The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  "With a little push," Paul went on, "I would marry you myself." The tone was bantering and sentimental both, the words were slightly slurred from the strong drink she had given him. But even drunk, Paul Landis could never be anything but precise and intelligent and self-protective, Caroline realized. He was waiting for her to make the move. If she made a joke of it he would too, if she told him she had always loved him he would fall on his knees and propose. How easy it would be, Caroline thought, and how easy everything would be forever after.

  "You're not ready for marriage," Paul said finally when she had not answered. "I guess you're too happy living the way you are."

  Happy? Caroline thought. Happy? Oh, my God, it's that I don't love you.

  "You're still thrilled with your girls' dormitory existence," Paul said. "But you'd better watch out. Getting to like it too much can turn it into a trap."

  "All right," Caroline said. She was too tired to argue, too bone weary to try to break her way through this incredible evenness that hid and protected whatever were Paul Landis' true feeHngs. Or per-

  haps what she saw of him on the surface actually was what lay inside too. Perhaps he really was Bermuda Schwartz. He was good and kind and contented to the point of smugness, and maybe he had a right to be. She looked at her watch and stood up. "It's awfully late."

  He stood too. "I was just leaving. I have to be at the office early tomorrow."

  They walked to the door of her apartment, she staying a little away from him so that he could not reach out and put his arm around her. "Thank you for a wonderful evening," she said.

  "It was my pleasure."

  At the door they stopped. Paul took her by the waist with both his hands but she turned her head away so that they ended in an embrace but not a kiss. Paul kissed her on the side of her face and she put her head against his shoulder. "I have a fierce headache," she murmured into the cloth, wondering whether he would ever accept such a lie. "I guess it's the hang-over I deserve, but a few hours early."

  He did not release her. "I just want to keep my arms around you for a minute," he said, almost gruffly.

  Caroline put her arms around Paul's waist and they stood there like that for a moment, leaning against each other. He needs tenderness too, she thought, he must. Everyone does, even Bermuda Schwartz with his hat and gloves. Oh, Paul, I wish with all my heart that I could give that tenderness to you, and that you could give it to me, and that it would be enough.

  He moved away from her finally and gave her a little pat. "You feel wonderful," he said lightly, "even for a thin girl." He picked his hat up off the chest of drawers. "Next Saturday," he said. "I'll call you before. I've inherited two tickets to the opera, my parents are going to Europe."

  "That will be lovely. Good night, Paul. Sleep well."

  As she shut the door she could hear Paul's jaunty footsteps going down the stairs. He was actually whistling. I envy him, Caroline tliought, for being busy and content and for finding refuge in Things. His best girl rejects his proposal of marriage; he thinks how nice it will be to go to the opera. Maybe I should try to be more like him. Tomorrow at the office wiU be better. Tomorrow some-

  thing good will turn up in my life. When tilings are darkest, something always does.

  What turned up the next day was something Caroline could never have thought of even in a daydream. She was in her tiny oJBfice when Miss Farrow came in with an armful of manuscripts that were so dusty and split on the edges from rubbing against their rubber bands that they looked as if they had been shunted around for months.

  "You'll have time to read these, won't you?" Miss Farrow said. She put them on Caroline's desk without waiting for a reply.

  "What are they?"

  "Some of mine. I'm cleaning out my backlog." Miss Farrow paused and smiled, a small, cold smile with more of smugness in it than happiness. "I'm leaving on Friday."

  "Leaving!"

  "There'll be a memo going around to that effect."

  Caroline didn't quite know what to say. How nice? I'm sorry? The first thought that entered her mind was that Miss Farrow had been fired, but she knew that was impossible. The next thought was that Miss Farrow had found a more comfortable job, but that seemed almost as ridiculous. She finally compromised on: "This must be quite a shock to everyone."

  "I don't like to leave in such a hurry and leave you all up in the air," Miss Farrow said. "And I finally trained my new secretary too. But it can't be helped."

  "Where . . . are you going?" Caroline ventured.

  The smile widened. "I'm getting married. My husband is moving his plant to California, so of course I have to leave Fabian."

  "How exciting!" Caroline gasped, not quite able to grasp it all at once. "I certainly wish you all the luck in the world."

  "Thank you."

  "When are you getting married?"

  "Friday or Saturday. Probably in the country."

  Miss Farrow looked different somehow, softer. Or rather, not as hard. She even looked less suspicious and less frantic. Then suddenly Caroline realized what part of the change was. Miss Farrow was not wearing her hat. Her red hair, pulled back in a chic neat chignon, gleamed under the overhead lights. Caroline felt a rush of warmth for her. She was leaving, the monster was going away. Now

  at last she wasn't someone to be afraid of and dislike, she was only another woman, whom a man found feminine enough to want to take for his wife. Caroline stood up and held out her hand. "We'll miss you," she said.

  Miss Farrow's hand was cool and slim, with sharp long nails. "I'll write once in a while from California," she said, smiling. "But I'll see you around before I leave." They shook hands, like two men, and Miss Farrow went out. Caroline picked up the first manuscript from the pile she had left.

  "Why, that old rat!" The date on the blank comment sheet was five months old. And it was a Western. Caroline looked through the other manuscripts in the stack. No wonder they had looked so shopworn. They were all five and four months old, and they were all Westerns. Caroline knew that Miss Farrow hated to read Westerns as much as she did. But at least I read them, Caroline thought indignantly, I don't hide them!

  At half past four Mr. Shalimar's secretary telephoned and said he wanted to see her. Caroline took a hasty look in her compact and walked quickly down the hall, Mr. Shalimar was seated behind his huge desk, busy with papers. She had not seen him for over two months, except for passing in the hall, and he too seemed to have changed. He looked smaller, less authoritative, less frightening. There was really no one in the oflBce who was afraid of Mr. Shalimar any more, they all thought of him as a rather pathetic, lecherous old man, and perhaps by this time he knew it. The story of his behavior at last year's Christmas party had spread immediately afterward and had given courage to those typists and filing clerks who had had similar experiences with him in the past, so that eventually every girl who had been pinched or kissed by Mr. Shalimar had come forth, whispering and giggling, to add her story to the oflBce gossip.

  "Ah, Miss Bender," he said, almost eagerly. "Sit down. Here, next to me." He gestured to a chair and Caroline took it cautiously. "I hardly ever see you any more," he said. He smiled at her, and added coyly, "You must be avoiding me."

  "No, no, not at all, I've been working very hard." And she added coyly, to keep up the spirit of the act, "That's what you want, isn't it?"

  "All the same, you should come in to see me once in a while," Mr. Shahmar said. "I Like to know what my favorite editors are doing."

  Caroline did not quite know whether to feel suspicious or pleased. This behavior was strange, to say the least. She said nothing.

  "Have you found any exciting new books for us?"

  "I'm reading a manuscript now which may turn out to be something."

  "Good," he said, "good. Keep at it. Keep turning them out." He picked up a typewritten sheet of paper from his desk. "You know of course that Miss Farrow is leaving us."

  "Yes."

  "We'll be sorry to see her go. She's
a good editor."

  "Yes," Caroline said.

  "I had thought at first of getting in a new editor to take over Miss Farrow's authors, but then it occurred to me that there are several bright young editors right here who could do the job just as well." He reached out and handed Caroline the sheet of paper. "Here is a list of Miss Farrow's authors and the manuscripts some of them are working on. I'm turning them all over to you."

  Caroline's heart turned over with happiness. She took the paper as if it were a rare original document and looked at it. Miss Farrow's authors 1 Some of them were the pick of the crop. "Thank you," she said.

  "You'll have to work hard," Mr. Shalimar warned. "You'll have to keep a watch on what each of these authors is doing, encourage them, write to them if they haven't done anything for us for a while, edit their manuscripts, even listen to their troubles."

  "I'd love that!" But already, through the radiant glow, her mind was clicking away. 'I'll need an expense accoimt to take them to lunch."

  "You'll get it."

  "The same as Miss Farrow's. We don't want them to think they've been handed down to an assistant, that will insult them."

  "Hers was very small, though."

  There he goes, Caroline thought, trying to cut corners. What a liar! "I know," she lied in turn, "she told me what it was."

  "Well, then, of course you'll get the same."

  "Thank you." She looked down demurely, gathering her corn-age, and then looked up at him. "I guess since Christmas is very close I'll be getting some kind of raise in accordance with my promotion. I'd

  Miss Farrow gets, but it seems a fair compromise."

  "Oh, I don't know about a raise," Mr. Shalimar said. "After all, this new job is quite an honor for you. You'll be getting something, of course, but I wouldn't count on twenty dollars. The company isn't that rich."

  The old bastard, Caroline thought. Now I know why he thinks the "bright young editors" can do Miss Farrow's job just as well. Half as expensively is what he means. "I hope you'll keep my request in mind, though," Caroline said. She stood up. "And thank you again. I'll try to do a good job."

  "Come see me sometime," Mr. Shalimar said, waving.

  Back in her oflBce Caroline read the list of authors excitedly. When Paul had said last night she wanted Miss Farrow's job he had never dreamed she might actually get it. She had, but of course it had been a dream. Her pique at Mr. Shalimar's financial ruses was gradually fading. She would do a much better job than Miss Farrow had—anyone could—and then she would get the extra money. And she already had the expense account. She was a real editor, like Miss Farrow, like Mike. A real editor!

  Chapter 20

  There is something very trying about holidays in a large city, perhaps because everyone feels obliged to be happy. In the country, in a large household, there are preparations for Christmas for many days before, children hang up decorations, trees are trimmed, and some people even make their presents instead of buying them in a department store. Everyone draws together and there is a fine feeling. In the impersonal city, in New York, people who are originally from other places yearn to go home where hoHday means family and people they love. Those who stay because they have no family or because they have been invited to enough Yuletide cocktail parties to tip the scales in favor of the Hghted fortress huddle togetlier as the crucial days draw near, drinking and laughing and shutting

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  out old memories, as one stops listening to nursery rhymes at a certain age, and the sophisticates among them exclaim to each other, Oh, I hate Christmas!

  As Christmas drew closer and the old year died slowly in a blaze of hghts April Morrison could not decide what to do. Should she go home? She was so grief-stricken after her rejection by Dexter and so embarrassed to face all the relatives who had been told to expect an autumn wedding that she wanted to stay in New York and hide. And then, too, in New York was Dexter Key, somewhere, doing something, living and perhaps, finally, accessible. Despite her unhap-piness she could not help but be thrilled by the lights along Fifth Avenue, the choirboys high on top of Saks with voices that actually sang in the evenings, the huge tree at Rockefeller Center with its enormous luminous Christmas balls, the tree attached to the front of the Lord and Taylor building made of hundreds of little light bulbs. And the store windows! The skaters that whirled mechanically on circles of mirror ice, the princesses and the angels and the fluff and the tinsel and the music that played until all hours of the night while people slowly filed by, held in by velvet ropes, peering into the lighted windows, stuffing freezing hands into their pockets and listening to their children exclaim with joy. April loved all this with all the delight of a tourist's heart, but it also saddened her because when she finally went home to her apartment her littie tree looked so lonely and artificial on the bridge table and there was no one she loved to look at it with her.

  She knew that on Christmas Eve Dexter's parents held a huge open house. They invited all their friends and many of Dexter's friends. The year before she had not gone, she had been in Colorado. But she knew where they lived and she knew what she was going to do.

  Maybe it was a crazy thing to do but she didn't care. Knowing she was going to do it made her feel happy for the first time since Dexter had left her. When she dressed on Christmas Eve in her most beautiful dress her hands were shaking. She had had her hair done, she had taken twenty minutes with her make-up. She looked, she thought, like Cinderella going to the ball, and perhaps she was. The prince, at any rate, would be there.

  She went to Dexter's parents' house in a taxi, so as to be sure not to muss her hair. She arrived at a quarter to eleven. It was late

  enough so that no one would notice her entrance and if they did they would be so full of Christmas punch they would be glad to see another pretty girl. She was trembhng, happy and excited and frightened all at the same time. A burst of noise greeted her when she stepped out of the elevator. There was a huge fat wreath pinned to the Keys' front door and the door was locked. April smoothed her hair and rang tlie bell.

  A maid opened the door, a thin little maid in a shiny black dress with a tiny white apron. She had evidently been hired only for this occasion because she looked at April blankly, liked what she saw, smiled timidly, and said, "Come in. Ladies' coats this way."

  April walked quickly behind the maid, looking around. It seemed to be an enormous apartment, with huge high-ceilinged rooms and expensive-looking French furniture and many mirrors. One of the rooms, the den, had coat racks lined up in it. The maid hung April's year-old beige cashmere coat between a brown mink and a black seal. "Go right into the hving room," she said and darted away, leaving April alone.

  So this was Dexter's parents' house. She felt as though she loved everything in it because they were things that were close to him. Perhaps this den was the room he had used as a child. She walked toward the noise and the press of guests, glancing through half-opened doors as she went. There was a room with a double bed-perhaps his parents' room. And a guest room, or was that one his old room? She loved them all, she wanted to run inside and look at all his former things. Instead she worked her way through the crowd to a table set with a great crystal punch bowl and accepted a cupful from a uniformed butler. Next to the punch table was a tail Christmas tree, reaching right up to the ceiling, covered with ornaments and piled up to its lower branches with elaborately wrapped presents. It was like the tree her family had at home and it made her feel more at ease and more hopeful about the outcome of this whole evening.

  She looked around for Dexter. At first she did not see him in this mob of merrymakers, and then she did, tall and dark and frighten-ingly familiar against the drawn white silk curtains of a window across the room. He had a glass in his hand and he was talking to a girl who was much shorter than he, so that April could hardly see her over the heads of the crowd. Dexter, she tliought, oh. Dexter.

  She only wanted to stand there, invisible and unnoticed, and look at him, terrified of being hurt by
him again and longing to keep that face she loved in her sight forever.

  Her hand was trembling so much that she almost spilled her punch on her dress. She drank it to get rid of it, hardly tasting the sweet fruity taste. It had liquor in it, gin or something. Maybe that's what I need, she thought, and went to the table for another, turning her head several times to keep track of Dexter. He seemed set, he wasn't going to move away for a while. He was drinking a highball, not punch. April wanted to sneak up and confront him, smiling and looking as if nothing had happened between them, but she was afraid to take a step. She held out her cup for more punch, smiling instead at the butler, who smiled back and said, "Yes, indeed!" as if he was glad to have wooed someone away from the bar and the stronger liquor. The punch was strong enough for April. She felt a warm glow and she was beginning to relax, and as she did her yearning for a word from Dexter became unbearable. She pushed her way toward him.

  "Hi," someone said. She looked up, dreading any interruption. It was a friend of Dexter's, a boy with a white nothing-face and short brown hair.

  "Oh . . . it's Chet, isn't itr

  "That's right. How're you, AprU?"

  "Fine," she lied, smiling nervously and wondering how to get rid of him.

  "I haven't seen you since this summer," Chet said.

  She remembered him more clearly now, he was the boy who had always seemed to be making vague passes at her when Dexter wasn't looking. She'd never been sure whether he liked her or was just a wolf, or if he knew about her and Dexter. Now she didn't care, she only wanted to get away from his polite conversation and get to Dexter.

  "Are you here with someone?" Chet asked.

  "I . . . no . . . yes."

  "No, yes?" He was grinning at her.

  "No. I was invited."

  "Well, I'm alone too," he said happily. "Can I get you a drink?"