The City Below

by James Carroll

  "If Kenny has to sign them, why doesn't his secretary do it?"

  "Because it's our job, that's why. Shit!" Lake banged the table, bouncing the telephones, jolting their bells. This is my shot, Terry imagined him saying, at a job upstairs!

  As the bell sounds faded into the awful silence, Terry, from his place behind Lake, said, "I know a typist"

  Lake faced him.

  Terry looked at his watch. "If I catch her as she's leaving work, I could have her over here inside an hour."

  Lake's eyes bulged. "Go! Go!"

  Doyle did not move. He said quietly, "I wouldn't think of bringing her over here if it was possible you'd talk to her like you just talked to Ginger." Somehow Terry found it possible to keep from blinking as he held Lake's eyes.

  Lake shrugged. "Okay, buddy. I'll be good. Promise."

  Terry glanced across at the girl who'd looked through him before. She wasn't looking through him now. To Lake he said, "Apologize to Ginger, Ed."

  "You're shitting me."

  "If you want a typist, you apologize."

  "You're the kid from BU."

  "BC, Ed. Big difference. Eagles, not Terriers. What about that apology?"

  Lake let everyone see the trouble he had believing this. But finally he looked back at the girl slumped in a nearby chair. "I guess he's right, Ginger. I'm sorry. I was out of line."

  Terry hooked his jacket and walked away.

  The Hancock Building was across Boston Common, a few blocks up Boylston Street at Clarendon. He arrived at the main entrance in time to light up. He leaned against a parked car and enjoyed his smoke and the cool air on his face. Beyond Copley Square the sky was red with the coming sunset. A feeling of calm acceptance came over Terry, and it reminded him of the feeling he'd once associated with church.

  Girls began pouring out of the building at a minute past five. They were heading home to neighborhoods like his own, but they were dressed like women in magazines or, even, movies; not like students. They wore a lot of makeup, dresses with petticoats and cinched waists, hats, and, some of them, gloves. They must spend most of what they earn, he thought, at Jordan's or Filene's.

  He didn't see her. He dropped his cigarette and pushed clear of the car, pulling himself to his fall height. Had she quit? he wondered suddenly. He hadn't seen Didi Mullen, except from a distance, since the May afternoon on Bunker Hill, and if her life had changed as much as his had—

  But then he saw that hair in the grand doorway. She had it pulled back in a ponytail, but still it framed her face and set her apart, as it always had. Her hair was the color of the sky at the end of Boylston Street.

  "Didi!" He called her name twice more as he cut through the crowd, waving. The girls made way for him. "Hey, Didi!"

  She stopped on the stairs. Other office girls flowed around her. Terry crossed to stand on the pavement just below. "Hi," he said.

  "Charlie!" she said, with an air of Anything can happen downtown.

  He raised his fist in mock anger.

  "Okay, okay." She laughed. "Terence." Her eyes sparkled behind the big round lenses of her glasses. Her arms went out He thought for a moment she was going to leap, hugging him, which made him pull back. He couldn't help it, but his first feeling was disappointment He had remembered her as pretty, but she just wasn't Now that he saw her face again—her pointed chin, her big lips with the wrong lipstick, her gangly neck, even her smile, which seemed goofy—it all made a sharp contrast to the pert good looks of the girls at the campaign.

  "Hey, Didi."

  "Hay is for horses."

  He felt himself blushing. "How you doing?"

  "Good, Terry. Really good." She hunched her shoulders girlishly, an unconscious emphasis of what could only have been happiness.

  "You look good," he said, and as if his statement had changed her, he saw the way in which she did look good, her face transparent with affection, shining with feeling, unprotected. Her eyeglasses moved and he thought, Dragonfly! Their cigarettes touching, how foolishly sexual he'd felt for a minute that late afternoon, and how the sweetness of their accidental, unrepeated intimacy had lingered. Now she didn't seem at all older than him, and the connection between them seemed far closer than the fact of her being the sister of his brother's friend.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I came to find you."

  "Me?"

  "Didi, I need a favor. I'm in really big trouble."

  "You are?"

  "Did you know I work for Jack Kennedy?"

  "I thought you went to college."

  "I do. I go to BC. But I'm a volunteer in the campaign, and we're in the homestretch now, and—"

  "He's going to win, isn't he? Everybody says he's going to win."

  "The polls don't say that Ike is working hard for Nixon now, and with Lodge, even Massachusetts—"

  "But you! You said you're in trouble."

  The office workers were still streaming around them.

  "Which way do you go?" Doyle asked.

  "The MTA at the library."

  "Shall I walk you?"

  Didi fell into step beside him, but she kept her eyes fixed on his face, and walking was awkward. As they headed across Copley Square in the wrong direction, away from the campaign, Terry felt stupid. How had he ever imagined that she would agree to drop everything and rush to Tremont Street? Or, if she would, that she could handle what went on there?

  "What trouble?" She asked this with such earnest alarm that he realized he had conveyed the wrong thing. She thought he was talking about himself. Hon, he wanted to say, in politics we always talk personal, urgent, end of the world. Relax.

  She continued looking at him while they were walking, and he had to nudge her once to keep her from bumping someone. He fell back on a briefer's neutral tone. "My office in the campaign coordinates getting college students onto the bandwagon."

  "I'm not a college student."

  "I know. That's not why, I mean ... we hit a major snag today." He saw it coming, the insult she would feel. If he could have touched a button and disappeared—Captain Video! "I mean, like twenty minutes ago. They sent me over, like desperate, to see if you would help?"

  "Help Kennedy?"

  "Yes. At the campaign headquarters near the Parker House."

  "Is he there?"

  "Kennedy?" Doyle burst out laughing. "No, Didi, no. The candidate is anywhere but in his headquarters. I've been working there a month, and I've never seen him."

  "Well, but what—?"

  "A typist, Didi." Terry stopped, then she did. They faced each other. Behind her the brilliant sky glowed, making her hair seem spun of the purest light. "We need a typist, right now. We need one bad."

  Terry had himself braced for her reaction, but he knew so little.

  "Really?"

  "Yes."

  Her face filled with delighted surprise. "You need me?"

  "You can type, can't you?"

  "A hundred words a minute. I won a prize last month."

  Doyle's eyes took a light from hers. "If you come with me, you can win one next month—but for Kennedy. Will you?"

  She seemed very young to him, despite her more formal clothes. She was so unlike the charging people he spent time with now, and sure enough, without a hint of the mortification he'd have felt saying such a thing, she answered, "Yes, I'd love to. But I have to call my mother."

  She was great. She sat at a typing table in the corner, her fingers flying. Other girls took the letters as she finished them, fed her fresh sheets of bond, carbons arranged, and crossed out the names as she moved down the lists. She rarely hit the wrong key, but when she did, she erased as if by magic, leaving no perceptible mark.

  Bright McKay had arrived after she set to work, and he, crossing back and forth for phone calls and for coffee, sent signals of approval toward Terry—winks, three-ring signs—as if Didi's accomplishment were his. Or was that his meaning?

  Her work sparked that of others, and soon the Young Dems were
bustling among the tables, pushing voter lists at one another, barking into telephones.

  All the bustle made Didi pull into herself, the way she could in the middle of the vast typing-pool floor at Hancock She'd been shy when Terry had first made the introductions, but she'd tried to compensate by being funny. When they'd shown her to the typing table, she'd cracked, as girls did at work, "Now to knock off some hen tracks on my roll-top piano." But no one had laughed. A couple of girls eyeballed each other without even trying to keep her from seeing.

  Terry encouraged her to take a break at one point, but she refused. She let the coffee he brought grow cold. He sensed her need to avoid having to make small talk with the other girls, to whom her presence had to be a rebuke. She resembled them hardly at all. With her garish costume jewelry, bangles on her jumping arms, and oversize earrings she looked more like the middle-aged housewives licking envelopes across the room than the girls in bobby sox and loafers. Terry wanted to see her getup as offbeat, but the truth was Didi seemed like an adolescent in her mother's clothes. In that company, he wanted to protect her.

  It was almost ten when she finished. Except for the Young Dems' corner, the vast room was nearly deserted, and all but the hanging cone lights had been turned off. Their corner glowed, however, and the eight kids who remained gave a rousing cheer when Didi snapped the last letter out of the machine.

  Ed Lake put the stack of pages in an accordion folder and hurried across the room, through the door that would take him upstairs.

  Doyle saw Didi rubbing her neck. He stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders and began to massage gently while the others congratulated her. Didi twisted in her chair to look up at Terry. The ripeness in her face made it clear that a sense of his pleasure was all Didi Mullen really wanted. The other kids saw it, and they fell silent to hear what Doyle would say—which of course made his saying anything impossible.

  Didi excused herself to go to the ladies' room. Terry watched her go, unsure why he felt sad all of a sudden.

  Ed Lake returned and reported that the gods above were well pleased. "And so am I," he said. "Thanks, gang. You're the best."

  "Praise from Caesar," one of the girls snapped. Lake struck a self-mocking pose that made everyone laugh, and made them like him again too.

  "Cow time!" Bright McKay cried, and a Tufts guy named Thatch countered "Chugalug!" Which meant the Grill Room of the Parker House. There were noises of agreement while they grabbed their coats and bags.

  Lake said to Doyle, "Is Didi gone already?"

  "She's in the head. I'll wait for her. I'll see if she'll come."

  "Tell her dinner's on the candidate. I hope she'll ..." Lake hesitated.

  "Sign on?"

  "That's what I was going to say, but I guess she probably ..."

  "Probably what, Ed?"

  "Probably wouldn't." Lake stared at Doyle, hard. Doyle sensed his dislike, and realized Lake had just decided something, but it had more to do with him than with Didi.

  "You could ask her," Doyle said.

  "I don't think so, no. Young Dems is a little different. If she wants on, she could hook up with the church-supper ladies." Lake tossed his head toward the main part of the room. "They need a typist for those voter lists."

  "That way, if you need one again, you can just raise your hand and snap your fingers."

  "Give it a rest, Doyle. Anyway, tell her the offer stands. About dinner, I mean. Dinner's on us."

  "Tell her yourself." Terry indicated Didi, who was coming toward them from the far side of the room. Her rich red hair was loose now, brushing her shoulders.

  "No, you do it." Lake glanced at her as he put his coat on and moved away. "See you at the Grill."

  By the time Didi reached Terry, Lake was gone. "Where'd everybody go?"

  "The Parker House. It's sort of a tradition, if we're here this late. Everybody's hoping you'll come." He was, anyway. With her hair down she looked less prim, more like one of the debs, ready to go out. He caught a whiff of her perfume. It stirred him to think she'd just applied it. "In fact, the campaign wants to buy you dinner."

  "Oh gosh, Terry, I don't think so."

  "No, really, Didi. You saved the game tonight. That was really important, what you did."

  "Terry ..." Unconsciously, she leaned toward him, a gawky posture. Her neck was so long. Her hair fell forward on her face. "I'm glad you asked me. I mean, I liked doing it."

  "So come have a sandwich or something. Then I'll take you home."

  "No, I'm sorry, but no."

  But hadn't she just prettied herself up? Had she done it only for going home?

  Terry realized she had just this moment changed her mind. Watching Ed Lake, that bastard, she must have grasped it that they were finished with her now, ready to send her back across—

  Doyle did not have the language to describe the gulf that separated Didi from his new friends, the gulf on both sides of which his feet had been planted for weeks now. He'd been a big shot, a comer. But Didi knew him. He was a fumbling adolescent pretending to be a man.

  "Well, let me take you home then."

  "You don't have to, Terry."

  "No, really. I'd like to."

  "I have cab money. Ma makes me take a cab at night."

  "Are you downtown that much at night?"

  "Not really, but at work sometimes ..." She let her voice trail off. Downtown? What would he think when he saw what downtown was to her—the world in which she worked, and the world from which she fled?

  He put his coat on, feeling slightly sick. "Well, anyway, I can walk you to a cab stand."

  "Sure you can, big guy." Didi tried to defuse the glumness by bumping her hip into "Terry, a stab at Mae West, but it didn't come off.

  They crossed the room, Terry leading the way between the tables and desks. He imagined reaching back to take her hand, but knew how out of the question that was. Instead, he reached up and slapped a light fixture, which began to sway behind them, playing its beam back and forth across the shadows.

  On Tremont Street the air was cold and wet, blowing in from the harbor. The pavement glistened with the mist of a coming rain. The streetlamps wore halos.

  There were no cabs at the stand in front of the Parker House. At the curb, a limousine sat with its engine running, a driver at the wheel. Two men in business suits were standing at the open rear door, talking. As Terry and Didi approached, he recognized Ken O'Donnell. He had the accordion folder pressed under his arm.

  On an impulse, Terry did then take Didi's hand and go right up to the men.

  "Mr. O'Donnell," he said brightly.

  O'Donnell interrupted himself to look blankly at Doyle.

  "I'm one of the Young Dems, sir. Terry Doyle, from BC." Terry Doyle, ace bell ringer, bade slapper, junior candidate. "I wanted you to meet the girl who dropped everything to type those letters for you." Terry indicated O'Donnell's folder. "Not one of our regular crew, an emergency volunteer." Terry brought her forward. "This is Deirdre Mullen."

  O'Donnell could be imperious with his own people, but he understood that this was an outsider. "Hello, darling," he said warmly. "You did a great job tonight, and we appreciate it." He put his hand out When Didi took it, he turned her to his companion. "And say hello to Ted Kennedy."

  The sound hung in the air.

  Didi and Terry both turned slowly. Kennedy. He was looking at her, nodding. What occurred to Doyle to say was, You should see how she erases.

  Kennedy was a big man with dramatic features, a head of wavy dark hair, a powerfully dimpled chin, eyebrows that nearly touched above his nose. Doyle had rung a few doorbells himself by now, and he knew about smiling, but it was impossible that the warmth on Kennedy's face was not genuine.

  "How are you?" he asked, but with a rote inflection that contradicted the light in his face. He shook Didi's hand, then Terry's. "BC? You both go to BC?"

  Terry's heart sank, but before he could protect her, Didi let out a loud laugh. "Oh, no, Mr. Kenned
y. Not me. I'm too smart to go to college!"

  Kennedy stared at her for a moment, then he laughed too. "So was I," he said. " Much too smart." He winked. "But not as smart as you, because I went anyway and hated it." He roared, a great, loud, infectious bark of a laugh that echoed off the walls of the buildings above them.

  Terry loved Didi for having put it that way, and for having so surely touched something in Kennedy.

  O'Donnell said to her, "But you're on the team now, right? We need you, Deirdre."

  Didi glanced at Terry, who nodded.

  "Yes, sir. I guess I am."

  "That's great." He squeezed her forearm.

  And Kennedy said, "My brother appreciates what you're doing for him." He looked right into Doyle's eyes.

  This Kennedy was less than a decade older than Doyle, the baby of the clan, the playboy who'd recently married a blond dish and who drove a convertible. Yet Terry felt as if the man had just blessed him. He veered from the thought, its association with priests. "We're working for your brother, but for the country too."

  "That's true. What's your name again?"

  "Terry Doyle."

  "And Deirdre Mullen," O'Donnell put in, demonstrating his skill—his first service to the family—at catching and keeping names.

  "Well, thanks, Terry," Ted said. "And thanks, Deirdre."

  "'Didi,' actually, Mr. Kennedy."

  Kennedy laughed again. "Then 'Teddy,' actually." And he leaned over quickly and kissed Didi's cheek.

  A moment later, Kennedy and O'Donnell were gone.

  Terry faced Didi. A soft rain had begun to fäll, but neither had noticed.

  Terry said, "Gosh, now you can't wash your face again."

  Didi, too moved to joke, stared at the darkness into which Kennedy's car had disappeared.

  "You're on the team, Didi. Handpicked by the head coach."

  She looked at him. "So I guess I better eat with you, huh?"

  "Yep." He took her elbow, and they walked to the Parker House entrance.

  "Wait a minute, Terry. Who's going to be there?"

  "The kids you met already, or if you didn't meet them, the ones you saw."

  "Are they friends of yours?"