“And so I have to worry about paying my rent while those two maniacs fight out their adolescent traumas? But why did he pick me?”
“Just remember what Samuel Johnson said about schoolteachers,” said Maria Teresa. “They are men amongst boys and boys amongst men.”
“Rich people make me sick,” said Misty.
Misty spent the rest of the afternoon in her office with her door half closed. She studied her checkbook and savings account book and she calculated on her machine how much it cost her to live each month. Noises in the hallway made her jump. When she looked around her office, her eyes filled with tears. She loved her work, and where else was a linguist with degrees from the University of Chicago and l’École des Hautes Études going to work, if that linguist did not want to teach? Her work had been going so well, and now it was all going to end. She turned her swivel chair toward the window and stared unhappily at a girl watering her office plants in the building across the street. She was about to cry, but Vincent interrupted her. He looked cheerful and unruffled. One glance at Misty and he knew things did not look promising.
“Will you have dinner with me?” he said.
“You can go to hell. I’m about to be fired.”
“Oh, that,” said Vincent. “Did you take that seriously? I just heard about it. Denton is on his way over to talk to you. Nobody’s getting fired. That was just one of those Denton-Roy ignorant army clashes. Now it turns out that Roy was just having the last laugh. He just quit. Seems he had a big job in Washington all lined up and wanted to make life rough for Denton before he left.”
Misty’s face went white. A red curtain of fury fell over her eyes. She picked up the first thing she could lay her hands on and threw it against the wall. It was a heavy glass ashtray and it tore a hole in the plasterboard before it shattered to the floor. Then she got up and made for the door.
“Where are you going?” Vincent said.
“To tell Denton to shove it,” said Misty.
She was gone before he could stop her. Vincent sat down at her desk and wondered if he would have stopped her. He felt he would not have. She was off to do battle with Denton and he was worried and proud at the same time. This was accompanied by admiration and tenderness. He was seized with love. Sitting in her chair in her office, he felt very close to her, but when he looked around, he realized that there was very little to feel close to. Her suede coat hung over a chair. On the floor lay the shattered ashtray. On her desk was a ceramic dish of paper clips, her calculator, and a stack of papers on top of which was a spark plug that functioned as a paperweight. There were no plants, no posters, no photographs. He lit a cigar. In addition to worry, pride, admiration, tenderness, and love, he also felt guilt. He was so used to the cavalier behavior of people like Denton that it hardly registered. This, he felt, was nothing to be proud of. He wanted to race down the hall and knock Denton’s teeth down his throat and save Misty. But when he thought of Misty, he felt that perhaps someone would have to come and save Denton.
An hour later, she was back.
“What are you still here for?” she said, grabbing her coat. Her face was pale and grim.
“I was waiting for you,” Vincent said.
“Then get me the hell out of here and just take me somewhere.”
She did not speak in the elevator, in the taxi, or in the banquette of the expensive bar Vincent took her to. When the waiter appeared, Misty seemed unable to speak. Vincent ordered whisky and soda.
“What will you have?” he asked her.
“One of those things they have in old movies,” she muttered.
Vincent ordered her a gin fizz. Silence descended again until the waiter brought the drinks. This gave Vincent a little time to consider the options. If Denton had fired Misty, if he could not see Misty every day, he would simply have to throw himself at her mercy sooner. If she had not been fired, he had a few months to go before throwing himself at her mercy. He looked at her quickly out of the corner of his eye. She sat huddled in her green coat looking malevolent.
“All right,” said Vincent. “Drinks are here. Please take one long sip and tell me what happened.”
Misty took a sip. “My, this is disgusting,” she said. “Well, here’s what happened. I found Denton coming down the hall looking for me. I said I was looking for him. We went into Roy’s office because it was nearest. He must have gotten out fast—there wasn’t a thing in it. Then I told Denton that he was a son of a bitch and that he may have gotten away with fucking around with other people’s jobs, but he wasn’t going to fuck around with mine, and that I quit. I said I was quitting because his kind of cavalier ownership, his brand of whimsicality came a little too close to threatening my livelihood and it was clear he either couldn’t see the connection or didn’t care. I told him I didn’t want to work for some prep school snip.”
“You said that?” Vincent said. “What did he say?”
“He looked sort of sick. He said he hoped I would stay, that the whole thing had gotten out of hand and that no one was ever going to be fired. I told him he ought to go out and get a job and find out what being an employee was like.”
“What did he say?”
“He apologized,” said Misty.
“He did? Denton?”
“Yes. He said he was sorry and asked me to stay.”
“And you said?”
“I said I would stay and that if he ever used me as a pawn again, I would either kill him or sue him. I come from a family of pinkos and lawyers. We don’t screw around.”
“Oh,” said Vincent. “That’s quite amazing.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Misty. “It’s disgusting. The really awful thing about people like Denton is that they make people like me do things like that. Do you think I like behaving that way? Well, you’re wrong, buster. That’s the worst side of me. He just can’t use me the way he does the others. If they want to dance around him, that’s their business. I’m not going to be treated that way.”
“I think you’re wonderful,” said Vincent.
“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Well, you would. I’m not wonderful. I’m the scourge of God. Now, do I really have to drink this thing?”
“Yes,” said Vincent. “Every drop. It’ll do you good.”
What it did was go straight to her head. The glasses on the long, mahogany bar began to wink at her. The vase of flowers on the side table took on a deep, rosy glow. She leaned her head back against the plush.
“Maybe I should have another one,” she said.
“A very wise move,” said Vincent.
“Vincent?”
“Yes?”
“Can we just sit around here for a while and get drunk?”
“A very wise idea,” said Vincent. “I’d love to see you drunk. Are you ferocious when drunk, or what?”
“I don’t know,” said Misty. “Suddenly, everything looks very soft.”
“A good sign,” said Vincent. He left his chair and slid over next to her on the banquette.
“Don’t kiss me or anything,” said Misty.
“I promise nothing,” said Vincent.
A gin fizz was placed in front of her. She sipped it slowly, her eyes a little glazed.
“Don’t mess around with me when I’m in a state,” she said. “I’ll tell you something you don’t know. I’m awfully glad I’m here with you. If you use that against me, I’ll kill you personally.”
The Magna Charta office was a long, stylish “L.” The prints on the walls were mostly Dürers, chastely framed in thin gilt wood. In the anteroom were framed covers of Runnymeade. The windows looked out over the roofs of midtown Manhattan and Central Park. Guido’s office was a small room paneled with bookshelves. These contained back issues of Runnymeade bound in green, books by authors the Foundation had subsidized, and spiral-bound Foundation reports on projects and works in progress. On a long table by the window were the three Peking glass bowls that had belonged to Uncle Giancarlo and went with the office. There was a brass
watering can filled with water and egg shells, a combination suggested by Holly to give the office plants a better life. Uncle Giancarlo had been against houseplants, but Holly had brought in a gardenia, an orange tree, and the asparagus fern that had once hung over her bed. The sight of this fern frequently sent Guido into a fit of nostalgia. In the hallway was a small refrigerator made of fake bird’s eye walnut, which when opened revealed a plastic lime, bottles of seltzer, and three cans of shrimp bisque. At the back was a small conference room containing a couch, a long table, and two upholstered chairs.
On Guido’s desk stood a framed photograph of Holly sitting near a wall of roses. She looked calm, impeccable, and absolutely gorgeous. It alarmed Guido how often he sat staring at this photograph. On the other side of the desk was another photo, also framed. This was a picture of Vincent and Guido, looking splendid. Holly had taken it one afternoon when they were feeling very pleased with themselves. Their hands were thrust forcefully into their pockets and their heads were thrown slightly backward. They looked like men on good terms with the outdoors—rumpled, handsome, and sporty. Their high spirits had been the occasion of the photo: they had been filled with an almost anachronistic sense of well-being. “If we’re feeling this good, we ought to have a record of it,” Guido had said.
Between them in the picture, but mostly obscured by the well-cut shoulders of their jackets, was a blur that was Jane Motherwell. Now she was gone and her replacement had not yet been found. Guido was sitting at his desk. He had called a temporary agency to get a typist and an employment service to get a secretary. That accomplished, he was thinking about Holly and wishing he were home.
Guido longed for home. He longed for Holly’s dinners. He longed for Holly. The elevator man had told Guido that he was the only man who seemed happy in the evening, and he was. He felt his three years of married life had gone by in a swoon, although the details, like those in great paintings, stood out in high relief. But what Holly thought was still a mystery to him. Although by action she seemed to love him ardently, Holly did not seem to live in the realm of the emotions. She felt, she emoted, and she never gave it a second thought. The complexities of love and marriage were things she lived with and through, and that was that. Guido, to whom thinking and feeling were the same thing, was learning that you might live with someone whose sense of life was not your own. The world and Holly were on excellent terms. It did not flare up and surprise her. It held no disappointments, alarms, or clubs with which to beat a citizen over the head. She had no grand schemes, no secret visions. Her own notions of things were so internal that she barely spoke about them. But for all that, she was the best companion Guido had ever had.
Holly had no ambitions to speak of, except to live nicely from day to day. Since she had enough money to support this one ambition, she devoted her life to domestic genius. She went to the Bronx Botanical Garden for lessons in Japanese flower arranging and bonzai. She took Chinese cooking classes and fed Guido the results. She had discovered that she had no talent for drawing but she did have a real affinity with clay. After a few small efforts on the potter’s wheel, she turned out a large black and silver Oriental urn, got bored, and began a survey of Chinese art. She read thrillers by the dozen, Victorian novels, French belles lettres, and large volumes on the subject of art history. It amazed Guido that she knew so much and did so little with it. When they had first met, she had been writing her master’s thesis on the subject of Chinese export porcelain. She had been encouraged to publish it. When the subject was brought up, she yawned and said she might some day. Education, she said, was something that enriched your life—not something you did things with. Guido thought of her as a city-state—strong, well-defended, and perfectly self-sufficient. Holly could cook, do needlework, play tennis, and fish. She had studied the Italic hand, the Carolingian minuscule, and the restoration of paintings and china. She could balance her checkbook to forty-five cents, make a perfect piecrust, identify most wild flowers in the northeastern United States, and bandage simple wounds. She could stand on her head, do a swan dive, repair lamps, and knew the collections of most major museums. Guido had once recited this list to Vincent, including the fact that Holly spoke French and Italian.
“Does she fly on commercial airlines?” Vincent had asked.
“Of course she does. Why?”
“Anything short of a transport carrier would crash under the weight of those accomplishments,” Vincent had said.
Guido lived happily with the fruits of those accomplishments. Holly balanced his life and made it sweet. But she produced in Guido a violent longing, even when she was in the same room, as if he could never quite get enough of her. At times she appeared to him like a crystal of smoky quartz. You could see through it and into it. You gaped at its perfection. You looked it up to learn how it had been formed. You took it home and kept it as a treasure. It sat on a shelf to be considered in all its splendor, and it never, never revealed a thing about itself.
By the time Vincent turned up for what had turned into a weekly Wednesday lunch, Guido had hired a secretary. The two temporaries had made appointments and then failed to show up. Five candidates had called. One was an actress who said she would be frequently on the road; one was a young man who said he was writing a novel with the aid of a computer; one did not know how to type; another could type but would not answer telephones; and the last did not speak very much English. A person named Betty Helen Carnhoops won hands down. She was a square girl with piano legs, short, efficient hair of no particular color, and green harlequin glasses that sprouted in each corner a gold rose with a rhinestone in the center. She typed ninety-five words a minute, took shorthand, and answered the phone in a brisk, businesslike manner. When Uncle Giancarlo eventually met her, he said, with a sigh: “How could you replace my beautiful tiger of wrath with such a horse of instruction? This is an office that gives money away for the purpose of making things beautiful and now it is made efficient by a cardboard box.”
Vincent felt he did some of his best work at Guido’s office. He had written several papers sitting at the table in the back. His own office, like most of the offices at the Board, was crummy. The Board was located in an old building whose ornate marble lobby gave no hint of the squalor above. The Board did not believe in certain frills and so the offices had not been painted for many years. Vincent’s was a grayish yellow further flawed by the chipped plaster and nail holes that marked previous tenants’ attempts to beautify. It was a workmanlike place, but for sheer inspiration Vincent legged over to Guido’s cleaner, sleeker quarters.
He bounced in, full of hope and cheer. Guido was sitting in the outer office looking smug and drinking a glass of seltzer and lime.
“I have finally hired a secretary,” said Guido. “What’s making you so springy today?”
“Misty,” said Vincent. “She actually expressed a form of affection for me last night.”
“Oh,” said Guido. “Did you bring the sandwiches? You’ll have to eat fast and then shove off. I’ve got to get everything ready for Betty Helen.”
“You hired someone called Betty Helen?”
“You appear to be in love with a girl named Misty Berkowitz,” said Guido, “so shut up.”
Vincent hated Betty Helen on sight.
“How could you hire her after Jane?” Vincent said.
“Because, unlike you, I had to work with Jane. You only had to flirt with her.”
“This one’s awful,” said Vincent.
“This one is pleasant,” said Guido, without looking up from the proofs he was correcting. “She knows the value of real work. You don’t have to get used to her. She has no mannerisms. A pleasant and efficient girl and she’s married, so I don’t have to endure the fallout of a stress-filled emotional life.”
“Married?” said Vincent. “She’s married? Jesus, who would marry her?”
“You are a physical snob,” said Guido. “It’s all very well for you to crab, but I have a job to do. It’s taken me two y
ears to pull this place together. You have no idea how batty Uncle Giancarlo was toward the end. He got bored and started giving money to people who wanted to wrap the Empire State Building in macramé. He wanted to fund a sculptor who believed that polygamy was a structure and that a small polygamous community in the Southwest would be an earth work. He started running poems in Turkish in the magazine. Meanwhile, I have put out excellent and profitable issues of Runnymeade and I did it with no help from Jane. Now I have help. Why don’t you figure out how much garbage Betty Helen and her husband account for and leave me alone.”
“Who would marry her?” Vincent moaned.
“She’s married to a chemical engineer. She makes one call to him a day. It is a brief call. When Jane was here I had unexplained calls to Rio and Paris on the bill every month.”
“It’s the amount of garbage for one squared,” said Vincent.
“Isn’t it doubled?”
“Squared,” growled Vincent. “That girl is a cup of tainted soup.”
“She’s nice,” said Guido. “I’m very pleased with myself.”
“Guido, how can you be so naive? That girl is a slime mould. She’ll sit under the fluorescent lights out here and weird habits will sprout. Believe me, she’s just lying in wait.”
“Well, she’s my secretary,” said Guido. “And I think she’s nice.”
The subject was closed. Betty Helen took a lunch break of exactly one hour. Most of the day she sat behind her typewriter, typing at top speed while looking out the window. She sat straight up in her chair. She did not speak to Vincent and he did not speak to her. To keep Vincent out of her way, Guido arranged their lunches in the back office.
“You might say hello to her,” said Guido.
“I nodded my head,” said Vincent. “Besides, her glasses glitter at me.” He paced around nervously, eating shrimp bisque out of a can. He had forgotten about Betty Helen Carnhoops. He was brooding about Misty.
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