by Monica Nolan
“Now,” said Pamela, changing the subject, “what should we do today?”
Maxie considered. Her idea that she and Pamela go to the Knock Knock and try to tail Lon in tandem was clearly out.
“We could go shopping,” Pamela suggested. “There’s a chafing dish out there with my name on it.”
“It’s too hot,” Maxie decided. “Why, you could keep casseroles warm on your windowsill. Let’s just stay inside and enjoy your air-conditioning. I can read your back issues of Polish in preparation for my new job.”
Pamela looked at her sideways. “You know, the air-conditioning is only in the bedroom.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to spend the day in bed,” Maxie said, with a suggestive smile. It was warm in the kitchen—or did her sudden flushed feeling emanate from the anticipatory heat spreading through her body?
We may disagree on almost everything, Maxie thought as she led the way to the air-conditioned room, but we’re certainly united when it comes to desire!
Chapter 17
Magazine Assistant
It was wonderful how everything had worked out. That was Maxie’s refrain the next few weeks. There she was, reporting to her glamorous new job on the seventeenth floor of the Schuyler Building, and going home each night to the girlfriend of her dreams. Her financial worries were a distant memory, and even her cigarettes were safe from Phyllis’s relentless budgeting.
How little she had thought, back in May, when she limped home to the Magdalena Arms with $2.38 in her pocketbook, that she was destined for a glamorous career in publishing!
There was never a dull moment at Polish. Maxie spent her days carrying out a dizzying array of tasks: fact-checking Vivian Mercer-Mayer’s social schedule, carrying dummies from the art department to Hal and back again, cajoling an overdue writer into sending something, and hunting for hours through the files to find out when Polish had last featured a certain shade of citron.
Maxie loved every minute of it, although she needed three cups of coffee to really wake up in the morning. Brewing coffee in the office kitchen was one of the first things she’d learned, and she was proud of her new skill. Both she and Hal were coffee fiends.
The second assistant was learning about more than making coffee from her dynamo of a boss, who was on the phone coaxing some society doyenne to let her country estate be photographed while he simultaneously approved layouts or wrote a “Sincerely Yours” editorial on youth fads (“Your editor is persuaded that the ‘Fab Four’ are no fly-by-night sensation, and that their screaming fans will multiply, not fade away as some have predicted”). Under Hal’s instruction, Maxie was learning to proof and edit; she wrote photo captions, and Hal had even entrusted Larry Lathrop’s column, “Larry’s Advice to the Lovelorn,” to his new employee.
Maxie enjoyed ghostwriting crooner Larry Lathrop’s replies to the mailbag of questions that arrived each week. She’d looked forward to working with the handsome lounge singer, but he was far too busy to read the column that bore his name—his publicist took care of it. Maxie felt quite cosmopolitan, whenever she called Hollywood about last-minute edits.
“Just take out the bit about how Larry loves to take phone calls from pretty girls. We’re selling Larry as a traditional man when it comes to boy-girl stuff.”
“ ‘Larry likes to do the dialing himself’?” Maxie suggested, scribbling rapidly.
“That’s the ticket, honey,” the public relations man approved.
Hal told Maxie she would likely meet the famous crooner when he visited later that month. “But don’t expect a lot of input into the column,” he told her. “It’s not brains he’s famous for, but that profile.” His eyes grew dreamy. “And what a profile!”
Publicists played a big role in the magazine world, Maxie discovered. At the Sentinel Mamie had sometimes passed on tickets to the grand opera or the fights, but at Polish Maxie and the other office girls divvied up not only tickets to the theater but the latest books, liquor, perfume, stockings, lipstick, and even, once, a gold watch with a patented clasp.
“Of course, you need to be careful,” Pamela instructed over lunch one day. “Never promise a publicist anything! But the presents are a definite perk.”
“I remember one Christmas getting a big bag of nuts from the Nut Growers Exchange,” put in Lois with a reminiscent look. “They lasted until Easter!”
The three working girls, whose offices were not far from one another, sometimes shared a tuna sandwich and shoptalk on their lunch hour.
She was part of a larger scheme now, Maxie thought. A cog in the smoothly operating machine of buying, selling, and advertising that had made America what it was. Was this how Great-grandpa Mainwaring had felt when he swung his ax in the virgin woods of Loon Lake? Of course, Great-grandpa hadn’t been a cog, but something more important: a gear, or vital spring, Maxie thought.
Still, she’d been missing something all those years she’d played while her friends worked. She finally felt she really belonged on the fifth floor. She, too, had stories of office politics, angry bosses, and horrendous mistakes almost made and avoided at the last minute. She too had suffered, eating nothing but applesauce, polishing her shoes herself, and even visiting a pawnshop.
Did other girls also have a Lon-like interlude they kept secret?
Her mind snapped back to the present as Pamela stood up, brushing the crumbs from her skirt. “Back to the grind! See you tonight, Maxie.” She looked both ways, and laid her fingers on her lips to signify a kiss.
Maxie mimicked the gesture, which had become routine. “So long.” She waved to Lois, and her two friends hurried away, already deep in a discussion of fall’s new colors.
Maxie sopped up the last bit of caviar from the tiny tin she’d lifted from a promotional basket sent by a new Russian restaurant. She was always a little slower than her two friends to leave the summer sun of Schuyler Plaza and return to the office, no matter how many times Pamela pointed out the importance of promptness.
In the lobby of her building Maxie picked up the Sentinel ’s afternoon edition and glanced at the headlines. MYSTERIOUS DOCKSIDE DEATH! The words jumped out at her from the front page. She read the story as the elevator rose. There’d been a rash of injuries on the docks, reported the Sentinel, culminating in this latest incident when Lukas Olafsson, thirty-three, was crushed by an improperly secured load. “As the winch swung the netted boxes from the pier to the ship, the net somehow came undone, and the recently elected shop steward was buried in a pile of packaged powdered milk.”
Powdered milk again! It was a reminder that under Bay City’s high-society surface, its dark underbelly still seethed with crime and corruption. Maxie realized with a start that she was mentally quoting from an old Mamie McArdle column. Sometimes she missed Mamie!
Why not ask Hal about covering the story? She tossed her hat and handbag on her desk, and picked up her notebook and pencil. Tucking the paper under her arm, she passed Lucille, who ignored her as usual and went on with her furious typing. Lucille resented being saddled with all the typing, and made it clear she considered Hal’s second assistant a washout. Maxie tapped on Hal’s door. At his distant, “Enter,” she slipped in.
“Yes, yes, Inga, I’ll make sure it gets straightened out. Yes. You can count on me. See you at the symphony.” Hal hung up the phone and announced, “There’s been another brouhaha over the Bay City Beautification Benefit—Mrs. Houck is out as chairwoman and Mrs. Hanson is back in.”
Maxie tried not to roll her eyes. The dummy for the “Here and There” party page was thick with pasted-over changes. If she were Hal, she’d cut the whole lot of feuding ladies, but her boss secretly relished this sort of society catfight.
“I’ll make the change.” Maxie scrawled on her steno pad, H.H. out, H.H. in.
“Hazel isn’t completely out,” cautioned Hal. “She still needs to be listed as a committee member.”
Maxie crossed out out and wrote comm. “Hal, I had an idea,” she began.
“Yes, Hal, I talked to the club manager,” Maxie told him patiently. “He’s a close family friend, and he said it would be fine. The photographer should arrive at three. And yes,” she forestalled his next question, “I told him you’d be there too, and were hoping to chat with Señor Suárez.”
Hal had been obsessed with the polo-playing Argentinian playboy ever since he’d landed in Bay City. Hoping she’d reassured him sufficiently that he’d have his moment with the man the press was calling “the pocket Apollo,” Maxie said, “I was wondering, what would you think about a piece on Bay City’s underworld activity?” She handed him the paper. As he skimmed the story, the fledgling second assistant continued eagerly, “I’m sure this is connected to the mob shakeup. I’ve got some inside information, and I’d be willing to work overtime, if—”
Hal wrinkled his nose. “Powdered milk? Remember, Maxie, my dear, our readers are the crème de la crème!”
“I know, but what about that John Donne poem about how each man’s death affects me?” Maxie argued. “These dockworkers are part of Bay City too!”
Hal pushed the paper back at her with a dismissive gesture. “Unless there’s a society angle, our readers will remain unaffected.” His eyes brightened. “Is there one? ‘Ex-deb Embroiled in Underworld Power Struggle,’ something like that?”
“No, nothing like that.” Maxie picked up the paper and exited the office, disappointed. She didn’t want to be the story, she wanted to tell it!
“Hal’s the best boss in the world,” she told Phyllis that night. “But he’s so determined to keep anything sordid out of Polish!”
Phyllis looked up from the Sentinel’s story. “There’s no mystery here,” she declared. “Those dockworkers are in my district. The local is voting for a new president, and the mob is doing some heavy-handed campaigning for the corrupt candidate!” She brightened. “I think I’ll ask Miss Ware’s advice on how to handle this.”
As if the mere mention of Miss Ware had taken care of the corrupt union, she asked Maxie, “Dinner out with Pamela?”
“At the Blue Danube,” said Maxie, picking up her hair spray. Noticing Phyllis’s lonely look, she suggested impulsively, “Why don’t you join us? My treat!” Maxie knew Phyllis missed their companionable evenings practicing radiator recipes. They had dwindled away, once Pamela and Maxie were an item again.
Phyllis protested, “I’m sure you’d rather be alone.”
“Don’t be silly.” Maxie discounted her objection. “Pamela just phoned to say she’s invited Lois—the more the merrier!”
Maxie could afford to be generous. It wasn’t only that she was up-to-date on her rent, had repaid Lois’s loan, and cleared her debt at Luigi’s. When Maxie finally called Grunemans about her overdue account, she discovered it had been taken care of—and the story was the same at Countess Elfi’s and the Tip-Top Tailor Shop. Maxie wondered once or twice if Pamela was her benefactress, but it seemed unlikely her girlfriend would choose to be anonymous. More likely she’d make it an occasion for advice on staying out of debt!
It was easy to be frugal, with money in her pocket, Maxie thought that night, ordering a salad instead of the steak. Gone was the fatalistic feeling that since she was destitute anyway, she might as well spend a dollar as a dime. It was only when Pamela criticized—or at any rate, suggested—that Maxie should put the price of her new sailor-striped sweater in her savings account, that the ex-deb still got the yen to take all the spare cash in her purse and go on a spending spree.
But so far she hadn’t. And she hadn’t quarreled with Pamela either. Not even when the ambitious girl suggested for the twenty-third time that Maxie use her evenings and lunch hours to practice typing until she could match Lucille’s speed.
Two and a half weeks, and no sharp words had been exchanged. It was some kind of record, Maxie reflected. It demonstrated just what two girls in love could accomplish if they both tried their darndest!
Maxie had even been attending Step Stool meetings regularly. She’d grown interested in spite of herself, now that she was in the publishing business. After years of mocking the newsletter for its self-importance, she now took a more constructive attitude. In fact, she had a few ideas up her sleeve that would stir up the staid Step Stoolers, when she outlined them at the next meeting.
Cheering up Lois was another shared activity, Maxie thought, as she looked across the table at her forlorn friend. The recent disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi had turned the office manager’s worry over Netta into panic. It had taken Maxie and Pam’s joint efforts to distract the distraught girl.
Lois was speaking now, with bright determination.
“I’ve decided to take the bull by the horns. I’m going to stop sitting around worrying—I’ll just head on down to Mississippi and help Netta with her voter drive!”
Pamela dropped her fork with a clatter. “Are you sure that’s wise?” she cried. “What about your job?”
“I have two weeks’ vacation. I’ll use that for my trip.”
“I think that’s a noble idea,” Phyllis told the lovelorn office manager warmly. Maxie echoed her sentiment, although she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for Lois, whose summer vacation would be spent dodging the Klan and going door to door like a civic-minded Avon Lady. Impulsively she offered, “Take my burnt-orange linen when you go. It’s bound to be sweltering in Mississippi.”
Maxie thought of the Mississippi heat again when Pamela let them into her apartment and switched on the air-conditioning. “What a way to spend your summer vacation!”
“I don’t think it’s safe,” Pamela fretted. “Netta has some experience with unsavory types, but Lois is too trusting by far!”
Pamela had always had a protective streak a mile wide when it came to the younger girl who hailed from her hometown.
“Lois is all grown up now,” she reminded Pamela. Her girlfriend went off to brush her teeth with a worried furrow between her eyebrows.
Maxie wasn’t sleepy. She sat on the couch and lit a cigarette. Pamela used to be protective, possessive even, of her. Maxie remembered the thrill she’d felt when Pam told a good-looking girl at Francine’s who’d asked Maxie to dance, “She’s with me!” It had been so different from Mingy Patterson and her ilk, who pretended in the morning that the previous night’s experimentation had never happened.
But then the possessiveness that charmed her had begun to chafe. It was a good thing the idea of Maxie moving in was still a touchy topic, because Maxie wasn’t sure she wanted live with her beloved. If she did, Pamela would know everything Maxie did—and there was so much the ex-deb did of which Pamela wouldn’t approve! The evenings she went out instead of practicing her typing, the visits to the Knock Knock Lounge—which were completely innocent, Maxie argued with her conscience. It wasn’t like she was looking for Lon. She was just keeping her ear to the ground to pick up any underworld rumblings.
And she’d miss the gang at the Arms. The fun she had helping with Dolly and Stella’s photo shoot; getting the inside dope on the Dockside from Phyllis. And someone had to keep an eye on Kitty!
“Are you coming to bed?” Pamela called. Maxie stubbed out her cigarette and packed her wandering thoughts away. But when she slipped into bed and switched off the light, she had to ask, “What if we stole Kitty’s manuscript and told her we wouldn’t give it back without final approval on copy?”
“Stealing is against the law,” Pamela said drowsily. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow, and you’ve already been late once this week. Forget about Kitty Coughlin.”
Maxie sighed as her law-abiding girlfriend turned over. She dreaded the alarm clock every morning. The job was perfect, of course, but it would be even more perfect if she didn’t have to get up before ten.
She had a wonderful job, she reminded herself. A won
derful girlfriend, a wonderful life. In fact, it was all so wonderful, Maxie was a little bored.
The problem was, leaping up at the alarm, gulping her first cup of coffee, and running for the bus had lost its novelty, she decided the next day. Composing Larry Lathrop’s pretended answers to the silly questions foolish women asked (My husband wants me to stay home, but if I keep working we could afford a new car. . . . ) seemed a little dull. If only Hal had given her the go-ahead on her mob investigation, Maxie thought, pouring herself a third cup of coffee.
Suddenly she stopped mid-sip. Why wait for Hal’s go-ahead? She’d work on the investigation on her own time, and dazzle her boss with the result. Even Pamela couldn’t criticize her project if it was carried out in the name of career advancement! She’d been pestering Maxie to use her lunch hour to improve her office skills. Investigating the mob would be much more interesting!
That noon, Maxie left Lucille typing like a demon and headed for Pete’s pawnshop. She’d engage the owner in casual conversation, convince him she was a close friend of Lon’s, and see what she could squeeze out of him.
Her spirits lifted as she approached the bar where she and Lon had gone. She relished the idea of pitting her wits against the shifty pawnbroker. On the off chance that the bar was a regular stop for the butch girl, Maxie pushed open the door and peered in. The back booth was empty—there was no Lon lounging against the worn leatherette.
Her mind was so full of Lon and her plan that she paid little attention to the veiled woman exiting the pawnshop. It was only after the woman climbed into an Olds and drove away that Maxie belatedly recognized her. Even if the ex-deb had never been a very dutiful daughter, no veil could disguise her own mother!
Chapter 18
Uplift with Pamela
Maxie slipped quietly into the crowded Step Stool office. Louise was speaking.