“I write a column for the Capitol Chatter. You might not know it—more of a tabloid than a newspaper. Anyway, I go places, clubs and parties and restaurants and such. Some of them public. Others—” she lowered her voice—“more on the private side, if you know what I mean. And then I write about it. What I did, who I saw. People kind of go around with me, vicarious-like.”
As she spoke, a slow smile stretched under Everett’s moustache, and the indulgent twinkle she remembered from childhood crept into his eyes.
“You’re the Monkey behind Monkey Business?”
She twisted in her chair, seeing that no one was passing by the open door. Satisfied, she turned back.
“You read the Capitol Chatter?”
His face dropped back into aloofness. “My wife is a regular subscriber.”
“Really? We don’t have too many of those.”
“Don’t they pay you?”
She smiled wryly. “By the word. And my boss is pretty stingy with those, too.”
“If your mother knew—”
“She’d die.” She didn’t feel the slightest pain at the joke. What affection she’d ever felt for her mother had long since callused into nothing more than an acknowledgment of lineage. They’d only spoken with each other a dozen times between the end of the Great War and the end of her life last spring.
“She loved you very much, you know,” Everett said with a banker’s measure of affection.
“So she disinherited me?”
“Legally, no. She left you a generous sum. And you’ll receive the proceeds of the Baltimore house, should a buyer ever be found.”
“Doled out in drips and drabs until I’m thirty.”
“And then you’ll have it all.”
“Not the Georgetown house.” She unhooked her toes from the floor and let her feet swing listlessly above the roses in the carpet.
“She only had your best interest at heart. I know she worried you might attract the wrong sort of man—one who would love you only for your money.”
“And that won’t happen when I’m thirty?”
“I suppose by then it might be the only thing that would get you a man at all.”
He smiled, inviting her to join him, both of them knowing that must have been exactly what Mom had been thinking when she drafted the document. Monica’s boyfriend, Charlie, had no idea about the money or her father’s wartime profits that had generated it. Sometimes, though, she wondered if he might not feel differently about her if he knew. Differently enough to leave his wife. Perhaps she’d tell him on her thirtieth birthday. That was just over nine years away. Not quite a decade. She might have to send him a telegram.
“Let me do this,” Everett said, pulling a wallet from the breast pocket of his jacket. “A personal loan. From me to you. Would ten dollars help?”
Ten dollars would indeed help. It would be half the rent—enough to sate her landlord for the next few days—or enough to buy the adorable brown velvet hat she’d seen in the window at Marcel’s, or to buy a nice steak dinner at a place where she might get a lead on a new club. How to choose? Still, she should put up a bit of a fight.
“Oh, I couldn’t.” Her feet swung free, alternating. “I wouldn’t want to be beholden.” Besides, Charlie was good for a steak dinner every now and then.
“Not at all. I would consider it fair trade for just a bit of your expertise.”
He said expertise in such a way as to still her feet. “Look, I don’t know what you think—”
“Mona and I have an important anniversary coming up. Twenty years of wedded bliss, and I’d like to take her someplace . . . festive.”
He said festive with the same conspiratorial air as expertise, and Monica responded with a wink. “I have just the place.” She fished around in her purse until she found the yellow card. Approaching Everett’s desk, she asked for a pen, turned the card over, and drew a comic-looking little monkey—with exaggerated eyelashes and a long string of beads—on the back. The same sketch appeared at the top of her weekly column. She held it by the corner and blew the ink dry before giving it to Everett.
“Shoe repair shop on East Sixteenth. Upstairs. Drinks are expensive, but strong. And the music was perfect for dancing.”
“And this’ll get us in?” He seemed somewhere between skeptical and amused.
“Worked for me. But take my advice. Dress like you’re headed for an evening at the Carlyle. This place is classy. And not so much chatter at the door. If they ask where you got the card, tell ’em you got it from Miss Monkey Business herself, but zippo on my name.”
“Mona will be thrilled,” he said, placing two bills in her hand and folding it within his own.
“And don’t tell her, either. Please, Everett. If word gets out and they know me at the doors, I’ll never get back in. And if I never get back in, I won’t have a job.”
“It is a secret safe with me.” He walked around to the front of his desk to offer a familial escort out of the office. “And you know, you can always come to me in your time of need. I’d hate to find you starving in the street like some rag straight out of Dickens.”
“I’d hate that too.” Despite the air of business behind their transaction, she gave him a brief hug—right in the doorway—and ignored the curious looks of all as she made her way back through the lobby.
The wind was just as sharp and cold as it had been before her visit to the bank, but it seemed to have lost its bite. She hummed “Ain’t We Got Fun?” not so quietly, turning every third step or so into a jazzy backward kick. Safe again from the wolves that hounded her. She might just chip in fifty cents to the coal fund of her boardinghouse and spend the rest of the day in the big parlor downstairs, snug in a warm room under one of Mrs. Grayson’s famous quilts. There was a new story niggling at the corner of her brain. Something about a banker and his wife celebrating their anniversary at a speakeasy. She would call it something like “A Night on the Town” or “The Ten-Dollar Ticket,” and it would begin with the wife finding a mysterious yellow card in her husband’s wallet, and she’s immediately suspicious, thinking he’s stepping out with another woman. . . .
Her thoughts carried her all the way through Mrs. Grayson’s cozy parlor and up the steps to her own apartment, where she came to a sharp, startled stop at the sight of a familiar form crumpled in the doorway.
“Trevor?”
At her voice, the boy lifted his head from where it had been buried in his arms. His eyes were red, ruining any chance of hiding the fact that he’d been crying the tears he seemed now determined to fight.
“Oh, Miss Bisbaine. Have you heard?”
“Obviously not.” She held out a hand to help him up, trying not to lose her own balance in the process. “Did the offices burn down or something?”
“Worse than that. It’s Mr. Moore.”
Mr. Moore. Her boss. Editor in chief and owner of Capitol Chatter. A small man with a bald pate fringed with hair the same length, volume, and consistency as his eyebrows. Constantly trudging, troll-like, through the tiny third-floor offices, leaving a trail of ashes from his perpetual cigar as he chomped and moaned about the lack of decent violence and vice in this hick town. He was fond of saying—daily, loudly—that all the real corruption was up there on Capitol Hill, and he was stuck with a bunch of hacks too stupid to know it and a load of readers too stupid to care.
“Did he drop dead yet?”
Trevor’s eyes grew to saucers. “Who told you?”
Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! ’Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of your old life and into the new!
KENNETH GRAHAME
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
MAXIMILIAN MOORE’S SECRETARY, Ida, had taken the telegram over the phone, and he read the message now written in her precise, efficient hand.
Edward Moore deceased. Request you come at earliest convenience to settle affairs.
Precisely wh
o had sent the telegram was unknown. He hadn’t any other family. No cousins or siblings anywhere. Uncle Edward had been his father’s only brother, and Max an only child—his parents now deceased.
He walked over to the window and leaned his head against the cool glass, feeling very alone despite the manic activity on the street three stories below.
Three soft knocks and a muffled “Mr. Moore?” from the other side of his door sharpened his attention.
“Come in.”
Ida’s comforting, homely face poked through.
“My condolences, Mr. Moore, on your loss.”
“Thank you, Ida.”
“But he’s in the arms of Jesus now.”
Max folded the slip of paper smaller and smaller. He’d never heard his uncle Edward say the name of Jesus with any reverence, and his church affiliation seemed to be confined to the National Cathedral. Not attending, just a correspondence of letters and clippings during its construction. Still, it was not his place to judge the fate of any man’s soul, and he quietly affirmed Ida’s prophecy.
He took off his glasses, sending the whole office into a blur, and gave them an unnecessary cleaning with his handkerchief.
“Is everybody assembled in the conference room?”
“Almost everybody.”
He didn’t need to see Ida’s face to visualize the look of thinly veiled contempt.
“Now, Ida, careful, careful. She does sign the paychecks, you know.”
“With a solid-gold pen, if she could.”
He chuckled and put his glasses back on, bringing the small, tidy office back into focus. “Call for me when she gets here.”
“But you know she hates not to be the last to arrive. Likes to make an entrance, that one.”
“Indulge me. I’m in mourning.”
“Of course, Mr. Moore. I’m so sorry. My condolences, again.”
In this short span of time, sweet Ida had offered Uncle Edward more kindness than the man himself had ever extended. And just what his “affairs” consisted of Max could only guess. The last he knew there was some sort of a small trade paper, Capitol . . . something—the name was on the stationery on which he’d written his annual brief Christmas note, as had been his habit since the death of Max’s parents. For a man in publishing, Uncle Edward had very few words of comfort; in fact, at the moment, Max couldn’t recall a single one.
He rolled down his shirtsleeves, fastened the cuffs, and was sliding his arms into the sleeves of his suit jacket when he heard her voice, strident and commanding, from the other end of the hallway.
“Ten fifteen is not ten o’clock, and we will not begin the meeting without Mr. Moore.”
He was giving his lapel a final brush when the door burst open, and the woman herself—Aimee Semple McPherson—filled his office in a wash of silk and fur. The rest of the world knew her as Sister Aimee, world-renowned evangelist, the woman who had literally driven from shore to shore preaching revivals, winning souls to Jesus out of the spiritual fear of his imminent return.
“Good morning, Aimee,” he said, as if her presence on the third floor were an ordinary occasion.
“Everybody’s assembled in the conference room. Everybody.” She was a small woman—smaller than anyone would imagine, having first seen her on a stage. Her dress and fur both her signature white, her face glowed with a healthy tan, and the tips of her fingernails deep red as she ticked off the list of those waiting downstairs. “Mr. Todd with the new cover, Mr. Crowley from sales and subscriptions, a few gentlemen from the radio, Mr. Lundi—everybody. We seem, however, to be missing our editor, which, in light of the fact that we are attempting to publish a magazine, seems to be a great, gaping maw. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Sister Aimee hadn’t built an empire by having people disagree with her, so Max slouched a bit, hoping to appear humble, and held forth his message.
“I’ve had a bit of bad news this morning. My uncle back east—he’s passed away.”
An immediate change came over Sister Aimee as she breached the space between them and grasped his hand in hers—icy cold despite the fur. She lifted her other hand high as she bowed her head in prayer.
“Father in heaven, I come before you on behalf of this man, asking for strength and comfort in this hour of need. May you carry him through this season of mourning. . . .”
Max stood, open-eyed and fascinated. His heart joined the prayer, but his mind drank in this vision. She was America’s Angel, a woman who’d stood in front of millions of people, and here he was, a private, unworthy recipient of her intercessory power. People lined up around the block outside of her church, the Angelus Temple, with scant hope of such an opportunity.
Upon Sister Aimee’s amen, he closed and opened his eyes and said, “Thank you, Aimee,” with the appropriate warmth.
“Of course,” she said, releasing him. “Now, we’ve business to attend.”
He followed her out of his office and down the hall, staying two steps behind her clattering little shoes not out of deference but out of habit. The hall opened up to a wide, winding staircase, which she descended like royalty—one hand gliding along the polished-to-silk banister, the other poised to wave at the people below. To think, she’d walked all the way up just to fetch him.
Given the expanse of the lobby, one would never guess that the offices above it were so small and cramped. The vast whiteness of the walls was interrupted with large, impressive paintings of biblical scenes. The ceiling stretched to the second story, where a skylight assured warmth and perpetual sunshine.
Max nodded at the two young women seated behind the enormous mahogany desk, pleased with the sweet, giggly way they returned his greeting. Tanya, one was named—the one with the soft brown curls pinned just behind her ears. And the other? Serena, perhaps—something exotic. She was newer and hadn’t yet learned all of the details that came with being in the employ of Aimee Semple McPherson, because she held her smile a little too long and let the giggle out a little too late to capture it completely behind her hand.
Without warning, Sister Aimee stopped in front of him, almost causing him to run straight into her fur, and placed her hands on the desk.
“Serena,” she said in that eerie, maternal tone she affected when addressing an underling of any kind, “do you honestly think that is the best way to comport yourself at a place of business, especially when you are representing the business of God Almighty?”
Poor Serena—yes, he’d remembered—looked toward the other girl and, stricken with confusion, said, “I’m sorry?”
“Give her a break, Aimee.”
She whirled on him, and for a moment he enjoyed a hero’s status as the pretty Serena sent a grateful smile from behind Sister Aimee’s elbow.
“Are you encouraging this young woman’s flirtatiousness, Mr. Moore?”
“Perhaps I am,” he said, growing bolder.
“At least have the decency not to indulge in such right under my nose,” she said, but a tug of a genuine smile was already forming. “And not on my time clock.”
He sent Serena a wink—something he’d done fewer than a dozen times in his remembrance—and followed Sister Aimee through the lobby to the conference room, where yet another impressive piece of furniture, this time a massive oak table, dominated the room. Twelve chairs were spaced evenly around it, ten of them filled with men of all ages and shapes. Two were empty. One conspicuously so, as its back rose high above the others at the head. The other, his, fifth down on the left. It could have been filled by anybody or, Max was certain, left empty, and no one would be the wiser.
“My apologies, gentlemen, for starting late,” Sister Aimee said, heading for her seat with the assurance that somebody would be waiting to go through the gentlemanly ritual of holding it out for her. “Mr. Moore has had some disturbing news from home—home, was it?—and we have been in a time of prayer.”
Max made his way to his own seat, saying, as both apology and explanation, “My uncle passed away.”
> As a single unit, they nodded, expressing as much sympathy as each was capable. These were, after all, businessmen—lawyers, radio-air salesmen, publishers, public relations managers. Even the artists in their midst were of a commercial ilk, creating on command and within a specific frame.
Here he had brought all his journalistic dreams, heeding a call from one of Sister Aimee’s varied pulpits where she spoke of bringing the Word of God to those who might never hold a Bible. A magazine of Truth for Today, its audience the very Bride of Christ. The title—the Bridal Call. When he had worried that he, a bachelor and a young one at that, might be unworthy of editing such a publication, she’d laid her hands on his head and anointed him, declaring him equally worthy and chosen and hired.
And then he’d taken his spot at the table, much as he did right now.
Sister Aimee led them in an opening prayer, as she did every meeting—every gathering, in fact—and this time he dutifully bowed his head and closed his eyes, lest somebody else equally bold catch him in his disrespect. He even joined his mind and heart to her words as she acknowledged God and his power and sovereignty in their lives and homes and streets and government.
“Reaching to the height and breadth and depth of our humble temple, in the waves that carry your message through the air, in every word and page of our magazine, we dedicate the hours of our days . . .”
She never spoke that she didn’t sound like a million lost souls would find their way to salvation through her voice.
Max didn’t need salvation, not in the same way Uncle Edward did. He tried to imagine Uncle Edward sitting in this chair, his fingers stained with ink, the iron-colored rim of hair tufted in all directions from being pulled asunder with each new idea. He would have lasted about thirty seconds into Aimee’s prayer before pushing himself away from the table and declaring it was time to stop yammerin’ already and start talking about how they were going to fill twenty-eight pages when the presses rolled next Tuesday. The publishing world had been his life—no formal education, no family of his own. Just one failed enterprise after another. Rags and tabloids, most of them. Now he was dead, and a slip of paper in Max’s pocket summoned him to handle the last of the man’s follies.
All for a Story Page 2
