The Other Typist (12 page)

“You may enter, ma’ams.”

It was a blind. I had heard of these but, having never seen one for myself, was astonished. The whole wig shop business was a bum steer. The proprietors of the store—whoever they might be—had probably never sold a single wig in their lifetimes, or if they had, it was purely unintentional. Odalie smiled at the young man behind the counter and stepped into the hallway now exposed by the open wall panel. The clerk watched her slinky movements, and in turn I watched him watching her . . . until abruptly I realized she had disappeared into the dark and I was still standing in front of the shop counter, quite immobile. The young man returned his attention to me and looked at me with a skeptical eyebrow raised.

“Ma’am? Gotta be coming or going, now. Indiscretion’s not good for business, ya know,” meaning the open door, which I sensed he was already itching to shut. Something about his bossy yet sycophantic demeanor provoked my ire. I shot him a murderous look (triggering the skeptical eyebrow to rise even higher and turn ever so briefly into a question mark of fear, I noted with some satisfaction), then strode down the dark hallway in the direction of Odalie’s disappearance. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, I felt the wall panel swing shut behind me. It was some minutes before my eyes adjusted, and I dared not move until I could dimly make out the floor again, afraid I would otherwise trip.

“Over here, Rose.”

I walked in the direction of Odalie’s summons, now sounding as though it had been enveloped in a din of other voices, and pushed through the velvet curtain at the end of the hallway.

I was unprepared for the scene that awaited me. I found myself stumbling abruptly smack-dab into the middle of a party in full swing. The room overwhelmed me. The walls were done in burgundy crushed velvet wallpaper. The lack of lighting caused the ceilings to recede in a dark, cavernous manner, and from the middle of an elaborate plaster medallion hung an unexpected crystal chandelier. The whole room was warm and humid with bodies, and the sharp tang of fermented juniper (from my time at the precinct I already knew very well this was the signature scent of bathtub gin) hung in the air.

The room was too packed to take in everyone at once, and I found myself focusing on the details of a few individuals who stood out. A couple of girls were shimmying a tight, frenetic Charleston in the middle of the room. Another young woman drank what appeared to be very frothy champagne out of a novelty glass shaped like a ladies’ high-heeled shoe, her dress twinkling with glass beads that swung in pendulous strings from the very modern, straight-across line of her décolletage. A pair of short, stocky men were puffing on cigars and clapping each other on the back as they roared with hysterical laughter, their faces growing pink and clownish with exertion, each blow to each other’s bodies more intimate and friendly than the last. Across the room a woman was sitting atop a piano, being urged by a small audience to remove her shoes and stockings. After making several halfhearted and insincere protests, she slipped off the requested garments and performed what sounded like an impromptu rendition of “Chopsticks” using only her toes.

“What’ll you have?”

I realized I was being addressed. I looked in the direction of the voice, which was decidedly downward, and was startled to see a dwarf in red suspenders and a trilby hat staring up at me. Eggplant-colored dark shadows rimmed his eyes, and he was badly in need of a shave. I struggled to formulate a reply.

“No bathtub gin for this one,” came Odalie’s voice. She suddenly materialized by my side and slipped a very lithe, sinuous arm around my waist. “Let’s start her on something a little more civilized. How about a nice champagne cocktail, Redmond?”

Redmond gave an almost imperceptible incline of his head, then turned and toddled off with a stiff gait on his thick, truncated legs.

“Redmond’s a sweetheart.”

“Where have you taken me?”

Odalie only laughed. “Come on, I want you to meet someone.” With her arm still entwined about my waist, she steered me to a far corner of the room, where a group of nicely dressed men stood clustered around a roulette table. Wordlessly I watched the shiny polished silver rudder of the roulette wheel turn in the air, the cross of its handle flashing as it slowly revolved. Odalie drew up short next to a tall, dark-haired man in an expensive-looking suit.

“Rose, I’d like you to meet Harry Gibson.” On hearing his name, the man turned to us and, with no attempt to hide it, looked me over with a wolfish skepticism from head to toe.

“I go by Gib,” he said, extending a courteous, indifferent hand. I shook it gingerly, and upon the completion of this gesture Gib immediately returned his attention to the roulette table. “C’mon . . .
c’mon
,” Gib muttered under his breath. Curiously, he didn’t appear to be rooting for any particular number, but rather
against
all of them in general. I watched his eyes flash as the roulette wheel slowed to the end of its spin and lurched precariously.

“Your drink, miss?”

I looked down to see Redmond had returned with whatever it was Odalie had ordered. He had returned with the drinks, but no bill, and I was soon to learn this was how things always worked with Odalie: drinks, meals, tickets to shows—Odalie received them all while handling the exchange of money for goods so discreetly as to render it nearly invisible. And now, by the simple virtue of being in her company, I was to receive all of these things for free. A dim realization of my new windfall crept over me as I examined the diminutive waiter who stood holding our drinks. His stocky arms were not quite able to clear the height of his head, but nonetheless he proudly held up a silver tray laden with two champagne glasses containing a cloudy, slightly greenish-tinted champagne. Odalie lifted one of the glasses from the tray directly to her lips and took a polite, appreciative sip. I knew a nice girl would never be caught drinking in a blind or otherwise, but I also sensed I was being tested; I could not refuse just now.

“What is it?” I asked as I hesitantly lifted the second glass from the tray.

“A little splash of heaven,” Odalie replied. I gave her a look. She laughed. “One part absinthe, two parts champagne. Try it—it’s positively lovely.”

“I . . . I don’t drink. What would the Sergeant say?” I blurted out.

Odalie laughed again, the music of her voice carrying throughout the noisy room. The white ball on the roulette wheel finally came tripping to a standstill, and a small uproar sounded all around the table. Gib turned distractedly back to us, frowning at my proclamation of temperance.

“Who is this friend of yours?” he said to Odalie, as if I weren’t standing next to her.

“Another typist. From the precinct.”

He started and looked at me with greater scrutiny. “Is she clean?”

Odalie scowled in annoyance—a rare look for her lovely face to display. “I’ll vouch for her, if that’s what you mean.”

“You can’t just bring anybody in here,” Gib said in a low warning voice. But it was a hollow warning; his attention had already been reclaimed by the roulette ball that had been thrown back into play, tripping along the fresh spin of the wheel.

“Have a drink of your cocktail, Rose, and show Gib here you mean no harm,” Odalie suggested. I sensed it was imperative at that point to drink, and so I did, suppressing the urge to sputter back the fizzing licorice-flavored champagne as it burned the back of my throat. “Good girl,” Odalie said approvingly, although I once again got the impression the conversation was not being addressed to me.

“Fine, have it your way,” Gib said with an air of dismissal.

“Oh, Rose, let’s get away from these dreadfully boring gambling bachelors!” Odalie suddenly exclaimed, winking at Gib and tugging me again by the waist. “I want to mingle.” She pulled me so close, I had no choice but to move in tandem with her like a docile farm animal. The cocktail had already planted hot embers just under the surface of my cheeks, and I could feel it warming me.

Once safely across the room, I finally asked, “Who is he?” I meant Gib. Without missing a beat, Odalie understood.

“He runs this place. Well, for now he does. You mustn’t be scared of him. He won’t like you for it. Besides, there’s nothing to be frightened of; once you get to know him, you’ll realize he couldn’t hurt a fly, really.” She hesitated, smiling to herself and turning the words that came next over in her mind. “Also, he’s my . . . my . . . well, I suppose you could say we are
enfianced
.”

I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what she meant; I had never seen her wear a ring or speak of an engagement, and Gib’s demeanor had struck me as so surly, I could hardly picture him proposing on bended knee. I glanced back at Gib. Upon observing more closely the brooding hue of his eyes and the dark shadow that ran the badly shaven length of his jaw, I realized I was offended by the idea of a man like that being engaged to the luminous creature standing next to me. It didn’t make sense. Odalie didn’t explain further, only gave me a wink, then immediately set about introducing me to what she called the notable individuals in the room. A number of the men were employed in the moving picture business, either as directors or producers, and a few of the girls had appeared as actresses in the background of several major films. One girl with extraordinarily yellow-colored hair had even appeared as an extra in a Charlie Chaplin film. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I thought I recognized her, not from the film, as I’d never been to the movies, but from a photograph I’d once glimpsed in
The Tattler
. There were also artists and musicians, and still other people, too, whose occupations eluded me altogether. It was my impression that as the evening wore on, the people to whom Odalie introduced me grew increasingly vague about what it was they did for a living, but of course by that time Redmond had returned with his tray several times over and the whole room had begun to feel like a ship that had been pushed out upon a rocky sea.

My recollection of the night’s events became significantly less reliable at some point. I believe, if I am not mistaken, I can recall taking to the dance floor with Odalie. I can’t claim to know how to do the Charleston, yet I seem to have some memory of performing it. And I have a suspiciously vivid idea of what a cigar tastes like. I also remember sitting on a settee while speaking with a very large-featured man who, evidently feeling the need to educate me, pontificated at great length on the difference between stocks and bonds. A very wobbly and inebriated girl standing nearby kept cutting into the conversation only to remark, over and over again,
Sir, you have the most interesting nose I
’
ve ever seen.
 . . .
That
’
s quite a nose
.

I am not certain what hour it was when Odalie and I finally left the party. But I do remember my stomach had already begun to turn sour on me by the time we were in a cab and homeward bound.

“Mustn’t. Go. To places like that. Again,” I managed to mumble with a debatable level of lucidity. “Not. For. Nice. Girls.”

“Oh, hush,” Odalie said, and with a
shh
added for good measure, patted and rubbed my hand.

“The Sergeant would never approve,” I mumbled. “Must tell him I’m sorry.” I let my head loll to the side and closed my eyes. Suddenly I felt two very strong viselike hands gripping my shoulders, shaking a small inkling of sobriety into me. I struggled to open my eyes and found Odalie looking into my face intensely.

“Now you listen to me, Rose,” she said in a cool, controlled voice. “There’ll be no telling the Sergeant about any of this.” My eyes began to droop and close, which must have offended her, because she shook me once again, this time harder. I was aware that the energy had shifted between us and something had killed the joviality of the moment; she was angry and she meant business. A bit frightened, I peered up innocently into her face and realized she suddenly looked like a stranger to me. She was trying to get me to understand something, and I understood on instinct she wanted me to make firm eye contact with her as a means of acknowledging her serious message. In my inebriated state, I willed my eyeballs to stop what felt like a repeated rolling motion. It took quite an effort, as my eyes felt like they were spinning in their sockets, left to right, left to right, left to right.

Perhaps this looked utterly pathetic to Odalie, for suddenly she laughed, gave a sigh, and released her grip on my shoulders. “What am I going to do with you?” came the rhetorical question, followed by another chuckle. “I suppose it’s silly of me to worry.” Now her tone was friendly, motherly—sisterly. She squeezed my hand. “You wouldn’t tell anybody anything. And besides,” she added, “you just got settled in. It would be a shame to have to look for a new place to live so soon.” I dimly became aware of the threat that was tucked and folded so neatly into her words. “I certainly don’t think Dotty would welcome you back with open arms, now would she?”

We both knew the answer to this question. I looked at Odalie, struck afresh by the state of dependency I’d gotten myself into in my new situation, but then my stomach did an impressive array of inner gymnastics, and I was forced to lean my head out the cab door and release some of the evening’s champagne and absinthe.

I
’ve always been the sort of individual to live her life by the rules. In the absence of flesh-and-blood equivalents, over the years I’ve taken a series of rules to serve as my mother, my father, my siblings, even my lovers—if an idea of love can indeed be derived from the sort of one-way devotion I cultivated in my regard for the rules. It’s true no one may have tucked in the covers at my bedside, but there was a certain comfort in adhering to a strict rule of turning the lights out at nine o’clock. And perhaps it’s true also there was no one there to tell me stories as I drifted off to sleep, but there was the list of prayers to be said, and the list of morning chores to go over in my head. Rules kept me safe. In keeping the rules dear to me, I could always be certain the nuns would clothe and feed me, the typing school would place me in a job, and the precinct would employ me. Until I met Odalie, the only god I knew was the God of the Ten Commandments.

So it’s strange to me that with Odalie, I suddenly found myself breaking the rules I had once held in such precious regard. In many ways I suppose my love of the rules was supplanted by my love of Odalie, and I was surprised by the speed of the exchange. The thing about rules is that when you break one, it is only a matter of time before you break more, and the severe architecture that once protected you is destined to come crashing down about your ears. I can only say I did it for the love of her, though the doctor I am seeing now hardly accepts that answer.

Of course, ever since the incident, the newspapers have painted Odalie as the victim. According to them, I am the one who has corrupted, who has lied, and who has committed the ultimate unspeakable act. Having forfeited my claim to having always followed the rules, I have unwittingly rendered myself plainly vulnerable to this attack. They may say whatever they want about me, and they do. They refuse to believe she might have bewitched me, but I can think of no more fitting word by which to describe the effect Odalie has had on me. Simply put, I have met no one more magnetic than Odalie, and I doubt I ever will.

During those early days of cohabitation, I was possessed by the idea of understanding and knowing Odalie, whose approach to dressing, drinking, and dancing enacted a sort of casual entitlement that was utterly alien to me. Many were the times I watched Odalie enter a room, the downy hair on her arms flashing golden against her tanned skin as she reached out a childish hand to steal the already-in-progress cigarette from between the lips of a man she’d never met. She was never once rebuffed, and the man—I say
man
here generically, because there were several—invariably introduced himself and reached into his pocket to fish out a lighter and a replacement cigarette, while Odalie puffed on her pilfered prize and regarded the gentleman with a sly, delighted expression, as if to suggest nothing he could pull out of his pocket could sufficiently replace the unique and spectacular treasure she had just stolen. During our time together, I was to spend countless hours observing Odalie, and I came to realize her little habitual interactions, such as her proprietary way with men’s cigarettes, were never intended to be cruel or slighting gestures; they simply constituted her way.

There were also many behaviors deeply familiar to me that were completely beyond Odalie’s repertoire. Blushing, for instance, is not something Odalie seemed able to do. Nor did she hesitate or demur. Her answer to every invitation, regardless of its relative legality, was to give the lanky, boneless shrug of a prepubescent teenager, a gesture often accompanied by the musical trill of her laugh.

And in no situation was this breezy, casual, devil-may-care attitude more shocking than as it concerned the physical act of love. I may never know for sure who Odalie did and did not take as her lovers, but I do know she was insufficiently scandalized by the reported conduct of the loose women who often attended Harry Gibson’s speakeasies. She acted as though it were the most natural thing for a woman to do whatever she wanted, with whomever she pleased. This confused me.

You see, I didn’t know then what I know now, which is this: Only the very rich and the very poor enjoy sex with a careless, indifferent abandon. Those of us who find ourselves somewhere in the middle—and here I must note I consider myself to occupy the middle, for although I was raised in an orphanage, the nuns did their best to equip me with the prudish values of a good bourgeoise (I have always quickened my step upon passing the ribaldry of the tenements)—only those of us in the middle class are obliged to maintain an attitude of modesty and discretion when it comes to sex. This is especially true of middle-class young ladies. We are the ones obliged to lower our eyes and blush during educational lectures on human anatomy; we are the ones who must
tsk
and shout
fresh!
with indignation whenever a young man tries to proposition us. We are given to believe we are the supreme keepers of sexual morality, and I, like any properly instructed schoolgirl of my day, earnestly felt there was something sacred in the keeping. Some keep it as a matter of burden, but I kept it as a matter of privilege.

I did not know anything about Odalie’s childhood, and therefore could not know how she had been brought up. I suppose even if I’d had such facts at my disposal, they wouldn’t have provided me any special insight, as the sexual habits of the very poor simply terrified me, and the sexual habits of the upper class were an obscure, opaque mystery to me. But the facts were Odalie seemed to feel neither the privilege nor the burden of upholding sexual mores, and as far as her own conduct—well, she did as she pleased with little sign of remorse. At parties she disappeared into darkened back rooms. She took automobile rides indiscriminately with anyone who amused her. When we went to dinner clubs, a special laugh of hers—a flirtatious one generally reserved for male company—could often be heard coming from within the walls of the coat check, muffled only slightly by a fur-and-cashmere buffer. I’m not certain why I took such a fascinated interest in Odalie’s sexual conduct (or misconduct, as I saw it), but I did. When it came to Odalie’s wild ways, I did not approve, but I was a silent judge, compelled as I was to follow and watch. Wanting to watch Odalie was a difficult impulse to resist, having as it does a kind of very potent and very dark draw.

A horrible disaster was looming on my horizon, so to speak, but from the very moment I met Odalie I was rendered utterly powerless to do anything other than watch it hurtle toward me. But, of course, if I am to tell it all in order, as I keep promising to do, there are other things I must tell first.

•   •   •

WE’D GONE TO
the blind on a weeknight, and the next morning I still had yet to make a full recovery. That morning, as I walked into the precinct and encountered the usual heady odor of cheap whiskey and old wine that was carried in daily, I felt my stomach instantly recoil and prepare itself for an encore performance of its previous gymnastic routine. With a great effort of concentration, I managed to keep my breakfast in its proper place. In some ways I was actually grateful for the fact my workplace was regularly infused with such an unpleasant fermenting scent, as the odor of all those bootleggers and winos passing through the precinct went a long way to mask my own odor, which I was certain I was still carrying around on my person. Adding to my luck was the fact the Sergeant was unable to pay me much mind on that particular day. I would have been utterly mortified for the Sergeant to discover me in my state, but he was far too busy.

Unfortunately, however, the Lieutenant Detective was not. At some point during the morning he gamboled across the room to hand off a stack of reports to Odalie, and in passing he glanced at me and was forced to look twice.

“Looks like somebody could use a little hair of the dog,” the Lieutenant Detective said, grinning in my direction.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, mustering a sneer, then catching my throbbing head in both hands. Still grinning, the Lieutenant Detective approached my desk and sat on it in his old familiar manner.

“Somehow I’m sure you
do
know,” he said. I lifted my head long enough to give him a haughty look. Odalie pretended to observe the reports he’d just handed her with riveted fascination, but I was quite aware her ears remained sharply attuned to our conversation. “Look,” he said, “I’m not the disapproving sort. I’ve found myself in the same condition on occasion.” I felt my nostrils flare. What gall! To assume that I cared what he thought! To assume the two of us—the Lieutenant Detective and I—might have something in common! Blind to my indignation, he slipped something shiny and silvery out of his pocket, laid it flat on the desk, and slowly pushed it toward me in a sly gesture, all the while smiling crookedly. I became dimly aware he was offering me a flask. “A few sips of that,” he said, “and you’ll make it through the day.”

Instinctually, I sniffed and recoiled. “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Detective—”

“Frank,” he interrupted, then leaned a little closer and added, “or Francis. But no one really calls me Francis.” He paused and colored slightly. “Only my mother.”

“I beg your pardon,
Lieutenant
Detective
,” I continued. He flinched as though I had just bitten him. “But I’m quite fine, and I’ll thank you to remove your
property,
as it were, from my desk lest somebody fall under the mistaken impression that it is indeed mine.”

He hesitated, then reached for the flask and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. As he did so, a small shiver of panic ran up my spine and I glanced about frantically, worried the Sergeant might be looking in our direction. I’d surely die of shame if the Sergeant were to glimpse the Lieutenant Detective trying to slip me a flask on the job. On the job or any other time, really. In the Sergeant I had always sensed my moral and ethical equal, and he’d always treated me as though the respect was mutual. As much as I felt compelled to impress Odalie and win her approval, I felt equally if not even more compelled to retain the Sergeant’s approval and couldn’t stand to have him think I’d transformed into one of those fast modern girls of whose lifestyle he thoroughly disapproved.

But at that moment it was only the Lieutenant Detective’s disapproval I had to suffer. He stood before my desk in his rumpled suit and white spats, shoving the flask deeper into his pocket and pushing a long lock of hair out of his eyes. His lips moved in silence, as if attempting to draw words from the deep well of his throat. Finally sound came out.

“Here I was, thinking how nice it was that perhaps you’d turned out to be mortal after all,” he said. “But I see you are as cold and mechanical as ever.” He fixed me with a stern gaze and turned on his heel. I watched him walk away, then winced as a sharp splinter of pain raced between my eyes. I redeposited my aching head into the cool skin of my hands and dimly heard Odalie laughing beside me. There was a mocking lilt in her voice; it was not a terribly kind variety of laugh.

“You little fool,” she said. “He was only trying to be a sport, and what he was offering would’ve helped you immensely.” She meant, of course, the contents of the flask. But not having any familiarity with the practice, I didn’t see how it could possibly make things better. I straightened my posture and stacked some papers brusquely. I rolled a blank document into the typewriter and began to punch out a report, feeling my brain cringe somewhere deep inside my skull with each loud
CLACK
. But I found there was a strange comfort in the excruciating pain. This was my penance, I was convinced.

At that moment, I began what I could not foresee would eventually become a long and repeated tradition of vowing to shun Odalie and failing. She was difficult to resist; she always seemed to possess one little thing you wanted, or one little thing that made you feel as though you owed it to her. The truth of the matter was the deal between us had been brokered the moment I’d agreed to move in with her. Well, sooner than that, perhaps. Perhaps it had been a signed and sealed matter from the very second I’d picked up the brooch Odalie had dropped on the day of her interview and neglected to return it.

With a shrug, Odalie dismissed the small scene between the Lieutenant Detective and myself and returned to her work without a second thought. But I was left to stew over the state of things for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. By quitting time I had come up with and refined several arguments I planned to present to Odalie, asserting why I could never again return to the speakeasy, not least of which was the fact it was illegal and a proper lady should never be caught in one, let alone a lady who works for the selfsame police force that was destined to someday burst in upon the scene. As every passing second brought us closer to five o’clock, I fortified my moral position and worked up my courage. But I never got a chance to enumerate such reasons to Odalie, and my eloquent pontification skills languished. As soon as we packed up to take our leave, she hijacked me in the most disarming manner, looping her arm through mine and whisking me off to a moving picture.

I had been resolved to say no to Odalie’s next proposition, no matter what it was, but here I was at a severe disadvantage, as I had never been to a moving picture before. I see now why they refer to it as the silver screen. I sat beside Odalie in the velvety dark, mesmerized by the beautiful oval faces and thick, fluttering eyelashes of the starlets and the kohl-rimmed eyes of the villains as they were lit up by a shimmering shower of silvery light. On a platform to the left of the stage a tall, thin man with a narrow, angular nose played an upright piano, his spidery fingers moving with a jittery dexterity in perfect time to the film. Looking upward, I stared at the luminous moonbeam projected over our heads and was enchanted.

But even under the alluring spell of celluloid, I felt my attention drift away and my mind begin to wander back to the girl sitting next to me. Generally speaking, mysterious people made me nervous and I tried to avoid them. I could not understand why it should be the opposite with Odalie. Just like all the other fools around her, I had developed a taste for her brand of mystery.