Skyscraper (12 page)

His eyes were intent on her own. Kind eyes, she thought, quizzical, understanding. Her own fell to the modest diamond on her right hand. He probably knew about her and Tom now; possibly Sarah had told him. She answered honestly, “We—we
can't get married. Not now, that is.”

A bald little statement. He understood it in all its implications. His eyes did not change, his face was impassive, but a little rat of anger sharpened its teeth in his brain. Of course! It would happen. He looked at Lynn with coldness veiled by an impersonal friendly interest. She was not nearly so pretty as he had thought her. A quite ordinary little girl, like millions of others, like hundreds, right in this suddenly oppressive building. And a quite ordinary boy, who had an average job and wouldn't get any further ahead, whose build was football, but whose brains were ping–pong. Two very commonplace little people planning a wedding day and a walk-up flat, dishes and babies, slippers, radio, the movies—

He said gently, “You're very young—”

“I know it”—she looked at him, grey eyes black, the pupils dilated—“and so is he. We—we've left each other free. It's better that way. I want to keep on with my job, I like it awfully. I'm crazy about it.” Her small firm chin was set, held a little high; she made a funny, hopeless little gesture with the hand which wore the ring. “Tom won't hear of my marrying him until—until he gets ahead. He doesn't want me to work. So there we are!” Her face was grave, even a little melancholy. Then she laughed up at him. “Sarah doesn't approve at all,” she admitted. “Sarah doesn't believe in marriage. She's all for careers. I don't believe Sarah's ever been in love, ever in all her life!” said Lynn with unconscious brutality and patronage.

Ah, had she not? He knew, he knew very well. His heart tightened.

“How old is Tom?”

She told him.

“And you? You told me once. Tell me again.”

She obeyed. He laughed, suddenly, very much relieved.

“Infants!” he mocked her.

Twenty-two and twenty-three; not planning to marry yet; tomorrow was another day. How had he ever thought her ordinary, even for a moment? How had he ever fancied her like anyone in the world, even so briefly? She was unique.

Competition is the life of several trades.

He sad happily, “Never mind Sarah—suppose you bring Tom—and that model girl with whom you live—Joan? Betty?

“Jennie,” Lynn corrected, laughing.

“Jennie, then. Bring her and Tom to the house; we'll throw a party—for you. A very young party—not, perhaps, altogether in years. Whom would you like to meet? Gossip rehashers, otherwise columnists, stage or motion-picture folk, artists, writers? Or just people?”

Her eyes danced. She said, “Anyone you say. It will be fun.”

“We'll make it so. We'll dispense with Sarah, I think,” he decided, without regret. “She's not as young as we are,” he said cruelly. “Yes, we'll dispense with her. That is, if you don't mind. We're old enough friends by now, are we not, to get along without the tertium quid?”

“The what?”

“Sarah,” he said, smiling, “and, besides, that was a cockeyed allusion.”

He set the date; and later, paying the check, murmured, “You'll telephone me if the evening's all right?”

“Of course it will be,” she told him happily.

Leaving, she looked back at Mara Burt and her companion, so evidently engrossed in each other. She wondered a little uncomfortably. She had met Mara in the rest room with Jennie. Jennie had given her Mara's history with a characteristic brevity. “Married, see, and Bill's out of a job. So she has to hold hers. She generally holds it by her knees.”

“Do you mean on her knees?”

“No,
by
'em. As far as I can make out she's only a fair typist and won't get much further. But the men in whatever office she's in like her. See?”

Lynn had been to Mara's apartment once or twice and had met Bill, a sulky, stocky young man, terribly aware that it was Mara's earnings and not his own that were paying rent and grocery bills. Lynn had come away feeling sorry for them both.

That evening while they were dressing to go out, she spoke to Jennie of her encounter with Mara. Jennie nodded her wise,
blond head.

“Sure, was it a tall guy, sort of T.B.-looking?” And at Lynn's nod, she went on, “That's her boss's nephew, Frank Houghton. She told me about him. He's been out in Arizona with his wife and kids and now he's back, working for his uncle. Mara says his wife doesn't understand him.” Jennie laughed. “Sure, that's what they all say. He's been giving her a rush on Bill's lodge nights and all. His wife writes or something, and sticks around home—they live in Flushing—and looks after the kids.”

“She must be crazy!” said Lynn indignantly.

“Who, the wife? Oh, you mean Mara. Crazy like a trained seal. She knows darned well she wouldn't get anywhere in business without the old S.A. and she doesn't give a whoop how she holds her job just as long as she holds it. I don't mean she'd go very far. She hasn't,” Jennie explained scornfully, “the guts. She'll just shilly-shally around, and if she's ever asked to come across she'll faint, and when she comes to, she'll yap that she's a married woman, and ‘Oh, how could you misjudge me so!' Bill's a sorehead of course, but I don't blame him. It isn't so keen for him, you know, hanging around the flat, waiting for her to come home with the weekly wage.”

Lynn thought, but all men who marry girls who keep on working don't take that attitude. Yet she wondered. And after a moment, fluffing powder on her nose, inquired, “But suppose she really likes this Houghton or whoever he is?”

“Not she. She likes his pull, that's all. Besides, what's it to us if she falls by the wayside?” inquired Jennie inelegantly.

Nothing, Lynn supposed. But she rather liked Mara Burt, the little she had seen of her. She wished somehow that she could be warned. For it was a losing game she was playing. Jennie would laugh at that. Sarah, if consulted, would remark merely, “Apparently the girl has no ambition, no intelligence; she is just ten mechanical fingers and for the rest—conscious sex appeal.” Tom, who had met Mara and her husband, would shrug. She thought, I wonder what David Dwight would say? She would rather like his opinion; some day she'd ask him what he thought, as a purely hypothetical case.

Jennie was talking about Dwight's party. She was enchanted. She planned to put some money in the little number 543. “You know, Lynn, the one I told you about—alternate white and black ruffles, simple, swell, stunning. Hope he's asked a lot of very old men, lousy with money, who have reached the stage where they're perfectly satisfied to hold your hand!”

“Lord,” commented Lynn honestly, “what a terrible prospect!”

“You're young yet,” said Jennie.

The party that evening with Tom was a Dutch-treat affair at an unfashionable barroom. Slim was there, and some of the UBC men. Slim took Jennie; there were other girls. Nice, happy-go-lucky crowd, not very noisy but very genial, talking inexplicable shop between drinks, food, and dances. Tom was perfectly happy. “Gee, you look sweet,” he told Lynn, “like strawberry ice cream. I could eat you up!”

She wore the dusky pink dress. Strawberry ice cream—and a rose-quartz pagoda! She thought wistfully that it was a pity a person as young and dear, as thrilling and beloved as Tom, could not shape his exciting voice into the quaint conceits and phrases that were like little windows opening—as could, say, a man like David Dwight. But of course if Tom talked like David Dwight he wouldn't be—Tom.

Guileful girl, she waited to tell Tom of Dwight's proposed party until this particular party was halfway through, and Tom, his hair ruffled and his eyes bright had just sung, with several others, the bulldog song—“Wow! Wow! Wow!” sang Tom, slamming his glass on the table.

She has thought he would rebel at the idea. But now, when his humor was expansive, now was the time to tell him.

She did so. He replied casually, “Swell—soup-and-fish, I suppose? Well, with a sponge and press I can get by.”

So, after all, he wouldn't mind going. She was amazed to find herself slightly disappointed. Or was it that just at this moment and in this humor he didn't mind?

But the next day he didn't mind either. Stopping at her desk—“Nice,” he said carelessly, “of the old boy to ask me.
Think how it will impress Gunboat.”

He didn't mind because he'd be there with her. Together.

 

 

 

AFTER LAUGHING, TEARS
RESPLENDENT, HE ARRIVED AT THE GIRLS' APARTMENT in time to escort Jennie and Lynn—in Dwight's car—to the party. He leaned back against the upholstery and muttered words of contentment. “This is the life,” said Tom, and added glumly, “only when you get, it you're too old to enjoy it.”

Lynn said, laughing, “David Dwight isn't too old—he isn't old at all. You have such comic ideas about age, Tom. Anybody over thirty looks like Methuselah to you.”

Tom digested this in an unhappy silence. She didn't think Dwight old then. Well, hell's bells, he wasn't, of course. But too old for Lynn.

Jennie shook out her black and white flounces. She looked very handsome, hair like daffodils, eyes like bluebells, Lynn's old onyx and gold earrings swinging from her ears. She said, “We're in for a large evening, I think.”

Lynn wore white. The “too innocent” white, upon which Jennie had passed on the occasion of Dwight's dinner. Jennie had grunted, observing her as, dressed and ready, she swung away from the mirror, “You need,” Jennie had said critically, “something a little startling. If you tied a blue sash around you now, you'd look like first prize at a baby party. Give me your jewel box.”

“I haven't any jewels,” Lynn reminded her, smiling, “just the old stuff grandmother left me.”

“That's just what I want. How about the garnets? Knock ‘em dead. That's what you need, you'll look virginal, quaint, and sophisticated, all at one and the same time. Here they are. Try ‘em on.”

A garnet necklace set in intricate gold. Earrings, heavily encrusted, and two wide bracelets. “There,” said Jennie, standing back, “that's what you needed. You looked like orange juice, straight, before. Granny's garnets put the kick into it.”

She handed Lynn a bright, light lipstick, entirely artificial. “Tone up the little old mouth to match the antiques—in color—” advised Jennie, “and you'll lay ‘em in the aisles like a row of prewar stingers!”

“Gee,” said Tom, staring, upon his entrance, “you look swell, Lynn.” He added, courteously, “and you, too, Jennie.”

“Never mind me,” said Jennie complacently. “I know how I look.”

“Haven't you got a lot of lipstick on?” was Tom's next, and natural, remark, his eyes on Lynn's brilliant mouth.

Lynn said, worried, “Perhaps. More than usual anyway, but with this white dress—” She started for the bedroom in order to hunt for cleansing tissues; but Jennie caught her arm and swung her around.

“Leave the face as it is,” she ordered, “remember, Tom isn't married to you yet. You're just right—as you are.”

So, lipstick and all, Lynn went to the party.

Wilkins opened the door with a special smile for Lynn. The big room was more or less filled with people. The loveliest frocks, the prettiest girls. “I feel like a poor relation,” Lynn whispered to Jennie as they mounted the steps to the temporary dressing-room, Tom having disappeared in Wilkins's wake.

The bedroom contained more women. Smoke, laughter, powder clouds, heavy perfume, the smell of cosmetics. Lynn pinched Jennie's arm until she shrieked, “Hey, what's the big idea? When I get bruises I
sue
!”

“Isn't that Lillie James—over there taking to the tall girl in black?”

“So it is,” agreed Jennie, staring, “thought she was in a sanitarium, nervous breakdown—boy or girl?”

“Jennie, hush, she'll hear you!”

When they had descended the stairs Dwight detached himself from a group around the fireplace and came forward to meet them. He took Jennie's hand in his and measured her with a cool, smiling glance, while Lynn murmured the introductions.

“Delightful of you to come, Miss Le Grande,” he said formally, but his eyes danced a very little.

“Jennie to you,” was Jennie's generous response.

“Of course, Jennie to me.” He turned to Lynn, and his eyes were not smiling nor were they cool. “Where's the lucky young man?” he pleasantly wanted to know.

“There he is. Tom—oh, Tom!” called Lynn, turning to see Tom standing by the door, very tall, very broad, very young, somehow a little ill at ease, with the sulky expression of the small boy who finds the party not quite up to his imagination and expectation.

Tom came over quickly. Women turned to watch him walk across the floor, not with the feline tread of his host, but the light step of perfect balance and vitality. He and Dwight shook hands and murmured conventionalities. Tom said, with an engaging grin and the courtesy of the junior which so infuriated the other man, “Looks like a grand party, sir.”