Skyscraper

by Faith Baldwin

  Tom had brought them all presents from the five-and-ten. He’d been their guest for dinner before. Lynn had asked sweetly, “Some night, may I bring Tom?” and so he knew his hostesses and their Barbadian maid. He brought them egg beaters and tiny trucks and jointed wooden toys. He brought Lynn innumerable idiocies, a pair of woolen socks to keep her feet warm, a pair of rubbers which would fold up into a handbag, doll’s clothespins, and, of all things, because she liked a glass of milk at night, a doll’s refrigerator. Lynn who had spent more than she could afford upon the cigarette case and lighter she gave him, was not in the least disappointed. She was enchanted—because he had told her early in the evening, “I’ve got something for you—very special—but it needn’t have publicity.”

  He gave it to her, going back to the club in a taxi. A ring it was, modest, twinkling, a good small stone. She said, “Tom, you shouldn’t.”

  And he asked, “Don’t you like it, darling? I hoped you would like it.”

  She cried, “I love it!” and let him put it on her finger, let him touch with his boy’s hard mouth her own parted and surrendering lips, and later asked, breathless, drawing away, “But—what does it mean?”

  He was sobered, after his moment of blind ecstasy. He repeated stupidly, “Mean?” He said, less stupidly, “Why, you, of course—and me—that we belong. We do, don’t we?”

  They did, of course. Their love affair had run a natural and normal course with the most prosaic of wavelike temperature charts. There had been small quarrels, and swift yieldings, and differences of opinion and hours of unity; but as yet none of the dangers or complications or obstacles which constitute crises.

  She told him, still breathless, “But—we can’t bind ourselves to anything now. We—we’re too young, Tom. You’ve your way to make. I’ve mine. Can’t you see?”

  He could see. He had to see on the fifty dollars a week the bank was paying him. He said, “I know—I don’t mean to bind you, you know that. I thought you’d wear it for now, because we belonged.”

  She wore it, on her right hand, as a concession.

  Jennie commented, looking at the ring, her narrow eyes widening. “That’s Tom, of course. When are you going to get hitched?”

  “We aren’t—that is—not now. We aren’t really even engaged.”

  “I see.” Jennie didn’t, quite. When girls wore diamonds and weren’t going to be married and weren’t even really engaged, they wore larger diamonds. Such was her simple lexicon. She added, yawning, “Slim’s getting pretty goofy. He’s a great kind, but not for me. I’d rather struggle along on the forty per, thank you.”

  “Has he—?” began Lynn.

  “He has. He wants to make a down payment on a house in Jersey, oh, migod!” said Jennie. “Can you tie that?”

  Apparently she could not.

  4

  FINISHED—OR BEGINNING?

  IN JANUARY JENNIE DID AN UNPRECEDENTED THING shortly before noon. She wandered into Lynn’s room at the bank, walking with the effortless, lazy ease so characteristic of her. Miss Marple eyed her severely. Jennie had been showing models to some of the New York buyers, spring models, and still wore her heavy make-up. She looked like nothing on earth, thought Miss Marple, sliding a pink-tipped finger through the corrugations of her own blond hair.

  “Lynn!”

  Lynn looked up from a frowning contemplation of a blue card which stated that one Hamilton Yates belonged to the Union Club, had an inherited income of $30,000 a year, had twice been married, begotten three children, paid alimony, and was not, as yet, a client of the Seacoast Company.

  “Lord,” said Jennie, casually reading all this over Lynn’s shoulder, “wouldn’t it be a break if you met him some day and said, ‘Hello, Ham, old egg, what I know about you!’”

  “It’s one of my nightmares,” Lynn told her seriously. “What’s the matter, Jennie?”

  “Lots. Can you chow with me?”

  From twelve o’clock to one o’clock all the models eat lunch. It is one of the minor mysteries of the trade. At one o’clock, they return to work. Why, no one knows, as no buyer is available from one o’clock to two o’clock.

  “I can in twenty minutes.”

  “Okay,” agreed Jennie, and wandered away again, casting a curious glance at the filing-cabinets, which repelled her slightly, as did the clicking of typewriters, the efficient mechanism of the place. Sales research, any kind of research, afflicted Jennie as did the smooth-running mechanism of the offices. She preferred yawning her way downtown, fighting with the colored dresser over hard rolls as opposed to soft: liked sliding in and out of gowns, made meticulously to her measure, slinging to her smooth skin which just veiled her lovely bones; liked sitting for an hour at a dressing-table smoothing creams over her face, painting her lips with scarlet, stiffening each tiny lash with midnight blue, patting on the liquid powder, dusting on the final coat, creaming her slow lids with faint blue. She liked gossiping with the other girls, liked observing Madame in the throes of creation, liked the unmerciful ragging directed at the willowy salesman with his narrow shoulders and white, tended hands. Best of all, she liked swimming into the show room, on parade before the buyers, men and women who sat back at small tables and observed her as she drifted into their line of vision, with the artificial, somehow enchanting placing of her long, slender feet; liked turning to all appearances hideously bored, one hand with its crimson nails accenting the suave curve of her hip. She liked it as well or better than rehearsals, back stage, footlight posturings. In a sense, it was less work. And it called for no effort of the mind.

  Not that she was mindless. Tom was utterly mistaken in that estimate. She had the mind of an animal, a rather nice animal: Shrewd, intuitive, seeking food, shelter, seeking security and self-protection with, in her case, the minimum of effort. She was capable of unreasoning loyalties, of unreasoning tempers, as an animal is capable of these things. But if she found them consuming too much effort she, as it were, opened her hands laxly, and let them slip through her fingers. So much in life was a trouble, a bore. Slide through life as best you can, exert yourself as little as possible, and you will have an unlined face at forty.

  When Lynn joined her at the cafeteria they selected a table for four—there were none for two—and Jennie looked gloomily at the crowds intent on nourishment. “Hope they don’t pick out this table,” she said, and gave her astonishingly ample order. Lynn, slim and small, had a horror of becoming fat. Her own order was calculated. She might let herself go at breakfast, at dinner, but luncheon was a frugal affair.

  “You don’t eat enough,” Jennie told her, secure in her own incredible slenderness. What she did with her food was a mystery. She didn’t burn it up, nor work nor worry it off. But she remained fashionably undernourished in appearance.

  “Plenty. I’m not like you. Fat runs in the family. What’s on your mind, Jennie?

  “Angie,” explained Jennie, “is going to get married. The dumb egg! He’s fifty, if he’s a day! But he’s got money. She’s leaving in a week. I can’t swing the flat alone. I wondered, would you like to come in with me?” She yawned as Lynn looked up, a little startled, and went on:

  “We wouldn’t get in each other’s way; it would be a swell arrangement. You could have your friends to the flat on the nights I went out.”

  Lynn considered. She said after a moment, “I think I’d like to. Tell me what it costs to run.”

  Jennie requested the Deity to have mercy on her. Lynn’s mental processes were far too clear-cut for Jennie. She counted on her fingers, guessing where she was not sure. She had never budgeted, nor had Angie. They had paid for things as they went along, inescapable intangibilities such as rent, light, gas. When they bought things for which they could not pay, they paid something on account and trusted that heaven would sufficiently protect the working girl when the final day of reckoning arrived.

  Lynn had a little notebook, a pencil. She set down figures, neat and round. So much for rent, so much—very little
—for light and gas. What about food? “Food,” said Jennie, “puts no gray in your bob, dinner, that is. Not if you know the ropes. Sometimes you snatch a lunch, too.”

  It was cheaper to eat at home, Lynn told her.

  “Not if someone else pays the check when you’re out.”

  Lynn looked at the figures and decided she could do it. It was not, of course, as cheap as the club. But with less put away for savings later to be invested, it could certainly be managed. And she considered that the advantages far outweighed the expenditure. To be free of the club was in itself an enormous lure—to have a place, partly on her own, to which she might go at night, in which she would take an interest, to which Tom would come. She decided. “I’ll do it, Jennie. When may I come in?”

  Any time after Angie’s departure, Jennie told her. She was as pleasurably moved as she could be, which wasn’t much. She liked Lynn. Lynn was a good scout. No, they would not get in each other’s way. Lynn, Jennie judged, would not be interested in Jennie’s circle of male acquaintances. She wouldn’t, as Angie had done, snatch heavy dates from under Jennie’s nose and then marry them—as a crowning insult!

  Lynn gave her notice to the club. “I hope it’s for your good,” said the directress, sniffling, the pink top of her dampish nose moving like a rabbit’s; and hoping, of course, no such thing.

  Sarah was frankly disapproving. “My dear child, what will your mother say?” Sarah had never met Jennie but had heard her discussed. Tom was not well pleased, either. “I don’t like it; she travels with a funny gang,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t have to travel with them, do I? And, oh, Tom, I’m so darned sick of the club!”

  He wanted her to be happy; if he wanted her to be happy only through his intervention, that was man’s nature, human nature. But even without his connivance he wanted her to be happy, as long as no other man assisted. He gave in gracefully. He grinned. He said, “Well, it has its good points. Can you cook? I’ll be up for dinner three times a week while Jennie goes gadding. Poor old Slim,” he added, with apparent irrelevance.

  Lynn wondered mutely if she could persuade Jennie to get rid of some of the dolls and pillows. She could, it appeared. Most of them belonged to Angie, anyway, and with her departure all but the shabbiest vanished. Lynn drew out some of her savings and scurried about second-hand stores in her spare time. Mrs. Harding, from Florida, wrote that she was so glad Lynn had settled in her own apartment with a “nice friend.” Sarah, it seemed, had held her tongue or, rather, her hand. And when the Hardings returned from the South they would send Lynn some of her own things from home.

  Tom painted furniture and carpentered a bookcase. He also built a radio set. On evenings when he was building the set Jennie took herself out. She couldn’t, she told her current cavalier, understand a couple of lovers who “acted that way.”

  “What way?”

  “Oh, he sits on the floor all tied up in goofy-looking wires and things, and she sits in a chair and admires him. He’s had the thing working, all right, but every night he comes he pulls it apart and starts all over again. He’s a nut!” said Jennie sincerely.

  Lynn made the living-room into her own. The bed-divan was now hers, and she contributed a cherry-wood chest which, both decorative and utilitarian, served as a bureau; and a small slim wall desk. Jennie had offered her the bedroom, but it was darker, smaller, more airless than the living-room, and besides, Lynn knew that Jennie would be lost without her dressing-table, her pots and bottles and jars of various mysterious cosmetics.

  So they settled down for the winter. Jennie was out most of the time. Now and then she threw a party at which Lynn was welcome to go or come. Generally Lynn went out with Tom, or to Sarah’s, or up to the club to see the girls, or somewhere, and would stay away as late as possible so that on her return the place would be empty of everyone save Jennie; Lynn, sleepily emptying ash trays and picking up glasses and plates and opening windows, might prepare for bed.

  Yet the flat did not work out. Oh, as far as Jennie was concerned, it did. But when Tom came into it, the flat was proving dangerous. They were in it together and alone far too much. Sarah Dennet said worriedly, still stamped with her generation’s conventions despite her madness of twenty years ago, “Does Tom come to the apartment, Lynn?”

  And Lynn had replied directly, “Yes, of course, that’s one reason why I went in with Jennie. It was too silly ranging the streets together, eating at expensive places. We can neither of us afford it.”

  “Jennie’s there, of course, when he comes?”

  “Sometimes,” said Lynn.

  Yes, but not often; and generally, when she was, Slim was there too, or another man. They were learning backgammon, and when Jennie’s brain reeled with that effort there might be a harmless round of poker; something to eat; something to drink. But these occasions were rare.

  It was spring. Spring makes a difference. The poets are right, whatever we may think. The poets are almost always right.

  “Tom, please, dear! Jennie will be home any moment.”

  “Let her come. No, I hope she stays away. Why isn’t this our place, Lynn, just yours and mine? Why do I ever have to leave you—at night?”

  “Tom—”

  “Oh, I won’t hold you against your will!” He loosened his arms and watched her gloomily as she walked away from him, and then, her knees relaxing, sat down in the straight-backed desk chair, touching her disheveled dark hair with shaking fingers. Tom’s kisses were no longer boyish, delighted. They were adult and melancholy and a little desperate.

  He burst out, watching her, the gleam of the gray eyes, the hurt, bruised look of the red mouth, the clear color staining her dark pallor. “Lynn, we’ve got to get married, I can’t stand things this way—”

  “Tom, we can’t; don’t be absurd, darling, you know we can’t!”

  He crossed the small room in three strides, kicked a silly hassock from his path, came and stood behind her, so that she was forced to turn and look up into his face.

  “I’ll—I’ll cut out all the radio business,” he said, a little pale. This was an authentic sacrifice. He was like an explorer giving up the sight and feel and sound of strange, enchanting countries. No one knew what radio had brought him. It is commonplace now. We all afford radios, cash or on the installment plan. We turn a switch and fumble with a dial and listen to music, to human speech, to a drama played by unseen actors. We say, “Rotten!” or we say, “That’s a good program,” and we listen to the advertisers’ sleek reminders with attention or boredom according to our amount of interest in brushes, furs, gasoline, shoes, breakfast foods. That is radio to us. A pleasure when the contrivance works; an annoyance when it does not. To Tom music, lectures, dramas, meant nothing. But the things which brought them to their audiences meant much. There was so much more to be discovered, so much more to learn. But it cost money, not alone the lessons, but his own private little experiments, which Lynn found so irritating and yet so boyish and charming.

  “I’ll give it up, I’ll save money; we can manage. I’ll hit the old Gunboat for a raise. There’s enough in that trust fund to start us—I know I don’t get it till I’m twenty-five but there must be a way, there has to be a way.”

  She said, after a moment, “With what I make—and what you make—we could manage, I think.”

  She didn’t want to marry; not when she said it over to herself; but with Tom there—and those heart-piercing words still burning in her brain, “Why do I ever have to leave you?”—she surrendered.

  She must marry him, or lose him. She took her two small hands and pushed back the hair from her face. The widow’s peak was ruffled; it gave her an urchin, elfin look.

  “Manage? Do you think,” shouted Tom, “that I’d let my wife keep on working?”

  He came of a generation of men whose wives had not worked. That is to say, they had kept houses and budgets, borne children, scrubbed and cooked and slaved and fought their way up into a little leisure and comfort. They ha
d been pioneer women some of them, women who carried guns as well as babies, women who could wield an ax.

  But they had not worked for money.

  Or had they?

  They had not, at any rate, worked for wages.

  She said, startled, “But, Tom, unless I do go on working, it isn’t possible.”

  “Why not—if you’re willing to sacrifice—”

  She cried out, wounded, “Oh, I am, you know I am! But look at us—Jennie and me. She gets forty a week, my salary comes to a little less, not counting the Christmas bonus. And we barely manage.”

  He said sullenly, “I won’t always be getting just fifty.”

  “No. No. Of course, you won’t. But,” she cried again, “you haven’t thought of me at all—of how much I like my work, how anxious I am to get on with it.”

  “Where to?” he demanded.

  She said, gray eyes dark with something near to anger. “There’s Sarah’s job sometime, if I fit myself for it. She isn’t going to stop either. Tom, I’m only twenty-two—by the time I’m thirty—”

  “By the time you’re thirty, you’ll be an old woman,” he said absurdly. Then he went down on his knees beside her, awkward, boyish, touching.

  “I do love you so much—and you love me, you know you love me!”