The Husband

by Sol Stein

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Husband

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Husband

  By Sol Stein

  Copyright 2013 by Sol Stein

  Cover Copyright 2013 Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 1969, 1972.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Sol Stein and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The Magician

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  FOR PAT

  modus vivendi

  The Husband

  Sol Stein

  Chapter One

  The office was folding up early. Secretarial desks were cleared, typewriters covered, and the girls were lining up in front of the mirrors in the john to pretty themselves. Account executives, eyes on the clock, were returning client calls and keeping them short. Copywriters and artists had stopped being creative at four o’clock. It was now four thirty, and the only clerical employees of the agency not caught up in the frenetic preparty activity were the two girls manning the Dale, Bowne, and Armstrong switchboard, which they would continue to do until one minute to five, when they’d pull the plugs and connect the night lines, though nobody would be around to answer them. Everybody in the agency, all one hundred and thirty-four employees, were invited to the party at the Biltmore in honor of Old Alex Ragdale, who had reached his sixty-fifth birthday and was being made to walk the plank.

  The agency occupied one floor and part of another in one of the skyscrapers in the Grand Central area. The main floor had four corner offices, the plushest for Paul Dale, who owned a controlling interest in the firm and was the only name partner. Legend had it that of the original Dale, Bowne, and Armstrong, Bowne had shot Armstrong over Bowne’s wife and had drawn a life sentence. Actually, Bowne and Armstrong are both Dale family names which Paul used to make his fledgling agency sound bigger than it was when he returned from the war and decided to strike out on his own.

  The second corner office belonged to Tony Cavallo, the brilliant art director, a very small, wiry, fiery little fellow who hated the big office and actually kept his drawing table facing a blank wall and never used the magnificent desk Paul Dale had provided him with except for interviewing job applicants, a duty he hated and would have gladly forgone if the personnel director had had any gift for judging artists.

  The third corner office belonged to Peter Carmody, creative director of the agency, who actually would have occupied the second office except for the fact that he and Paul both felt that their offices should be geographically as far apart as possible.

  Paul Dale kept the fourth corner office empty on purpose. His comptroller felt that it was a waste of rent money to keep it vacant, but Paul knew what he was doing: that empty corner office, carpeted wall to wall, was the honey pot that kept the younger executives outworking each other.

  Peter Carmody called the fourth office Paul’s cheap incentive plan. Peter was one of those ageless men who cause comment at long-term school reunions because everybody else has gotten gray or fat or middle-aged in a conspicuous way and Peter somehow continued to look like a slightly older version of the fellow they had known at school. He was just over six feet tall, big-boned, bushy, brown-haired with a bit of a wave in front, pleasant-looking when he smiled, with articulate hands. He wore eyeglasses, but they were in his hands more often than on his eyes; he used them for making a point, for studying when embarrassed or bored, for gesturing at sketches, a kind of baton or ruler or wand. He kept one pair with him, a second in his desk, and a third at home. He’d sooner be caught without a pair of eyeglasses as without one of his hands.

  Peter was the only man in the agency who wore a sport jacket and slacks to work, and in wintertime a sweater under the jacket. It was a sign of his easy self-confidence. The careful fellows who wore the latest fashions neatly pressed were unsure how much their talents were needed by the agency. Peter knew. Dale, Bowne, and Armstrong was known not only on Madison Avenue, but in Chicago and L.A. and Houston as very smart, and it had gotten that reputation because of Peter’s gift for coming up with campaigns that didn’t sell themselves but the product.

  When Peter joined the agency nearly ten years earlier, Dale, Bowne, and Armstrong had as many names in its title as it had accounts—three, and none of them big. There were fewer than a dozen employees, counting Paul Dale and the mail boy. Paul felt as if he were running a retail store and desperately wanted a breakthrough. He consulted a head-hunting firm that found Peter Carmody for him; he had to pay Peter very nearly what he paid himself and give him a piece of the action to entice him. Peter was barely thirty at the time and hot.

  Within six months Dale, Bowne, and Armstrong was making the columns regularly, adding clients as fast as they could build staff to service them. Peter’s work attracted companies who could measure their sales in relation to advertising campaigns and who then stuck with them in a fickle industry. In the years since, Peter had developed at least four copywriters who, he claimed, could do anything he could do, but nobody believed that, including the copywriters.

  *

  A quick glance at his watch told Peter it was almost five. Time to go. He was just coming around the corner of his desk when Elizabeth Kilter came into the room and shut the door behind her.

  He looked at her face, green eyes, black hair, then at her figure in the deep green dress, then back at her face.

  Most young girls, the secretaries around the shop, for instance, looked soft. Most female executives he had met looked hard. Elizabeth Kilter was an exception; she looked softer than any youngster of nineteen. She was Tony Cavallo’s most senior artist. She made a lot of money for a girl. She wasn’t a girl, he corrected himself. She was a woman.

  Involuntarily Peter’s eyes strayed to the family picture at the corner of his desk—Rose and the two children. Rose had been a beautiful girl, now was a beautiful girl getting older. Elizabeth, he had discovered in the last four months, was a woman. It had taken him very nearly to age forty to learn the difference.

  “I just stopped in Alex’s office,” Elizabeth said. “You going to the wake?”

  “Paul says I have to make a speech.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  “I don’t know yet.” His hopes rose. “Want to walk over to the Biltmore with me?”

  “I’m not going. I said good-bye to Alex in his office.”

  “It’ll be an awf
ully lonely party for me if you don’t come.”

  “I can’t think of it as a party. Alex looks awful. What’s he going to do with the rest of his life?”

  “Retire.”

  “To do what?”

  “It’s company policy,” said Peter uncomfortably.

  “Screw company policy,” said Elizabeth, and she was out the door, gone.

  *

  Peter, shaken, walked out around the edge of the bullpen, past several offices, including Alex’s, glad to see a bevy of glad-handers around Alex because he didn’t want to talk to him just yet, and went the whole long way around two sides of the building until he was at Paul’s open door.

  “Come on in,” hailed Paul. “Just getting ready to go over. Susan”—he jabbed a thumb out the door—“is closing up and goosing the stragglers over.”

  Peter made sure he was close enough so he couldn’t be overheard by anyone outside. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “Who, Alex? He’ll be fine.”

  “His grandchildren live in California.”

  “So he’ll visit California.”

  “Then what?”

  “Maybe he’ll move to California. What’s this all about?”

  “Alex and Martha have lived in Mamaroneck all their lives. Their friends are all there.”

  “It’ll sort out.”

  “He doesn’t like golf.”

  “He’ll find something.”

  “All he knows is advertising.”

  “Yeah,” said Paul.

  Paul was right. Old Alex Ragdale, the first male employee of the firm to reach the mandatory retirement age, was the kind of account executive you trusted with a secure account, who could take clients to lunch or dinner, talk about their grandchildren as well as his own, describe a campaign devised by somebody else, keep the client posted. He couldn’t make an ad, or get a new account, or keep an account that was in trouble.

  “Let’s go,” said Paul.

  Together they headed for the elevators, where a group of dolled-up typists and executive trainees shushed up the second the boss was in sight, and they all descended to the street in unreal quietness. The Biltmore was just a few blocks away.

  Paul marched rather than walked, glancing sightlessly at passersby as if he were a colonel inspecting troops.

  “How long do you want me to talk?” said Peter.

  “Well, I’ll say a few things officially and give him his present. I suppose Old Alex’ll say a word or two, and then you can wax eloquent about his contribution to the firm.”

  “You said that with a straight face.”

  “Alex is reliable. You don’t see much of that in the young job hoppers.”

  “Why don’t we keep him on?”

  “Peter, you just can’t set a policy and then break it when the first employee reaches sixty-five.”

  Peter was tempted to say, “Yes, Colonel.” He said nothing as they went through the revolving doors into the Biltmore.

  *

  They had rented several adjoining parlor rooms, where the partitions could be folded back to make a room large enough to accommodate one hundred thirty-four employees minus Elizabeth Kilter and plus Mrs. Ragdale, the only spouse invited to the affair. Within a short time the cloud of cigarette smoke, not all of which managed to rise, plus the senseless chitter-chatter and clinking of glasses, made Peter want to run for cover rather than circulate. He hated cocktail parties, but he had a duty to do. He watched several of the billing clerks getting the seventeen-year-old handsome Puerto Rican mailroom boy, unused to drinking, drunk. He watched the pairing off of some of the singles, in preparation for whatever was to come afterward. Finally he summoned his courage and went over to the Ragdales, insinuated himself among the well-wishers, pumped Alex’s hand.

  Old Alex Ragdale, as he was known since his retirement party was announced, was a short man, which meant that he had long ago lost the battle against a paunch, what with the constant lunching and dinnering and keeping up with the clients’ cocktails. His hair was white, not gray. His full face had a constant blush from broken capillaries in the cheeks, and his sideburns looked as if they should have grown into mutton chops. Peter liked him. The man had done his duty for the firm and in turn had drawn his pay. But his work was such that he could be easily replaced by someone younger, at less pay, and he would soon be completely forgotten.

  Mrs. Ragdale looked very much like her husband—a matched pair.

  “I’m sorry your husband is leaving us,” said Peter to Mrs. Ragdale.

  “Confidentially,” she said, “I think he is, too.”

  Alex stared her down, and she said no more. Peter, helpless at small talk, clapped Alex on the back, a gesture he regretted immediately because it seemed so condescending, and moved away through the crowd.

  On the raised platform at the other end of the room, Paul was tapping the mike and ahemming for silence. “Folks,” he said, when most eyes had turned toward him. “There, that’s better now. Can you all hear me? Good. I’d ask you to be seated, but there aren’t any seats.” That got a short laugh from some of the younger employees. “So we’ll keep the speeches down to size. Today,” he said, gesturing at Alex, “we are gathered to pay our respects and to say good-bye, or rather au revoir, to the first employee of Dale, Bowne, and Armstrong to reach the retirement age of sixty-five. I am happy that the pension plan will provide our friend and colleague Alex Ragdale and his wife with security for the rest of their days.”

  This time there was some temperate cheering.

  “I know,” continued Paul, “that it is customary on such occasions to give the departing employee a gold watch. However, I know that Alex Radgale has had a busy business career—twenty-one years of it with this company, I am proud to say—and has not had much time to travel except on company business. Therefore,” and he drew a long envelope out of his inside pocket, “I am pleased to present Alex Ragdale, one of our best-loved employees, with a pair of tickets for a round-the-world cruise which sails from New York harbor a week from Sunday!”

  There were Ooohs before he finished his sentence, and at the end of it wild cheering, as people parted to let Alex come up to the platform to receive the envelope. Alex’s red face was redder than usual. Were there tears in his eyes?

  He shook Paul’s proffered hand, then whispered, “Thank you” into the microphone.

  “One moment,” said Paul. “To help Alex keep track of the time while he is on that round-the-world cruise, here also is a gold watch, only in keeping with the times, it runs on an energy cell and you don’t have to wind it.” Alex took the watch with both his hands, afraid of dropping it.

  “Read what it says,” shouted someone from the audience.

  Alex tried to check the flood of his feeling. He read the engraving on the back to a hushed room. “To Alex Ragdale from his friends and colleagues at Dale, Bowne, and Armstrong on the occasion of his retirement and in appreciation of his services.”

  “Go ahead,” said Paul, “say a few words.”

  Alex Ragdale handed the watch down to his wife and then grasped the microphone with his hands. Peter could see the perspiration beading on Alex’s forehead.

  “I’m not one of the creative people, and while I can hold my own in conversation with a client, I haven’t anything new to say except thank you for your generous gifts and for coming here today and for your good wishes, and I would forgo them—the gifts, I mean—glady if it meant I could continue working with you all. I miss you, and I hope you will invite me to come around and visit when I return.”

  He fled from the platform into his wife’s arms. There was loud, continuing applause, and then someone whooped up, “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” and everyone joined in.

  Paul’s finger beckoned Peter up onto the platform. Peter swallowed the rest of his drink, handed his glass to somebody, and went up.

  “Our creative director, Peter Carmody, wanted to say a few words.”

  You lying bastard, thought
Peter.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Peter said, looking about the room at the glazed expressions, “or am I not describing you correctly.” It got a laugh. “I could say that Alex Ragdale is an honorable man. But I played poker with him one day on the train out to Chicago.” Laughter again. “I could say that Alex Ragdale is a virtuous man, but I have seen his right thumb and forefinger close on a secretary’s behind.” Mrs. Ragdale’s laughter led the rest.

  It was at this moment, his mind churning to think of what toastmastering nonsense he would say next, that Peter spotted Elizabeth Kilter at the very rear of the room, near the door. She had come, after all. Why? To see his puppet show on behalf of company policy?

  “Now that he is going to retire,” continued Peter, “Alex can play golf on weekdays”—someone cheered—“when there’s no lineup at the first tee, except Alex admitted to me years ago that he learned golf only to play it with clients and that the game bores him stiff. He could garden—I’ve seen their lovely garden—but then what would Mrs. Ragdale do if Alex poached on her territory? He could get himself some Sears Roebuck tools and monkey around the house, but after seeing him try to get his office door back on its hinges after the furniture movers left last year, any monkeying he does around his house is likely to make his property values plunge! Seriously—”

  It was that word “seriously” that got the big laugh. “Not everyone is suited to living half a life on half pay. When Alex gets back from his round-the-world trip, when he’s had enough of living in a stateroom and hoping the Dramamine keeps working, I think the first Monday back, I think Alex should show up in his old office and get to work and earn the other half of his pay right alongside the rest of us!”

  For a moment there was a dreadful quiet in the huge room as people looked to Paul for a cue, then received it from Alex Ragdale, who came back onto the platform, saying, “Bless you,” and Mrs. Ragdale was up there beside him, hugging Peter, and Peter, embarrassed, said into the microphone just, “Enjoy the party,” and left the platform, catching a glimpse of the artery pulsing in Paul’s forehead. Peter worked his way through the pleased crowd to where he had seen Elizabeth standing, but she was no longer there.