Unlike Others (22 page)

She knew how she looked. She said, "You don't think I'm entitled to a half-day once in a while? I take work home all the time."

"I know about women like you." A dull red crept up Stan's neck and spread over his cheeks. "The girl I dated in college was ruined by one. Can't you stick to your own kind? Do you have to get your hooks into decent girls?"

But I haven't seduced Betsy, Jo thought. She came to me of her own free will, because she loved me. Already I've made her happy.

She knew better than to say so.

"Betsy's my girl," Stan said. "Keep your dirty perverted hands off her."

"What makes you think she's your girl?"

His face was mottled now. Of course, Jo thought with a pang of pity, poor miserable guy, he's lived in a dream world so long he doesn't know the difference. He fails once and just barely makes it once—that makes her his girl. Maybe he thinks they're engaged, or something.

But this was no time to analyze the workings of his mind, such as it was. She had to salvage what she could. She said quite calmly, considering that her knees were trembling, "I'm sorry this came up just when I was ready to hand in my resignation. We've worked well together. I thought we could part on friendly terms."

"Resignation? How come?"

"I have a terrific job in New York. More money than here and a good chance for advancement. Do you want to take my two weeks' notice or give me two weeks' severance pay?"

Stan stood up. His eyes glittered. She'd read about eyes glittering; she had supposed it was just a figure of speech. "You can go now," he said, his voice rising hysterically. "You can go right now, and you don't need to mink you're going to get any severance pay either. I'm firing you."

“Okay. Ill take it up with the Labor Board."

"And I'll tell them you're a Lesbian. A dyke, a dirty pervert. That'll take care of you all right."

"I’ll tell them I took in the little girl you seduced, that she didn't want to go with you but she had to or lose her job. And after that," Jo said thoughtfully, "I believe I’ll pay a social call on your mother. I've always wanted meet her."

He caved in. It was pitiful; she tried not to feel sorry for him, but the habit was too strong. He said, "All right, goddam it, I’ll give you two weeks' pay. Now will you get out?"

"Plus what I have coming. It's almost half a month."

"I’ll have your check in five minutes."

“I’ll be ready to leave in five minutes.”

He looked baffled. She walked unsteadily back to her own office; hers no longer. The curtains she'd bought, the off-white paint she had selected for the walls and ceiling, even the Travel Now Pay Later sign outside the window had a special meaning because she was leaving them behind. For a moment she felt the emptiness of the dispossessed. She had been safe here; and now the safety was torn away.

She gathered up the things that were hers. Stacking them together, her spirits rose. She had a trade and she was good at it. These were the tools of her trade. For this she could forgive Stan the damage he was inflicting on her.

She bundled everything up, looked around to be sure she wasn't leaving anything, and was back at the door of Stan's office within the stipulated five minutes. "My money."

"Here, damn it."

She looked at the check, doing mental arithmetic. Folded it and put it in her billfold. "Thanks." Better cash it before he changes his mind and stops payment.

"Jo, maybe you wouldn't have to go. You could try to do better. We always got along all right."

She felt her face grow cold and stiff. For a while there, she thought, I really believed he was growing up. Standing on his own feet. But he never will. It's too late, his mother caught him too young. She could picture him down the years, growing older and more petulant, confiding in an endless series of secretaries and assistants and casual female friends. Always searching for love and afraid of it, always falling back on sympathy.

She felt a burden lifted from her. "I'm sorry, I have this other job. I hope things work out all right."

"Same to you."

She walked out without looking back. She said to the astounded Gayle, "You can have my tissues and pencil mug. Good luck with your wedding," and went on out, shutting the frosted glass door behind her for the last time.

The operator looked at her curiously as she stepped into his car. He didn't ask any questions. He'd seen other girls walk out in the middle of the morning, carrying a little stack of personal belongings. This one was easier than most to get along with.

She said, "Thanks, Tim. This is for your baby, get him something from me."

"You don't have to do that, Miss Bates. It's been a pleasure."

She swung out of the building. In the street she stopped, standing like an island around which currents of people moved.

Call Betsy. First thing, before I start planning. Then Mag. She’ll know somebody, she always does. Or Richard will.

She went into a drugstore, ordered coffee, and let it cool while she added and subtracted. The arithmetic came out better than she'd dared to hope. With what she had left from last payday she had almost four hundred dollars. Bus fare would be fifty for the two of them; meals en route; a month's rent on a cheap room. Within . a month one should be working. It could be done.

She left a dime and two pennies for the coffee and a nickel for the waitress, reassembled her belongings and went to the row of telephone booths. Two were occupied by paunchy men with sample cases. She shut the door of the third behind her, feeling slightly nervous as she always did in closed places. Her fingers were cold. She dropped a dime into the coin slot and rang her own number.

There was no answer. The dime dropped down into the little metal hatch, and she retrieved it. There was no need to look up Betsy's number; she had called it once, and it was clear in her mind.

A hesitant elderly voice answered. Jo said, "May I speak to Betsy?" and stood waiting for the voice to say that Betsy wasn't home. I can't stand it if she's not there. I have to talk to her.

"Why, I’ll call her. Just wait a minute." There was the click of the handset as she put it down, then footsteps going away. In a minute Betsy's voice said, "Hello?"

“It's Jo. Look, how much money have you got?”

"About forty dollars. Do you need it?"

Jo said, "That's all right. I've got almost four hundred.”

“How would you like to go to New York? Tomorrow, or the next day?"

"With you? Sure."

Relief flooded Jo. I knew she'd take it like this, I knew she'd trust me. She hadn't known anything of the kind, she had been terribly frightened.

She said briefly, "I've left my job. Look, Stan knows all about me, what I am. He got unpleasant about it, so I resigned."

"Did he say anything about me?" She wanted to say no. Desperately, she wanted to protect Betsy. She’ll have enough to face, she thought in self-defense. Hip in a square world, gay in a straight world, broke in a culture where practically everything's measured by money—she’ll find out.

Betsy said, "I'm not a baby. Tell me the truth."

"He guessed, yes. He seems to think you're in love with him or something—the bastard."

She heard Betsy's sharp intake of breath. That was a shocker, poor kid. But she felt proud and possessive. Betsy had guts, she would make out all right.

Betsy said cheerfully, "We’ll be okay. We'll get jobs right away, you’ll see. If I can't find an office job I'll wait tables, I did it in college for a while."

"Sure, we'll be fine."

"Find out about bus schedules. It's cheaper than taking a train, and more fun besides."

"Well take sandwiches and skip the lousy roadside restaurants."

"And cushions. They charge you fifty cents for a pillow. Jo," Betsy asked practically, "What will you do about your furniture?"

It was the first time she had thought about it, but the answer came without effort. "I have a friend who'll dispose of it for us. The lease runs from month to month, so that's no problem."

"All right, I'll be there when you get home. This calls for a steak. The time for a steak is when you're out of work."

"Swell. You know I love you?"

"That goes both ways," Betsy said. She hung up. Jo waited a moment, then dialed again.

Richard was in. It's my day, she thought in exultation, I'm fortune's darling. Any other time he'd be out in the suburbs trying to sell a row house to some happy bride and groom, or on the far west side trying to get rid of some white-elephant mansion. Today he's at his desk, and how's that for luck?

She told him what had happened, leaving out the details. He knew, it had happened to him too. He said, "Good for you, kid. I'll get rid of your stuff, it won't bring much but it's better than paying someone to haul it away. I've got a property in the University area, nice young couples going to school on a shoestring, they're hot for good cheap furniture."

She said, with tears filling her eyes and threatening to spill over, "I want to see you before I go."

"How about dinner tonight?"

"No, my girl's cooking a steak. Why don't you come over and share it with us? She's going with me."

He accepted that, too. "Naturally. I want to look her over. I can tell you one thing now, she's not good enough for you."

"You’ll see."

"What about money? I'll split my parachute fund with you."

That was the hundred he kept for dire emergencies, not to be broken unless actual hunger threatened. The tears rolled down her cheeks. She said with a sniffle, "I'm loaded, but thanks just the same."

"You're bawling."

“Only because you're such a fool.”

Richard snorted. "You know something? This is the best thing that ever happened to you."

"Certainly, I'm thrilled to death."

"Seven o'clock all right?"

"Sure, whenever you can get there. I want you and Betsy to know each other."

God bless him, she thought, hanging up and hearing her coin clink into the money box. I'm going to miss him. The sweetest guy in the world.

She didn't want to go home just yet. She wanted to give Betsy time to get there, to find Betsy waiting when she unlocked the door. We can go marketing together, she thought, it'll be the first time. But first I want to tell her how much I love her.

She decided to walk down Michigan, past the Art Institute, and say good-bye to the lions.

It was a sunny, windy day, the kind of day that comes too seldom to the middle west. Jo stepped along briskly, shifting her load of books and working tools from arm to arm. Between Washington and Madison she stopped to pick up a shopping bag in a small specialty shop where she bought things now and then. The owner, shingled and tailored, refused her dime. "Take it for luck, Jo. It's been nice knowing you."

All the good people, she thought. My own people. We’ll find more of them in New York.

She passed the Art Institute without noticing what displays were placarded, glancing vaguely at the people going up the wide front steps: students, courting couples, middle-aged shoppers, tourists. She turned east on Jackson, past the art students sitting on benches in the little park beside the Institute, making the most of what well might be the last warm day. Bless them, she thought, feeling a warm regard for everybody in the world.

A few blocks to the east, placid and undistracted by traffic and commerce, the Lake lay. From the corner Jo could see the line of blue where it met the sky. A pair of gulls, veering westward from the beach, circled above her. Their wings moved in unison against the blue autumn air.

We're losing the lake, she thought, but we’ll have the ocean. And we’ll fly together.

To her right lay the long platform of the Van Buren Street train station, echoing with the feet of arriving and departing commuters. Red and green lights glowed down the long network of tracks.

Betsy will be there by now, she thought. She ran down the long flight of wooden steps, her heels clattering, and towards the waiting train.

~ ~ ~

AFTERWORD

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and, with a price of twenty-five cents on their light cardboard covers, affordable for the average American.

Prior to the introduction of the mass-market paperback, as it would come to be known, the literary landscape in America was quite different than what it is today. Reading was primarily a leisure-time pursuit of the wealthy and educated. Hardcover books were expensive and hard to find, so purchasing books was a luxury only the rich living in major metropolitan areas could afford. There simply weren’t many bookstores across the country, and only gift shops and stationary stores carried a few popular novels at a time.

The Pocket Books were priced to sell, however, and sell is what they did… in numbers never before seen. Availability also had a great effect on sales, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.

Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.

Like many of the early paperback publishers, Dell relied on previously published material for its early books, releasing “complete and unabridged” reprints under different titles by established authors. Within a couple of years it was focused exclusively on mysteries, identifiable by the Dell logo on the cover—a small keyhole with an eye looking through it. Many of the Dell mysteries also featured a colored map on the back cover representing the various locations pertaining to the story’s crime. These “mapback” editions became extremely popular and by 1945, Dell was publishing four new books a month.