Skyscraper

by Faith Baldwin

  “Tom—for heaven’s sake—” She pulled herself away. “Don’t talk so wildly. It isn’t like you. You know I love you.”

  She returned to him of her own accord and kissed him very sweetly. He bounded into the apartment a moment of so later singing, “My baby just cares for me,” a little off-key but at the top of his lungs. He was perfectly and extravagantly happy again. He had forgotten the fantastic fears, the hot desperation, the sudden smothering sensation of a savage despair, which had briefly seized him a moment before. He had forgotten David Dwight, to whom he had spoken once, on conventional words—“Mr. Norton will see you at once, Mr. Dwight”—and at whose back he had glared incredulously as Dwight walked from the outer room with Sarah and Lynn. He had forgotten that the thought of Dwight had affected his mood, as the hand of the puppet master jerks the puppets from attitudes of serenity into postures of terror and rebellion.

  He was very much in love, and twenty-three years old.

  Going home, to sit up the rest of the night, in an endeavor to capture Europe on his home-built short-wave receiver, he tried to console his gloomy companion out of his own superabundance of confidence. For himself, things would come right, he’d get a raise, he’d make some money somehow. Lynn would give up the damned job, in which she was in danger of meeting undesirable people—which, translated, read, attractive men with money—and they would be happy forever after. As far as David Dwight was concerned, well, Sarah had been with them, and probably Lynn was right, she’d only been included because of Sarah, and anyway she might never see him again. Not that it would matter much if she did, for what could Lynn find really worth her while in a “middle-aged” man? Forty-eight plus, to twenty-three may seem middle-aged—depending upon your viewpoint and your sex. But Lynn next day pulled a blue card from the files marked D and entertained herself with reading what was inscribed thereon. Not that it told her more than she already knew; and the Who’s Who recountal was little better. She’d probably never see him again.

  She saw him the following week. He wandered into the room where she was working, a flower in his buttonhole, a faint smile on his subtle lips. He apologized.

  “I suppose this is out of order. I’ve been talking to Sarah. I’ve got Scarletti—of the opera, you know, coming to dinner Friday. I thought you and Sarah might like to come too, all very informal and all that.”

  He added quickly, marking her slight hesitation, “Sarah says it’s alright with her.”

  “I’d love to,” Lynn told him sincerely, her heart beating a little faster. She did like him so much, he was so stimulating a personality, and there was about him—the bland actor’s face, the rather big head with its shock of gray hair, the lazy, keen eyes—a glamour; the glamour of legend or tradition.

  He took out a notebook and a little gold pencil. “I’ll send a car,” he offered, “say, about seven-thirty. We’ll dine at eight. What’s your address?”

  She gave him the address. He asked, lingering a moment, putting the notebook away, “You’re in the telephone book?”

  “Yes, but under Le Grande. I live with another girl,” she said. “The phone is listed in her name.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Le Grande—is it possible?”

  Lynn laughed. “Smith, really. She’s a model here in the building.”

  He nodded, smiled again, said, “Friday, then,” and departed.

  “Holy cat,” breathed Miss Marple, suddenly at Lynn’s elbow, “who’s the grand duke?”

  “You’re sure stepping out,” was Jennie’s only comment as Lynn told her over the lunch table. “What’ll you wear?”

  “There’s the black net—”

  “Too sophisticated—”

  “There’s the cherry satin, but that’s pretty well worn out!”

  “Look here,” suggested Jennie, “there’s a little dress, it’s a dusky pink lace, stiffened with wide sleeves and a do-funny of French blue at the waist. It’s been taken off the line, it’s a fourteen, with a twelve skirt length. I can get it for you. It will set you back $69.50, but it’s worth it. It sells for $110, retail.”

  “Jennie, it sounds marvelous!” Lynn looked at her friend, gray eyes shining. “But—I shouldn’t!”

  “Sure you should. You’ve got to dress for the occasion. This Scarletina—or whatever his name is—may be as contagious as he sounds—offer you a castle in Florence and a gondola in Venice. He gets about a thousand a yip, I guess. Hop to it, you’re only young once. I’ll ask Madame if I can bring the dress home tonight. She’s a pretty good fellow. She’ll let me do it.”

  “All right,” agreed Lynn. After all she needed another evening dress, she excused her extravagance—and she had not spent her father’s Christmas check.

  Jennie went upstairs after luncheon and attacked Madame on the subject of the little number fifty-eight, size fourteen, in dusky pink. Madame was agreeable. Madame rather liked Jennie; “lazy, stupid, dependable,” was Madame’s reaction toward her model, not entirely just.

  Madame was very tiny, very dark, with an almost startlingly intelligent little face, and smartly, amusingly dressed. She was quick as a humming-bird, shrewd, emotional. She designed her own frocks, all of them, bought the materials, oversaw workrooms and showrooms. She was the first of the wholesalers to move over and up into the Times Square district as a convenience for the out-of-town buyers who entered town via Grand Central. The Seacoast Building welcomes her with open doors, and the Bank and Trust Company had respect for her account. A hard worker, Madame.

  Jennie found the frock, boxed it, and put it away until closing time. Business was slow today, but, standing at the dressing-room door behind the drapes, she heard Sam Pearl, the salesman, Pearline, as he was affectionately called by the models, expostulating with a lone buyer who had wandered in and demanded to see models at, say, $39.50.

  “Oh,” cried Mr. Pearl, with a short sharp scream, “thirty-nine fifty! Impossible!” He put his hand up on his hip and shuddered, large reproachful eyes on the buyer. “Impossible,” repeated Mr. Pearl firmly. “Madame never expresses herself under sixty-nine fifty!”

  Crushed, the buyer oozed through the doors, and Mr. Pearl, with a shrug, flitted to the nearest mirror and ran a little comb through his permanent. Jennie in the doorway giggled once. He turned sharply at the sound, but she had vanished; all was silence save for the voice of Madame rising from the workroom where the rows of machines stitched busily. The draperies before the models’ room were hanging limp and motionless. Mr. Pearl moved closer to the mirror and examined a flaw in his schoolgirl complexion which had worried him of late.

  I must tell that one to Lynn, thought Jennie.

  She did. And Lynn told it, however, without Jennie’s comments and embellishments, to Sarah and Dwight on Friday night. Scarletti was late. The car had called first for Lynn and then for Sarah. There were two square boxes in the car, marked with Lynn’s and Sarah’s names. Lynn’s contained unseasonable gardenias, and Sarah’s, orchids. Lynn had never had gardenias in her life. Sarah had had orchids, doubtless. But once she had preferred very red roses, dark, with the dew upon them—

  “Look, flowers!” Lynn cried, as Sarah entered the car.

  Sarah unwrapped her own. She wore black, severe, well-cut, crystals at her throat and well-shaped ears. She said, “He’s very extravagant—and does everything well.”

  “I never dreamed you knew him. Long?”

  “Twenty years, a little more.”

  “How exciting,” said Lynn. “What’s he like, really?”

  The car purred down Fifth Avenue. Sarah was silent. Presently she aroused herself. “He’s a brilliant man,” she said. “Erratic, people call him, but a very good friend.”

  That was what Lynn had thought; she said so. She, too, was silent, thinking it would be pleasant to have a friend, a man friend, an old man upon whose cool, impersonal strength one might lean when things became too difficult for one.

  Dwight’s apartment was a duplex, the penthouse on top o
f a lower Fifth Avenue structure. The elevator shot them to the twentieth floor, they climbed a winding staircase, stood before the apartment doors and were admitted by a manservant who, following the unexpectedness of most things connected with Dwight, did not look like a manservant. He looked like a man. He had nothing of the stage of Jeeves about him. He looked rather like a prize fighter. He had been one.

  That was the last formality, if Wilkins could be called formal. Dwight was standing in front of an Adam fireplace, driftwood was burning in it, for looks, he explained, not because of necessity. It was a lovely spring night, with just the proper amount of chill in the air, as cool and sweet and promising as an adolescent girl. Lynn, during the exchange of greetings, wondered vaguely why all men couldn’t learn to wear clothes properly without effort. She thought absurdly, I’ll bet when he wears a full-dress shirt it stays put!

  He wore, however, dinner clothes, not too new, not too old. He took them to a bedroom, up a winding stair, a bedroom opening upon a gallery of iron grillwork hung with two beautiful old Spanish shawls. The bedroom was so extremely right that you didn’t notice furniture or wall treatments or draperies.

  “Hairpins,” cried Lynn, delighted, “for the growing bob! And rouge. And powder. And, Sarah, look at the jar of cotton, tied with ribbons, and this atomizer of perfume.”

  She pressed the plunger like a child, and was immediately enveloped in a frail, faint, bewitching scent which Paris bottles at $20 an ounce.

  “Now I’ve done it!” she said, abashed.

  Sarah, regarding herself briefly in the mirror, said, “That’s what it’s there for.” She added, “You look lovely, Lynn.”

  She did. Dusky pink lace stiffened in little tiers. She looked like a rose-quartz pagoda, or so Dwight told her when he saw her. Black hair, close-waved, a satin cap, the widow’s peak pointed a dark arrow on her forehead. Gray eyes, black lashed, clear color, olive skin, red lips, smooth shoulders rising from the tight bodice. And at her slim waist the waxen ivory of the gardenias thrust through the twist of French blue ribbon.

  They had cocktails in the long many-windowed room. Scarletti arrived breathless, before the second round in a strange Inverness and broad-brimmed hat. He, too, wore dinner clothes, from which he bulged pathetically. He was a great, dark, fat man just a suspicion greasy, with eyes like a good child’s, an enormous appetite—he and Jennie would certainly get on, thought Lynn, watching him, fascinated—and a gift of Homeric laughter.

  They dined in a room which was glass on three sides, the lemon-silk curtains pulled over the windows with tasseled cords. A perfect dinner, mellow wines, and good talk; talk of travel, of opera, of people, of civilization, of trends and tempos, detective stories and the Russian crown jewels. Then they had coffee in the living-room, and Dwight took Lynn in to a smaller room, a little lovely library, and showed her his collection of Japanese prints and of etchings, of old books in fine bindings.

  “You like things of this sort?” he asked.

  “Yes. I don’t know much about them,” she confessed.

  “Neither do I. But I like lovely things about me.” His eyes were on her own, friendly, controlled. He smiled at her and added, “You, for instance. You don’t mind my saying that? You’ve a charming frock—but I’m repeating myself.”

  She said, “That’s the advantage of having a friend who is a model.”

  Sarah spoke in the doorway, “Can’t you persuade Scarletti to sing for us, David?”

  “I’ll try. I am still complimenting our little friend on her gown.”

  “Jennie bought it for me,” Lynn told Sarah.

  Sarah’s eyebrows drew down, black and heavy, a smidge across her forehead.

  “You don’t approve of Jennie?” asked Dwight, laughing at her.

  “Not for Lynn. A model,” said Sarah.

  “Jennie’s a dear,” said Lynn, flashing into indignation. It wasn’t kind of Sarah, she thought, before strangers. David Dwight was a stranger.

  Spirit, thought Dwight, and loyalty. His interest quickened. He passionately admired loyalty, perhaps because he had encountered so little of it along the road, possessed so little of it himself. He had had it once given him, full measure, pressed down and running over. He had for gotten that gift. He had it still, from the same donor. He could remember this and forget the original bestowal.

  “Models are all right, Sarah; don’t be provincial,” he mocked her. “Nice girls. I’ve known dozens.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Her voice was a little sharp.

  “Sarah, don’t give me away. What will Miss Harding think?” he murmured reproachfully. “You make me sound like an ogre, a Casanova seeking to devour the lithe ladies of the wholesale garment trade. But really, my dear, your idea of models is outdated. They are longer forced to entertain the avid buyers from out of town, lest they lose their jobs. As a matter of fact a good model is so rare nowadays that the wholesaler is content with working hours only; and so permits the buyer to seek his own amusements. Let’s go back and see what we can do with Scarletti.” As they went into the living room together he said to Lynn, low, “I like the way you champion your friend. Sometime, perhaps, you’ll bring her to one of my parties?”

  He took it for granted that this was the beginning of a friendship. Lynn’s heart had warmed to his defense of Jennie. She smiled at him openly. He nodded imperceptibly, as if a bond had been sealed between them. “Guiseppe, old boy, could you sing for us?”

  “Later,” rumbled the big Italian, “not now. I am too concerned with the digestion of your excellent meal.”

  He turned to Sarah and asked a question. They sat down together in the low chairs by the fireplace, and Dwight gestured to Lynn. “I’ll send Wilkins upstairs for your wrap,” he said, “and we’ll go out and look at the view. Not that it will mean anything to you—who enjoy the scenic facilities of the Seacoast Building every day.”

  “I spend most of my time on the third floor,” she reminded him.

  Wilkins brought the wrap. Dwight put it about her bare shoulders. They went out on the terrace together, and together leaned over the parapet and looked out over the lower city. The terrace was gay with the hardiest of spring flowers, with small, squat trees in green pottery jars, with chairs of decorative metal, swinging couches, tables.

  She drew a deep breath of pleasure and astonishment. “How very lovely!” she told him, entranced.

  “I like it. Later, we have gay awnings and parasols. All it then lacks is sand and sea,” he told her laughing, “but I stay in town—when I’m here at all—until courts close, you know. I’ve a place on the Island,” he went on. “I’d like you to see it. You’d enjoy it, I think.”

  The mail plane passed overhead. They heard the strong singing of the engine, they saw the steady shining lights—

  “It is a wonderful city,” he said, so softly, so easily, that he did not disturb her little dream of lights and buildings, of archway and park, of far waters and strange lands beyond. “A city whose symbol is the skyscraper—have you ever thought much about skyscrapers?” he asked her.

  “Why, no—” she answered, startled.

  “Of course not. Every day you go to one, are swallowed up by it, every day you work there, never thinking of the life teeming in the building, beating against the walls, unaware of the thousands of people, working, like yourself, passing in and out ceaselessly, through the doors, unaware that many of them spend most of their waking hours under that impossibly high roof. A skyscraper is a little city, it is a little world, it is a strange planet, it is,” he went on smoothly, “a phallic symbol. Yet it is also a new pattern against the sky; it is all of ordered beauty and upward growth that many of the workers within it shall never know. And it must influence them, whether they are aware of it or not.”

  She listened as he went on talking, weaving a web of significant words; then, abruptly, he was silent. What had he said, Lynn wondered. Not much perhaps—perhaps, after all, his words had no significance, or perhaps they
were more important than she knew. But his voice had a dark necromancy, his trained, eloquent voice. She stood there in a magic circle, scarcely breathing, thinking yet not thinking.

  In the room they had left, Scarletti struck a chord, sitting fatly at the piano, grotesque god of song.

  “I’ve bored you,” said David Dwight contritely. “Come, let us go in and listen to our imported songbird.”

  He stood aside to let her pass before him. But she stopped a moment on the threshold and turned toward the dreaming spires, with the golden squares that were their windows, of downtown New York. She forgot, if indeed she had ever remembered, that the golden squares meant people working, scrubwomen earning their musty daily bread, clerks doing overtime, harried people, housed together in the spring night for the purpose of wage earning.

  Little cities—little worlds—strange planets—phallic symbols.

  What was that?

  She remembered, from her indiscriminate reading; flushed a very little and, turning, went into the living-room. Now Scarletti was singing. He was singing “Una Furtiva Lacrima”—

  Sarah was listening, her eyes half closed. Lynn sat down in a deep chair. The music throbbed about her, lifted her, high, higher, past the pointed soaring of the city buildings which aimed at so far, and so impossible, a goal.

  But presently Scarletti ceased to sing, and there was general talk and a rubber or two of bridge. And Lynn did not again go out upon the terrace. She felt, very dimly, wordlessly, that there was danger in terraces above a city, in the anachronistic blooming of spring flowers from soil scattered in cement and set upon steel, danger in dreaming lights, in distant streets, the ugliness veiled and softened, danger in voices speaking precisely patterned words—

  “Happy evening?” asked Sarah, as they were riding toward home.

  “Awfully,” said Lynn.

  “A charming man.”

  “Yes.”