Three-Martini Lunch

by Suzanne Rindell

  “Oh. I assumed I’d be interviewing with a personnel manager first,” I said, resisting the urge to bite my nails.

  “Typically, yes,” the woman said. “But seeing as how he’s in a bind, Mr. Nelson is looking to hand-pick someone. Let’s see . . . How does tomorrow at one o’clock sound?”

  I hesitated. What if Mr. Nelson hired me? What would Cliff say? Surely we would bump into each other again. Cliff didn’t know I’d altered my name. Already things were getting tangled.

  “That would be fine,” I said, pushing my misgivings aside. I wanted the job, and what’s more, I needed it.

  “Marvelous. I’ll put you on the books. You’ll report to Roger Nelson’s office; he’s on the seventh floor. There’s a temp named Barbara—goodness, you’ll see what I mean about the temps!—who will receive you when you get there.”

  • • •

  I remember that night feeling to me like the longest in the history of time. I was so relieved when morning finally rolled around, I hardly noticed the oppressive heat as I got dressed and ready. When I left the Barbizon at noon it was already shaping up to be another hot, thick day and I was sweating when I came up from the subway. Without quite remembering the walk, I was suddenly standing in front of the towering high-rise that housed Bonwright. I gazed up at the dignified gold lettering stamped into the limestone façade and at the rows upon rows of great glass windows rising into the air like a small army advancing upon the sky. I took a deep breath. There was nothing left to do but go inside.

  I stepped towards the giant revolving door. The lunch hour was beginning for some and ending for others, and a parade of secretaries—most of them belonging, I presumed, to Bonwright but also to the law firms and accountants’ offices that likewise occupied offices in the high-rise—were flowing in and out of the building in a steady stream. For the briefest of instants I swore I saw Judy, her clean wheat-colored hair pulled high into a ponytail and a swipe of bright red lipstick on her mouth. I was so convinced it was her I had to restrain myself from calling out a greeting, reminding myself Judy could not possibly be here. And really, though I was desperate for a friendly face, I had to admit it was better not to know a soul here. It was my only chance for a fresh start.

  I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor, where a receptionist with a pinched voice greeted me tersely, saying only “Name, please?”

  “Eden Collins,” I answered. It sounded very strange to me. But then, I suppose it ought to have sounded strange.

  “Yes,” the receptionist said, following her finger across an appointment calendar. “Miss Collins. I see you’re on the books.” She pivoted in her chair and stood up, gesturing for me to follow her around behind a wall, where I encountered the familiar scene of a typing pool. The doors of the executives lined the perimeter of the large, open, square bullpen, each editor’s name indicated in stylish silver metal letters. Girls sat rowed up at typing desks, each of them likely seated closest to the editor she was assigned to assist. The steady hum of typewriters and chatter filled the air.

  “See that girl sitting in the far corner there? She’s temping as Mr. Nelson’s secretary today; go check in with her and she’ll notify you when Mr. Nelson is ready for you.” The receptionist snorted to herself. “Or she’ll try.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I walked in the direction she pointed. The room smelled of stale coffee and typewriter ink—a familiar smell, one I’d memorized during my time at Torchon & Lyle. Once across the room, I cleared my throat. “Eden Collins to see Roger Nelson,” I said to the temp sitting behind the desk. She looked up, and I found myself staring into a pair of big brown eyes and an explosion of bleached-blond hair.

  “Oh!” she jumped up, and for a split second a rush of panic came over me, as the neckline of her dress was so low it appeared her breasts were going to spill out of her blouse and I might have to catch them. She put out a nail-polished hand for a handshake. The breasts miraculously bounced in place but did not spill over, and I breathed an inward sigh of relief. “I’m Barbara,” she said, pronouncing it “Bawb-rah.”

  “Eden Collins,” I repeated, shaking her hand.

  “Oh yeah! Of course!” she said. “You’re on the calendar.” She put one finger in the air, then spun about and took a few steps to fling open one of the executive’s doors. “Mis-tah Nelson? Eden Collins here to see you.”

  “Barbara, dear, I’ve shown you how the intercom works. Remember yesterday when we went over it again?” a man’s voice called back. He sighed.

  “Oh! That’s right!” Barbara said in a chipper voice. With one heavy movement of her shapely arm, she slammed the door shut. I watched as she leaned over the desk (I wondered again at the neckline of her dress) and pushed the button for the intercom. I heard a muffled buzzing from behind the door.

  “Yes?” came the voice over the intercom, followed by another heavy sigh.

  “Eden Collins is here for her interview,” Barbara reported.

  “All right,” he said. “Send her in.”

  “Sure thing!” Barbara replied enthusiastically. She rose and opened the door again, gesturing for me to follow. “Mr. Nelson, Eden Collins,” she announced. “Whoops! ’Scuse me,” she added, bending over to pick up the nail file where she had dropped it on the floor. There was a slightly clownish air about Barbara’s dumb-pinup routine that made you wonder if she wasn’t doing it on purpose.

  I peered at Roger Nelson as he stood up from behind the desk, curious to see whether he bore any resemblance to his son. He was more substantial somehow, as though he were made of heavier bones. He wore a well-tailored suit and what appeared to be an expensive silk tie. His hair had receded to leave only a half-ring of silver that ran from his ears down and from which the rest of his head rose in a very smooth, shiny dome. He had the kind of eyes I’d always inwardly described to myself as “Santa Claus” eyes. They were a radiant cornflower blue and caught a slight twinkle in the light, an effect that seemed more pronounced given the reddish hue of his face. It was easy to take stock of all the details, because for the moment he was not looking at me. His gaze was steadfast on Barbara’s backside as she bent over to pick up the nail file.

  “Thank you, Barbara,” he said. Behind me, Barbara made her exit, pulling the door shut behind her.

  He leaned over the desk to shake my hand. I noticed a slight paunch around his middle.

  “Well, Miss Collins, I understand you have a letter of introduction.”

  I nodded and reached into my pocketbook for the letter. He read it over quickly, his eyes darting from side to side over the page.

  “This recommends you very highly.” His smile stirred up a swarm of butterflies in my stomach. He cleared his throat. “My last secretary worked for me for fifteen years. I trusted her to read all my manuscripts, and the office ran like a well-oiled machine—a quality, I’m afraid, that has been lost since her departure. I assume you have secretarial training of some variety? You know how to take dictation and type and all that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hmm. And you like reading? If I assign you editorial duties—I’m not promising we’ll make you a reader right away—but if I ask you to read the occasional manuscript here and there, you could read the manuscripts I assign you at a fairly speedy clip?”

  “Oh yes!” I exclaimed, then tried to rein in my enthusiasm so I wouldn’t start babbling about my former responsibilities at Torchon & Lyle. “That’s the part of the job that interests me most.”

  “What’s your favorite book that’s come out recently?”

  We chatted for a while about books and what made for a best-seller. I explained about the course Mr. Hightower had taught on popular fiction. I told him about the novels I’d loved best as a teenager, and later as a young woman in college. At one point I caught myself rhapsodizing about the first time I read Katherine Mansfield and Carson McCullers but then I glimpsed a slightly
disinterested frown cross Mr. Nelson’s face. I remembered whom it was I was talking to and threw in some mentions of Hemingway and Joyce for good measure, and he seemed to approve.

  “Well, Miss Collins, I’ll admit, I like you for this position. But I want to make certain you know what you are getting yourself into . . . Your office etiquette must be impeccable, and the reading, it’s a great deal of work—most of which I expect done after regular work hours. You understand that?”

  “Oh yes, sir.”

  “And this is your first job?” he asked.

  I hesitated. I only hesitated for the briefest of moments, but still I hesitated. I was about to tell a lie. I did not take it lightly.

  “Yes,” I said, finally. “That’s right.”

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Nelson. “Well . . .” he trailed off, then gathered himself. “I had been hoping for someone with previous experience, but you seem like you have half a brain, at least. I guess we’ll just hope you catch on quickly. I can’t very well keep Barbara.” He smiled to himself. “I’d like to, but I can’t. As wonderful and as gifted as she is, I’m getting far too behind on work. Reader’s reports in particular.” He looked me over quickly. “You do look like the type to read a lot.”

  I wasn’t sure whether this was a compliment or an insult, but then he smiled and I smiled back. Mr. Nelson had an audacious charm about him that was difficult to resist. There was something dapper yet very masculine about him. He held up a finger as though he’d had an idea.

  “Have you eaten lunch yet, Miss Collins?”

  “Oh . . . no,” I answered.

  “Neither have I.” He smiled. “I have just the plan.” He leaned over and pushed a button on the speaker box sitting on his desk. “Barbara? Put down whatever file or report you’re currently destroying, sweetheart. We’re going to lunch. Steaks on me!”

  I looked at him, baffled.

  “We’ll have a little lunch,” he said. “The three of us, to celebrate the changing of the guard, so to speak.”

  “You mean to say I’m hired?”

  “You can start this afternoon.”

  Just like that, in an absolute daze, I found myself following Mr. Nelson and a delighted, giggly Barbara downstairs to the lobby, where we caught a taxi and rode all the way down to Delmonico’s.

  I had heard of Delmonico’s, but I had never been there before. It was a dark-paneled sanctuary filled with bankers, lit with that incandescent brand of chandelier light that only very expensive restaurants seem to have. Mr. Nelson did all the ordering for us, which meant that three martinis appeared almost immediately, followed a little later by three medium-rare steaks, creamed spinach, and potatoes au gratin.

  While Mr. Nelson had conveyed an air of regal authority in the office, this quality expanded even further in the restaurant so that he was positively leonine, presiding over the dining room, one of his commanding, heavy, pawlike hands laid upon the table at all times. He was friendly with the staff, all of whom seemed to know him very well. The maître d’ had rushed to greet us as we walked in the door, not batting an eye to see Mr. Nelson in the company of not just one but two young ladies. When our steaks arrived to the table, the chef came out, dressed in his white smock and chef’s hat, to inquire whether they were done to Mr. Nelson’s liking. When we finished the main course, the maître d’ came back over and chatted for a while with Mr. Nelson, at which point Mr. Nelson casually pulled out a cigar from his inside jacket pocket.

  “You don’t mind if I smoke this, do you?” he said. The corners of the maître d’s mouth twitched. It was plain that he did mind.

  “Certainly, Roger,” he said, then gave a little stiff bow and scurried back to the host desk.

  As Mr. Nelson puffed away on his cigar, he regaled us with stories about the time he’d gone on a drinking binge with Raymond Chandler and when he’d gotten into a bit of trouble during one of William Faulkner’s visits to New York. I listened to these nervously, for one thing had become glaringly obvious during the course of lunch: Barbara didn’t quite understand that my being hired meant her temporary assignment was at an end and that this was a farewell lunch. She called him “Roger,” as opposed to “Mr. Nelson,” and patted his arm affectionately at regular intervals, as though they were a couple entertaining and I was a guest.

  As lunch was winding down, she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room, leaving me alone with Mr. Nelson.

  “Did you have a pleasant lunch?” Mr. Nelson asked.

  “Absolutely lovely,” I replied. “Only . . . I don’t think Barbara understands her assignment is over.”

  “Yes,” he grumbled. “She’s not catching on. How unfortunate. I ought to have had the agency call her. Anyway, it’s too late for that now.”

  The bill arrived, a slip of paper upon a little silver tray, and he reached for it. I watched him sign it, wondering how he was going to clear up the confusion with Barbara.

  “Well,” he said, glancing at his watch with an air of finality, “I’d better be getting back to the office. You can follow along when you’re through here.”

  He stood up and straightened his tie while I blinked at him, uncomprehending. When you’re through here, he had said . . . We had finished our meal; I couldn’t think of what else there was to do or why I wouldn’t simply follow along with him. But he spoke again and the mystery was dispelled.

  “If you would, please let Barbara know she’s no longer needed. When you’ve done that, come back to the office. You can pick up your employment card from Personnel and get settled into your new desk this afternoon.”

  “Me?” I asked. “Tell her?”

  “Yes,” he said, ignoring the shock in my voice. “You can do that, can’t you? Thank you, Eden. I’ll see you in a little while, and we can get to work.” With a serious nod, he hustled across the room and slipped out the door. I dimly glimpsed him waving an arm to hail a cab.

  I turned back, mustering my courage. The whole point of a temporary girl is that you’re only temporarily needed, I told myself. Barbara can’t possibly be too disappointed. What a strange day it was turning out to be!

  The maître d’ came over with a plate of crêpes suzette and set them on the table before me. “Mr. Nelson asked that we send you ladies out some dessert,” he said.

  “How thoughtful,” I muttered in a flat tone. I was aware I sounded ungrateful. “Thank you,” I added.

  I looked up to see Barbara returning from the ladies’ room, her hair smoothed and her lipstick freshly applied.

  “Where’s Roger?” she asked, innocently peering around with bright, hopeful eyes.

  “Barbara,” I said, “please have a seat.”

  Feeling terrible, I slid the plate of crêpes suzette closer to her. Perhaps she had a sweet tooth and they would make her feel better. I took a breath and delivered the news.

  27

  Barbara did not take the news very well. She tried to avoid making an out-and-out scene, bless her heart, but nonetheless she sniffled into the white cloth napkin until little rivulets of mascara trickled down her cheeks. I escorted her back to the ladies’ room, where the two of us attempted to patch up the damage with the combined contents of our purses.

  “I’m no dummy,” she insisted, accepting my powder compact and dabbing under her eyes. “I know I make a lousy secretary. I wasn’t in it for that anyhow. It’s only that . . . Oh, he left without even saying good-bye! That certainly sends a message.” Her face crumpled again and she let out a soft wail. “I suppose that’s when you know you haven’t the slightest chance of holding a fella’s attention anymore.”

  With a shock, I realized she’d been gunning to become his mistress. In fact, perhaps she already had—in some capacity or another—but she wanted to make it a regular habit. I decided the less I knew about that, the better.

  Later, on the curb outside Delmonico’s, Barbara and I said goo
d-bye to each other. I think, had we been closer to midtown, she might’ve followed me back to the office, just to see if there was still a glimmer of hope. But we were about as far downtown as we could be. I was beginning to learn that Mr. Nelson did nothing by accident.

  • • •

  I was soon to learn Barbara was not the only one who admired Mr. Nelson. In fact, Mr. Nelson’s overwhelming charisma was perhaps the most defining characteristic of his personality. He was well-respected among his colleagues. He could calm the finickiest, most neurotic of writers with a single pat on the back. Agents loved him; other editors wanted to be him. His lunch-dates were notoriously long, and yet most people he lunched with expressed disappointment when it was finally over. I knew this was so because when they didn’t want lunch to end they often made excuses to return with him to the building and have one more drink in his office. When they emerged, they shook hands with Mr. Nelson, still reluctant to go, and promised to have their girl set something else up again soon.

  “Wonderful,” Mr. Nelson would say. “Have your secretary call Eden here. She’s a whiz with my calendar.”

  This was another clever ploy, because there was very little I could do with Mr. Nelson’s calendar; it was perpetually overbooked.

  It was Mr. Nelson’s job, I realized, to be popular, and he was accomplished at it. If he had a fault, it was that he was perhaps a little too good at being popular; it was plain that he thrived on his popularity, and that he was very aware of how other people regarded him. I wondered if this wasn’t because he’d “married up,” so to speak. Like most men who possess a larger-than-life personality, Mr. Nelson had crafted a sort of mythology around his success. “Pulled myself up by my own bootstraps,” he would say, and then proceed to recount a long list of working-class jobs that had led him from newsboy to ice-truck driver to senior editor. But this was only the partial truth. His wife, Doris, I learned, was a well-coifed silvery blonde whose handsome middle-aged face often graced the society pages. She was from one of New York’s oldest families; in marrying her, Roger Nelson had made a powerful social alliance—an alliance that was fairly against the odds—and it was obvious that Mr. Nelson enjoyed dropping the names of his in-laws as well as their illustrious ancestors into conversation.