing a dozen of his fraternity brothers, their faces in shadows. Otto Avery stood in the foreground, holding a cake resplendent with nineteen candles. Mitzie, of course, had screamed, then pulled the sheet up over her head.
“Surprise!” Avery said, grinning. “A surprise for our Chazz!”
Behind him, the other boys stood as shamefully embarrassed as Charlie, for they suddenly realized the sort of situation upon which they had intruded. It was obvious that only Avery knew the malicious surprise which was masked with the innocent one.
There were mumblings:
“Sorry, Charlie.”
“God, fella, we didn’t know.”
“Avery, you’re a rotten bastard.”
“We’ll clear out, Charlie. God!”
None of them saw behind Charlie into Basescu’s cubicle, but all of them knew it was Mitzie Thompson’s quivering form folded humiliated in the bed linen, and all of them got out as quickly as they were able.
Avery set the cake on Basescu’s couch.
He had the familiar snide smirk on his mouth as he turned to leave; and for his parting words, he said, “Many happy returns, Chazz boy. What’d Mitz give you, eh? Couldn’t have been a wart.”
Then he slammed the door.
Downstairs, the dance was still going on. The orchestra was playing Just a Cottage Small by a Waterfall, and in the kitchen, a group was competing with:
You can bring Pearl,
She’s a darn nice girl,
But don’t bring Lulu —
Upstairs, Daphnis et Chloë was still spinning endlessly around the turntable of the phonograph; but its music was gone.
Mitzie Thompson put her clothes on wordlessly; and Charlie Gibson stood in the other room, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the night, in his underwear, with his back to the birthday cake.
MARCH 6, 1957
CHAPTER SIX
EVERYBODY at Cadence Publications knew the story about Marge Mann, and the spike on Wally Keene’s desk.
The stunt was a typical Keene one — one of his “psychological” ones.
He left a railroad spike out on his desk, near the edge of a corner, so that whoever came into his office was tempted, as he talked with Keene, to touch it, pick it up, or fondle it, in the abstract way of preoccupied people.
The first day he put it there, he invited one of the men from Circulation to come down to his office; and on sundry pretexts, he asked practically every female executive in Cadence to come in for a chat. Then, both men would observe the woman’s reaction to the railroad spike. In Keene’s words: “The thing was so goddam phallic, it was bound to be revealing!”
There was Miss Novick, for example, a prissy, purse-mouthed production chief on the shelter magazine, Your Home. As she talked with Keene, her fingers barely skirted along an edge of the spike; skirted there, then gingerly were withdrawn.
Miss Bonner, the beautiful young fashion editor on that magazine, picked up the spike and lovingly caressed it throughout her conversation with Keene.
Miss Angelo, Keene’s pretty and sweet nineteen-year-old secretary, picked it up, looked at it, then gently put it back in its place.
There were various “revealing” reactions on the part of the female employees toward Keene’s phallic symbol, but the one reaction no one ever forgot — and Wally Keene never forgave — was the reaction of Marge Mann.
At first, she picked it up without particularly noticing it, and she stood gripping it for a few seconds. Next, with rather roughshod enthusiasm, she began tossing the spike from hand to hand. Then finally, at a pause in the conversation, she noticed the spike in her hands. She looked at it, looked at Keene, and before tossing it with a thud to the desk, she said, “What the hell do you need this old thing for?”
“Penis envy,” Wally Keene had said about it. “She has a chronic case. God, did you see the way she threw the thing on the desk!”
And everyone who heard the story laughed and agreed, and it became a standard. Even Marge herself said later, “Well, if the goddam spike had been on anyone else’s desk, I might not have had the same reaction … But Wally Keene! After all!”
For from the beginning, they had felt a relentless antipathy toward one another.
Marge was a woman whom most men liked — liked in the “pal” sense. They got a kick out of her, they could tell their most obscene stories without any qualm, and could count on her consistently for an ear that was simpatico about anything from their bleeding ulcers to their wives’ post-partum depression periods. Marge was “a good kid,” “a real swell gal,” and “a helluva sport!”
Only two men who worked with Marge at Cadence had felt differently toward her from the general male. They were Keene and Charlie Gibson.
Keene had hated her. Charlie had loved her.
On the morning of March 6, 1957, Marge Mann sat idly over a copy of the Times, pretending to read it, and trying to keep from thinking of either of these men.
But she would no sooner read: “Paul M. Butler denounced tonight Eisenhower Administration claims of civil rights achievements as — ” than she would begin to worry: Why doesn’t Charlie call me back? I’ve called him twice. In the elevator this morning — he looked as though he knew something. Why doesn’t he call me back?
And she would no sooner force her eyes back to the Times and read: “From London came news of new friction in Parliament over the matter of — ” than she would cry within herself, God, why did I beg Keene the other night? God, why?
It had happened in a sudden, compulsive way — the whole thing; from her picking up the telephone and inviting Keene over to her place for drinks, to hearing her door slam hours later, hearing his nonchalant whistling outside in the hall as he punched the elevator button, and lying in the dark — hungry, with the taste of Scotch in her mouth; naked, and staring across the room at the tropical fish swimming in their lighted tank; the feeling of being old; too old now to do anything about the fact she had of being old; too old now to do anything about the fact she’d fouled her life up good.
It had happened after lunch — the phone call she had made. In a sense it had happened because of what had transpired over the fruit salads and whisky sours in Michael’s Pub, between Blance Phelan and herself.
Blance was an old friend of Marge’s. They’d been in publishing together for years. Before Blance took her present job as an executive editor on the new home magazine Dorset Publications was sponsoring, Blance had held a job similar to Marge’s — a job as homemaking editor on a women’s slick magazine. They’d often had lunch and drinks together, gone to meetings and parties, and gone to movies and the theater. About fifteen years they’d known one another, and they could talk freely, frankly.
Blance said, “Do you think you ought to have another
drink, Marge?”
“My God, it’ll only be my fourth. That’s a funny thing for you to say, Blance.”
“Well, I just wonder if you should.”
“When did you start this drink-counting business?”
“Marge, things aren’t going well for you, are they?”
“I’ve got bills, if that’s what you mean. My operation was goddam expensive, but you know me. I don’t let it get me down.”
“And the job?”
“Same as ever.”
“Really?”
“No, not really … Not the same at all. There’s a slight personality difference between me and some young punk Cadence hired.”
“And that’s all it is?”
“That’s all! Where’s my drink, anyway?”
“I wish you wouldn’t have it, Marge. You know when you’re faced with a problem, drinking just makes good things bad and bad things worse.”
Marge chuckled and winked at Blance. “A little philosophy is all I need, eh? … Aw, Blance, you know me. I can roll with the punch … I might even leave Cadence … might start sending out feelers, letting people know I’m available … Don’t know why I owe Cadence any loyalty. What’s the situation over at Dorset? Could you use a high-priced homemaking editor?”
“Do you want me to tell you the truth, Marge?”
“Why not, honey? But I want my drink more.”
“He’s bringing it … Listen, Marge, you’re getting a bad name. Marge, I’m no prude. I’m pretty realistic, and I know you, Marge. I know when you’re in trouble. Other people don’t have to tell me, either. I know the way you behave, the way you joke; the flip act you put on.”
“So people are talking. People always did.”
“Marge, a woman in our field can’t afford to get a reputation as a lush.”
“Oh, honey, I was always a maverick in our field. Where the hell I ever got the notion to major in home economics, I’ll never know! But I did, and I know my stuff. And if I tell a dirty joke every now and then around my illustrious colleagues, it doesn’t matter a goddam, because I know my stuff!”
“No one’s indispensible, Marge — least of all, women our age.”
“Blance, let me tell you something. Before I went to Cadence, in the photographs for the homemaking sections, the models would be wearing Bergdorf Goodman sheaths and emerald clips from Van Cleef and Arpels, and they’d be mixing up cake batters in some fabulous Frank Lloyd Wright kitchen of the future. That was how Cadence was going about wooing a mass audience. They knew less about reader identification than a lecturer at the Frick Museum knows about pushing dope … I had to tell them. And I did tell them. A few times I even went to the five-and-ten myself to get props for the photographs, to get a housedress for the model to wear, or a set of those plastic cannisters for the picture, so that the readers could look at our magazines and see themselves — not some ultra-sophisticated slant-eyed model from the Plaza Five Agency, but themselves, and their neighbors next door … Don’t tell me I wasn’t indispensible to Cadence, Blance!”
“I’m not talking about then, Marge. I’m talking about now.”
“And, Blance, listen, when I came to Cadence you should have seen the way they gave the recipes. It never occurred to them that the poor ninny out way to hell and gone in Ida Grove, Iowa, bent over some hot-as-hell stove, would like the ingredients listed in the order that they are to be added to the dish. They never even thought of trying to make it easy for the reader, and as a matter of fact, before I came to Cadence, they didn’t have a test kitchen. They didn’t even test the recipes sometimes. Just shoved them into the magazines without testing them. I could use another drink; get his eye … I had to fight for that kitchen.”
“I’m not even getting through to you, am I, Marge?”
“Oh, you’re coming in fine, baby. It’s just that I don’t think you realize how indispensible I was to Cadence. Every single appliance in that test kitchen, I got for Cadence, for nothing. Gratis, I got it, Blance. Just because it never before occurred to Cadence that the manufacturer would be getting thousands of dollars of advertising free by the very fact we shot our food pictures in the kitchen, and all the stoves and refrigerators and electric mixers and what-the-hell else would show in the pictures. They were glad to equip our test kitchen free. Glad, hell, they were grateful … Where’s my drink? This place is getting too popular lately.”
“Marge,” Blance said quietly, “you’re shouting. You’re saying very obvious things; and you’re getting tight. Try to keep from being afraid. If you can keep from being afraid, you can lick this, Marge. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Marge Mann had answered, suddenly aware of how she must have sounded, of the meaning of the words she had been saying, of what was happening to her. She sat for a moment, then clutched at a cigarette and let Blance light it. Then she said, “Blance, I think they’re going to demote me … If they do, I’ll have to quit. They know I will; that’s why they’ll do it. I’ll have to resign, Blance … And I’m sixty years old.”
“You can still do something about it, can’t you?”
“I’m sixty years old. I have nothing in savings; and I have less than five hundred dollars still in stocks. I’m really sitting pretty, aren’t I?”
“Why don’t you try to do something about it, Marge?”
“What can I do about a young punk who hates my guts and who’s the fair-haired boy at Cadence?”
“Can’t you talk with him?”
“No. What the hell would we talk about. About poor little old me and please be kind?”
“Just try to talk rationally with him. Tell him you’d like to work with him — not at cross purposes. Bury the hatchet.”
“Oh, God, you don’t know him, Blance.”
• • •
Hours later, after Marge had gone back to Cadence and quite impulsively picked up the interoffice phone and called Wally and asked him if he’d like a drink at her place, she had suddenly realized that she didn’t know him either.
She didn’t know him; and she didn’t know what she was going to say to him when he walked in her door at six o’clock.
But when it happened, her feelings didn’t show. She opened the door with a flourish and a pitcher of Martinis in one hand; and she said, “Hi, fella, could you use a Martini?”
“Hello, Marge,” Wally Keene answered calmly. He strolled in and glanced about the apartment in an abstract manner. “I see you’ve already had a few. Is that why you wanted to come home first, so you could have a few before I came?”
She laughed as though he were making a joke, hating his superior air, the neat, young, handsome look of him — the two-years-out-of-Yale look, and the young-man-on-his-way-up-in-a-hurry look.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I wanted to straighten up a little. My maid’s gone South for the winter.”
“Nice place,” he said. “I’d always heard these Southgate Apartments were very chic. Is that a Degas on the wall?”
“Yes.”
“Nice.”
“Thanks … Want a Martini, Wally?” Feeling a little more sure now. “Hmm?”
“Okay, Marge,” he answered, placing his coat on the couch. “You have a nice view too. High up; looking out at the city, eh?”
“I like it,” she said.
For half an hour or so, it went easy like that. They sat side by side on the semicircle-shaped velvet couch before the fireplace, their drinks set on the kidney-shaped, marble-top coffee table. The apartment was a pleasant one — a big one, though it was only one large room with a small kitchen and foyer off to one side and a small dressing room and bath off to the other. But it looked big, and somehow plush. Marge was extravagant and flamboyant; and it looked like the kind of place she would live in, the kind of place someone would go to for cocktails in Manhattan, and think, this is nice.
Marge Mann didn’t look sixty certainly. She seemed younger — vivacious, amusing, pretty. Sometimes people mistook her for Wendy Barrie �
�� that always pleased her — sometimes, for Eve Arden.
As she sat beside Wally, drinking — on her fifth — she began to think Blance was right; all she had to do with Wally was bury the hatchet, be friendly; and she noticed how easily they conversed and she felt glad she had gotten the impulse to ask him here. She laughed when he said: “You know, Marge, the only thing that’s somewhat incongruous here is that fish tank!”
“My poor fishies,” she responded gaily. “They’re so pretty. Sometimes at night I just turn the lights out and sit here in the dark and watch them. I just love to watch them, all the colors. Want another drink? I do … Poor fishies.”
“I’ve still got some.”
“You’re slow, eh, Mr. Keene?” She smiled at him, reaching for the pitcher. “Gee, I just thought. Mr. Keene, tracer of lost persons … Remember that radio program?”
“Um-hmm … You drink quite fast, don’t you?”
“I’ve always been a heavy drinker, I guess. I couldn’t wake up in the morning without my little old can of beer.”
“Really? You drink in the morning?”
“Well, look papa-doodle,” Marge Mann said, feeling very lightheaded and happy by now, “I don’t make like an alky or anything. I just like my little old can of beer.”
“Where’d you pick up that expression?”
“Which one, papa-doodle?” “That one!”
“Oh, I always say that when I’m happy. Papa-doodle. Don’t know where it came from. Like it?”
“Un-uh.”
“Scuse me, papa-doodle.”
“I think you’re getting crocked, Marge.”
“Who’s crocked? I’m a little high, papa-doodle, but I’m as sober as you.”
Keene looked at her, disgust evident in his facial expression. Then he studied his glass, and finally, “What do you want, Marge?”
“What does who want?”
“Look, don’t play around. You want something. You asked me up here for a reason. Before you get too crocked, and before I have to catch my train, why don’t you tell me.”
“Okay, papa-doodle,” she said. “I will. I asked you up here to bury the hatchet.”
