Skyscraper

by Faith Baldwin

  “I suppose you think I’m a fool?” he proffered.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Thanks—a lot.”

  “But a dear fool. Oh, Tom, why are you so stubborn? Why will you look at things this way?”

  “Suppose I look at them another way. Suppose you’re right, and there’s nothing in the back of Dwight’s bean except a nice friendly feeling and a desire to help us both and a real need for someone to type this book or encyclopedia or whatever it is—Well, when it’s done, then what? You have always been so keen on a future. Where’s a future there?” he argued, against his usual convictions.

  “None. He told me that, too. But he said when business picked up I could go back into the type of work I had been doing.”

  “I see. He expects you to work all your life? Well I don’t.”

  “But I want to.”

  They were back to where they started months ago. Tom sighed heavily and kissed her. He said, after a moment, “There’ll be a way out. You see. I’ll make a killing, somehow. Rob the bank! Start with a hundred in Wall Street and run it up to a hundred grand—not, however, in this market. I’ll help an aged man across traffic and he’ll leave me a million—”

  “Oh, Tom—” she was laughing again. This was the Tom she knew best, boyish, absurd, young, darling—

  “No, but seriously, I’ll find a way. Rawlson was talking to me tonight. He says there are lots of ways—”

  “What did he mean?”

  “Never mind now,” Tom told her solemnly. He held her close, kissed her. “You’ll tell Dwight, ‘Thank you kindly, wealthy sir, I don’t want your job’?”

  “Yes—it doesn’t make sense anymore,” she told him mournfully.

  “You bet it doesn’t. Hello, here’s Jennie.”

  Jennie came in, scattering her outdoor garments about, and greeted them imperturbably.

  “Hello, turtle doves.”

  “Where have you been?” asked Lynn.

  “Didn’t Tom tell you? I told him to. It’s Mara. She phoned here in a fit or something. Wanted you,” explained Jennie, walking around the room in search of a cigarette, “but as you weren’t handy, I had to do. So I went up there, like a fool. Found the flat had been torn to pieces. It seems like her darling Bill had been feeling neglected of late. Missed his little wife. So he picked up with some synthetic blonde who runs a beauty shop in the neighborhood. Mara found out, and they had what the books call words. Words and music. Then he sprung it on her that he had known for weeks that she’d been seeing Frank Houghton, and the battle was on again. You never heard anything like it, the echoes of it, I mean. He wasn’t there when I arrived. Gone to the beauty parlor for a facial, I guess. She is leaving him. He is leaving her. I don’t know who’s leaving who. Anyway, it’s a hell of a mess. I gave her two aspirins and some spirits of ammonia before I left. She was going to sit up for Bill. No thank you, said I, and cleared out—Marriage,” reported Jennie, who had found her cigarette and was surrounding herself in smoke, “marriage is the bunk; I don’t care what you two think. Marriage, unless it means a bank account and no questions asked, is a flop. I’ve seen plenty, and tonight was the pay-off.”

  “Oh, poor Mara,” said Lynn, distressed.

  “Poor, my eye! She’s a fool. Where will this Frank Houghton business get her anyway? Houghton’s got a wife and kids and a job that depends on his uncle, and if he has money in the bank it’s just rainy-day savings; the first good thunderstorm will melt it. She thought she had to choose between losing her job and making a play for Frank; I got that much out of her. Wait till Frank has to choose between his job and her,” prophesied Jennie, and ambled into the bedroom. “Marriage!” she said, disappearing.

  “Gee!” remarked Tom in the silence that followed.

  “I ought to go see Mara—call her up or something,” said Lynn, worried.

  “Keep out of it, Lynn,” he warned her, “and you’ll be better off. I’ll go now, Lynn; you look pretty tired.” He added, awkwardly, “I’m sorry as the devil that—that I can’t see things the way you do.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” It did matter. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said faintly. She kissed him. “We’ll have to wait,” she said and clung to him a moment—“We do love each other, don’t we?”

  “We do.” It was like a vow, the way he said it. He bent his tall head to hers once more and kissed her sorrowful red mouth. “Go to bed, honey, see you tomorrow,” he said gently.

  When the door closed Lynn picked up her things and wearily into the bedroom.

  “About Mara—Should I go up there now, Jennie, and see what I can do?”

  Jennie, creaming her face at the mirror, turned.

  “Well, no! Are you out of your mind? There’s nothing we can do for her except give her a bed if Bill kicks her out.”

  “He can’t do that,” Lynn reminded her. “She pays the rent.”

  “Well, maybe he can’t. We’ll see. Did you see Dwight? What did he have to offer?”

  “He offered me a job with him. I’m not,” said Lynn, over Jennie’s exclamation, “going to take it.”

  “Well, I’ll be a vestal virgin!” gasped Jennie. “Not going to take it? See here, does that mean, you, or Tom—” Jennie asked shrewdly.

  “Tom, I suppose. He has ideas. I know he’s mad, but what can I do about it?” asked Lynn, sitting on the edge of the bed. “He says he won’t marry me if I do take it—and as all I was taking it for was to get married—there isn’t much use, is there?”

  “Men!” said Jennie.

  That night before she went to bed, Lynn got out her best monogrammed paper and wrote a letter to Dwight. It was an awkward letter, without life or color. How could she tell him the truth? It sounded so conceited, on her part—so childish, on Tom’s; she would never be able to meet David Dwight frankly again if she told him. She wrote that, after thinking it over, she decided that Sarah was right, it was better to stay where she was and also not to incur the possibility of dismissal by marrying immediately. She had talked it over with Tom, and he had agreed. After all, her position was excellent with the SeaCoast Company, she had a chance of a future there—it had been so kind of Mr. Dwight, she appreciated it, etc. etc.

  She mailed it on her way to work; it reached Dwight that evening, was waiting for him when he came into the penthouse. He read it twice, swore once, and laughed aloud.

  Young Shepard, of course. He had more brains than he had given him credit for. All for the best, he supposed. He hadn’t, Dwight hadn’t, let her down; he had made good his offer of friendship. And things were as they had been; she wouldn’t marry the youngster for heaven knows how long, in the meantime perhaps she would change her mind. Women do. Yes, possibly all for the best, he thought, and he wrote her a brief note regretting her decision but abiding by it gracefully and concluding with the wish that before the summer ended she would spend the weekend on Long Island as his guest. He would ask Sarah too.

  For three days Lynn looked for Mara in the rest room, and did not find her. She disliked going to the insurance office and tried several times, evenings, to ring up the flat. Twice there had been no answer; once a strange woman had answered and had hung up immediately; and the fourth time Bill had answered and had announced heatedly that Mara wasn’t there—he didn’t know where she was. On the third night Mara arrived with a suitcase.

  Jennie and Lynn were at home. Tom was out with young Rawlson again, and Jennie for some reason lately seemed to have a scarcity of engagements save when Meyer from Chicago was in town. Mara came in, her red hair flaming from under her hat, her face ashen under the rouge.

  “I’ve left him,” she announced, “for good!”

  “Mara—!” Lynn sprang to her feet. “Here, let me take your things—and your bag—you can’t mean it.”

  “I do mean it.” Mara sat down on the edge of a chair. Jennie, standing hand on hip, watched her and said nothing—eloquently. “I went home this afternoon—a little early. That woman was there—not for
the first time, I suppose.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told her something. She left pretty quick. I told Bill he could leave, too. He said he wouldn’t, the place suited him. I said I’d paid for it. He said the lease was in his name. If I wanted to go, I could; he’d stay on until the end of the month. I said I’d divorce him. He told me, go ahead—but on what? And that he had as much on me as I had on him—”

  “Don’t cry,” said Lynn, after a moment. “What are you going to do?”

  “May I stay here? I can pay my share. I won’t,” she said viciously, “have Bill to support—”

  “Of course you can stay here till you find a place,” Lynn told her, “that is, if Jennie doesn’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Jennie, yawning, “I’ve a double bed. You can sleep in it if you want to, provided you don’t snore or kick.”

  “Bill’s a beast!” was Mara’s only expression of gratitude. “Going around with that cheap woman behind my back!”

  Jennie asked gravely, “Sure it was all his fault? You hadn’t paid much attention to him lately.”

  “If you mean Frank,” Mara said, flaring up, “there isn’t anything to it—Bill hasn’t any right—Frank’s lonesome, that’s all. So am I. Sick and tired of going home every night to a grouch. Nothing was ever right; I couldn’t do anything to please him. Bill, I mean. Besides, Frank’s got a drag. Nowadays, you need all the drag you can get. Well, why shouldn’t I stay on the right side of someone who has influence?”

  “You’re riding for a fall,” was all Jennie had to say.

  Later, when Mara was running water in the tub and making herself at home generally, Lynn had a word alone with Jennie.

  “Look here,” said Lynn, “this is a mess, isn’t it? It isn’t fair for you to have Mara here. Ofcourse we can put up some sort of cot in the living room if she stays on—but it’s putting you out, and you don’t even like her very much.”

  “I don’t mind,” repeated Jennie. “No, I don’t like her particularly. She’s neither one thing nor the other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she isn’t good or bad. Not that I think anyone is, either, one hundred percent, but that’s the nearest I can get to it. I don’t blame Bill much. He must have felt pretty rotten, having her bring home the bacon and slice him his share, with reminders. Then after a while I suppose he got used to it. But they’ve led a cat-and-dog life for months, as far as I can see. So I figure he turned around and made passes at someone who told him how wonderful he was and what a success he was going to be. Mara never told him that. All she did was tell him he was a failure. So he is, perhaps; but maybe it’s partly her fault. Then, as to this Frank business—that’s her own affair. Only the point is, it isn’t an affair. She hasn’t the nerve. You’d have to respect her if she had—”

  “You don’t really mean that, Jennie, do you?”

  “Sure I mean it. Personally I’d respect her more if she was paying for whatever influence that bird may have, instead of taking it and giving him a lot of hope that doesn’t mean a damn. I like to pay on the nail,” Jennie explained, “if I get anything worthwhile. So far I’ve only got dinners and shows and perfumes and flowers and stockings. Well, I pay for those with my bright and cheery company—it isn’t worth any more in the open market, see?”

  Lynn laughed. “You’re the limit,” she said affectionately.

  “I saw Millie Haines on the street today,” Jennie told her irrelevantly. “She used to work for me for Canton and Stein, the wholesale coat-and-suit house. She darned near ran over me, driving a big sports Packard. She still works at Canton and Stein and she gets forty a week.”

  She shrugged.

  “And I’m not mentioning some of the show girls I used to pal with; they still ankle across the stage, they still have an Equity card, and their penthouse would make your lawyer boy friend’s look like a bird cage! Well, I wonder,” said Jennie, “whether it pays to be a virgin!”

  Mara came out just then, wearing a silk robe.

  “You’re peaches to take me in like this,” she said, fully recovered, her small round face flushed and smiling.

  “Just as long as no one else takes you in,” said Jennie.

  “I’ll look for a room,” Mara promised.

  “Don’t bother,” Jennie said; and for the first time during her acquaintance, Lynn beheld her embarrassed, a little ill at ease, “I may not be here long—I’ve plans—I haven’t,” she added, “made up my mind yet.”

  “Jennie!” Lynn stared at her.

  Jennie waved a lax hand in her direction.

  “Don’t get all hot and bothered,” she advised carelessly. “I don’t know yet. I’m working on a prospect.”

  “A job?” asked Mara, not very interested.

  “I’ll say so,” Jennie agreed. “How about a glass of milk and some crackers or some beer? I’m starved,” she added, casting one oblique look at Lynn’s worried face.

  She went into the kitchen and Lynn started to follow. But the telephone shrilled loudly near her elbow. Mara gasped and shrank back into her chair.

  “It may be Bill. Tell him I’m not here. Tell him you haven’t seen me. No, tell him I’m here and I’ll stay here,” she ordered uncertainly as Lynn turned toward the instrument.

  It was not Bill. It was Tom.

  “Lynn? Did I get you out of bed? Look here, I’ve got swell news. Pick out your site in Westchester and hire an architect. We’re going to be rich!”

  “Tom, you’re tight,” said Lynn severely.

  “Not very. I can’t tell you over the phone. Meet me at the old crasheteria for breakfast—we’ll have chops on me.”

  “But Tom—”

  “I tell you, I can’t talk more now. But all our worries are over,” he told her triumphantly, “and I love you like nobody’s business.”

  11

  MARA’S WAY OUT

  ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, MARA’S PRESence having complicated matters, Lynn arrived breathless, late for her cafeteria appointment with Tom. She had wasted time in argument, standing at the door of the apartment while Mara, a cup of coffee in her hand, inveighed against Bill.

  “A girl who marries and goes on working is a fool; and a man who agrees to the arrangement is a worse one,” she said. “I’m warning you.”

  “But,” Lynn had argued, “if a woman’s job means a lot to her, if she feels she can work it up into something big, absorbing, why shouldn’t she go on with it? On a fifty-fifty basis, a partnership? Marriage ought to be that way!”

  “Try and do it!” said Mara.

  Tom, waiting, watching the clock, reproached Lynn at entrance. She ordered coffee and rolls, smiling at him, “Tom, I’m so sorry—”

  “You’d better be!” He squeezed her arm in his big hand. “Woman, you ain’t heard nothing yet!”

  “But I want to hear—”

  “No time now. I’ll see you tonight. Jennie going to be out?”

  “I don’t know. Mara’s there, Tom; she’s left Bill,” Lynn said dramatically.

  “Well I’ll be a son of a gun!” But he wasn’t very interested. “Get rid of the audience,” he advised her, “and I’ll spill the news.”

  She drank her coffee hastily. “Tom, we’ll be so late!” She watched him pay their check (“This time it’s on me,” he said) and walked with him through the cafeteria.

  “Can’t you tell me anything?” she begged.

  “Just that I’ve a swell chance, that’s all. We’ll be on Easy Street yet,” he told her.

  That he had been working on an experiment in radio, she knew. She guessed, radiant, “Someone in UBC is interested in—”

  “No,” he interrupted. His face was grave. “It’s not that, though old Hank has promised to give me a hearing. This is different. Big business.” He laughed down at her, left her at her own door.

  Shortly before closing time Sarah came into Lynn’s office and stood by her desk a moment.

  Lynn ros
e, smiling.

  “No, sit down. I’ve been talking to David,” said Sarah. “He wants us to come down for the weekend, Saturday afternoon. Can you go? He’ll have a car for us.”

  Lynn said instantly, joyously, “I’d love it.” Then she sobered. Tom would object, she realized with a sinking of her heart. She added more quietly, “I’d like to, a lot—but—must he know right away?”

  “No, tomorrow will do,” Sarah answered, and left the room, with her easy, rather striding step. Lynn stared after her. It would be heavenly to spend a weekend in the country somewhere. But there was Tom. Why should he object? She asked herself angrily, unseeing eyes on the blue cards strewn on the desk. It was idiotic of him to be so sensitive where Dwight was concerned.

  She resolved to say nothing until she had heard his news, whatever it was. She racked her brains for the remainder of the day, trying to discover some clue to his excitement and confidence, but could find none. That night he explained.

  Jennie was out. Mara was out. They had the little place to themselves. Tom talked, pacing the floor, words hurtling over one another. Lynn sat there, her hands clasped, listening.

  It was very simple. The Seacoast Bank and Trust Company was planning a merger with one of the biggest banks in the world; if the merger went through, and it had every likelihood of so doing, the result would be the biggest bank in the world, without doubt or rival. Tom had learned of the impending deal through certain channels open to him, correspondence, for instance, and overhearing here a word, and there another. “All very secret,” Gunboat had warned him. The directors’ meeting would decide it, Tom supposed, but that wouldn’t be for some time. Somehow, Bob Rawlson had got wind of the thing, too.

  The Seacoast Company stock was at the moment at its very lowest, due to the general downward trend of bank stocks. The merger would send it sky-high. The trick was to buy as much as one could, in small lots, here and there, without arousing any curiosity or speculation, and hang on until the big news got out. Of course, Tom didn’t have much—but he’d borrow, mortgage his future; there were ways and means; he could borrow upon the principal of the small legacy which would come to him eventually, and Bob was going to borrow all he could too; they’d pool their interests. It meant, by autumn, perhaps, a big profit. What did Lynn think of it? He asked exultantly.