Tiger shrugged good-naturedly. The jig was up. She’d be out of the pool, dried arid dressed, and on the elevator in no time. Still, she figured, she’d put up a small struggle because to do otherwise would be shamefully weak. “I’m a little rusty. I’ll pick up.” Sure, she’d pick up. She’d pick up her day’s wages and be gone.
“I’ve been clocking you,” said the girl. “You’re racing along at—oh—thirty words to the half hour.”
“Yes, but they’re big words.” Tiger held up the last page she had typed. “Look. Scatological. Codicil. Supercilious…How do you spell ‘supercilious’?”
“A lot better than you do. What’s your name? Don’t spell it—just say it.”
“Janice McAllister.” It sounded good. Very Scotch-Irish, fifth-generation Hoosier. Very American.
“I’m Martha Wesloski.” She was a friendly type, perhaps five years older than Tiger, and apparently very conformist. “First job as a typist?”
“I was with the Peace Corps in Africa. I did fifty words a minute—on drums.” Was that her? No, damn it. It was Luther, using her mind, speaking through her mouth. Tiger attempted to rectify the quick lie. “No. That’s not true.” And she framed a sheepish smile. “I lie a lot. It’s a habit I picked up. I’m trying to stop.”
Martha glanced up at the big wall clock which supplied the heartbeat for the steno pool. It was nudging 10 A.M. “Come on. Coffee break.”
“Really? But I’ve barely started.”
“Come on. Our union fought the good fight for it. Don’t ruin it for everyone.”
Tiger got up from her typewriter, and it seemed glad to see her go. When it wasn’t looking, she stuck her tongue out at it.
The white-jacketed counterman appeared in a square hole cut in the wall. Behind the hole was the commissary. The thing looked like an afterthought, as though the boss showed up one morning, saw the hole in the wall and said, “Let’s stick a man in it and have him serve coffee.” And the board of directors approved it ten to one, the one abstention being a doddering old spoilsport who never drank anything stronger than Chiclets. All about the counterman were coffeepots and chrome items that smoked and hissed and looked ice cold and very hot. A person could buy ice cream in that hole. And Cokes. And Drake’s Cakes. Anything. The idea was for the people on Tiger’s side of the hole to line up and, when their turns came, yell something through the hole and the man would scramble around as though he were shot in a shooting gallery. Then he’d pull himself together and hand the orders through the hole. It was a very effective way in which to utilize a hole in the wall, very purposeful and resourceful. The man worked swiftly, with a practiced speed, but under sweaty duress. He resembled all the countermen in all the drugstores in which Luther had hoisted tips. Nor was it beyond Luther to show up in that hole, just to bug her on her first day at work in the new world. He could do that, Luther could. And he might, too. And soon.
“Yeah? Next?” The counterman loomed up in front of her as a hands-on-hips torso. And he was very annoyed with the daydreaming girl. “Hey!”
Tiger delivered the perfunctory smile and addressed the man as though there were nothing odd about his standing there with no legs to speak of. “Coffee and a doughnut, please.”
“How do you like it?”
“Oh, fine. It’s my first day and already—”
“The coffee!”
“Oh. Black.” She really didn’t like it black, but she didn’t want him to bother on her account.
The man poured the coffee. It steamed up in the wax cup like alligator bile. “Jesus,” he said, nodding his head at the kooks he had to deal with.
“Yes.” Tiger smiled, trying to carry it off with aristocratic grace, as the young Kate Hepburn would most certainly have done.
The cup of coffee and the glazed doughnut came through the hole in the wall as if fired in anger. Tiger ducked instinctively but soon realized that it had no fuse. She paid with a smile and thirty-five cents and followed Martha back to the steno pool, her new home, and there enjoyed her pasty repast. Somewhere around ten thirty all the girls went automatically back to work, so Tiger did likewise. Who was she to question how nature worked? She sensed that she was losing some of her individuality. Yet she realized that that was what she was being paid for. Life is give-and-take. Who said that? Robin Hood.
Pippety-pip developed into a slightly faster tatta-tat-tat. But in no way was it the classic clackety-clack of the seasoned pro. Still, it came under the heading of gradual improvement, and Tiger sensed a pride in her gathering accomplishments. “The typewriter is your friend.” That’s what had been written in the little booklet that accompanied her Christmas present from Daddy four years ago. That particular typewriter wasn’t really a friend. It wasn’t even a casual acquaintance. It was more of a total stranger. And by Easter it had evolved into a venal enemy. But that was long ago…and this typewriter, an electric job, was trying very hard to be friendly. It didn’t jam. It didn’t shake or make disconsolate noises. It just hummed happily and was very patient, even with Tiger’s erratic pace. It was an all-around simpatico good fellow, a chum, a buddy. And so Tiger devoted even her lunch hour toward the further cementing of their purring-good relationship.
Martha had asked Tiger to join some of the girls for lunch, a humanitarian gesture that Tiger just wasn’t up to. Besides, that glazed doughnut was lying in her stomach like a chunk of fermenting brain coral, ebbing and flowing in a surf of coffee that had a caffeine count so high that she was in danger of eternal insomnia, even after death. Necroinsomnia. Play that on your Smith-Corona.
Anyway, by the time Martha and the other femmes returned from their jabbering lunch, Tiger had taken her tatta-tat-tat and fashioned it into a rather acceptable pa-tumn, pa-tumn, pa-tumn.
Martha came over. “How you doing?”
“Fine. It’s all coming back to me.” Then Tiger looked at the 424 misspellings. “Maybe tomorrow it’ll come back in English.”
Martha sounded like the Harvard football coach. “Hang in there. You’ll get it.” And she went back to her own machine.
Tiger stayed at her machine, rather satisfied with the way it was going. After all—Roam wasn’t bilt in a dae. The coffee was at low tide, and the doughnut had receded with it, nestling up somewhere in Tiger’s intestines, where, in spite of the fact that it was lying dormant, she knew she’d hear from it later. Tiger glanced up at the big clock without breaking stride. She wasn’t normally a clock watcher, but everyone was leaving. The other girls were covering their machines as though the things had just died. Martha was standing next to her. “Five o’clock. We’ve been sprung.”
“That late?” Yes. And all the girls were going through the doorway in threes—mini, midi, maxi—soon disappearing down the elevator shafts. And tomorrow a new batch would ascend, serve their time, and at five o’clock go down the shaft in a like manner. Continuity. The life cycle. Evolution. And Tiger was a part of it, and it was comforting.
“Which way do you go?” Martha asked.
“Well…I think I’ll stay a little longer. Is that okay?”
“Sure, but don’t make it a habit. And if you stay past five thirty, don’t forget to sign the check-out book in the lobby.”
“Okay.”
“Night, Janice.”
“Good night and…thanks.”
Martha turned back and smiled. Then she exited with the rest of the herd.
And so it was just the three of them. Smith, Corona & Her. She worked awhile longer, feeling the knowledge coursing through her fingers. It was like swimming and riding a bike—you don’t forget. You always have it. Conditioned responses. But as the clock sneaked up on five thirty, she felt a slight insecurity that would shortly develop into a roaring panic. She hated it in herself, but she had so disenfranchised herself from the world in general that the prospect of signing the check-out book shook her up. Where would it be in that big lobby? Who would be in charge of it, an SS man? How could she identify herself as an employee? S
he had no proof, no card, no button. No indelible ink stamp on her wrist that read “H, d & M.” How easy it would be for her to be accused of burglary. How simple for the SS man to explain that he shot the girl because she had run past him without either identifying herself or calling out the standard password: “What is right for General Motors is right for America.” No, she decided, she’d have to be out of there by the witching hour.
She covered her typewriter affectionately. Good job, old paint. Then she walked to and waited by the elevator, thinking about her new friend, Martha. Martha would introduce her around, into a straight environment, a contemporary scene, sans pot and passions. There’d be beer and hamburgers. Men named George. Apartments with wallpaper. (Maybe Martha needed a roommate. But it was a bit early for that because maybe Martha was a slob or a dyke or a chronic crier.) Old movies. Bogart. Records, antique hunting. People across a hall you could borrow a cup of sanity from. Letters from home. (Of course, to get a letter, you must first send one.) The point was—anything was possible. Tiger was riding a glorious high. She had survived her first day on the job, her first day without what’s his name. And now she was going back to her cheery little room at the nice YWCA. She passed through the lobby without any trouble because it was not yet five thirty and no password was required. An idea struck her as she reached the street and she acted on it immediately…
…And came out of the Rent Anything store with a portable electric typewriter. Not a great one but a good one, in good condition, a machine that knew its way around the language. At $6 a week it wasn’t a bad deal. She was making $75. But why they called the damned thing portable—it had to weigh fifty pounds in its bare feet. All that made it portable was that it had a handle. By that kind of thinking, one could put a handle on a DC-9 and carry it aboard a 747 because it would be “portable.” No matter. She listed to port until she was able to find a cab. The cabby was then good enough to wait at a Take-Out-Sandwich place. And when she arrived at the Marshal House Y, it was with a typewriter in one hand, neatly balanced by a heroic sandwich in the other—a sandwich that had everything in it, including its creator’s admiring good wishes. All that kept the sandwich from overcompensating for the typewriter was that Tiger had taken a small bite of it on the long voyage home. That had evened things out. But the bite dropped, like a prodigious rock, into her stomach, breaking up forever the glazed doughnut that was still lying there like an iron fist, gathering rust and twittering like a raw nerve ending.
She set up the typewriter so that it received the best light in the room. Since she had neglected to buy typewriting paper, she would have to do her stuff on Marshal House Y stationery, which had limitations mostly because it was lavender blue and silly-dilly, also narrow, and short, and bulky, and floral. But it was better than toilet tissue, of which there was such a goodly supply that Tiger had to wonder if the former occupant of 1224 hadn’t gone out in a blaze of dysentery.
She finished the hero sandwich right down to the last clump of garlic. And with it she polished off the two bottles of ginger ale that she had brought it for companionship. Later she figured she’d go out for a walk, pick up a paper, grab an orange drink at Nedick’s, and return to her room for a good night’s sleep, the better to face the next day with.
And so, with spirits high and tummy full, she sat down at the typewriter and listened to it purr. It was noisier than the one at the office, but in its favor was the fact no one was watching her. The first thing she typed on three pages of the ladylike stationery was, quite necessarily, cathartic: “My name is Janice Lynn McAllister, and I am, I think, of sound mind. I am basically from just outside Indianapolis, but, in general, I belong to the world. I will destroy this letter in a moment because, as long as I’m on the subject of me, it is about to get just a teensy bit raunchy. I feel a need to think sexy here because it has always been my main hang-up. I would like to meet, please, a man who will properly fill both my mind and my body. A man not too big but, please, not too lacking where it counts. I make good love now, much better than I used to, and certainly better than any girl just outside Indianapolis, or inside for that matter. I don’t consider myself soiled because, what the hell, times have changed. I consider myself experienced, traveled, knowledgeable. I know what turns me on, and I know how to do likewise with whoever I’m socking it to. I’m not exactly aggressive or even terribly original. But I’m not just submissive either. I think I’m responsive. I think I can be inventive, too. I think I’ll try anything, but, sorry, the lights have to be out. When the lights are on, I begin to notice things like pictures and lamps and they kill my concentration. If it’s dark, I can make my own pictures and they ain’t bad. And though I don’t consider myself a wanton, to be honest, I would like, just once, to wrap myself around a man who can do me real good and not feel he has to talk about it or even refer to it when we’re finished. I think, in those circumstances, I can really let myself go, really tear up the sheets and steam up the windows. That goes for language, too. I’d like to go nutty and yell obscenities all over the place. I’d like to say “fuck” and “suck” and all the words because I think they help heighten the passion. Only, when it’s over, I don’t want to discuss it. I don’t want to be reminded that I was good or wild or crazy. I just want to go to a museum and look at Klee or a library and read Montaigne. I want to keep all reference to sex out of my daily life because, Jesus, I think I’m shy. Also, thanks to Mom and Dad, I guess I still feel that sex is dirty. By doing it in the dark, I can pretend it’s not me. But if I talk about it in the daytime, that is me, and all I want to do is what I want to do and not feel that God is going to strike me dead. Daylight is Janice. Darkness is Tiger. In darkness I can allow a man to say, “I love your cunt.” If he said that to me in daylight, I would dissolve. In darkness, then, I will be the craziest, sickest, wildest female a man ever got hold of. In daylight, the best I can ever be is an escaped nun. Therefore, and in conclusion, once I establish myself as an independent wage earner, I am going to devote a good deal of my time and effort to finding someone who will be Little Boy Blue when we’re in church, but who, when the sun goes down, will do likewise. And I he. And then he me again. And Me Thee, and tee-hee. And when he’s in me, I want to just spin around on him until he fires me at the moon. I want him to have a prick as alive as his mind. I want him to stab me with passion every night and—”
The phone rang. She kept writing.
“During the day he will be a companion and a teacher and a—”
It kept ringing. She kept writing, or trying.
“friend, friend. Someone who will worry about me and—”
The telephone was not of a mind to stop. So Tiger stopped. And her heart came very close to failing because reality was about to get through to her and ruin the great snow job she was performing on herself. Reality with its incessant ringing. She removed the page on which she was typing and crumpled it. Then she crumpled the other two pages that had preceded it, somehow feeling that whoever was on the other end of the phone, once she’d picked up the receiver, he’d be able to read the dirty things she had written. She picked up the receiver and didn’t feel very good.
“Yes?” she said. “Hello, Luther. Fine, and you? Yes, I’m breathing better now. Yes, I got a job. I’m a typist. I can too type. I can too spell. Yes, I miss you. No, I don’t want to come back. Maybe not ever. Maybe never, I don’t know. I’m sorry, but that scene with Fat, it just wiped me out. Luther, I’m only gone one day. I don’t know where I belong. I’m trying to find out. I have not forgotten what you look like. You’re the one with the big eye in the middle of his forehead, right? Luther, please! I am trying to evolve! Now I’ve crawled up out of the…the primordial ooze, and I’m hoping to grow legs. If it turns out that they don’t work, then okay, I’ll wriggle back to you and complete my degeneration. But in the meantime, you have to leave me alone!…Sir? Sir? You have a wrong number, sir. Please hang up and call the zoo. This is a goddamned recording.” She slammed down the receiver very ha
rd and was surprised to see how upset she was.
Then the crying came. Deep and gasping again. And she wondered if the whole problem wasn’t that she was allergic to Luther. If she was, then she’d been taking the wrong pills. She crawled slowly into bed but knew that she’d never sleep. Somewhere in the middle of the night, drenched within an overwhelming self-pity, she got out of bed and wrote a letter home for close to three hours. Then, without reading it, she signed it “Louisa May Alcott” and tore it up. After that she got two hours of sleep. Two hours—it was getting to be her average.
I could tell she was upset; only, I didn’t really know why. What the hell, I’d given her a whole day to see how dumb she was acting. Besides, it was no picnic for me, either. Fat and Leon gave me a pretty wide berth that day. As a matter of actual fact, they were out all day long and didn’t fly in until well past midnight, and even then I barely heard them. Maybe they were afraid I was going to tell them to move the hell out, ass and baggage. But to send them packing before Tiger came back would just have to stick out like some kind of concession. She’d realize how badly I wanted her back and how I’d do just about anything to get her back—and that, of course, would signal the oncoming end. Leon knocked on my door at 3 A.M. All he wanted to do was say au revoir. Which he did, just like that. Au revoir. As if he were a goddamn legionnaire going off to fight in the Sahara. No speech, no thanks, no apologies, just au revoir. Maybe the son of a bitch was French, who knew? I didn’t know where the hell he was going, but then, I didn’t know where the fuck he came from either. Therefore, nothing had been lost because nothing had been gained in the first place. (Philosophical Observation No. 63, from the Memoirs of Daffy Duck.) The next morning Fat told me he’d be leaving, too, just as soon as his cleaning came back. Everybody was walking out on me. Everybody except my toys. My toys, bless ’em, they were loyal. If a man has a couple of good toys in life, he can muddle through. I had a soldier, and a doggie, and a teddy, and a mouse in a car, and a bunny on a bike, and a man on a wagon—companions all. I didn’t have my wounded ballet dancer doll. The bad girl who came to visit—she stole it. I really did miss it. And while I was missing it, the goddamn New York Telephone Company showed up and took my toy phone away. Which meant I couldn’t even call Nanny again. I chewed on my pacifier and wet my diaper. I wasn’t supposed to do that. I’d really get it for that.
A Glimpse of Tiger Page 11