Annie (9 page)

“Well, then, we've got to do something about that right away,” said Mr. Warbucks. All of his self-confidence come back. “And nothing but the best for you, Annie. You'll go to the Roxy. Then an ice-cream soda at Rumpelmayer's and a hansom cab ride around Central Park.”

“Golly!” Annie's eyes lit up with delight even though she didn't understand half of what Mr. Warbucks was talking about.

“Grace, forget about dictation for tonight,” Mr. Warbucks thundered. “We'll do it first thing in the morning. Instead, while I'm working, you take Annie out to the movies.”

“Yes, sir,” said Miss Farrell.

“Aw, gee,” said Annie disappointedly.

“Is something the matter, Annie?” asked Mr. Warbucks.

“Oh, no, nothing, sir,” replied Annie. “It's just that . . . aw, gee.”

“No, what is it, child?” asked Mr. Warbucks. “You don't want to go to the Roxy?”

“Oh, no. I want to go,” said Annie. “It's just that, well . . . I thought you were going to take me.”

“Me?” said Mr. Warbucks, flabbergasted. “No, no, I'm afraid I'll be far too busy tonight to . . .”

“Aw, gee,” said Annie.

“You see, Annie, I've just been away for six weeks,” explained Mr. Warbucks, “making an inspection tour of my factories. Or what's left of my factories, with this damn Depression. And when a man is running a multibillion-dollar corporation, he doesn't have time . . .”

“Oh, sure, Mr. Warbucks, I know all about it,” said Annie. “And, heck, if you don't want to take a little girl from an orphanage to the movies, that's okay.”

“Well, now, I wouldn't put it that way,” said Mr. Warbucks. The phone rang and Miss Farrell ans-wered it.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, holding out the phone to Mr. Warbucks. “Bernard Baruch is calling.” In 1933, Bernard Baruch was—aside from Oliver Warbucks—the wealthiest and most powerful financier in America. He was also a close friend and adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But Annie, of course, had never heard of Bernard Baruch and had no idea whom Mr. Warbucks was talking to on the phone.

“Hello, Barney!” bellowed Mr. Warbucks. Annie got up from her chair and came to stand beside him, staring pleadingly up at him with eyes that said, Please, couldn't
you
take me to the movies? “Yes, I just got in a couple of hours ago,” Mr. Warbucks continued into the phone. “No, I didn't get to Cleveland. But I was in Detroit and Chicago. And, Barney, I didn't like what I saw out there. My factories shut down.
My
factories shut down . . . You're darn tootin', if I'm not making money, nobody is. And damn it. Barney, your pal Roosevelt has got to do something drastic. He's got to come up with a new approach, a new plan, a new . . . something.” Unnerved by Annie's unblinking eyes, Mr. Warbucks, still holding the telephone, edged away from her. But Annie stepped resolutely forward to stand once again in front of him. “Yes, I know that Roosevelt is a Democrat, but he's a human being, too,” Mr. Warbucks went on. “Yes, I'll talk to you about it. Come over here tonight . . . Good, we'll be able to . . . I can show you all the figures on . . .” Mr. Warbucks looked down at Annie. She looked soulfully back up at him. He heaved a great sigh of defeat. “Look, Barney,” he said into the phone, “we better make it sometime tomorrow. Tonight . . . tonight, I forgot, I've got a date to go to the movies. With an eleven-year-old girl.”

Annie stood up on her tiptoes and whispered into his ear. “I'm twelve,” she said.

“I was mistaken, Barney, she's twelve,” said Mr. Warbucks. “Good-bye, Barney.”

Mr. Warbucks hung up the phone and gazed down at Annie with a shake of his head and just the slightest hint of a smile. “Okay, kiddo, you win.” He went to the archway leading to the foyer and called out, “Drake!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Coats. For Miss Farrell, Miss Annie, and me!”

“Yes, sir.” Drake came into the living room with the coats all but instantly.

“We're going out to the movies, Drake,” said Mr. Warbucks, getting into his Chesterfield.

“Yes, sir,” said Drake, as he helped Annie with her coat. “Will you be wanting the Rolls-Royce or the Duesenberg, sir?”

“The Duesenberg,” replied Mr. Warbucks. “No, wait. This child has been cooped up in an orphanage. We won't drive, we'll walk.”

“
Walk
to the Roxy?” said Miss Farrell.

“Sure, why not?” said Mr. Warbucks, gaily swinging his green silk scarf around his neck. “It's only forty-five blocks.”

“Yes, sir!” smiled Miss Farrell, looking surprised but happy.

A few moments later, bundled up warmly in their coats, hats, and scarves, Mr. Warbucks, Miss Farrell, and Annie stepped out the front door of the mansion into the cold but clear and starry New York night.

“Ah, smell that,” said Mr. Warbucks, taking a deep breath of the city air. “Fifth Avenue bus fumes. There is no air like the air of New York. And you don't realize how much you miss it—the whole damn city—until you've been away from it for a while. Like the man says, ‘After New York, everyplace else is Bridgeport.'”

And soon, as warm as cinnamon toast in her beautiful new pink wool coat and hat, Annie found herself strolling down Fifth Avenue hand in hand with Grace Farrell, who—aside from her mother, whom she hadn't yet met—was clearly the prettiest and nicest woman in the whole world, and with Mr. Oliver Warbucks, who was not only the richest man in the world, but who also seemed pretty nice, too. For a kid from an orphanage who spent last night in jail, I'm not doing bad for myself, thought Annie, smiling to herself—so this is what it feels like to be happy.

A
nnie would never forget her night on the town with Mr. Warbucks and Miss Farrell. She was dazzled by the Roxy Theater, with its vaulted ceilings, mirrors, murals, and dark-red carpets. And she was even more dazzled by the movie at the Roxy,
Little Women
, starring Katharine Hepburn. She laughed and cried at the film, while all the time munching happily away at the hot buttered popcorn and Hershey bars with almonds that Mr. Warbucks had bought for her. “Gee, I love movies—I want to see every movie they ever made,” said Annie, starry-eyed, as the three of them came out of the Roxy to find Mr. Warbucks's Rolls-Royce limousine waiting for them at the curb. “From now on, Annie, you'll get to see all of the movies you want,” promised Mr. Warbucks.

They climbed into the limousine and drove to Rumpelmayer's, on Central Park South, where Mr. Warbucks treated Annie to the biggest chocolate ice-cream soda she'd ever set eyes on. And then, bundled up in blankets against the cold of the December night, they took a ride around Central Park in a horse-drawn hansom cab. On the way home to Mr. Warbucks's mansion, Annie fell asleep in the back of the limousine. And Mr. Warbucks, she later vaguely remembered, carried her upstairs and put her to bed in a bigger and more comfortable bed than she'd ever imagined even existed. Half awake when he tucked her into the bed, Annie smiled up at Mr. Warbucks and then fell asleep again, remembering as her eyes grew heavy that only the night before she'd slept on the cement floor of a police station-house cell. “I guess that's the best thing about life,” whispered Annie to herself as she drifted downward into sleep, “you never know what's going to happen next.”

The following morning, Annie was awakened at ten o'clock by a gentle knocking at her bedroom door. It was the cook, Mrs. Pugh, bringing her breakfast in bed. Annie had never before slept so late as ten o'clock, and, of course, she'd also never before had breakfast in bed. The breakfast was delicious. A large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, an enormous stack of pancakes soaked in Log Cabin maple syrup, two poached eggs, hot buttered toast, strawberry jam, a glass of milk, and a cup of hot chocolate. “I could get used to this, real easy.” Annie smiled to herself, wiping jam from her face with an Irish-linen napkin.

After breakfast, a pair of French maids, Annette and Cécille, helped her to bathe and then to dress in a lavender-and-white organdy dress and a pair of black patent-leather shoes that Miss Farrell had bought for her that morning at Bergdorf Goodman. Gosh, thought Annie, I'm better dressed now than Myrtle Vandenmeer. Miss Farrell had also bought her six other dresses and four more pairs of shoes. “I didn't know that anybody ever had more than one pair of shoes at a time,” remarked Annie to Annette and Cécille as they brushed and combed her hair. When she was ready to go downstairs, Annie looked at herself in the full-length mirror that hung on her bedroom wall. “Golly, get a load of me!” she exclaimed. Her bedroom, which was dominated by the outsize canopy bed in which she'd slept the night before under salmon-pink silk sheets, was decorated in various shades of pink—there were pink drapes, a pink carpet, and pale-pink flowered wallpaper. It was the most beautiful—and the pinkest—room that Annie had ever seen.

That afternoon, after a scrumptious lunch of baked ham, sweet potatoes, hot biscuits, and apple pie, Annie went swimming with Miss Farrell in the mansion's indoor pool. In a light-blue bathing suit that Miss Farrell had picked up for her at Lord & Taylor, Annie splashed happily about at the shallow end of the huge pool. She'd never been in a pool before, and, of course, she didn't know how to swim. “We'll do something about that right away,” said Miss Farrell, and within an hour, an instructor—a man named Johnny Weissmuller, who had been a gold-medal winner in swimming for the United States in the 1928 Olympics—arrived to teach Annie to swim. Annie was a fast learner, and by the end of the afternoon she was able to float and to swim a couple of tentative strokes. “I wish I could give you more lessons—you'd be an Olympic swimmer in no time,” Mr. Weissmuller said, beaming, “but I'm off tomorrow to Hollywood to play the title role in a movie version of
Tarzan
.”

“I'll go see you in it, Mr. Weissmuller, I promise,” said Annie.

That evening, Mr. Warbucks took Annie out to dinner in the Peacock Alley room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where they dined on caviar, which Annie didn't especially like, pheasant under glass, and an incredibly delicious dessert called Baked Alaska. Mr. Warbucks told Annie that he, too, had enjoyed their night out together at the Roxy. “You know, Annie,” he mused, sipping on a glass of French champagne, “I haven't taken a vacation in years. Been too busy. But now, damn it, for the next two weeks, while you're visiting, I'm going to take one. To hell with work—for once, I'll let my business take care of itself. I'm going to show you New York like no one has ever seen it.”

At the age of fifty-two, Mr. Warbucks was a self-made billionaire whose entire life was devoted to work. Indeed, although he had kept company with some of the most beautiful women in the world, including Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford and Greta Garbo, he had never married. He'd been too absorbed in building up a financial empire that encompassed everything from oil wells in Oklahoma to automobile factories in Detroit to rubber plantations in Brazil. He was the world's richest man, but was also perhaps the world's loneliest man. For he had no family and virtually no friends. And he almost never took a day off from work. Until now.

In the next days, Mr. Warbucks kept his promise to show New York to Annie. He took her everywhere—to the Stock Exchange, to the Statue of Liberty, to St. Patrick's Cathedral, to the Bronx Zoo, to Radio City Music Hall, and to the top of the Empire State Building. “Gee, to think that I lived here all of my life and never saw any of these things,” exclaimed Annie as Mr. Warbucks pointed out the sights to her from an airplane he'd chartered to fly her over the city. And they saw at least one movie every day, everything from Shirley Temple in
Little Miss Marker
to the Marx Brothers in
Duck Soup
.

As they roamed the city together, hand in hand—the tall shaven-headed man and the little redheaded girl—Annie told Mr. Warbucks about her life at the orphanage. “That Miss Hannigan should be horsewhipped,” said Mr. Warbucks, making a mental note to have one of his aides contact the Board of Orphans and have them investigate Miss Hannigan. Annie also told him about her stay at Bixby's Beanery. “That couple violated the child-labor laws, making you work like that,” said Mr. Warbucks angrily. “One phone call and I can have that place shut down and Fred and Gert Bixby thrown into jail.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Warbucks, please, don't do that,” begged Annie. “They didn't mean any real harm—but maybe send them a letter saying not to do it again or they could go to jail.”

“All right, I'll send them such a letter,” said Mr. Warbucks. “But you're a lot more forgiving than I am, Annie.”

One afternoon, as she and Mr. Warbucks chanced to stroll by Grand Central Terminal, Annie pointed out the place where she'd sold apples and told him about her life in the Hooverville. She recalled how everyone there—especially Randy and Sophie—had been so kind to her. And, finally, she told Mr. Warbucks about her dog, Sandy. “Annie, I doubt if there's a chance in a million of your ever finding Sandy again, assuming that he's still alive,” said Mr. Warbucks bluntly. “But I'll do everything in my power to help you find him.” And, within twenty-four hours, Mr. Warbucks had hired a dozen of the best detectives from the best private-detective agency in New York, Pinkerton's, and ordered them to search the city for Sandy.

“If he's to be found, Pinkerton's will find him,” promised Mr. Warbucks. Each night before she went to bed, Annie got down on her knees and prayed that the private detectives would find Sandy, safe and sound. Once a day, Annie wrote a letter to the children at the orphanage, telling them about her adventures as Mr. Warbucks's holiday guest. She wrote them that Mr. Warbucks had Pinkerton's out looking for Sandy.

“What's a Pinkerton?” asked Molly as Pepper was reading Annie's latest letter aloud to the orphans. “You dope, everybody knows that,” said Pepper. “They're another kind of dog, like bloodhounds—it takes one to find one.”

“Oh,” said Molly.

• • •

One evening, a few days after Annie had come to stay at the mansion, Mr. Warbucks summoned Miss Farrell to his upstairs study. “Grace,” he said, turning red with embarrassment, “I've decided . . . uh, I've decided that . . . I want to adopt Annie.”

“Oh, Mr. Warbucks, how wonderful!” exclaimed Miss Farrell.

“Of course it's not that I personally care anything about her,” said Mr. Warbucks, trying to cover his embarrassment by being gruff, “but, well, I wouldn't want that poor kid to have to go back to that damn orphanage again. And we've got plenty of extra room here. Besides, I mean, she's a heck of a nice little girl, isn't she?”

“Yes, sir, she certainly is,” agreed Miss Farrell with a radiant smile. Mr. Warbucks's attempt to hide his feelings for Annie was not fooling her for a moment.

“All right, first thing tomorrow morning, contact my attorney, Morris Ernst, and have him draw up the necessary adoption papers,” commanded Mr. Warbucks.

“Yes, sir!” Miss Farrell cried happily. “And I'll also go to the Board of Orphans and have them draw up the papers releasing Annie from Miss Hannigan's care.”

“Good,” said Mr. Warbucks. “The sooner that Annie never has to have anything to do with that woman ever again, the better.”

“I couldn't agree more, sir!”

The following morning, Miss Farrell paid calls at the offices of both Mr. Ernst and the Board of Orphans, and by noontime, with the appropriate legal papers tucked in her briefcase, she arrived at the front door of the orphanage. Miss Farrell wasn't at all malicious or vindictive, but, having learned all about Miss Hannigan from Annie, she couldn't help being eager to see the expression on Miss Hannigan's face when she found out that Annie was going to be adopted by Oliver Warbucks. So although she could just as easily have broken the news to Miss Hannigan by letter or over the phone, instead she went to the orphanage in person. The orphans were in school when she arrived, and Miss Hannigan was alone in her office, where she'd just turned on the radio to her favorite soap opera. “Once again, we bring you
The Romance of Helen Trent
, intoned the radio announcer in a deep, syrupy voice as the strains of the program's theme song, “Juanita,” were heard on an organ in the background. “The story of a woman who sets out to prove for herself what so many women long to prove. That because a woman is thirty-five, or more, romance in life need not be over. That romance can live on in life at thirty-five, or after.”

“Oh, merciful God, I hope so,” groaned Miss Hannigan, taking a swig from her pint of rye whiskey and lighting up a Lucky Strike cigarette. The best thing that had happened in years to Miss Hannigan was that—three weeks earlier—Prohibition had been repealed. She could now buy whiskey legally and cheaply in liquor stores instead of from high-priced bootleggers. Now, in fact, she could at last afford to be drunk from early morning until night. “Oh, damn, who the hell is that?” muttered Miss Hannigan angrily as Miss Farrell knocked on the front door. Miss Hannigan switched off the radio, slipped the pint of rye into a desk drawer, and went to the front door.

“Good afternoon, Miss Hannigan,” Miss Farrell said brightly as the door was opened.

“Well, well, well, if it ain't Farrell,” said Miss Hannigan, leading Miss Farrell into her office. “You're early. Only one week. What's a matter, Warbucks fed up with Annie already? You come to tell me she's comin' back before Christmas?”

“Oh, no, no, on the contrary, Miss Hannigan.” Miss Farrell smiled, settling gracefully into a chair next to Miss Hannigan's desk. “Mr. Warbucks is delighted with Annie. And Annie is having the time of her life.”

“How nice,” said Miss Hannigan, taking a drag on her cigarette.

“Yes, she and Mr. Warbucks are practically inseparable,” Miss Farrell continued. “They go everywhere together. To the Roxy, to the Stock Exchange, and, oh, guess where they had lunch yesterday?”

“The Waldorf?”

“No, the Automat.”

“The Automat,” grunted Miss Hannigan. “Slummin', huh?”

Miss Farrell opened her briefcase and took out a pale-blue legal document. “Miss Hannigan, I know that you're terribly busy, as always,” said Miss Farrell, handing her the papers, “but this has to be signed by you and sent back to Mr. Donatelli at the Board of Orphans by no later than ten o'clock tomorrow morning.”

“Huh, what is this?” asked Miss Hannigan, looking in puzzlement at the document.

“This is a release—releasing Annie from your care and from the care of the Board of Orphans,” Miss Farrell explained.

“A release?” Miss Hannigan looked confused. “I don't get it.”

“You will,” said Miss Farrell coolly. “Because, you see, Mr. Warbucks is so taken with Annie that . . . guess what?”

“What?” asked Miss Hannigan.

“He has decided to adopt her,” announced Miss Farrell with a smile.

Miss Hannigan's jaw suddenly dropped so wide-open that her teeth all but fell out. And her cigarette did indeed fall from her mouth to the floor, where she clumsily stamped it out. But she tried otherwise to remain outwardly unbothered by the news of Annie's good fortune. “How nice,” said Miss Hannigan, sitting down dazedly behind her desk. “How wonderful. Now, let me get this wonderful news straight. Annie is gonna be Warbucks's kid? The daughter of a millionaire?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” chuckled Miss Farrell. “She's not going to be the daughter of a millionaire.”