Just an Ordinary Day: Stories Page 5

  He said, “I thought ‘Mood’ would look better in the center. Stand out more.” He was still standing helplessly in front of the easel, watching her when she walked across to stand in front of the picture he called “Mood.” It was a painting of a girl sitting by a window; she was a very pretty girl with long dark hair down her back; she was wearing a white dress and she was staring at the moon. “It looks swell here,” Katie said. “Just fine.” She began to laugh, not turning around. “Were you late for dinner yesterday?” she asked.

  “Not very.”

  “Was she sore?”

  “Katie,” he said desperately, “for God’s sake, stop walking around and come talk to me.” His voice trailed off weakly. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “Poor old Peter,” Katie said. She came over and took his arm, leading him to the bench. “Poor old Peter,” she said again. “She gives you a hell of a time.”

  He put his head in his hands, saying shakily, “Sometimes I think I can’t stand it much longer. What am I going to do?”

  “Don’t get all upset,” Katie said. Impatient again, she got up and reached into the pocket of her shorts for a cigarette. Lighting it, she walked over to the easel and said to the picture, “Don’t pay any attention to her.”

  “I think if she doesn’t leave me alone—” he said.

  Katie moved closer to the picture, frowning. “Why is this part blue?” she asked. “You told us in class…”

  He lifted his head. “I wanted to see how it would look there. It’s a sort of departure to give a greater effect.” He sighed. “I suppose it looks awful.”

  “It’ll do,” Katie said. She moved restlessly away from the picture and along the nearest wall, seeing without interest the familiar pictures one after another, still lifes of vases and books and violins and china cats, portraits of his children, an occasional abstract in vicious reds and yellows, a landscape with a rusty barn, a picture of a beautiful girl with dark hair knee-deep in a moonlit pool, another of a beautiful girl with dark hair gathering roses by moonlight. “I passed her on campus this morning and she wouldn’t speak to me,” Katie said.

  He was frowning, staring at an imaginary picture. “It needs something there,” he said. “Blue seemed like the thing.”

  “I wanted to walk right up to her and slap her face,” Katie said. “What a worn-out old hag.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” he said.

  “Excuse me,” Katie said formally. “I forgot she was your wife. What a well-preserved old hag.” She laughed, and he smiled reluctantly. “Cheer up,” she went on, “don’t let her make you miserable.” Her tour of the room brought her back to the easel, and she said, “It’s a swell picture, honestly.”

  “I made it as good as I could for you,” he said. “I only wish I weren’t a third-rate artist.” He waited for a minute. “If I could make it better, I would,” he said.

  Katie dropped her cigarette on the floor and put her shoe on it. “I don’t want to make her mad, though,” she said. “She could get me thrown out of college if she got mad enough.”

  “She’s waiting for you to graduate.” He stood up wearily and went over to the easel, looking at the picture while he felt out for the brushes and palette beside it. “She says that after a few weeks I’ll never see you again.”

  “She better not make any kind of a fuss,” Katie said.

  He began to paint cautiously. “I’ve let her go on thinking that I won’t see you again.”

  “I certainly wish you could come out to the beach,” Katie said.

  “I don’t know.” He pursed up his lips doubtfully. “She may go away somewhere with the children.”

  Katie said quickly, “But of course there’s my family and all my friends. Maybe I could meet you in New York or someplace.”

  “New York would be easy,” he said, turning around to her. “I told you I could manage New York.”

  “I’ll see how things come out,” Katie said. Going to the window near the door, she said, “This weather is driving me crazy. Let’s go outside for a while, go wading in the brook.”

  “Too many people around on a day like this,” he said. “I don’t want her to get any more suspicious than she already is.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Katie said. “Were you ever in Bermuda?” She tapped her fingers irritably on the window glass. “I’d like to go to Bermuda.”

  “Come away from the window,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Katie stamped her feet walking to the bench; she sat down, pulling up her legs and wrapping her arms around them. “How nearly finished are you?”

  “Another couple of days.”

  “Plenty of time,” Katie said. “I don’t have to have it till May fifteenth.”

  “I’ll spend some time working it over,” he said. “I’m not satisfied at all.”

  “I am,” Katie said. “As long as I graduate. They don’t expect me to be a genius.” She yawned, and stood up. “I’m going.”

  He turned away from the easel, surprised. “I thought you’d stay awhile.”

  “I stayed awhile,” Katie said. “I’m no help to you while you’re painting, anyway.” She stopped with one hand on the door and kissed one finger to him. “You work nice and hard,” she said, “and I’ll see you in class Monday.”

  He said desperately, “Katie, listen,” and she hesitated, the door just open. “Can’t you tell me something to say to her?” He stood without moving, looking at her eagerly, his shoulders weak. “Think of something” he said.

  “Let me see.” Katie stood in the doorway, chewing her lip. “Tell her,” she said finally, “you tell her that I wouldn’t hurt her for the world.” She smiled and waved her hand. “Bye,” she said, and slipped out the door, closing it gently behind her. Before she was more than a few steps away, she heard the key turn in the lock.

  As though anyone cared, she thought, going along beside the brook; next spring I could be in Paris. As she started across the campus she thought suddenly, why not a poppy-red bathing suit? and laughed out loud. Boy, she said to herself, they could see me coming a mile away.

  NIGHTMARE

  IT WAS ONE OF those spring mornings in March; the sky between the buildings was bright and blue and the city air, warmed by motors and a million breaths, had a freshness and a sense of excitement that can come only from a breeze starting somewhere in the country, far away, and moving into the city while everyone is asleep, to freshen the air for morning. Miss Toni Morgan, going from the subway to her office, settled a soft, sweet smile on her face and let it stay there while her sharp tapping feet went swiftly along the pavement. She was wearing a royal blue hat with a waggish red feather in it, and her suit was blue and her topcoat a red and gray tweed, and her shoes were thin and pointed and ungraceful when she walked; they were dark blue, with the faintest line of red edging the sole. She carried a blue pocketbook with her initials in gold, and she wore dark blue gloves with red buttons. Her topcoat swirled around her as she turned in through the door of the tall office building, and when she entered her office sixty floors above, she took her topcoat off lovingly and hung it precisely in the closet, with her hat and gloves on the shelf above; she was precise about everything, so that it was exactly nine o’clock when she sat down at her desk, consulted her memorandum pad, tore the top leaf from the calendar, straightened her shoulders, and adjusted her smile. When her employer arrived at nine-thirty, he found her typing busily, so that she was able to look up and smile and say, “Good morning, Mr. Lang,” and smile again.

  At nine-forty Miss Fishman, the young lady who worked at the desk corresponding to Miss Morgan’s, on the other side of the room, phoned in to say that she was ill and would not be in to work that day. At twelve-thirty Miss Morgan went out to lunch alone, because Miss Fishman was not there. She had a bacon, tomato, and lettuce sandwich and a cup of tea in the drugstore downstairs, and came back early because there was a letter she wanted to finish. During her lunch hour she notice
d nothing unusual, nothing that had not happened every day of the six years she had been working for Mr. Lang.

  At two-twenty by the office clock Mr. Lang came back from lunch; he said, “Any calls, Miss Morgan?” as he came through the door, and Miss Morgan smiled at him and said, “No calls, Mr. Lang.” Mr. Lang went into his private office, and there were no calls until three-oh-five, when Mr. Lang came out of his office carrying a large package wrapped in brown paper and tied with an ordinary strong cord.

  “Miss Fishman here?” he asked.

  “She’s ill,” Miss Morgan said, smiling. “She won’t be in today.”

  “Damn,” Mr. Lang said. He looked around hopefully. Miss Fishman’s desk was neatly empty; everything was in perfect order and Miss Morgan sat smiling at him. “I’ve got to get this package delivered,” he said. “Very important.” He looked at Miss Morgan as though he had never seen her before. “Would it be asking too much?” he asked.

  Miss Morgan looked at him courteously for a minute before she understood. Then she said, “Not at all,” with an extremely clear inflection, and stirred to rise from her desk.

  “Good,” Mr. Lang said heartily. “The address is on the label. Way over on the other side of town. Downtown. You won’t have any trouble. Take you about”—he consulted his watch—“about an hour, I’d say, all told, there and back. Give the package directly to Mr. Shax. No secretaries. If he’s out, wait. If he’s not there, go to his home. Call me if you’re going to be more than an hour. Damn Miss Fishman,” he added, and went back into his office.

  All up and down the hall, in offices directed and controlled by Mr. Lang, there were people alert and eager to run errands for him. Miss Morgan and Miss Fishman were only the receptionists, the outer bulwark of Mr. Lang’s defense. Miss Morgan looked apprehensively at the closed door of Mr. Lang’s office as she went to the closet to get her coat. Mr. Lang was being left defenseless, but it was spring outside she had her red topcoat, and Miss Fishman had probably run off under cover of illness to the wide green fields and buttercups of the country. Miss Morgan settled her blue hat by the mirror on the inside of the closet door, slid luxuriously into her red topcoat, and picked up her pocketbook and gloves, and put her hand through the string of the package. It was unexpectedly light. Going toward the elevator, she found that she could carry it easily with the same hand that held her pocketbook, although its bulk would be awkward on the bus. She glanced at the address: “Mr. Ray Shax,” and a street she had never heard of.

  Once in the street in the spring afternoon, she decided to ask at the newspaper stand for the street; the little men in newspaper stands seem to know everything. This one was particularly nice to her, probably because it was spring. He took out a little red book that was a guide to New York, and searched through its columns until he found the street.

  “You ought to take the bus on the corner,” he said. “Going across town. Then get a bus going downtown until you get to the street. Then you’ll have to walk, most likely. Probably a warehouse.”

  “Probably,” Miss Morgan agreed absently. She was staring behind him, at a poster on the inside of the newspaper stand. “Find Miss X,” the poster said in screaming red letters, “Find Miss X. Find Miss X. Find Miss X.” The words were repeated over and over, each line smaller and in a different color; the bottom line was barely visible. “What’s that Miss X thing?” Miss Morgan asked the newspaper man. He turned and looked over his shoulder and shrugged. “One of them contest things,” he said.

  Miss Morgan started for the bus. Probably because the poster had caught her eye, she was quicker to hear the sound truck; a voice was blaring from it: “Find Miss X! Win a mink coat valued at twelve thousand dollars, a trip to Tahiti; find Miss X.”

  Tahiti, Miss Morgan thought, on a day like this. She went swiftly down the sidewalk, and the sound truck progressed along the street, shouting, “Miss X, find Miss X. She is walking in the city, she is walking alone; find Miss X. Step up to the girl who is Miss X, and say ‘You are Miss X,’ and win a complete repainting and decorating job on your house, win these fabulous prizes.”

  There was no bus in sight and Miss Morgan waited on the corner for a minute before thinking, I have time to walk a ways in this lovely weather. Her topcoat swinging around her, she began to walk across town to catch a bus at the next corner.

  The sound truck turned the corner in back of her; it was going very slowly, and she outdistanced it in a minute or so. She could hear, far away, the announcer’s voice saying, “… and all your cosmetics for a year.”

  Now that she was aware of it, she noticed that there were “Find Miss X” posters on every lamppost; they were all like the one in the newsstand, with the words running smaller and smaller and in different colors. She was walking along a busy street, and she lingered past the shopwindows, looking at jewelry and custom-made shoes. She saw a hat something like her own, in a window of a store so expensive that only the hat lay in the window, soft against a fold of orange silk. Mine is almost the same, she thought as she turned away, and it cost only four ninety-eight. Because she lingered, the sound truck caught up with her; she heard it from a distance, forcing its way through the taxis and trucks in the street, its loudspeaker blaring music, something military. Then the announcer’s voice began again: “Find Miss X, find Miss X. Win fifty thousand dollars in cash; Miss X is walking the streets of the city today, alone. She is wearing a blue hat with a red feather, a reddish tweed topcoat, and blue shoes. She is carrying a blue pocketbook and a large package. Listen carefully. Miss X is carrying a large package. Find Miss X, find Miss X. Walk right up to her and say ‘You are Miss X,’ and win a new home in any city in the world, with a town car and chauffeur, win all these magnificent prizes.”

  Any city in the world, Miss Morgan thought, I’d pick New York. Buy me a home in New York, mister, I’d sell it for enough to buy all the rest of your prizes.

  Carrying a package, she thought suddenly, I’m carrying a package. She tried to ease the package around so she could carry it in her arms, but it was too bulky. Then she took it by the string and swung it as close to her side as she could; must be a thousand people in New York right now carrying large packages, she thought; no one will bother me. She could see the corner ahead where her bus would stop, and she wondered if she wanted to walk another block.

  “Say ‘You are Miss X,’” the sound truck screamed, “and win one of these gorgeous prizes. Your private yacht, completely fitted. A pearl necklace fit for a queen. Miss X is walking the streets of the city, completely alone. She is wearing a blue hat with a red feather, blue gloves, and dark blue shoes.”

  Good heavens, Miss Morgan thought; she stopped and looked down at her shoes; she was certainly wearing her blue ones. She turned and glared angrily at the sound truck. It was painted white, and had “Find Miss X” written on the side in great red letters.

  “Find Miss X,” the sound truck said.

  Miss Morgan began to hurry. She reached the corner and mixed with the crowd of people waiting to get on the bus, but there were too many and the bus doors were shut in her face. She looked anxiously down the long block, but there were no other buses coming, and she began to walk hastily, going toward the next corner. I could take a taxi, she thought. That clown in the sound truck, he’ll lose his job. With her free hand she reached up and felt that her hat was perched at the correct angle and her hair neat. I hope he does lose his job, she thought. What a thing to do! She could not help glancing over her shoulder to see what had become of the sound truck, and was shocked to find it creeping silently almost next to her, going along beside her in the street. When she looked around, the sound truck shouted, “Find Miss X, find Miss X.”

  “Listen,” Miss Morgan told herself. She stopped and looked around, but the people going by were moving busily without noticing her. Even a man who almost crashed into her when she stopped suddenly said only “Excuse me,” and went on by without a backward look. The sound truck was stopped by traffic, up against the c
urb, and Miss Morgan went over to it and knocked on the window until the driver turned around.

  “I want to speak to you,” Miss Morgan said ominously. The driver reached over and opened the door.

  “You want something?” he asked wearily.

  “I want to know why this truck is following me down the street,” Miss Morgan said; since she did not know the truck driver, and would certainly never see him again, she was possessed of great courage. She made her voice very sharp and said, “What are you trying to do?”

  “Me?” the truck driver said. “Look, lady, I’m not following anybody. I got a route I gotta go. See?” He held up a dirty scrap of paper, and Miss Morgan could see that it was marked in pencil, a series of lines numbered like streets, although she was too far away to see what the numbers were. “I go where it tells me,” the truck driver said insistently. “See?”

  “Well,” Miss Morgan said, her voice losing conviction, “what do you mean, talking about people dressed like me? Blue hats, and so on?”

  “Don’t ask me,” the truck driver said. “People hire this truck, I drive where they say. I don’t have nothing to do with what happens back there.” He waved his hand toward the back of the truck, which was separated from him by a partition behind the driver’s seat. The traffic ahead of him started and he said quickly, “You want to know, you ask back there. Me, I don’t hear it with the windows all shut.” He closed the door, and the truck moved slowly away. Miss Morgan stood on the curb, staring at it, and the loudspeaker began, “Miss X is walking alone in the city.”

  The nerve of him, Miss Morgan thought, reverting to a culture securely hidden beneath six years of working for Mr. Lang, the goddamn nerve of him. She began to walk defiantly along the street, now slightly behind the sound truck. Serve them right, she thought, if anyone says to me, “Are you Miss What’s-her-name?” I’ll say “Why, yes, I am, here’s your million dollars and you can go—”