Alone at Night

by Vin Packer

  “What part?”

  “The part about Jen being mixed up with Slater before Carrie’s death.”

  “How mixed with him? Sleeping together?”

  “Uh huh. Sleeping together.”

  “And you knew it.”

  “Yes. All those times she was pretending to be out with Horace Dryden and the others, it was Slater. The whole summer, it was him.”

  “Holy Cow! Did Carrie know it?”

  “I don’t think so. If she did, she knew it the way she knew everything about Slater… she just passed over it. I don’t know if she knew it or not.”

  “Well, how’d Al Secora know it?”

  “I don’t know that either. I don’t know very much about this whole thing, but it’s nasty gossip to be going around… Of course, Slater’ll ignore it. Just go on drinking—the hell with it. But it’ll hurt him, and it’ll hurt Jen too.”

  Lena said, “I don’t see that at all. You just found yourself another excuse to hit Slater about his drinking, s’all.”

  “One day he’ll show up at one of our meetings. It’s awfully hard to admit you’re an alcoholic!”

  “Yeah,” Lena said, “but you make up for it later. Later it’s all you can talk about.”

  “I talk about other things… Blue Eye, Chiggers, Rabies…”

  “Distemper, Housebreaking, Worms,” Lena finished the list. They both laughed.

  Chris said, “Seriously though, it’s nasty gossip.”

  “No one will give it a second thought, if you ask me. Oh, sure, they’ll believe Slater and Jen were having an affair—that wouldn’t surprise anyone who knew Slater, but this other stuff—it’s silly.”

  “I agree, but I thought Jen should know what’s being said.”

  “Tell me what Chayka said about Nancy.”

  “It wasn’t all that important. They have problems.”

  “I can’t imagine wanting to sleep with Nancy Chayka.”

  “You’re probably not her type either, Lena.”

  “Is there another woman?”

  “I think it’s just the Seven Year Itch. He’s lost interest. You know, Ted’s a bright guy, and she’s not exactly the high I.Q. type.”

  “Rubbish, Chris! Ted was Industrial High. Ten years ago he didn’t know Q was in the alphabet.”

  “Well, he knows it now. That’s my point. He’s matured.”

  “Just because he joined AA?”

  “Don’t ride it too hard, Lena.”

  “All right, but the fact is, Nancy Chayka is a slob. She’s let herself go.”

  The phone rang at that point and Lena said, “Doctor, my little dog is shivering and singing ‘My Old Kentucky Home’. Does it mean anything?”

  Chris said, “See if they pick it up at the hospital.”

  The phone stopped ringing, and Chris said, “They’ve got it… Slater never would have married Jen if Carrie hadn’t been killed.”

  “It’s her hair,” said Lena. “I don’t think Nancy Chayka’s been to a beauty parlor in ten…”

  Then the buzzer from the Animal Hospital signified the phone call was a personal one.

  Chris got up and lifted the phone’s arm from its wall bracket.

  Slater Burr’s voice said, “I’ve had it with you, Chris!”

  “Slater?”

  “Yes, Slater! I mean, this newest piece of slander is goddamned laughable!”

  The look on Chris’ face clued Lena to run into the bedroom and pick up the extension.

  Chris said, “It isn’t something I made up. I just thought Jen should know.”

  “I’m not only an alcoholic, I’m a murderer!”

  “I just told Jen what Secora was yelling around Boyson’s place last night, that’s all. I thought Jen should know what yesterday’s drinking expedition led to.”

  “I’m a murderer! Oh, that’s a hot one, Chris!”

  “I didn’t say it. Needless to say, I discount it, but…”

  “Oh, you’d love to believe that! You’d love to! Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you, Chris? You get Jen all excited just because we had a little fun at Walsh’s Place yesterday, and your wife fell on her face!”

  “Leave me out of it!” Lena’s voice chimed in from the extension.

  “Then stay the hell out of it!”

  “Yes, Lena,” said Chris, “stay out of it!”

  “He brought me into it! So I did fall on my face—you weren’t so great yourself, Slater Burr!”

  “Le-na!” Chris shouted. “Hang up the phone!”

  “The next time you get any bright ideas about me,” Slater said, “just tell them to me and leave Jen out of it!”

  “She happens to be my sister, Slater.”

  “We’ll be more than happy to leave you both alone,” Lena McKenzie said.

  There was a click.

  Chris said, “Slater?”

  “He hung up,” said Lena.

  “Look, Miss Busy-Body, did you have to butt in?”

  “My dog has fleas!” Lena sang out, “Doctor McKenzie? My dog has…”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Lena!” He dropped the phone and went back and sat at the kitchen table.

  When Lena waltzed in, he said, “You should have stayed out of it!”

  “Boy, was his dander up!”

  “I know,” said Chris. “It’s funny, because Jen just laughed off the whole thing.”

  “She probably had a delayed reaction.”

  “I know Jen better than that. She wasn’t at all excited. I never thought Slater would think twice about it. I thought Jen might, but not him… Well, that’s the thanks I get.”

  Lena sat down and picked up her cup of coffee. After a moment she said, “When was the last time they slept together?”

  “Now how the hell would I know that, Lena! My sister doesn’t…”

  “No. I mean Nancy and Ted,” Lena McKenzie said.

  II.

  Selma was already at work when Donald Cloward got back to the apartment. His father took a coffee break and sat with Cloward at the table in the living room.

  “The thing about Olinski,” Milton Cloward was saying, “is that he wants to please me. Now, a lot of fellows run the thing without thinking. Just another job to a lot of fellows. But Olinski remembers little pointers I give him, like Keller Insurance on seven, likes to have the operator ask a passenger getting off ‘You going to Keller?’ Then point out the office to anyone going there, you know, son?”

  “Yes, pop, I know.”

  “You see, Keller is just around the corner to the left, and people miss it. Sometimes just go right back down. Could lose business that way… But Olinski always remembers to ask, ‘You going to Keller?’… I put him on Car 2, you know, right before the holidays.”

  “You told me, pop.”

  “He looks up to me. It’s only natural to feel something for The Starter, but Olinski don’t just think of me as boss. He’s got a real notion to please me, you know, son?”

  “Sure, pop.”

  “That’s why I went to his place Christmas Eve. You shoulda seen his face when I come in the door, son, he…”

  Cloward sat there half-listening, with a loneliness all through him now. He was very tired, physically tired, and tired too of his father’s perpetual talk about the job and Olinski. He realized the same thing he knew when he sat listening to Guy: he was not in the picture at all. His only hope was Slater Burr, and last night he had almost destroyed that with his drunken visit to Laura Leydecker. He had to prove to Slater that he was a different person from the dumb kid eight years back, quick and ambitious and through with his past; that was his one chance, convincing Slater Burr of that.

  He had no interest in being Guy Gilbert’s secretary; the very idea of being a secretary repelled him. Nor did he have any enthusiasm about working in a huge city where he would count for nothing, with his prison record and his lack of education. But working for Mr. Burr he could climb fast, exactly as Mr. Burr had done, working for Nelson Stewart.

&n
bsp; In prison for a year he had had a cell mate who was keen on psychology. He used to discuss with him the fact Slater Burr sent a Christmas card every year.

  His cell mate had said, “Maybe this Burr wished his wife dead.”

  “What sense would that make?”

  “A lot. You did what he might have done himself, so in a way he’s grateful to you, because you saved him from doing it. It’s not unusual.”

  “He was crazy about her.”

  “You never know, Don… Then too, lots of breaks a guy gets here, he gets from the people he did the most damage to on the outside. I’ve seen it happen. I knew a murderer once, his only visits at the end were from the victim’s sister. It makes some people feel big as hell to forgive. They feel like little gods!”

  Cloward did not accept the theory because he was not sure he understood it, but he never lost the idea that when he got out he would at least straighten out one fact: he was sure he had not stolen Slater Burr’s car that night. It was like an obsession with him. He went over and over the conversation he would have with Mr. Burr, and he did not pretend to himself that it was all he wanted. He never lost the hope that Slater Burr might say, “We have a place for you in the plant, Buzzy, if you want it.”

  Once or twice, he even imagined Leydecker making the same offer; Leydecker saying, “All right, you and I know I gave you the keys, and you and I know that at the last minute I moved you to Slater Burr’s car, hoping you’d hit the drop-off. I’m ready to make it up to you.”

  But that was a fantasy, no thread of likelihood there. Leydecker had no sympathy for Cloward’s kind; Slater Burr, on the other hand, was cut from the same cloth. If Nelson Stewart had been a snob, Slater Burr could easily have been in Donald Cloward’s shoes. There was the difference, to Cloward’s mind.

  Now it was beginning to work out, wasn’t it? If he could just keep hold of himself, watch impulses, and drinking that inspired them… keep hold, and play everything exactly as Slater Burr had told him to… But in the back of his thoughts that morning was the fear Slater Burr would get wind of what he had done last night, after Mrs. Burr dropped him off, or that he would simply change his mind… that something like that would go wrong.

  His father said, “Well, son, I best be getting back.”

  He looked at the old man. He wanted to be a lot more than Milton Cloward, a lot more than a male secretary too.

  “I think I’ll sleep,” he said.

  “Did you have an exciting night with Ted?”

  “Sort of.”

  “We was worried when you didn’t come home for so long. Of course, we knew better than to think you’d get in any trouble, but…”

  “I saw some old friends, was all.”

  He felt the urge to tell his father he had been with the Burrs. He wondered if his father would react with anything but worry that his son would get into trouble again; it all came down to that… No, he would wait.

  “I never thought Ted Chayka’d make anything of himself, but it goes to show you… How long you staying on, son?”

  He felt like saying don’t worry, pop, I’ll get out of your way as fast as I can.

  “A day or two. I’m not sure yet.”

  “We’re glad to have you.”

  “Thanks, pop.”

  “After all, this is your home.”

  “Yes.”

  “I best be getting back, or Olinski will be The Starter before I know it! Got to keep my eye on Olinski,” his father chuckled.

  III.

  Anyone else might have taken the rest of the day off, or waited until the union took action, but Mona Sontag could only think in terms of finding a new job immediately. She had already missed her first Christmas Club payment, and with Burr sick, and the terramycin Dr. McKenzie had advised, so expensive, her dismissal that noon had rocked her into a panic. Behind the panic was: I told you so, Mom.

  In a way she did not even wonder why she was fired. She was the sort of person who gave money to the Cancer Fund out of fear that refusal to contribute would lead to cancer… Over and over yesterday, she had told herself two things: don’t get mixed up with people you’re not in a class with, and don’t give in to Albert Secora just because he bought you such an expensive present… She had not listened to herself on either count. She had gone right on drinking with the Burrs and the McKenzies up at Jitz’s, and when Al took her home, she had let him do it on the couch in her parlor. She had brushed her doubts and rules aside, and now she was paying for it.

  The personnel director at Leydecker Electric studied her application form.

  He said, “Ten years at Burr Manufacturing Company?”

  “Ten years,” said Mona Sontag.

  “And you were fired just like that? For no reason?”

  “The reason given,” said Mona Sontag, “was that the office was overstaffed.” God punished, was all. But I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the Lord.

  “Right at Christmas time,” Mr. Percy, the personnel man said, “and right in the middle of the day… That seems strange.”

  “I was given two weeks severance pay,” Mona Sontag said, to emphasize that if she had done something very wrong, she would have been let go without pay, as Linda Hadley had been let go, for stealing from petty cash.

  “Were you the only one let go?”

  “The only one from the office,” she hedged. It made no sense to feel shame at being fired along with Al, but she felt shame anyway, because of letting him do it last night… all so shoddy, there on the couch in her parlor, drunk. There was no point in trying to figure out Slater Burr’s reasoning. She had been too drunk to remember what had taken place in the latter part of the afternoon, at Jitz’s, and she no longer cared. God had punished, and now she needed a new job.

  “Then others were fired, in the plant?”

  “I heard some talk about it, but I can’t say for sure.”

  “Miss Sontag,” Mr. Percy said, “would you mind very much waiting here a moment?”

  Mona Sontag gave him a defeated smile, a shrug. “I got all day.”

  Some holidays these were turning out to be! Burr with the Blue Eye, and herself cheapened and out of a job. I told you so, Mona, she thought, while she waited for Mr. Percy to return.

  eighteen

  Min’s solemn eyes watched from the leather frame on his desk, as Kenneth Leydecker finished his telephone conversation with Mrs. Basso.

  “The doctor gave her some tranquilizers,” said Mrs. Basso, “and they’ve quieted her down, sir, but she wants to be sure you talked with the Cloward boy, as you promised.”

  “That’s all taken care of,” he said. Min’s eyes seemed to sharpen with disappointment at the lie, and Leydecker looked away from her face, and down at the report on his desk. “… the probable sales volume will be more than $9,000,000 for the company this year compared with $4,250,000 last year.” He said into the phone’s mouthpiece: “This is a very busy time for me, but I’d come home if it’d help, Mrs. Basso.”

  “No, sir, I think it’d make everything worse. I think the girl wants to be alone, is what I think. His coming back like this has started it all up again, sir.”

  “I know… I know… Did Doctor Yates say anything else?”

  “Just to keep her doped up until things pass over, sir.”

  “Is she eating, at least?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “I see… Well, you’ve done all you can, Mrs. Basso, and I appreciate it.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s such a shame.”

  “Yes,” Leydecker said, “call me if there’s anything important.”

  He hung up, and looked back at Min’s photograph. “It wouldn’t have done any good to talk to the boy!” he said aloud to her. “The police know how to…” his voice trailed off, and he shook his small body from his thoughts, shuffled through his papers, and gave Leydecker Electric and The City of Cayuta his attention… At least the day had brought one good, positive thing Kenneth Leydecker’s
way. In the morning mail, a letter from The Ithaca Lock Corporation. They were highly interested in Leydecker’s very confidential proposal for a merger with Burr Manufacturing Company. Their plant outside Ithaca was amply equipped to accommodate a merger, and their tentative estimate was much more than Slater Burr could hope for from any other concern. If Leydecker could squeeze Burr out via the zoning proposal, Burr would have no choice but to accept I.L.C.’s offer. It was a coup for Leydecker, no doubt of that; quite different from leaving Burr with no alternative, which would make Leydecker look like the villain… He would rid Cayuta of its foremost eyesore in center town, enhance Cayuta to G.E., then work for Leydecker Electric’s merger with G.E… Very neat and sound, but there would be plenty of careful work on Leydecker’s part.

  Leydecker had already warned Oliver Percy not to hire any more employees from Burr Manufacturing Company. A representative from I.L.C. was arriving in Cayuta next week, all on the sly, to look over Burr Company. Leydecker wanted no labor disputes there… everything in order. No one wanted to buy anyone else’s bitter draft. Burr Company was worth little enough, without the added distraction of labor trouble. Even though that would not affect I.L.C. after a merger, it looked bad.

  After Burr and The Cayuta Macaroni Company were gone, Cayuta would be a decent city. The day was past when a small city could exist on its home-grown industry; all the big money was on the outside. The thing was, to pull it in, and that was what Kenneth Leydecker intended to do—pull it in! The trouble with Slater Burr’s kind was that they did not want to work for anyone else; they were living back in the forties, when there was a war and war contracts… The trouble with small cities categorized as “depressed areas” was they did not gang up on the Slater Burrs—force them to act… Well, Kenneth Leydecker would do it for Cayuta, and Kenneth Leydecker would come out just as nicely as Cayuta would.

  He picked up the inter-office phone at a buzz, and listened to Oliver Percy.

  “Send her up,” he said. “I’ll talk to her myself.”

  And that was part of it too… reaching everyone, big and little alike, having time for a secretary named Miss Sontag, the same as for Hamilton Carruth, from Ithaca Lock.