Skyscraper

by Faith Baldwin

  So Lynn remained in town, enrolling for all the classes she could manage for the fall term and for a tail-end summer class before the regular session. She took her two weeks’ vacation literally in a classroom, and during that time did not see Tom at all, his apprenticeship on Long Island lasting longer than he had expected. He telephoned her now and then and wrote her short, illegible, happy notes.

  The fact that Jennie was leaving worried her. Would she be able to swing the apartment alone? She thought not; not yet, at any rate. And of course she wouldn’t permit Jennie to pay. She spoke to Sarah, a little self-consciously.

  “Jennie’s leaving the apartment,” she said. “I suppose I’ll have to look for a room, or go to the club again.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It isn’t a pleasant prospect; in the last few months I’ve become pretty accustomed to freedom.”

  “Where’s Jennie going?” Sarah wanted to know.

  “Oh”—Lynn was vague—“I don’t know; she’s tired of housekeeping I guess.”

  Sarah raised her heavy eyebrows but forbore to press her further. She said, after a moment, “There’s a little apartment on the ground floor in this building. Just one room and bath. The tenant is sailing on October first for Europe. She has a long lease. She told me that if she could rent it to someone reliable she would be willing to let it got for very little, less in fact than the rent. I—you’d be alone, of course, but in the same building with us.”

  “Sarah, that sounds grand!”

  “Have you a lease where you are?”

  “No, just one of those month-to-month things. Gosh, I’d love it,” said Lynn. “Could I see it?”

  Having seen it, she told Jennie, “It’s just the thing, awfully cute. You couldn’t swing a cat in it, but I haven’t a cat and wouldn’t swing one if I had. It’s fitted up as a living-room you know, one of those studio couches, and there’s a sort of electric-plate affair in something not as big as a clothes closet. I can’t stay on here alone anyway, Jennie; and I don’t know of anyone I like well enough to ask to come in with me.”

  “Sounds all right,” Jennie admitted after a moment, “if you’re willing to be under Sarah’s eagle eye every minute of the day and night.”

  “Oh, she won’t interfere with me,” Lynn said easily. “It would never occur to her.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Jennie. “Lynn, you haven’t told Tom—anything, have you?”

  “Of course not,” Lynn replied indignantly. “What do you think I am? Why?”

  “I didn’t think you had. But Slim’s been getting all hot and bothered about me lately. I—I just won’t see him that’s all,” said Jennie, setting her small jaw firmly. “I can’t afford to. Suppose I get fed up with Jake—and Slim’s handy? God knows what I’d do. And I don’t want to do anything,” she added ambiguously.

  “Oh, but Jennie,”—Lynn flushed and stumbled a bit—“if Slim should find out he wouldn’t—I mean, you wouldn’t have any more trouble with him.”

  Jennie slid her long eyes around at her friend.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re all wet—that is, if you mean that Slim would cut me off his calling-list. He wouldn’t, naturally, have honorable mentions any more but—”

  “Oh, Jennie, not Slim!”

  “Why not? He’s a man,” said Jennie definitely.

  Tom came back in high feather, enthusiastic to the boiling or bursting point over his work. But Lynn, the first time they were alone together, paid him scant attention. She came straight to the point.

  “Tom,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me Mr. Norton let you out?”

  He looked excessively uncomfortable. Of course he might have known she’d find out! Everyone knew, he supposed. He answered awkwardly, “Gosh, it was all so darned stupid. I—I didn’t want to tell you. You see, I walked into his office, all set to tell him I was quitting—and I can prove it too, Lynn, by the date I interviewed ‘em up at UBC and was taken on—and then he sprang it at me. About firing me, I mean. Lord, you could have knocked me over with a—a cobweb!”

  “But why did he fire you?” she demanded, believing that much of his explanation, impossible not to believe him; he was so entirely eager and honest.

  “Oh, I wasn’t ‘responsible.’ I didn’t take my ‘obligations’ seriously, or so he said.”

  Now was the time for her to say, “And didn’t you? Did you—did you break your word to me about Rawlson?” But she couldn’t say it. She had missed him so much, she had him back again, he hadn’t lied to her, she knew he hadn’t lied, perhaps Sarah had misunderstood Mr. Norton, perhaps she had taken this talk of obligations and responsibilities to mean a dishonorable discharge.

  She said irrelevantly, “Oh, darling, I’m so glad to have you back. Don’t let them send you places again, will you? I’ve missed you so much. I wish,” she said, low, “that they hadn’t fired you—I mean—”

  He kissed her. “So do I,” he said cheerfully, “but if I’d said, ‘I’m quitting, anyway,’ he wouldn’t have believed me, Lynn, I would have felt like a fool.”

  She asked, “I supposed you know Bob Rawlson has your job?”

  He looked so perfectly aghast that she knew he hadn’t known; knew, too, with a relieved throb of her heart that he hadn’t been seeing Rawlson.

  “Rawlson!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes. Sarah told me that Mr. Norton had given him this chance, as he was dissatisfied where he was. Tom—do you think,” she asked, “that—that it was wise—of Mr. Norton?”

  “Wise?” He frowned, puzzled, then understanding, he laughed. “Sure! Thinking of that jackass idea he—I mean we had? Get it out of your funny little head. Pipe dreams, that’s what it was. Nothing to it. Rawlson’s forgotten it long ago, I guess.”

  She thought, Then he doesn’t know there’s been talk on the Street.

  She decided not to tell him. What was, after all, the use?

  By the middle of October Jennie had moved to a Riverside Drive apartment, to her own amused chagrin.

  “Jake,” said Jennie, “is old-fashioned. He thinks that if you’re going to keep a woman—”

  “Please, Jennie, don’t talk like that.”

  “Why not? Is there a prettier name for it?” asked Jennie, and continued imperturbably—“that you have to keep her on the Drive. I held out for Park Avenue or at least, the East Side. But nothing doing. Still it’s a nice dump,” she conceded carelessly, “and has all the works, including a maid.”

  She added, “I don’t suppose you’ll come see me.”

  “Why not?” asked Lynn, in her turn.

  Tom, learning that Jennie had moved and Lynn was moving, was insistent in his demands for an explanation. What’s the big idea? I thought you liked the place and that you two got along like a house afire.”

  “We did, we do, but Jennie’s—Jennie’s had a raise,” lied Lynn desperately and futilely, “and she’s had a chance to go into a bigger place with—with someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, just someone she used to know.”

  “Look here, what’s wrong with you? Come, spill it, what’s it all about?” asked Tom.

  “Nothing. Whatever it is, it’s Jennie’s business,” said Lynn, “and I haven’t inquired into it.”

  Her tone warned Tom that he was not to inquire, either; but for the rest of their time together while Lynn in a brave endeavor to follow his jargon listened to his tales of the new job, his mind was busy with speculations. A talk with Slim enlightened him not at all and only served to puzzle him more. But one day, reporting for work at noon, he saw Jennie leaving the building with a short, dark, dapper man, and protecting herself against the slight autumnal chill in the air by a three-skinned Russian sable slung about the collar of her tailored suit. “So that’s it!” said Tom, staring.

  He told Lynn, when next he saw her, “I’m wise to Jennie’s game. Look here, you’ll have to cut her out.”

  Lynn said stubbornly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
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br />   “She isn’t,” explained Tom, “wearing sables—and such good ones that even I could tell ‘em—and isn’t living on Riverside Drive—oh, Slim knows that much—on whatever she pulls down upstairs. Don’t make me laugh. You—you can’t afford to see her, Lynn.

  “Is that so? Well,” said Lynn furiously, “you can’t dictate to me about my friends—I’ll see her as often as I want!”

  Tom took his troubles to Sarah, braving all curious looks to stop in at her office one day and sit down beside her desk. Sarah listened patiently, making little dots and circles on the blotting-paper with her fountain pen.

  “I thought it was something of the kind. Don’t,” she advised slowly, more anxious than Tom could know that he and Lynn should not quarrel, “don’t antagonize her, Tom. She’s very loyal. No matter what Jennie does or has become, she won’t desert her. And you’ll only make her angry. Let me talk to her instead.”

  She did so, at the first opportunity, coming right to point.

  “You musn’t blame Tom,” she concluded, after she had explained.

  “I don’t. Yes, I do! Men make me sick!” said Lynn violently.

  “I know you’re fond of Jennie,” Sarah told her gently, “but can’t you see that she has cut herself off from all companionship with you by this step?”

  “No. She was honest with me about it from the very beginning. She was perfectly willing that I should, as you say, cut her off. She wanted me to, rather. But I won’t. She’s lonely—in a way. I—I don’t go there when—anyone else is there, Sarah,” Lynn told her.

  “I see. That’s wise, of course.” Sarah was silent for a moment. She thought, what a rotten hypocrite I am! What right have I to preach to Lynn about Jennie’s morals? Even if—if it was all over years ago, it happened, didn’t it?

  There is caste in everything after all—no man kept me, she thought further, her chin lifted—that was a free gift; this is a—business arrangement.

  She said aloud, “I’ll not say any more, and I don’t think Tom will. It’s up to your own judgment, Lynn.”

  Now, when Tom came to Lynn’s new apartment, she took him as a rule up to Sarah’s. It was tacitly agreed between them all that this arrangement would be the better part of valor. But he came sometimes at such curious times that they couldn’t inflict themselves upon Sarah, and so they took to going out again for the brief hours belonging to them.

  There were not many such hours. With the opening of the fall term Lynn was busy four nights a week.

  Tom asked, dissatisfied, “What’s the big idea of killing yourself?”

  She answered, “It isn’t settled yet—but if Sarah does change her position, I’m in line for hers, you know.”

  “Gee, that’s great!” He said it sincerely, but his eyes flickered anxiously over her small face, a little pale, a little thin. “But you musn’t work too hard. You can’t stand it.” And then because Sarah had talked to him, advising, warning, he said awkwardly, “You’re not fretting about Jennie, are you?”

  She said, “I suppose so, a little.” She touched his cheek with her hand, leaned closer to him in the motion-picture house where they were sitting, heedless of the stage show. “It seems such a waste. I’m so sorry for her.”

  Tom said glumly, “So am I, in a way, but it’s her own funeral. Slim’s started to hang around her again. I’m worried about him, too.”

  They were silent, as the curtain fell and the house darkened and the film started to unroll, holding each other’s hands, like children, for comfort.

  Lynn had not encountered David Dwight since the house party, save once when she had seen him outside the bank. His car was driving away, and someone else walking briskly into the bank had presented to her abstracted view a back and a set of shoulders which reminded her of Bob Rawlson. She had seen Dwight only as a figure, leaning back against the upholstery of his car. He had not seen her. She admitted to herself that she was a little hurt, and more than a little bewildered by his apparently deliberate neglect. Before the house party, if she had not seen him often, she had at least heard from him occasionally; a note written from Washington, Chicago, Cleveland; flowers, telephone calls.

  He was, she decided, probably dreadfully busy. Courts were in session, he would be away perhaps most of the time. Still, it was odd—

  She even spoke of it to Sarah, frankly enough. Sarah, her eyes guarded, said “He’s occupied, I suppose. I was in The Times the other day that another case had gone against him, on appeal.”

  Lynn thought, I wish I hadn’t spoken; she must think I’m crazy; as if I mattered to him—at all.

  The football season was on. Tom was sent out, with the announcers, to learn the business of the outside hookups. He returned from these expeditions full of enthusiasm. He liked such work even better than the master control room or “cranking gains” in the various studio control rooms—which meant he assured her, simply monitoring the broadcast form the studio, in the studio control room, en route to the master control room. It was, she decided, much too deep for her. But that he was happy was perfectly obvious. His work had changed him, even in this brief time. He was more sure of himself, not in his cocky, boyish way, but maturely sure. He had grown in poise, in stature almost. He was never bored now, but eager and ardent, looking forward to the next day’s work.

  “You’ll get over it,” Hank told him.

  “Not I,” said Tom. “This is like Christmas every day, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Lynn at his insistence came now and then to the studio and was permitted to observe the programs through the glass windows and to sit in the reception room and once to go through the control room, which filled her with the blank amazement and slight terror of the layman confronted by the mysteries of science. The various apparatus for sound effects amused her more than anything else, and she endeared herself to the gentleman in charge of them by asked what he called, with some astonishment, intelligent questions. She thought that afterward when her work permitted it, she would get books “and things,” talk more seriously with Tom, try to learn a little more about this astonishing phenomenon which concerned him so closely and deeply. He could understand her work, but she couldn’t understand his; and she wanted to, if only the better to comprehend him.

  Lynn was by no means entirely satisfied with Tom’s explanation of the way in which he had left the bank. But she forced herself to be. She had no proof, nothing upon which to base her occasional quite dreadful doubts of him. She had no proof that he ever saw Rawlson. But it was unfortunate that at this tag end of the season, at a time when little cars were going into cold storage and town cars replacing roadsters in the city, Tom took it upon himself to buy a car. It was not new, it was second hand, even third hand; but it had had, as he said proudly, “a sweet paint job,” and it looked smart and shining as he brought it one evening to a flourishing stop in front of the apartment house, and dashing in, invited Lynn to step to the window and gaze upon the chariot under the light of street lamps.

  “But where on earth did you get it?” she demanded, feeling suddenly sick.

  “Made a killing in the Street,” he offered cheerfully, his arms about her shoulders.

  She moved away from him.

  “Tom—? Please be serious.”

  “Robbed a bank,” he went on. “Hey, what’s the big idea of going over there? Won’t it be swell when spring comes—provided either of us has any time—we can go picnicking. Bought it,” he said amiably, “for a song.”

  “”But I don’t understand,” said Lynn miserably.

  “Bigger and Better Business, baby. I figured if I had to take to apple-selling I could load ‘em in the rumble seat and park on quiet corners.”

  She said steadily, “Tom, you’d better tell me the truth.”

  “You won’t like it,” he warned her, sobering.

  Her heart was very heavy. She said, “It doesn’t matter whether I like it or not, does it?”

  “Oh, it isn’t that bad,” he told her cheerfully, “
only I know you hate speculation. No one on a small salary,” he intoned gravely, “has a right to speculate. Well, I did—a little. And there’s the answer,” he said truthfully.

  He flicked a finger toward the car. “Get on your things and we’ll try it,” he suggested.

  “No, Tom, come over here and sit down.”

  He obeyed, wondering.

  “Tom, are you—are you telling me the truth?”

  “Sure, I am. Say, look here, Lynn, what’s biting you?”

  “But there’s been a leak,” she said steadily, “about—the bank merger. I heard about it some time ago. I didn’t tell you—I thought—but now—Tom, you promised me—you swore you’d tell Bob Rawlson you’d have no more to do with that scheme of his. You said you had told him.”

  “Of course I promised. And I told him,” he told her, bewildered. “What’s all the shooting for?”

  “Someone has been buying the stock,” she said, “someone knows. And—you were let out.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” he said “even if I was fired.”

  She was silent. He said again, “I didn’t do it. Good Lord, Lynn, I bought that car for three hundred and fifty dollars. If I had done what you think—I wouldn’t be buying second-hand cars.”

  She said, “I’m not so sure. You wouldn’t, of course, make the profit other people would. You haven’t,” she said bitterly, “enough business sense.”

  He got to his feet and stood over her. “Is that so? Do you mean to tell me that you think I went back on my word?”

  She said wretchedly. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “And I don’t know what to think of you!” He was angry; and he was innocent; and it is a curious fact that a combination of anger and innocence wears often the very face of guilt. His hasty words carried, to her ears, absolutely no conviction. “I thought you were pretty fair-minded—and loyal. Sarah said you were. She said about Jennie—no matter what Jennie has done or become, she said, you would stick to her, wouldn’t hear anything against her. That goes for Jennie. But because you hear some fool rumor you immediately jump to the conclusion—”