Night My Friend

by Edward D. Hoch

  “All the wrong kind.”

  “Maybe in a few weeks I won’t be so fussy.”

  “Can’t you get unemployment insurance or something?”

  “Not right away. I wasn’t fired, remember. I walked out.”

  “But Harry Rider! He never did a favor for anybody in his life that didn’t have a dozen strings attached.”

  “You didn’t used to think he was so bad, back before we were married.”

  “That was before we were married. A lot of things were different then, Dave.”

  He lit a cigarette and started pacing the floor. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry. He didn’t have anything for me.”

  She shook her head as if to clear it. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess the whole thing is just too much for me all at once.”

  “Just stop worrying. I’ll have a job by the end of next week and a better one than I left. You can bet on it!”

  She smiled at his words, even though neither of them felt quite that optimistic. They both knew it would be a long weekend.

  Monday morning was warm and rainy, with a west wind blowing the drops of rain against the front windows with disturbing force. O’Bannion gazed out at it unhappily. It would not be a pleasant day to be trudging the streets of the city in search of a job. The kids, not yet old enough to attend school, were cross with the prospect of a day indoors, and he could see that Kate was already tense.

  “Cheer up, honey. I’ll phone you after lunch.”

  “Where are you going to try?”

  “Oh, there are a few offices around town that might have openings, especially for someone who walked out on the old man. I’ll hit those today and tomorrow, and if the scent is cold I can always try an employment agency.”

  He went off in the car because Kate wouldn’t be needing it and he wasn’t quite up to facing the ride in on the same old commuters’ train. It was still too early in the day, and there would be people he knew, people he wasn’t yet in the mood to chat with. In the city, he parked the car at the ramp garage he occasionally used, nodding silently in reply to the attendant’s cheerful morning greeting.

  The first place he tried was an engineering firm where he had contacts. He thought. They listened in friendly agreement to everything he said, and one of them even offered to buy him lunch. But there was no job available and he wasn’t yet ready to accept charity. He thanked them and went and bought his lunch from a white-coated sidewalk vendor who sold dry ham sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. He found an empty bench in the park and ate among the damp trees, thankful at least that the rain had stopped and the wind had died to a gentle breeze.

  The job he’d left, O’Bannion was beginning to realize, had done little to prepare him for the necessity of stepping quickly into something else. He’d never had any opportunity to build upon some sketchy engineering courses he’d left unfinished at college. The job, for all its nine-thousand-a-year salary, had been little more than an arduous managership of an office full of unmarried and just-married girls more intent on dates and marriage than work.

  He called on two other places that afternoon, and the best he came up with was a promise of something “maybe in a month or two.” That wasn’t good enough. He was already more depressed than he cared to admit to Kate.

  Tuesday was much the same, and Wednesday. That afternoon, he swallowed his pride and called the familiar number of his old office. He got by the switchboard operator without being recognized and in a moment he was talking to Shirl.

  “This is Dave. How are you?”

  “Mr. O’Bannion! I’m fine, how are you? Everyone’s been asking about you.”

  “I’ll bet. Who are you working for now?”

  “They have me in the pool till they get someone to replace you. Have you found anything yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got a couple of leads. What I called for—has there been any mail for me? Anything personal?”

  “Just the usual junk, Mr. O’Bannion. Except this morning a letter came for you from California. Los Angeles. It looks as if it might be personal.”

  “It is.” He had some friends in Los Angeles who often misplaced his home address and wrote him at the office.

  “Should I forward it?”

  “I suppose so,” he said, and then had a second thought. “Say, would you like to meet me for a drink after work? I could get the letter from you and you could tell me what’s been going on.”

  She hesitated a moment, but finally agreed. “All right. I guess I’d have time for one.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you at five—a bit after five—over at the Nightcap.” He hung up and then phoned Kate to tell her he’d be a bit late for dinner.

  By the flickering candlelight of the Nightcap, a quiet little place where it seemed always to be the cocktail hour, he really looked at Shirl Webster for the first time. She’d been his secretary for the better part of the past year, but in that dubious manner of modern business he’d tended to take her mostly for granted. She was nothing more than an impersonal machine to take his letters and dictation, answer his phone, and perhaps suggest a birthday present for his wife. He’d never really thought of Shirl Webster as a woman, though he was aware now that she was surely a woman, and a striking one at that.

  “I’m sorry it all happened,” she said, seeming to mean it. “I liked working for you.”

  He noticed for the first time that her eyes were blue, a very light blue in sharp contrast to the dark of her hair. She was a tall girl, perhaps nearing thirty, with a certain regal grace about her. “I’m glad of that, at least,” he said with a chuckle. “There were days when I thought the whole place was in league against me, including you.”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. I was kept busy all day Monday explaining what had happened to you. All the girls miss you.”

  “Makes me sound like a bluebeard or something.” He sipped the martini in front of him. “Do you have that letter?”

  She nodded and handed over a flat envelope with a Los Angeles postmark. He pardoned himself and slit it open, just to make sure the news was nothing more urgent than weather and kids and when-are-you-coming-to-visit-us. Then he folded it away in his inside pocket.

  “Nothing important?” she asked.

  “The usual stuff. They’re old friends. I’ll have to write them, tell them about my new status.”

  “Do these leads of yours sound good, Mr. O’Bannion?”

  “I’m not your boss any more. Call me Dave.”

  “All right—Dave.”

  “To answer your question, no—the leads don’t sound good.”

  “Maybe the old man would take you back. He’s having a hard time replacing you.”

  “I have a little pride left, unfortunately. Want another drink?”

  For a moment he thought she’d agree, but then she shook her head reluctantly. “I have to get home.”

  He realized that in almost a year he’d never even thought where home might be. “Got a boy friend, Shirl?”

  She blinked at him. “I’m too old to call them boy friends any more.”

  “Oh, come on! How old are you—twenty-five?” He’d knocked a few years off his real guess.

  “You’re sweet. Now I really have to go. But keep in touch, let me know how you’re doing.”

  “I will.”

  He watched her walk to the door, hips tight against the contoured fabric of her skirt, and he wondered why he’d never noticed that walk before.

  Thursday was too nice a day to be out of work. It was fine to walk along Main Street on your lunch hour and moan about having to return to a desk on such a beautiful day, but O’Bannion quickly discovered it was only frustrating to be job-hunting on such a day. The trees in the park were already blossoming with spring, and the people he passed were smiling. He would have felt happier in a thunderstorm.

  Friday was more of the same. An offer of a job at a thousand dollars a year less than he’d been making, a promise of something “maybe in the summer,” a regret for a posit
ion just filled. It all added up to a big zero.

  On Saturday morning he went to see Harry Rider. He knew the man would be at work on a Saturday because the tracks were racing. Harry’s main source of income demanded a six-day week. He was a big man, with a face and hairline that made it difficult for O’Bannion to remember him as Kate’s one-time suitor. The years had changed them all, but none more so than Harry Rider.

  “What can I do for you, Dave?” he asked, not bothering to rise from behind the wide desk strewn with typewritten sheets, racing forms, and three telephones.

  O’Bannion stared at the thinning hair, the wrinkles of tired skin around deep, calculating brown eyes, and said, “I phoned you last week. Maybe you forgot.”

  “Oh! Sure, I remember now. You’re out of a job.”

  “That’s it. I’ve got some good leads in town, but you know how it is when you just walk out on something. No two weeks’ pay or anything like that.”

  “Need ten bucks?” Harry Rider was already reaching for his pocket. The words, coupled with the motion, made O’Bannion suddenly ill. He was sorry he’d come.

  “No, no—nothing like that. I was wondering if you knew of anything around here. Even something temporary. You said once you had a lot of influence in the right places and just to come see you.”

  “Sure. I can get you a job cleaning out the stables up at Yonkers. How’s that?”

  O’Bannion’s face froze. “I didn’t come here for that sort of talk, Rider.”

  “Just kidding. Never take me serious! Ask Kate. She never took me serious.”

  “We weren’t discussing Kate.”

  “Sure, sure. She know you came to see me?”

  “No.”

  “Just as well.”

  “I intend to tell her when I get home. I have no secrets from her.”

  Harry Rider chuckled. “Maybe it’s time you started having a few.”

  He could see he was getting nowhere with the man. There was no job in the offing, only this opportunity for ridicule. “I’m sorry to take up your time,” he told Rider, rising from the chair.

  “Wait a minute! Maybe I’ll hear of something in your line.”

  “Thanks. Don’t trouble yourself.”

  He was going out the door when Rider called after him, “I’ll be in touch with you, Dave.”

  O’Bannion didn’t bother to answer.

  On Sunday he went to church for the first time in a year. Listening to the minister rant about the evils of overabundance, he wondered why he’d bothered. The previous evening he’d told Kate about his visit to Harry Rider. She reacted about as he expected and there had been an unpleasant scene. She hadn’t accompanied him to church on Sunday, and when he returned to the house he found her mood had not improved.

  “It’s a nice day,” he said, to make conversation.

  “Just great.”

  “Still upset because I went to Rider?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be? Dave, there are employment agencies, friends, relatives—why go to Harry Rider for a job?”

  “I didn’t know you felt that strongly about it.”

  “You knew—you knew darned well. I have a little pride left, even if you haven’t.”

  Anger growing within him, he spun around and started from the room. Then he paused to face her once more. “Do you happen to know how much we have in the bank? I figure it’s just about enough to keep us going for another three weeks. Then we either stop eating or stop paying on the house and car.”

  Her lips were a thin line of—what? It almost could have been contempt. “Maybe you should have thought about the money before you quit your job,” she snapped.

  “Sure, sure! Maybe I—” The ringing of the telephone cut into any retort he would have made. He decided it was probably just as well and went to answer it.

  “Is this Mr. Dave O’Bannion?” a strange voice asked. Male, perhaps a bit muffled.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. O’Bannion, I understand you are presently at liberty. I have a position available, temporary work, which I’d like to discuss with you.”

  “Sure. Who is this calling?”

  “My name is Green. Could you meet me tomorrow to talk it over?”

  “Certainly. Where are you located?”

  “I’ll be in Room 344 at the Ames Hotel, anytime after ten. It must be tomorrow, though, as I’m leaving for Canada on Tuesday.”

  O’Bannion assured him it would be tomorrow. Even this mysterious temporary sort of job was worth looking into. But when Kate questioned him about the call he implied it was from someone he knew, someone he’d contacted the previous week. He had a growing feeling in the pit of his stomach that the strange Mr. Green in his hotel-room office would prove somehow to be an associate of Harry Rider.

  Green, if that was really his name, proved to be a tall man in his mid-thirties. He didn’t really belong in the hotel room. He seemed more like a man made for the outdoors, a man who might venture inside only for a drink or necessary food. He was obviously ill at ease in the surroundings of impersonal luxury such as one found at the Ames.

  “You’re O’Bannion?” he asked, frowning as if he might have expected someone older.

  “That’s right.” He held out his hand and Green shook it. Then they both sat down and O’Bannion added, “You have a job open?”

  Green leaned back in his chair. “A temporary position. It would involve a trip to Canada.”

  “For how long a period? I wouldn’t want to be away from my family.” He said the words because they sounded right. Just at the moment Kate and the boys were far from his thoughts.

  “Only a day or two. And the pay would be good.”

  “How good?”

  The man shrugged. “Perhaps five thousand dollars.”

  His worst fear realized, O’Bannion got suddenly to his feet. “I guess you’d better tell Mr. Rider I’m not interested.”

  “Who?”

  Why had he gone? Why had he gone to Rider when he’d known all along that this would be the only sort of job the man could offer? Across the border for five thousand dollars.

  “Harry Rider. I believe that’s a name you know.”

  Green was blocking him at the door, holding him back. “Wait, wait. Look, there’s no risk, if that’s what’s worrying you. It’s safe.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll give you something to take with you. All you do is deliver it to an address in Toronto and you’ll be paid the money.”

  “Five thousand dollars for no risk? Why don’t you take it yourself?”

  Green was nervous now, unsure of himself. “All right,” he decided suddenly. “I guess I got the wrong guy. Go!”

  O’Bannion went.

  The remainder of the day he spent in a sort of twilight, wandering from office to office, filling out applications for jobs he neither wanted nor qualified for, existing in a world of mere minutes adding up slowly to hours. Again and again his thoughts returned to the man in the hotel room, to the five thousand dollars he’d offered for the flight to Canada.

  O’Bannion tried to guess what would have been involved. Harry Rider’s interests were mainly gambling, horse racing, and the like, although he occasionally dabbled in politics. Perhaps it was nothing more than transporting betting slips or some political material.

  The afternoon was sunny, even now when it was almost ended, even with its twilight rays filtered through the blossoming branches of the park trees. He walked with a lengthened, broken shadow behind him, destination undetermined. Then, the random thought just crossing his mind, he started down the street toward his old office. They’d be leaving now, not a minute too early because the old man was always watching, but not a minute too late either. He stood in the shadow of a building, watching faces and figures already receding from memory after only a week’s time. Then he saw Shirl Webster, walking very quickly along the curb, head down against the sunset.

  O’Bannion crossed the street and intercepted her at the next stoplight.
“Hello, Shirl,” he called from a few paces behind her.

  “Dave! I mean—”

  “I told you Dave was all right. How are you?”

  “Fine. I was just this minute thinking about you, wondering how you were coming along.”

  “Got time for a drink?” he asked, and as the words left his mouth he wondered just how accidental this meeting had been. Didn’t he subconsciously seek her out rather than return home to Kate?

  “Just one. I have to meet my boy friend.”

  He chuckled. “I thought you were too old to call them that.”

  “On days like this I feel younger. We going to the Nightcap again?”

  “Why not?”

  Over a drink, with the candle flickering on the table between them, he suddenly found himself telling her about his interview with Green in the hotel room. It was an odd sort of feeling she gave him and he wondered how he could have worked with her all those months without being affected by the sensuality of her presence.

  “So you walked out on him,” she summed up, making it a simple statement.

  “I walked out on him. Wouldn’t you?”

  She toyed with the plastic stirring rod from her scotch-and-water. “I don’t know. Five thousand dollars is more money than I make in a whole year. I don’t know what I’d have done.”

  “It’s obviously something crooked, with Rider involved.”

  She frowned into the glass. “The Rider you mention—if he is such a shady character, why did you go to him in the first place?”

  Why? It was the sort of question Kate had asked too. Why? Was it purely a spirit of revolt against his wife’s wishes, or was there more to it than that? “I don’t know why,” he answered finally. “Not really.”

  He lit her cigarette and watched while she settled back in her chair. “I think you’re like me, Dave. I think you’re sick of working your life away for someone like the old man, who doesn’t care about anything but the profit and the overhead.”

  “You think I should have done it? What Green wanted me to do?”

  “I don’t know. I think you should have asked a few more questions, thought about it a little more.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He signaled the waiter for another drink.