The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  The table was really only large enough for six to sit in comfort but a seventh chair and place setting had been forced in with the others. There were Mr. Shalimar and Barbara Lemont, already seated, Mr. Bossart, who stood up when the two girls approached, two empty chairs and Mike Rice standing with his arm protectively around Mar)' Agnes. Mary Agnes looked awed and rather frightened, as if she wasn't quite sure what she was doing in this distinguished company.

  "Do you know everyone here?" Mike asked. "You know Mr, Bossart, don't you? Caroline Bender and April Morrison."

  Mr. Bossart held out his hand and Caroline took it. It was a very hard, square hand with a silky palm, a hand she somehow did not like. It was Kke shaking a block of wood. But he smiled ingratiatingly at her, showing white, chorus-boy teeth, and she smiled back and sat down next to him.

  "May I sit here?"

  "Please do," Mr. Bossart said.

  April sat in the other empty chair between Carohne and Mike. There was a bottle of whisky on the table, a bucket of ice cubes, a pitcher of water and two bottles of soda. Mike poured drinks for Caroline and April.

  "She's my little reader," Mr. Shalimar said, pointing at Caroline and leaning forward over the table. "D'you know that, Arthur? She's my little reader." His voice was slightly thickened and aggressive, and Caroline realized Mr. Shalimar must be the one responsible for the halfway mark on their whisky bottle.

  "Oh, yes," Arthur Bossart said silkily. He glanced at Caroline with somewhat heightened interest. "Cigarette?"

  "Thank you."

  "She's been here only a year and she's a reader," Mr, Shalimar persisted. "Only a year ago . . . She's very ambitious. Very ambitious."

  "And talented too, I presume," Mr. Bossart said.

  "What's talent?" Mr. Shalimar said. His tone had become more aggressive. "Training, that's what you need. Experience and training. Little college girls walk in here and think they're going to tell everybody what to do. Think they can eat the world in three bites. They don't know how long it takes to become an editor."

  "I'm sure Miss Bender will get the best of training from you," Mr. Bossart said pleasantly.

  "Talent," Mr. Shalimar said. "She thinks she can get there with talent."

  Caroline clenched her hands together under the table and took a deep breath, smiling at Mr. Shalimar in what she hoped was an innocent and winsome way. "I guess the thing that first made me feel I could ever hope to be an editor was something you said to me when I first came here, Mr. Shalimar," she began, looking at him and then at Mr. Bossart. "I remember that we were all down in the bar—Mike was there, remember?" She turned to Mike and then back to Mr. Shalimar and Mr. Bossart. "You told me that an instinct for the work was die most important thing an editor could have. That and enthusiasm. It seems to me that proper instinct is a form of talent, wouldn't you say so?"

  "Seems that way to me," Mr. Bossart said, nodding. Mr. Shalimar was silent, beginning to scowl.

  "Here's the soup," Mike said. "Look out, girls, it's hot." He moved

  aside as the waiter put down the plates of steaming soup, and when Carohne glanced at him he winked at her almost imperceptibly.

  He remembers, Caroline thought. And he knows that it wasn't Shalimar who said instinct was all-important but Mike himself. But it was what Mr. Shalimar had been thinking. How Mr. Shalimar must dislike me, and I never really realized it!

  Mr. Bossart was stirring his soup so it would cool. Mr. Shalimar's attention was momentarily distracted by a fresh highball which he was consuming instead of the soup, and Barbara Lemont was looking at him with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. Cornered between Mr. Shalimar and Mike, Mary Agnes was mechanically spooning up her soup because it was in front of her. The room was very noisy with the cacophony of voices and the clink of spoons against heavy china.

  "Where did you go to college, Miss Bender?" Mr. Bossart asked. Somehow he had a way of making even a simple question like that sound intimate.

  "Please call me Caroline."

  "Caroline."

  "I went to Radcliffe."

  "Oh, really?" His youngest daughter was tr)'ing to get into Radcliffe this year, Caroline knew, but she was sure he wouldn't mention that or the daughter. He didn't. "I hear they're still wearing raccoon coats to football games up there," he said. "Is that true?"

  "Some of the girls do. They buy old ratty ones for five or ten dollars, left over from the twenties."

  Mr. Bossart laughed. "With built-in hip flask pockets and built-in fleas."

  "Gee, I hope not fleas."

  "Did you go to the Harvard-Yale game this year?"

  "No."

  "Watched it on television, I hope."

  "I'm afraid not."

  "What kind of alumnus are you?"

  "Nose-in-the-book type, I guess," Caroline said, smiling.

  "I don't believe that. You're too pretty."

  "Thank you."

  Across tlie table Mr. Shalimar was talking to Barbara, looking at her intendy. Without being able to read lips, Caroline was quite sure

  he was telling her about his former glories. Barbara had never heard his stories before and she was listening with respectful interest but not with the kind of fascination that April had shown. She had, instead, the unguarded look people have when they are in one-way conversation with a garrulous drunk; and she looked as if she were trying to figure out what sort of man he was when he was sober.

  "Do you live here in the city?" Mr. Bossart asked.

  "I do now. My family lives in Port Blair."

  "Oh, really? You go up weekends, I suppose."

  "Not always," Caroline said.

  "Too much social life here, eh?"

  She smiled prettily.

  The waiter had taken away the soup bowls and replaced them with plates of chicken and peas and tiny potatoes. Mr. Bossart took out of his pocket something that looked like a fourteen-carat-gold Boy Scout knife and began to cut his chicken with it. "Christmas present," he said to Caroline, not the slightest bit abashed.

  "It's beautiful."

  He wiped the blade he had used on his napkin. "See, it has three blades of diflferent sizes, and a bottle opener, and a nail file and a chisel. You've never seen a pocketknife with a chisel in it before, have you?"

  "I never saw a gold one either."

  "I have seventy-two knives at home," Mr. Bossart said. "Been collecting tliem for years."

  "My heavens, you could start a revolution."

  "And I have thirty-five antique guns. I have a pair of authentic seventeenth-century dueling pistols, and one of the first single-action revolvers ever made. But you probably don't know what I'm talking about."

  "It's very interesting."

  "Collecting guns and knives is purely a man's interest, women are bored to death when we talk about it. You're a sweet girl to pretend you care." He smiled at her in a chummy sort of way, with just a touch of condescension.

  What sort of bird have we here? Caroline thought. "I'll admit it's a bit above my head," she said.

  "I've been thinking for a long time of starting a man's magazine," Mr. Bossart said. "I discussed it with Clyde Fabian before he had his

  stroke, and he was interested too. You know, there are a slew of magazines in the field, but they're mostly girlie magazines—sexy pictures, lewd jokes, photos of girls in negligees. Even the ones with good fiction and articles go very heavy on the sex angle. What I want to do is something new. A real man's magazine, with nothing about women in it. Just hunting, fishing, sports cars, mountain climbing, bullfighting and derring-do."

  "Do you think most men would like that?" Caroline asked dubiously.

  "Why not? There would be nothing in this magazine for college boys, or for the armchair athletes. Oh, we'd have entertainment features. Theater, books of interest to men, and of course a section on the bar."

  "How about food?" Caroline asked.

  "None of these fancy color photographs of apothecary jars filled with uncooked macaroni," Mr. Bossar
t said scornfully. "We'd have a piece on how to dress and cook wild ducks after you've shot 'em, on how to barbecue venison and antelope, and so forth."

  And in December you can bind the Christmas issue in fur, Caroline thought. "It sounds different," she said.

  "It is different."

  The waiter removed the main course and brought ice cream with chocolate sauce. Caroline turned around for a moment and April nodded at her with a little half-smile, as if to say. Well, you're doing all right. She smiled back.

  "We won't have any women on the staff," Mr. Bossart went on. 'Tou know half these magazines for men are dominated by harpies. Women don't know what men want." He winked at her. "Well, at least, they don't know what men want in a magazine. We'll keep the women in the kitchen and in the typing pool, where they belong."

  "How about at Derby Books?" Caroline asked.

  He looked a little flustered, but only for an instant. 'TDerby Books is a good place to have a woman or two because many of their readers are women. A woman should not try to think like a man, because she can't even if she tries. A woman's weapon is in her femininity."

  That's not where Miss Farrow's weapon is, Caroline thought. "You're absolutely right," she said.

  "It's fun talking to you," he said. "More coffee?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Well, why don't we dance?"

  "I'd love to."

  He stood up, pulled out her chair, and nodded to the others at the table. Then he led her across the ballroom to the tiny space that had been left clear for dancing. Caroline walked into his arms. It was like embracing a slab of burr-covered wood. The hard mechanical palm he had extended to her in his handshake had not been a unique phenomenon, it had simply been an uncovered part of the entire unyielding whole. I can't imagine him and Amanda Farrow as lovers, Caroline thought. I can hardly think of two less loving people in this world.

  They danced v^dthout speaking. Caroline glanced surreptitiously around the room and saw Brenda look at her with round eyes and tifien nudge the girl next to her. Caroline could already imagine what they would say to her on Monday. I saw you dancing with Mr. Bossart! The waiters, who were anxious to clear the tables and get home, were removing coffeepots and plates of petits fours before they had been emptied and snatching partly filled whisky bottles off the tables. Caroline caught sight of Mike Rice with a bottle under each arm heading for the salon, followed by April.

  "There's more room in the salon," Mr. Bossart said. "Do you want to go in there or shall we head for the bar?"

  "Maybe there's a bar in the salon. Let's look." Caroline liked being seen with him, but she didn't want to be seen going off with him alone. It would be too easy to start office gossip and what would be the good of having Miss Farrow's reputation witliout any of Miss Farrow's privileges?

  It was after nine, and some of the girls who had dates or husbands to go to were leaving. Caroline saw Mary Agnes heading toward the elevators. It was an orderly party, much more so than any of the intimate pre-holiday get-togethers in the oflBce were, perhaps because the formal atmosphere of a large hotel subdued the people who would ordinarily have been clowning drunkenly and letting loose with all the frustrations that bound them during the year. Mr. Bossart found an empty table in the comer of the sparsely occupied salon and pulled out a chair for her.

  "There is a bar," he said. "We're in luck. What would you like?"

  "Scotch, please."

  He brought drinks and moved his chair closer to hers, and put his

  arm around her tightly. "Can I give you a ride home when we leave?"

  "Well, I have to meet someone in the Fifties at ten-thirty. If that would be on your way I'd love it, but I'm sure it isn't if you're going to the highway."

  "Your boy friend?"

  "He's a boy and a friend, yes."

  Mr. Bossart smiled. "If it were a girl I might make the trip. It's a shame you can't see my little sports car. You'd like it."

  "I'm sure I would, too."

  "Well. Another time."

  "Another time." She smiled niefuUy at him, but she was sure there would be no other time, at least not for her. Even trying to please him, smiling and trying hard to find the right thing to say, was fun because he was Mr. Bossart, the figurehead, the inscrutable, the celebrity. But as a person he bored her. She was surprised at herself for feeling this way. When she had first sat next to him at the table it had seemed the start of an adventure. She could have imagined herself rejected by him but never bored. And yet they were completely incompatible because neither of them was the kind of person the other wanted to know better. He wanted a conquest from her, perhaps. Perhaps his offer of a Hft home was only harmless chivalry, but she suspected she could easily make it something more personal. And she wanted a conquest from him too, in a way. She wanted his notice. And that was the only compatibility between them, the mutual desire for conquest—not even a very passionate desire at that—and she could remember few times when she had been more uncomfortable. When she noticed Mr. Shalimar and Barbara coming toward their table she was almost glad to see them.

  "Have you met Miss Lemont?" Mr. Shalimar asked. His speech was considerably thicker than it had been at the dinner table and Caroline was surprised. She had never seen him this way before although she knew that didn't mean it was unusual with him.

  "Yes, we have," Mr. Bossart said pleasantly.

  Mr. Shalimar held Barbara's chair for her, sat down beside her, and put his hand under the table. "I've never met Miss Lemont before," he said. "I've just met her tonight. She's a lovely-looking girl, don't you think?"

  "Yes, indeed," Mr. Bossart said. Barbara looked odd, either em-

  barrassed or trying not to laugh. She stirred a Httle in her chair, evidently trying to dislodge the Shalitnar tentacles from investigating any farther up her knee.

  "She looks like a Mona Lisa," Mr. Shalimar said. "Look at that smile."

  Barbara did look a little like a Mona Lisa, Caroline was thinking. She had straight, medium-brown hair tucked behind her ears, and regular features. There was an air of plainness about her face that was somehow also attractive, and she seemed to be trying hard not to reveal any of her feelings. Only that slight curve of an upturned mouth gave her away. She's probably the kind of person, Caroline thought, who looks prettiest when she's happy, and least pretty when she's asleep.

  "Little Mona Lisa," Mr. Shalimar said. Barbara winced, smiled at him sweetly, and moved away a little faither.

  "I'd love a ginger ale," Barbara said, somewhat desperately.

  "We'll get a waiter."

  "There aren't any," she said, a little more desperately. "I guess we'll have to get up and get our own."

  "I'll get some," Mr. Bossart said comfortably. "I'm about ready for a refill anyway." He went over to the bar and came back with drinks for them all.

  "It's a nice party," Caroline said, at a loss for conversation. "Isn't it?"

  "Very nice," Mr. Bossart agreed.

  "I'm glad I met this girl," said Mr. Shalimar. His eyes were half closed, but instead of looking sleepy he looked like an animal that is about to pounce. "She's an intelligent girl. And pretty too. Y'know, she supports her child and her mother on what she makes here. How d'you like that. Art?"

  "Is that a compliment to your large earning powers or your resourcefulness?" Mr. Bossart asked.

  "My resourcefulness," Barbara said.

  "Let's see, you work on Americas Woman, don't you," Mr. Bossart said.

  "Yes. I'm Assistant Beauty Editor. I used to be a secretary, but I was promoted this Christmas."

  "Oh, yes ... I remember now. Barbara Lemont. They're very pleased with you up there."

  "I'm glad," Barbara said.

  "She's got a good future," Mr. Shalimar murmured. He leaned over and brushed Barbara's cheek with a kiss. She glanced at him from underneath her eyelashes as if she woiild like to wipe her cheek with her hand, but she was still smiling that inscrutable little smile.

  "How old are you, if yo
u don't mind my asking?" Mr. Bossart asked.

  "Twenty-one."

  "My! And how old is your child?"

  "She's two." For the first time Barbara's smile became truly warm. "She was two last week."

  "Isn't she a lovely thing, Art?" Mr. Shalimar said. He put his hand behind Barbara's head. "Give us a Christmas loss."

  Caroline imagined she saw Barbara shudder imperceptibly. There was a long embarrassing moment while Mr. ShaHmar swooped upon Barbara and held her in a kiss, he moving his head from side to side, she with her neck and shoulders held so stiffly they looked as if they might snap. Caroline looked at Mr. Bossart, wondering what he might do, but he did not seem to be particularly surprised or displeased. He's probably watched this kind of display year after year, Caroline thought, disgusted. Let the executives kick up their heels a little bit, it's Christmas.

  When Mr. Shalimar finally drew lingeringly away from her Barbara turned to her glass of ginger ale as if nothing had happened. She sipped at it, her eyes lowered. But the skin around her mouth was white. Mr. Shalimar lifted his highball glass and drank the entire contents. Caroline realized for the first time how much she disliked him. It was partly because he had revealed that he disliked her, and that was going to make working with him more difficult. His mere distrust of her ambition and abihty would not have made her feel this way about him, for under other circumstances it could have been stimulating. But all the weakening respect she had had for him was rapidly vanishing, and without it he looked like nothing more than a foolish old lecher.

  "Another drink," said Mr. Shalimar. "Another drink." He rose to his feet slowly and walked to the bar. I hope he passes out, Caroline thought. She glanced at her watch, but it was only nine-thirty, too

  early to meet Paul, and she wasn't anxious to wait alone in a hotel bar.

  "He's certainly full of Christmas spirit," Mr. Bossart said. His tone was pleasant and cheerful, but there was an undertone of apology in it.

  "Yes," Barbara said.

  "I guess you'll be having Christmas with your family."

  Barbara nodded. "I'm going to put up the tree tonight when I get home. It's mostly for my daughter, I think she's old enough now to appreciate it. And old enough to know not to pull anything off it." She smiled.