by Vin Packer
She waited for the druggist to get her the medicine, and then she found herself staring at the phone booth, back by the soda fountain. She looked up at the big clock—four-thirty, and she thought to herself: He wouldn’t be home yet. I could just say, Mrs. Burr, ma’am, I’m sorry about yesterday…
That was all… I’m sorry about yesterday. If God and the priests weren’t going to help her, she would have to help herself. While she fumbled in her change purse for a dime, she took it back about God not helping her; it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t very safe to think along those lines. No, God was okay… and there was a dime. The trouble with Father Gianonni was he drank all the communion wine, and was half-asleep most of the time, as a result.
Bravely, she walked back and shut herself inside.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mrs. Burr?”
“Yes.”
“This is Mona Sontag, from Walsh’s Place. I mean, from yesterday at Walsh’s Place. Remember?”
“Oh yes, Mona, how are you?”
“I’m fine… I’m not fine, exactly. I’m sorry, Mrs. Burr, ma’am, about yesterday.”
“Mona, we were all celebrating Christmas. You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“Well, I don’t remember it very well.”
“Mona, we were all in the same condition. There’s no reason to feel badly.”
The tears gathered in Mona’s eyes then. She said, “I been ten years with B.M.C., ma’am. My dog is even named Burr. I just—don’t know what to say, but if I did something yesterday to cause…” and her voice broke, and she fished in her coat pocket for a tissue.
“Cause what, Mona?”
“Cause Mr. Burr to fire me, ma’am.”
“Mr. Burr fired you?”
“He said the office was overstaffed, but Mrs. Burr, there’s work enough there for ten girls.”
“I don’t understand. Are you sure that was the reason?”
“No, ma’am, because he fired Al Secora too, so I thought…”
“I see.”
“I thought it was something I did yesterday, or Al.”
“Mona,” Mrs. Burr said gently, “let me talk to Mr. Burr when he comes in.”
“I tried to get another job, but…”
“You’re upset now, Mona. You just forget about it until I talk with Mr. Burr. Then I’ll call you, tonight, at your home. All right?”
“All right, Mrs. Burr.”
There was a click, and Mona Sontag said a feeble, futile “goodbye” to the dial tone, hung up, and let herself out the booth.
III.
Only last night, Oliver Percy had said he should have a raise, for all Kenneth Leydecker was expecting of him lately. He had not said it to Kenneth Leydecker; he would prefer to forget the person to whom he had said it, but even if there had been a bit of braggartry in his long harangue over a glass of sherry late, late last night, this afternoon was proof enough his complaint was justified… Here it was five-thirty already, but forget all about that; look who he was here in center town traffic with!
Finally, he had located him at the Polish War Veterans Club. He was to deliver him to Leydecker Electric, where Leydecker was waiting to talk with him… Well, that would be a pretty talk, you can bank on that! In his condition!… They were driving through downtown traffic, and it was no easy task to steer, with Secora clapping his arms on Oliver Percy’s shoulders and breathing his foul breath in Percy’s furious face!
“Tell you what, buddy,” Secora was saying, “we’re gonna have a strike and a trial, hah?… Oh, ask not what Slater Burr can do to you, but what you can do to Slater Burr! Hah? J.F.K… Hah?… Hey—knock, knock!” Secora rapped Oliver Percy’s shoulder with his knuckle. “Knock, knock!” he repeated.
“Please!” said Percy, “this is five o’clock traffic.”
I’m hardly a Personnel Director, Percy had said, only last night, my title should be Executive Confidant!
“You know what I did last night, Mr. Percy-O? First time I ever did it to a woman, see. You gotta be a little boozed up, see. I—”
“I don’t care to hear about it, thank you!”
“Well, ain’t that the old nose-in-air fer you!”
“I’m trying to drive this car safely.”
“Someone ought to pin a rose on you for that, Percy. Hey, knock, knock!”
“Will you stop punching me, please?”
Percy swung the car over to the curb, near L.E.’s downtown hiring center. Somehow, he was supposed to propel this person up to Kenneth Leydecker’s office!
“Who’s there? Astronaut,” Secora was talking to himself, “astronaut if Slater Burr killed his wife, but ask what your country can do for you!”
“Oh, shush! Shush!” Oliver Percy shrieked, and by now, the five o’clock crowds were thick in front of the place… gradually, a few here, a few there, turning to stare.
It was an immense embarrassment for Oliver Percy even to be seen in the company of Secora; after all, he could hardly turn to the onlookers and say, “This is all part of my duties, you understand!”
Percy felt sudden relief when he saw Ted Chayka walking toward the car.
IV.
“… So we come, to the end, of a per-fect day,” Miss Rae sang to herself as she covered the typewriter and dropped her pencils in the white mug on her desk, just outside Mr. Burr’s office… A bit of irony at day’s end, she mused… per-fect day, indeed! Perfectly preposterous!… Ah, and the dear lamb in there so sorry about all of it now… How many times had he buzzed her to see if she had gotten hold of Mona Sontag yet!
“Don’t worry, sir,” she told him each time, dear heart, don’t worry, “I’ll locate her. She’s probably in some café.”
“Keep trying Secora too, Miss Rae. Tell them both it was a mistake.”
Yes, lambie, and we all make them. “Yes, sir,” she had answered.
Well, she would certainly have enough to fill a page or two in her diary this evening.
She planned the beginning: “I knew instantly that something was wrong when he walked in this morning. His dear blue eyes were sunk deep in…”
The door of the reception room swung open, and a young man in a leather jacket stood there, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Well, if it isn’t Marlon Brando, Miss Rae said to herself. She liked her little mind jokes. The obituary of her daydreams read: “Behind the spinsterish façade of Millicent Marvin Rae, was a rollicking good humor, and a quick and full heart.”
She said to the young man, “The office is closed.”
“I want to see Slater Burr.”
“If wishes were horses,” Miss Rae answered, “beggars might ride.”
“Is he still here, or isn’t he?”
“He is. But you have no appointment, and if it’s employment you’re seeking, the employment office is on the first floor, to the right of the door as you enter, and it will be open at 8:30 in the morning.”
“I’ll wait for him to come out.” The young man sat down in one of the leather chairs.
Miss Rae said, “This office is closed, young man.”
“Has he got someone in there with him?”
“That is none of your business.”
“Uh huh. Well, I’ll wait, Miss, if you don’t mind. I’ll just sit here quietly and wait for him to come out.”
“It won’t get you anywhere… What do you want with Mr. Burr anyway?”
“That is none of your business, Miss. I’ll wait.”
“Wait. You won’t bother me,” said Miss Rae.
But it did bother her, which was one reason she did not pick up the inter-office and tell Mr. Burr he was there. Heaven knows what the young man wanted, but Miss Rae knew Mr. Burr would probably tell her to just go along, he’d take care of it. Then she would miss her ride home with him… Dear, dear heart, our time together is so fleeting—moments stolen from the years in inches… Ah lamb, and tonight he needed her, so upset and all, his cherished brow furrowed in frowns and worries. There, there, it’s no
t that bad.
“We all get out of sorts, sir,” she had planned to say, as he drove her down Genesee Street. “And I’ve seldom seen you lose your temper so. You were due. We’re all due a day like that, sir.”
And he would say, “What about you, though, Miss Rae… in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never once…”
“Ah, never mind an old maid, sir. But I have my days too, sir.” Days near you, lamb.
The young man said, “When’s he usually come out?”
“Oh, this time sometimes, sometimes later… sometimes six, and sometimes seven.”
“Tell him I’m waiting then. Tell him that.”
“I can’t disturb him, young man. Those are my orders.”
“Do you hang around until he leaves?”
Always… waiting, hoping: Miss Rae, can I drop you?… She said, “I do my work. When my work is done, I go home.” Tonight, after the evening ritual—the cooking dinner, sweeping, bathing, preparing clothes for the next day, then: the diary, writing in it at her desk, in her nightie and robe, with her hair pinned in rags: “Today, he must have had a fight with her. There’s no other explanation. Two people were fired. I never saw him in such a rage.”
Marlon Brando was stubbing out his cigarette impatiently. Just go on! Just leave! She said, “I think he’ll be very late today, young man,” but her words were punctuated by the opening of his door.
The young man stood up. “Mr. Burr? Mr. Slater Burr?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to talk with you, Mr. Burr.”
“What about?”
That’s a lamb; don’t give him the time of day; O I’m waiting, see me, dear?
“It’s personal, if you don’t mind…” looking now in Miss Rae’s direction. She went right on putting away her things, ostensibly oblivious, and he would say: “Anything you have to say can be said in front of Miss Rae.”
Slater Burr said, “Miss Rae?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Why don’t you just run along now. Why, it’s after five-thirty!”
Sometimes, though, it was after six, remember? And I was always here, lamb, and today when you need reassurance, I wanted to…
“Yes, sir, I’m leaving now,” said Millicent Rae.
twenty
“All right,” said Slater Burr, “fifty dollars, but how the hell do you know Oliver Percy?”
“That’s my business. I just want to get out of this town. You hand over the money, and I’ll say my little spiel, and we’ll call it even, okay?”
“Thirty, forty, fifty,” Slater counted out the bills and slapped them to Miss Rae’s desk. “All right, I’m waiting.”
“Percy claims this fellow he works for has it in for you.”
“That’s not news. But what about I.L.C.?”
“Percy says this fellow—Limedecker, or whatever it is, has plans to get I.L.C. to come and see your plant. Bid on it. All on the sly, you understand. L.E. wants to merge with G.E. They hope they can get you out with the zoning plan, force it so you have to sell to I.L.C. Percy says the Industrial Development Committee won’t be sympathetic with you if you get an offer from I.L.C., and your likelihood of swinging a loan in these parts will be unlikely, if you know what I mean, if you got an offer from I.L.C.… That make sense?”
“Yes, it makes sense,” said Slater Burr.
“Percy says Leydecker will stop at nothing to get you out! He says it’s like an obsession with him, getting you out of town!”
“Is that it?”
“Yes. Do I get my fifty now?”
Slater pointed to the money, and the young man scooped it up.
“Is this the way you live?” Slater said.
“It’s the way I earn travelling expenses sometimes, when I’m stuck in a small town like this. I head for the Y.M.C.A., sort of a home office.”
“And that’s where you met Oliver Percy?”
“He goes there to—swim,” the young man snickered.
“You don’t look queer,” Slater Burr said.
“I’m not. Me queer? Would you take me for a faggot?”
“I don’t know what I’d take you for,” said Slater, buttoning his coat, “but I know I’d a hell of a lot rather be taken for queer than taken for you!”
Whoom! Carrie’s explosive laughter; oh, Mr. High and Mighty, is evil so offensive to your delicate sensitivities? And he laughed inwardly at himself, waiting until the young man was gone; how coolly he had said those words: I’d a hell of a lot rather… Whoom! Whoom!
But Fate was often an unsuspecting ally. He knew it as he picked the phone off its cradle and made the call to Miss Rae; let there be a strike over Sontag and Secora, it was all part of the scheme of things; only Miss Rae knew better, knew that he had fired them in a clap of fury, and he would tell her they were not to be rehired, she was not to try and reach them. Her telephone did not answer; when he got home, he would call her again.
And when he got home, he knew even more how easily Fate often cooperated. In the kitchen he made himself a martini, waiting for Jen to finish her tirade.
“… makes you look guilty, that’s what I’m concerned about—firing them that way, all over asinine gossip!” she said.
He said, “Jenny, how well do you know me?”
“I’m beginning to wonder.”
“Do you ever listen when I talk about business?”
“Slater, it has nothing to do with…”
“Just listen to me, Jenny. Please?” a little smile playing at his lips. “I fired them because I want a strike! I couldn’t just fire two people for no reason; it’d look as though I wanted a strike. Jenny, I chose them because it’ll seem as though anger motivated me… Oh, I’ll be forced to rehire them, no doubt of that, but for awhile there’ll be plenty of trouble at the plant.”
“What do you mean?”
And he told her about Leydecker and Ithaca Lock. He watched while her expression changed from one of anxiety to one of admiration, then love, in the softness of her eyes, the release of her full lips from their tightness, the beautiful, soft countenance of calm.
“Now do you see?” he said.
“But you were angry when you left this morning. I’d never seen you so angry.”
“Yes. I collected my thoughts in the car, on the way to the office… You see, Jenny, everything works out.”… Whoom!… Well, Carrie, it does; lookit me, hmmm? He said to Jen, “Is Cloward in the living room?”
“Yes… Slater, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, God, don’t apologize! Business is complicated, Jenny.”
“You had me scared. For awhile I was even…”
“Even what?”
She laughed. “Oh, well… I let Donald drive, coming out here?”
“Yes?”
“He had trouble starting the car—the shift, you know?”
“And for awhile you began to think I was the bogy man, hmm?”
“It did frighten me a little. On top of that, Miss Sontag calling, and everything.”
“Yes, well, he probably had trouble with the shift the night he killed Carrie too… You know, Jenny, I think you’re right. I’m not much on parlor psychology, never liked it, but I think you’re right. I probably did feel some guilt about Carrie’s death. I suppose it’s only natural.”
“Of course, it is, darling.”
“Yes, well, I’ll be glad when Cloward’s out of here.”
“And so will I! Slater, I love you.”
“Je t’adore.”
“It still always sounds like ‘shut the door’ when you say it.”
“I wish we could go upstairs and shut the bedroom door.”
“Take a raincheck, will you? For about eleven-thirty tonight?”
“You’re on.”
“Slater, I feel so much better! Oh, darling!”
And it was fine between them again; the Martini just right too; a giddy glow of euphoria all through Slater Burr, with the explosive sounds of Carrie’s laughter far, far in the backg
round.
II.
“I’m sorry about my cousin, sir,” said Ted Chayka. “I took him to his place, and I got my wife to go over there, keep him home for the night.”
“Yes, that’s best. I want to do what’s best for the town, do you understand me, Chayka?”
“I certainly do, Mr. Leydecker.”
“Your cousin has quite an imagination.”
“You mean the stuff about Slater Burr killing his wife?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t blame Mr. Burr for firing him.”
“It wasn’t because of Secora’s idiotic talk, Ted. It’s a bit more complicated. Slater Burr is above that… No, I trace it all to Oliver Percy.”
“What, sir?”
“It’s too involved. But you see Percy is a braggart. He gets puffed up with importance… Now, he dates Donald Cloward’s sister. He’s told me a few times that he takes her out… I think he’s been telling her my business, showing off the fact he’s in on many very personal and discreet business relations… I think he told her, and she told her brother, and word got back to Burr through the Cloward boy.”
Chayka did not understand, but he nodded as though he did.
Leydecker said, “It was very nice of you to come here and deliver Cloward’s message… I’m sorry you got involved in all this other business.”
“Oh, that’s all right, sir.”
“I know a policeman doesn’t make much, and I’m happy to reimburse you for your time.”
“Please, Mr. Leydecker, I wouldn’t think of it.”
“I want to reimburse you… and there’s something else.”
“I don’t want any money from you, sir.”
“Never mind protesting, Ted… I want to give you something. And,” Leydecker looked at his wrist watch, “it’s quarter to eight now… I want you to do something else for me.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Secora claims Cloward is at Slater Burr’s.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to call there and tell Cloward that I’d like to talk with him. Here in my office. At nine-thirty tonight. Tell him personally. Tell him it’s about Laura.”
