“Tremont-4569. And I’ll thank you to do it correctly this time!”
I plugged the jack into 4569. It rang through, so I flipped the switch. But . . . had I flipped the switch on the other call? Had I even patched the other one through?
I couldn’t remember.
I chewed on a nail. Had I or hadn’t I?
Another light flickered, so I grabbed a jack from a third pair in order to plug it in, only it wouldn’t stretch far enough. I tried again, more forcefully, but only succeeded in yanking my neck forward.
Ow!
Why was my neck . . . ? I looked down and realized my long strands of beads had become tangled in a cord. In several cords, in fact. How was I supposed to . . . ?
I looked over at Doris, but she was speaking into her mouthpiece, patching calls through on her board. I looked in the other direction, but that girl was busy as well.
I tried to pull the beads off over my head, but they got hung up on my headset and that blasted light was still blinking at me.
Oysters and clambakes!
I leaned forward, as close to the board as I could, and plugged the cord in. I was so close to the board now the jacks were pressing in to my cheek. I could hardly even move my mouth to speak. “Number, please.”
“Tremont-4582.”
Well that was nice, but I couldn’t back up far enough now to even find it!
What I really needed was to—I gave my beads a tug. Nothing happened. Maybe if I unplugged the cords and then plugged them all back in quickly, no one would notice. I grabbed my beads with one hand and then put the other hand up to the cords that dangled from the jacks.
One, two . . . !
I yanked the cords out, tugged my beads free, and then . . . oh. Now I didn’t know which jacks they all belonged to. I put them all back where I thought they’d been and then prayed for another light to flicker.
Flicker.
Soon.
Anytime now.
Hadn’t Doris been wearing a necklace? I wondered how she kept hers from getting caught up in all the cords. I snuck a look. That was clever! She’d drawn it up at her throat in front, letting it dangle down her back.
I made the adjustment and then four lights lit up at once. I patched through the first two calls, then realized I didn’t have enough cords for the last two. I checked again. They were all in use.
As I was trying to decide what to do, Doris reached over and pulled a handful of cords from the board, placing them back onto the shelf. She removed one side of her headset. “When the lights go off, pull the cords out!”
It was going to be a long day. I could tell.
8
The supervisor finally tapped me on the shoulder and excused me for lunch. I nearly fell off my stool in relief. She walked past me and then tapped Doris as well, who proceeded to thread an arm through mine and pull me down the hall. As we walked, she reached a finger behind her ear, pulled something out, and popped it into her mouth.
“Is that . . . ?”
She blew a bubble and sucked it back in, popping it. “Chewing gum. Can’t chew it while I work, and it’s a shame to let a good piece go to waste.” She led us back to the bathroom, where she pulled a sack from the shelf. “Aren’t you going to get yours?”
“Isn’t there a lunchroom?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Sure. But why would you want to eat that slop?”
“I didn’t bring anything else to eat.”
She shrugged. “So you’ll know better tomorrow. Might not taste good, but it won’t kill you.” I followed her out the hall and up a flight of stairs.
“I thought . . . isn’t the lunchroom supposed to serve lunch to everyone?” That was something Father was so proud of, that everyone had the chance to eat a hot lunch every day.
“They do. But that doesn’t mean we have to eat it.”
“But . . . maybe people think the food is just fine.” My father sure did. “You should tell someone about it.”
“Who’s going to listen to us complain? With that strike a few years ago, everyone figures we already got what we were after.”
“But that’s not fair!”
She smiled as she slapped me on the arm. “Fair? You’re funny! Only people that got nothing else to do worry about what’s fair.”
But it still didn’t seem right, and I didn’t understand why Father hadn’t heard about the food being so bad.
As we walked on, I heard music playing. It was a lively song that sounded like a rendition of “Yes! We Have No Bananas.” Doris threw open a door. “See? It’s not so bad if you don’t count the food. We even got a piano.”
She was right. It wasn’t so bad, although it was unfortunate it smelled of cabbage. But the room was large and bright. At one end was a kitchen fronted by a long counter, which was staffed by several women wearing large white aprons and hairnets. There were round tables scattered about the center of the room, and a bulletin board at the back was plastered with a multitude of papers.
“We’ve even got a phonograph. And crossword books and a stack of magazines.”
“Crosswords?”
“You like them too? You should talk to Ethel. She’s a real brain. Did one last week in fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes!” That was impossible. Even Martha at the dormitory took at least half an hour.
“We got a dictionary too. Word is, they’re all sold out in the city. But we pooled our money, and Dottie knows someone who works at Brattle Book Shop. It’s an old one, but it’s got all the words in it.”
“You pooled your money for a dictionary?” At school we pooled our money for mah-jongg sets or magazines. Some of the girls pooled theirs for cigarettes.
“Oh sure.” She snapped her gum. “Lots of the girls take correspondence courses. Although they’re talking about buying their own dictionary. On account of the girls doing crossword puzzles keep taking it.”
I liked crossword puzzles, although I wasn’t crazy about them the way some people were. But had she mentioned magazines? “Do you think there’s a Photoplay? Or a Movie Weekly?”
“Don’t know. But there’s a True Confessions and a True Stories and a True Romance!” She winked at me. “I know because I bring them in.” She walked over to a pile sitting at one end of a table. “Oh. And look: Real Confessions.” She turned the pile over. “And Real Stories and Real Romance too.” But she turned up her nose at them and fished True Confessions out of the jumble. “Read this one. It has ‘Kidnapped by a Gypsy Lover’ and ‘Confession of a Chinese Slave Girl.’” She fanned her face with it as she recited the articles.
“I’m not sure I . . .” A flush of horror swept my face. I wasn’t supposed to be me—I was supposed to be Janie! How could I have forgotten so easily? “Does Janie read these?”
She thrust it at me. “Everyone reads these.”
I tried to see past her to the table. “Are you sure there aren’t any Photoplays?”
“Photoplay! Movies are pretend. These—” she waved the magazine beneath my nose—“these are real life.” She pointed to the kitchen behind me. “Better go get your lunch. It’s all right if it’s still hot, but if you let it get cold . . .” She shuddered.
I tucked the magazine under my arm. Janie. I was supposed to be Janie. Weaving around the tables, I rolled my shoulders forward and kept my eyes on the floor as I approached the counter.
“Your ma ain’t cooking for you today, huh?”
Startled, I glanced up at the woman serving up lunch.
She looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You’re looking peaked.”
Peaked? Then I must be doing something right. Janie never wore rouge. At least not that I had ever noticed. I took the plate the woman offered me and turned around, working my way back to Doris’s table. There were several other girls sitting there by the time I’d returned.
“So she’s not Janie?” They were speaking to Doris though they were looking at me.
Doris was beaming. “No. But she’s doin
g good, isn’t she?”
One of them peered up at me as I sat.
I glanced over at her.
The girl addressed me. “You got a name?”
“Janie.”
“You got a other name?”
“Janie is my other name.” At least for the time being.
“Oh! That’s funny. Imagine there being two of you and looking just the same.”
I ate. It wasn’t too bad considering I couldn’t really tell what it was. Only . . . “Doris, how come so many of us are eating now? Isn’t anyone patching through calls?”
“There aren’t that many that come in. It’s lunchtime. Everyone’s eating. It’ll start to get busy again after one. Don’t worry.”
Worry! I hadn’t worked this hard since I’d tried to study for my economics test.
One of the girls got up and went over to the piano. Her fingers took a walk up and down the keyboard and then launched into “Ma! He’s Making Eyes at Me.” As some of the girls finished lunch, they went over and sat down or stood beside her and started singing. Someone began a game of Old Maid, and over at a table in the corner, a cluster of girls sat poring over some books.
“Don’t know why they bother.” Doris saw me looking in their direction.
“What are they studying for?”
“Couple of them want to be secretaries and work in one of those fancy offices, but how can you practice without one of those typewriters or Dictaphones? The only way to be a secretary is to . . . be one, you know? And they got to work here, so they can’t just quit, but if they don’t quit, then how are they ever going to be secretaries?”
Very good questions.
“Couple of them even want to go to school.”
“High school?”
“College.”
“Then why don’t they?”
“You really are funny! They don’t have the money. They got to work in order to save up money for school, but even once they save up the money, they can’t quit working to go to school because they got to have money in order to keep paying the bills. See? You got to have money in order to do something.”
“But . . . you all get paid. You must have some money.”
“Well, sure we do. But then there’s rent and food and clothes. And after that, there’s not much left.”
“But . . . what about amusement parks, and movies, and . . . and everything else?” That’s what was so glamorous about working. Working girls were liberated and independent. They were thoroughly modern. “Working girls are supposed to be the ones having all the fun.”
She looked at me askance. “Fun! You think working is fun? I only work because I have to. That’s the only reason any of us are here. Being a hello girl is better than most jobs, I guess, but I’d rather not have to work at all. I’d almost rather get married. Any of us would.”
I just assumed they were living the life I’d always dreamed of. That’s what it seemed like from the movies anyway.
“Here.” Doris pushed her magazine back in my direction. I took it up and started on the gypsy kidnapping story, but I kept imagining Rudolph Valentino as the gypsy and couldn’t really understand why anyone would want to try to escape from him. Even Agnes Ayres in The Sheik had eventually succumbed to his charms.
“Ready?”
I looked up to find Doris staring down at me, hand on her hip. At some point the girl at the piano had stopped playing and the room had emptied. “Oh!” Was it time to go back to work already? “I suppose so . . .”
“You suppose!” She laughed. “You’d better be ready. You got Janie’s job to keep for her.”
“Do we get a break later?” Maybe then I could finish the rest of the magazine article.
“Sure we do. When we go home after our shift, we can have all the break we want!”
I stopped by the bathroom as we passed and pulled an old receipt from my pocketbook and begged a pencil from Doris. If I wrote down each number as it was given me, then maybe I wouldn’t make so many mistakes. As long as I didn’t let the supervisor see what I was doing, then it might just work. I turned it over and folded it into a small square so I could hide it in my palm.
Lights started blinking on my board just as soon as I wiggled my way back up onto the stool. I pulled the headset down, chose a cord, and plugged it in. “Number, please.”
I wrote it down, remembering to throw my beads over my shoulder before I reached for the second cord. And I remembered to flip the switch on that first call too . . . and the second, and pretty soon I got into a good routine.
But then the calls started coming in too quickly.
That’s when I forgot to flip the switch. I was reaching to plug in another cord when I was startled by a voice in my headset.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
“That you, Paddy?”
“Sure it’s me. You sounded worried last night so I thought I should call. What’s eating you?”
I was reaching to flip the switch when a third light started blinking. Should I . . . ?
“I don’t think that Phillips kid is going to play along.”
“Don’t worry. You got all summer to take care of it.”
“But I get the feeling he could cause a lot of trouble. That Prince has turned out to be a royal pain.”
The man had a distinct way of speaking, saying rile instead of royal. I mouthed it once before I realized he was talking about a prince. And he’d mentioned “that Phillips kid.” Were they . . . were they talking about Griff?!
“Don’t worry. King’s already got a plan to take care of everything.”
What did they mean, take care of everything?
“What do you mean, take care of everything?”
“He’s ready to do what he has to.”
“Do you mean . . . is he planning on taking the kid out of the picture?”
That was funny. He’d said pitcher instead of picture. I tried the phrase out too before the meaning of the words hit me. Out of the picture? I felt my mouth drop open. Out of the picture meant—!
“That kid don’t know what’s good for him. King’s just gonna knock him off that throne, that’s all. In plain sight of everybody so there’s no mistake about it. But if what you say is true, he’s got to do it soon. In order to send a message. If you’re not going to play along, then you’re not going to get to play, see? It’s the principle of the thing.”
I heard myself gasp. “What are you saying? You can’t just go around threatening—”
“Hey! Who’s that on the phone?”
I clapped a hand to my mouth.
“Who’s there?”
I flipped the switch with a trembling hand and the voices went away.
Who were those people? And what were they planning to do to Griff?
9
By the time my shift was finished, I’d misconnected a dozen calls and failed to pick up a few others entirely. What was it Griff had gotten himself into? And how were those men planning on stopping him? They said they were going to put him out of the picture. When people said that in the movies, it meant they were planning to kill someone!
If I hadn’t opened my mouth, I could have listened in longer, but I had. So now I had to figure it all out from what I’d overheard. It was like a crossword puzzle. The kind where you didn’t know the word going down, but you hoped if you could fill in the word going across, it would give you enough to get by on.
I ran straight up the stairs to my room once I got home. I had to think.
Griff was doing something someone didn’t like.
But that wasn’t possible, was it? School had just gotten out, and he’d said he was working on some commission all summer.
And who were those people anyway? They’d talked about someone they called the king and their accents were definitely Irish.
Maybe . . . would the operator who’d passed the call to me remember the telephone number? If only I could just apply myself and buckle down and think! There had to be some way to work
it all out. I nibbled a fingernail to the quick as I paced across my bedroom floor. I didn’t know where the call had come from, but I had patched it through. That had to mean something.
But what!
“Ellis?” I heard my father’s call float up from downstairs.
Oysters and clambakes! It must be time for supper.
“Rather quiet with just the two of us,” Father said as he looked around at the empty chairs.
There was something niggling at the back of my mind. Something about that telephone call.
“How was your day?”
“Hard.”
His brows rose.
“Hard. It was hard because . . .” I took a drink of water. “It’s very sad to be an orphan.”
He nodded. “Quite. I think it’s quite admirable, what you’re doing.”
Admirable? Was he talking about me?
“You have a gift, Ellis, and it’s gratifying to see you put it to good use for a change.”
Gratifying? Admirable? For once, I was doing something right! Except . . . I wasn’t, was I? I mean, I was doing something right. I was helping Janie out. And I was going to try to help Griff out as well. So I was doing something right even though Father was talking about the wrong thing and didn’t really know it. But why should the particulars matter? What my parents didn’t know couldn’t hurt them. They’d never find out I wasn’t really working at the orphan asylum, and it was rather nice to think my father thought I was admirable. I liked the feeling. “Do you think . . . could I go over to the Phillipses’ after supper?” Maybe I’d be able to figure out what Griff had gotten mixed up in.
“Tonight?” My father was frowning. “I don’t know . . .”
“Griff said he was working in the city this summer too. Since I don’t think he’ll be going to the shore, I thought I’d just . . .” I shrugged.
“I suppose. Sure. Why not?”
That’s why I liked my father. Mother would have asked “Why?” instead.
I only had to wait a few minutes in the parlor before Griff came down. Their parlor looked like ours, with a large bay window framed by black shutters. But theirs was painted in the mustardy yellow Griff’s mother had preferred, while ours was decorated in the burgundy and dark green colors my grandmother Eton had liked. I walked past a table. They had a collection of spoons in a cabinet on the far wall. I was looking at one done in gold with a strange triangular shape to its bowl when Griff came up behind me. “Ellis?”
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