by Howard Fast
“You wouldn’t come to Thirty-seventh Street at night even for a real cool place?”
“Thirty-seventh Street?” said Margie, and that was that.
It was just an ordinary morning walk down Thirty-seventh Street for Margie until she came to the corner where the political meeting was in progress; but afterward she realized that what followed was in part because Joe Campiogne had asked her the question about the discothèque. If not for that, when she came to the little wooden platform they had set up for the political meeting and was asked about the frug, she might have shaken her head and denied everything. This way she simply nodded. Actually what happened was this. She came toward the platform from the east, where the crowd was thinnest, and one of those earnest, rapidly balding young men who seem to be the working pillars of modern politics pushed toward her, confronted her, and demanded:
“Are you the girl?”
Nothing ever surprised Margie. Sometimes she was a bit confused, but hardly ever really surprised, and she asked:
“What girl?”
“Do you frug?”
“Well, my goodness, I was just telling Joe Campiogne what I thought of his silly notion of opening a discothèque here on Thirty-Seventh Street …”
Obviously a young man in a hurry, he said sharply, “Then you do frug?”
“I suppose so.”
The young man grasped her arm and was shouldering his way through the crowd as he informed her, “Believe me, I don’t for a moment believe that we’re going to get to it. We’re running overtime already. The Governor always crowds his schedule too full, and anyway, I don’t think Thirty-seventh Street is the place for the frug, do you?”
“Well, I just told you,” Margie said, climbing up the stairs to the platform with him—partly of her own volition and partly dragged, “I don’t.”
“Good. Then you won’t be disappointed if you don’t go on? I mean, since you get scale anyway.”
“I won’t be disappointed,” Margie promised.
“Good girl.” He nodded, patting her shoulder. “Costume?” He pointed to the hatbox.
“Lunch,” Margie grinned. She was wonderful at contriving a deception but a little less so at carrying it out.
“Well, anyway, you get a good seat for being agreeable.” And he plopped her down at the end of the second row of wooden folding chairs, next to a fat, red-necked man whose whole face was folded intently around a thick cigar. The young man pointed to a dark, beautiful mink coat which occupied the seat in front of her, whispering:
“The Governor’s wife. Say hello when you get a chance. See you later.”
The Attorney General of the state of New York was speaking, and he was at ease with the garment workers, reminding them of a time, forty years or so in the past, when he had been a shipping clerk. “In the shipping room,” he shouted, “a man is a man. When they throw three dozen garments at him and let him know that he has thirty seconds to pack them, no one asks his party affiliation. It is what they call in a modern film a moment of truth.” This sally fetched a great laugh and a ripple of applause from the crowd, but the man next to Margie only hunched his shoulders more and folded his lips even more tightly around the cigar, blew smoke, and muttered through his clenched teeth:
“Moment of truth!”
“So now we approach another moment of truth,” the Attorney General said. “I wish to introduce a young woman who has the virtues of truth and forthrightness—the wife of the Governor of this great state …”
With a single, quick movement the woman sitting in front of Margie made her decision, slipped out of her mink coat, rose, turned to Margie, smiled sweetly, and said:
“Do hold it for me a moment, my dear.” And then she dropped the coat into Margie’s lap. Margie smiled back, folded the coat upon her lap, letting the hatbox dangle from one arm, and with great pleasure composed herself to listen to what this charming woman had to say.
It was Margie’s first intimate introduction to the contagious disease called politics, and with her eyes half closed Margie listened and allowed her dreams to envelop her. Whatever Margie was in the mental measure of an IQ, she was highly creative and free from the curse of boredom in real life. She listened with approval to the Governor’s wife and meanwhile with another part of her mind reviewed the circumstances that had made an ex-hoofer United States Senator from the state of California. She measured herself against Ronald Reagan and decided that worse things could happen to the country than to have either the Governor’s wife or an enterprising model like Margie Beck hold office.
When the meeting was interrupted by a group of angry pickets from a South American country, Margie nodded and accepted that, too, as an interesting and pertinent part of politics. She was neither ignorant nor foolish, and the great gaps in her conceptual approach to geography struck her quite forcibly. She promised herself that she would buy a large atlas and study it zealously, if only to satisfy her curiosity.
While all this went on in Margie’s mind, the meeting raced to its conclusion at breakneck speed, and still sitting there, Margie watched the capable young handlers bundle the Governor, his wife, and the Attorney General off the platform and into waiting limousines. The black Cadillacs pulled away behind their police escort of motorcycle cops, the crowd dissipated, and Margie dreamily left the platform and walked toward Seventh Avenue and Marvin Potnik’s successful firm, M.P. Creations.
Not until she reached Seventh Avenue did Margie realize that she had the mink coat in her arms. So a rich and interesting day began.
Long before her twenty-third year Margie realized that she was different. There were people who took an easy walk through life, with the cradle at one end and the grave at the other, and in between nothing ever happened to them. At the opposite extreme there were people who had only to step out of doors after dinner and saunter to the corner and the ensuing events would fill a book. Margie belonged to the second extreme—and had belonged to it for so long that she simply accepted it. There she was with a mink coat; it was unlikely, as she perceived it, but not unnatural.
She went into the building where she worked—still not too late, since she had never arrived on time after her first day on the job and her discovery that Marvin Potnik had a daughter her age and that the said daughter had carefully trained Mr. Potnik into the uttermost extremes of permissiveness, and that he was thereby unable to apply other methods to Margie.
Toby Garcia, the elevator starter, said to her, “That, Margie, is a number-one mink coat. Where did you steal it?”
“From the Governor’s wife,” Margie grinned.
“Has she got more? Why don’t you wear it?”
“I just don’t mind if I do,” Margie said. “To have this and not even to try it on would be a real crime, even if I didn’t steal it. Don’t you agree?”
Toby said that he agreed, and he held the black patent-leather hatbox and Margie’s camel-hair coat while she slipped into the mink. Apparently she was the same size as the Governor’s wife, for it fitted her perfectly and made her the center of attention for 90 per cent of the people entering the building. The other 10 per cent were aged ladies who had forgotten important things.
Calls came now for Toby to get with it and start some elevators, but he was looking at Margie with simple joy, and he told them to drop dead for a while, and then he said to Margie, “That, Margie, is the mink coat to end all mink coats.”
Almost black, deep, rich, it rippled like a thing alive. Margie put her hand into one pocket and brought out a diamond bracelet. Half a dozen people, a nice assortment of bosses, salesmen, and one sharp lady buyer from Pittsburgh, were watching now.
“It’s a grab bag,” Margie said with delight, slipping the bracelet on one wrist.
“Try the other pocket.” one of the salesmen suggested.
“Margie, you are graduated and my heart is broken,” the other salesman said.
The second pocket yielded only a pair of gloves. Margie took her hatbox and coat from Tob
y and marched grandly into the elevator, with Toby shouting after her:
“When you fence those rocks, Margie, I want my ten per cent if they are real.”
“I’ll marry you just as you stand,” said the first salesman.
“That’s the best offer I have had today,” Margie said.
“But the coat comes with.”
“Naturally.”
On the twenty-first floor Margie left the elevator and floated down the corridor to where a pair of double doors announced: M. P. CREATIONS.
She entered, passed Elsie May who stared without recognition, flung hatbox and camel-hair coat on the showroom couch, and stood grandly in the mink. Then Elsie May, who was the receptionist and who had seen Margie day in and day out for a long time, rose slowly and followed Margie into the showroom. Then Marvin Potnik, small, plump, harassed, and in his early sixties, entered, and after him Hy Golden, vice-president in charge of sales, and Alan Compton, designer. Hy Golden was a dark, brawny, six-foot-three-inch, ex-Rutgers football star. Compton was half of Hy Golden’s weight, five sixths of his size, and pale to the point of effacement, pale skin, pale hair.
They stared. Golden shifted his point of view. Practical as always, Mr. Potnik said sadly, “If you are married, Margie, then congratulations are in order. Only not to be invited to the wedding hurts.”
“If she is married,” said Golden,” she married Fort Knox.”
“I know that coat,” Compton said professionally. “There are only four coats like it in America. Now where have I seen it?”
“Never mind the coat,” said Mr. Potnik, looking at the bracelet. He raised Margie’s wrist, so that the diamonds caught the light. “For something like this you would have to marry the boss of the Mafia. And it’s real.”
“It’s glass,” decided Golden.
“Hy—some things you know. Not diamonds. I should only have a windowpane of such glass.”
“Margie, you are to be congratulated,” Compton said.
“Who is he?” Elsie May wanted to know. “Not in one thousand years would such a thing happen to me, so all I am asking, Margie darling, is to allow me to engage in it vicariously. When? How? And why?”
“He’s the Governor,” Margie grinned.
“Come clean, Margie—come clean.”
“The Governor. Absolutely.” And then she told the story of the political meeting and of how she came into a mink coat and a diamond bracelet.
“I don’t believe it except that it comes from Margie,” was Mr. Potnik’s immediate reaction.
“It is strictly a question of rich,” said Golden. “It’s like ping-pong.”
“What do you mean it’s like ping-pong?” Compton demanded.
“Look, you play ping-pong, no matter how good you are, there is always someone better. The same with money. No matter how much you got, there is always someone who has more. But this has got to be the top—casual. It is absolutely a world’s record in casual. Hold my coat, darling. There you are.”
“Margie,” Mr. Potnik asked gently, “were you ever a Girl Scout?”
“How did you know?”
“You were?”
“At home in Kapatuk. But that was a long time ago.”
“It follows,” Mr. Potnik nodded. “That accounts for a lot of things, only who thinks of a model as a Girl Scout? Anyway, Margie darling, I am happy you are not married—I mean without myself at least knowing.”
“Is that where you come from, Kapatuk?” Golden asked.
“You know the town?” Margie asked eagerly.
“I never heard of it. Where is it?”
“In the Genesee Valley.”
“And they are all more or less like you—in this Kapatuk?” Compton wanted to know.
“You’re putting me on,” Margie said, “and it could have happened to anyone.”
“Not to anyone—believe me, Margie,” Mr. Potnik told her. “Look, as far as the coat and the bracelet are concerned, we got what you might call involuntary larceny. But it just happens that Captain Bixbee of the Fourth Detective Squadron is a friend of mine. I will call him up. He’ll send for the coat and the bracelet, and the Governor can stop worrying.”
“What makes you think he is worrying?” Golden asked.
“He’s worrying,” Potnik said decisively. “Meanwhile, Margie, do me a small favor. Sit in the corner of the couch there for the next fifteen minutes—just the way you are, with the bracelet showing. There’s a new buyer from Neiman-Marcus in Dallas. I want him to walk in here and see a coat and a bracelet of this quality sitting calmly in my showroom. It’s a kind of décor no interior decorator could give you.”
“He sees her there and then he sees her modeling the dresses?”
“Today Gertrude will show the line.”
“Gert’s not in yet.”
“So he’ll wait,” Mr. Potnik said. “Look, Alan,” he explained to the designer, “today everything is status. When I was young it was quality. Today quality does not count—only status. What Margie’s got on is over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of status, and the Governor won’t mind.”
“This is a pretty warm coat,” Margie said.
“So for fifteen minutes you will be warm. As a favor for me?”
But in all truth Margie was delighted, and she took her place in the corner of the couch while Mr. Potnik telephoned Captain Bixbee.
The buyer from Neiman-Marcus arrived sooner than anyone had expected him to appear. Mr. Goldman and Mr. Compton had gone about their various tasks, as had Elsie May, the receptionist; and Mr. Potnik was still on the phone trying to reach Captain Bixbee, when the showroom door opened and a slim, meticulously dressed man with a white silk scarf and rather long sideburns entered. In addition to the white silk scarf, he wore a black suit, very stylishly cut, Italian style, very narrow in the trousers, a white-on-white shirt, a mustard-colored tie, a black cashmere topcoat, and a black felt hat. He gave Margie the impression of being a man of varied but indiscriminate tastes. He had a long face and very unusual blue eyes, and. Margie knew that certain friends of hers would consider him handsome. Considering that he was a buyer he was certainly not bad looking, and the way he stood and stared at Margie was uncomfortable yet flattering. Margie was a little vague on the subject of Texans, and she knew that, style-wise, they were likely to go out on a limb, so she was quite ready to believe that this was the latest male fashion in Dallas.
True to her responsibility, she smiled and attempted to make him welcome.
“You’re from the store in Texas, aren’t you?” she asked.
He nodded.
“How do you like New York?”
He nodded again.
“Mr. Potnik was telling me about you. He’s on the telephone now.”
He nodded a third time.
“He’ll be back in a moment.”
This time the man from Dallas spoke, shortly and directly to the point, “How about you and me having a cup of coffee?”
“If you wish,” Margie said.
“I wish.”
“Only a few minutes,” Margie said.
“Naturally.”
She was walking out with him when Mr. Potnik called out to her, “Margie, I got Captain Bixbee on the telephone—”
“I’m going out with the buyer from Texas for a cup of coffee, Mr. Potnik,” Margie called back. “Right downstairs. We will be back in ten minutes.”
“What?”
“Ten minutes, Mr. Potnik.”
“The buyer?”
“That’s right, Mr. Potnik.”
Mr. Potnik finished talking on the telephone and then he walked into the reception room, and there was Elsie May standing, with the door to the corridor open, staring out.
“They just got in the elevator,” she said dully, as from a great distance.
“Who? The buyer from Neiman-Marcus? I told Margie to impress him, not to date him, but they are five minutes together and already she is having coffee with him.”
“Who?�
�� Elsie May asked.
“Who? Who? Margie. Who else am I talking about?”
“But you said the other one was a buyer from Texas.”
“That’s right.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, he isn’t a buyer. He’s a buyer, but he’s not the kind of buyer you think he is.”
“Please, Elsie—talk sense. What kind of a buyer do I think he is?”
“From Neiman-Marcus.”
“He isn’t?”
“He isn’t,” Elsie replied.
“What kind of a buyer is he?”
“He’s a buyer for two ensembles for his girl friend who my brother, Mike, sent up here.”
“What is this?” Mr. Potnik demanded shrilly. “You know I don’t sell wholesale to people. This is not a shlock shop. This is a very poshy and high-class place. So how could you do that, Elsie? Because you take advantage of my good nature?”
“I had to,” Elsie May pleaded.
“Why? Why did you have to?”
“Because my brother, Mike, promised him. So I figured I would persuade you to make just one exception.”
“So why didn’t your brother, Mike, unpromise him.”
“He couldn’t. That was Joey Montoso.”
“Who’s Joey Montoso?”
“Who’s Joey Montoso?” Elsie May repeated. “He’s nobody but the biggest torpedo in the country. That’s all. He’s from Cleveland, but believe me, he has a national reputation. He works everywhere, and once even in Toronto, so that makes it a kind of international reputation.”