That was true, we always did have a good time.
At lunchtime in a drugstore she told me that when Mr. Kaufman had shown me the picture she could not decide whether I was dumb or clever. Then she added something about me that I have never forgotten and that still seems to me the nicest thing that anyone has ever said.
“You’re not either one or the other,” she told me. “You’re just yourself. I’ve never seen anyone like you.”
It was astonishing that I had the same thought about her. Meeting someone, I suppose, is like fractions in school which you try to reduce to some common denominator.
“Would you mind telling me,” she asked, “what made you go into Bullard’s? You didn’t have to, did you?”
I found myself explaining to her how I felt about things and telling more about myself than was really necessary, and answering strange questions. She said I sounded as if I were in the Social Register. She wanted to know all about Hugh and about the dances and about Westwood.
“You’ve had everything I’ve always wanted,” she said, “and now you don’t want it.”
“What sort of things?” I asked.
She sighed and we looked at each other.
“Money,” she said, “security. I’m going to get it someday. I’m good. I know I’m good. Someday I’m going to be making thirty thousand a year.”
It gave me a feeling which I have had sometimes in a club where I have been sitting safe and warm, looking out of the window at people in the street. That idea has often come to me when I have tried to see things through Marvin’s eyes, for somewhere something would come down between us, exactly like a window. I used to be puzzled, and I still am, by her sense of values.
Marvin Myles was born and brought up in a small city in Illinois, the name of which I cannot recall. Both her parents were dead. She had a brother married, living somewhere out in California, to whom she hardly ever wrote, and an aunt in Chicago. Her father had owned a furniture store and there had always been trouble with the grocer’s and the butcher’s bill. Once she showed me one of her high school photographs—a plain girl. Her eyes and mouth were both straight and defiant as she stared into the camera. Her hair was done in hideous bulging pompadour, fastened behind by an enormous butterfly bow ribbon, and she wore a high-necked shirtwaist. She told me once how hard her mother had worked on her party dresses, and about a girl named Lottie Lou whose father owned the bank and who went East to boarding school. Lottie Lou and other girls like her would see Marvin when they came home for their vacations, seeing her always less and less, finally not seeing her at all. She had gone to Chicago after high school; her aunt had sent her to the University. After her father died, she found some work on one of the Chicago newspapers and later brought her mother to live with her in a one-room apartment. Then she got a job writing copy in the Jacobs agency, and when her mother died she was offered a position with an agency in New York. Then Mr. Bullard had heard of her and now she was making seventy-five dollars a week, more money than she had ever seen.
It was six o’clock when we got back to the office and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Nearly all the desks were deserted, but there was a light in Mr. Kaufman’s room. Mr. Kaufman was in his shirt sleeves, looking at proofs of footwear advertising.
“We made the calls,” Marvin Myles said. “I kept the notes. Mr. Pulham did the washing.”
“Let’s see the notes,” Mr. Kaufman said.
She opened a briefcase and handed him a bunch of printed forms, all filled out in pencil. He ran through them like a paying teller in a bank.
“Did they talk?” he asked, and his eye ran down one of the pages. “Read that to me, Miss Myles,” and Marvin picked up the page.
“It’s the first time,” she read, “that I won’t mind when Frenkel takes off his shoes.” I remembered that Mrs. Frenkel had said that, but I had not imagined that Marvin had written it.
“That’s the stuff,” said Mr. Kaufman. “Warmth and color. Have you got any more like that?”
“Plenty more,” Marvin said.
“Well, that’s fine,” said Mr. Kaufman. “Make each interview into a little story. You’d better get going. I’ll be here all night. Just wait here a minute, Pulham.”
Mr. Kaufman did not speak until Marvin closed the door.
“Now,” he said, “just as man to man, Pulham, was there really a woman named Frenkel?” I saw what he was getting at then. “You see, a number of people have been trying to get these interviews. There’s a temptation to rely on the imagination.”
“You’ll have to take my word for it, Mr. Kaufman,” I said.
“But what did you do?” said Mr. Kaufman. “Tell me what you said.”
“She wanted to call the police and I told her she needn’t do that,” I said. “I told her I was going to do some washing for her. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“And she listened to you?” Mr. Kaufman said.
“Why, yes,” I said. “Why shouldn’t she?”
Mr. Kaufman looked interested.
“Pulham,” he said, “you must have a human approach. Now go and help Miss Myles with the report.”
When I got back to the cubicle where we worked Marvin Myles had taken off her hat and was beating on the keys of her typewriter.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
First she looked annoyed and then she smiled.
“Don’t look like a babe in the woods,” she said. “If you don’t take care a robin will come along and cover you up with leaves. What did Kaufman want?”
“He kept asking questions about Mrs. Frenkel and talking about warmth and color.”
“That’s his favorite line,” she said, “warmth and color, and don’t get to thinking that it sounds silly either. You must have made an impression on him.”
“I don’t see why,” I said.
“Never mind,” she answered. “You’ve made an impression on me. I thought you were terrible and now I like you.” She pulled a sheet out of her typewriter. “You can go over the grammar of this, and then you can give it to Kaufman’s secretary to make a clean copy, and you’d better go out and get some sandwiches and coffee for us and charge it on your expense account. Now, don’t talk any more.” I had never seen anyone write so quickly.
As time went on, her lips pressed themselves into a thin, stubborn line.
“You can go on home if you want,” she said once. “I can handle this. I’m used to it.”
“No,” I said. “There might be something I could do.”
“All right,” she said. “Go out and get more coffee.”
She finished the report at half-past eleven and stretched her arms over her head and yawned.
“Well,” she said, “that’s that. God, but I’m tired!” She got up and pulled on her bell-shaped hat. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I’m going to see you home,” I told her.
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“It’s late,” I told her. “You ought not to go out alone so late.”
“Oh?” she said. “What do you think I generally do?”
She lived in the seventies, between Lexington and Third Avenue, and I took her home in a taxi. She leaned back with her eyes half-closed, looking at the lights.
“I’ll have a car of my own some day,” she said, “with a chauffeur waiting outside when I do night work; and I’ll have a mink coat and a French maid, and I’ll ask you up to dinner.”
“All right,” I said.
“And be sure you wear a white tie and be sure you behave yourself,” she said. “There’ll be lots of interesting people, all the writers and artists and people on the stage. I’ll be a partner in an agency by then. You see, I know I’m good.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know you are.”
“Here we are. Will you come up?”
She asked me as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll just see that you ge
t in all right.”
We walked up a flight of brownstone steps into the vestibule and she took a bunch of keys out of her bag.
“Curiously enough, I have my keys.”
“Well,” I said, “good night.”
“Good night,” and she looked at me in the half-light of the vestibule.
“Good night,” she said, “darling,” and she kissed me.
I had not expected any such thing at all, but somehow she made it seem the only correct thing for her to do.
“Good night,” I said.
I sent the cab away, because I suddenly felt like walking. I have never had anything happen to me before or since which was just like that. I was suddenly more alive to everything—the clearness of the night and the way the street lamps each cut a luminous sphere in the darkness. There was a sense of spring in the air, not like spring in the country, for the seasons in New York are independent of the seasons in the rest of the world. I was sharing something with the city. For once in my life I was where I wanted to be, a part of everything.
As I say, it all seemed perfectly natural. It did not occur to me for quite a while that Marvin Myles might have been in the habit of kissing almost anyone good night who took her home. Even when it did occur to me, it did not bother me. I kept going over, before I went to sleep, what she had said and what I had said, and I remember wondering what I would say to her in the morning, whether everything in the morning would be like the day before. Bill was at his desk when I arrived, but Marvin was not in yet.
“What did you do to Kaufman?” Bill asked.
“What did I do to Kaufman?” I repeated.
“You did something,” Bill said. “I’ve just seen him. He likes your personality.”
“Well, I don’t like his,” I said.
“That’s all right. Neither do I,” Bill answered. “But if you’re getting on with Kaufman it’s fine. Now, where is that tabulation on the washrooms? Bullard wants to see it. Hell is going to pop today.”
“What’s happened now?” I said.
“We’re going to sell the Coza campaign today,” he said. “It’s going to be some party. And what do you think the crux of the campaign is going to be? Who do you think hit the basic idea?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, I’ll tell you who did,” Bill said. “I did. It’s a great big vital story. Why does mankind use soap?”
“To clean itself,” I said.
“There you go,” said Bill. “That’s it exactly. And why does soap clean? Why does soap get out dirt?”
“It washes it out,” I said.
“And why?” said Bill. “Because of an alkaline reaction. And why is Coza better than any other soap?”
“I don’t know why,” I said. “Is it?”
“Frankly,” said Bill, “that’s the tough part. Now, why is it better? Because the Coza chemists, after years of work in the laboratory, have developed a cleaning force, an imponderable. And what do we call that force?”
“What do we call it?” I asked.
“We call it Alkalinity Plus,” said Bill. “Try this test today. Wash something with an ordinary soap, and then wash the same thing with Coza. Coza cleans because of that added imponderable—Alkalinity Plus.”
“But is Coza different from any other soap?” I asked.
Bill smiled dreamily.
“It’s different—now,” he said, “because it has Alkalinity Plus. You can see that in the headlines, can’t you? It’s easy to remember—Alkalinity Plus. Hello, Marvin.”
She smiled at us and took off her hat and put it in the green steel cupboard.
“Hello,” she said, and our eyes met for a moment.
“They want to see us up front,” Bill said. “They’re going to use Alkalinity Plus.”
From the way she looked I could tell there was something important in the announcement.
“Bill,” she said, “I’m awfully glad.”
“And I made it perfectly clear,” Bill said, “the idea’s mine, but the name’s yours—Alkalinity Plus.”
Marvin took off her gloves and laid them beside her hat.
“Thanks, Bill,” she said. “When did they decide on it?”
“Just this morning,” Bill answered. “Bullard called me up at seven o’clock. He had the ideas all in front of him about the pores of the skin and the delicacy of fabrics. You know the way Bullard is. Well, he couldn’t decide on anything, so then I gave him ours.” Bill raised his arms and let them drop to his sides. “It hit him,” he went on, “right in the solar plexus. ‘Good gracious,’ he said, ‘I never thought of that! What does make soap clean?’ Well, he’s swallowed it, and once you give him an idea, believe me he can work on it. And now we’re going to try it on the client. He’s going to start with one of those simple reports that you and Harry did yesterday. Just homey, informal stuff. And then he’s going to turn to the client and hit him on the head hard. ‘Mr. Fielding,’ he’s going to say, ‘what makes soap clean?’ Then we bring on the charts and figures. Come on now. Bullard’s waiting for us.”
“But, Bill,” I said, “that isn’t the way soap cleans. It is due to its property of emulsifying fats, not due to alkali at all.”
Bill sat down on the edge of his desk.
“My God,” he said, “where did you get that?”
“It’s in the encyclopedia,” I said. “I looked it up out there in the reference library.”
Marvin looked at Bill and scowled. “Do you mean to say,” she said, “you got that whole idea without looking anything up?”
“I thought you had looked it up,” Bill said. “Wait a minute—wait a minute. The idea is just as good as ever. Here’s the way it’ll go.”
Bill looked at the ceiling and drew a deep breath.
“For years, for centuries, chemists and makers of soap everywhere have gone on the mistaken theory that the cleansing properties of soap were derived from free alkali. Today modern science has revealed a new truth. Leading chemists know today that it’s emulsification that cleans—without attacking tender hands and fabrics in the washtubs. That is why the Coza chemists have evolved a soap of a new high emulsifying power, based on the secret property they call Emul. How about that, Marvin? That has eye value—Emul. Coza is rich in Emul. That’s why Coza cleans.”
There was a moment’s silence and Marvin sighed.
“You can talk your way out of anything,” she said.
This shows how quickly Bill’s mind could work and why I am right in believing that he was a remarkable person, and he was generous too, because he explained to Mr. Bullard that I had studied the whole theory of soap in my spare time. They all seemed to accept me as part of the organization after that. In fact, Mr. Bullard had an interview with me right after the Coza conference was over and his office was still littered with charts and drawings and containers and piles of soap.
“Pulham,” he said, “I’m going to call you Harry; that is, if you don’t mind. I’m going to call you Harry, because you’ve made your letter today. You’ve been a part of the team. Have you ever thought how strange it is that a great idea is always simple?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“I’m just playing with words,” Mr. Bullard said, “just playing, you understand. We’ve been the first to get down to the real essentials of a soap campaign, almost the first to consider basically why soap cleans. Your friend Bill King thought of the general idea, which was in the back of my mind all the time, but I give him credit for it. Miss Myles perfected the idea of the chemists working on the formula—and as a matter of fact Coza chemists work very hard—and then you came in with another suggestion that soap emulsifies. Mr. Kaufman and I finally smoothed these ideas and made them presentable. We were given the ball to run with and we put the ball over. Yes, you’ve earned your letter.”
I am sure that Mr. Bullard did not always take himself seriously when he played with words. It was simply the way people talked in those days, and perhaps they tal
k so still. Yet I know that from the moment he told me that I was a part of the team I began to like the Bullard office.
I began to understand that to sell soap it was necessary to endow it with some unique quality which would appeal to the consumer. What was more, before long they persuaded themselves that Coza had the mysterious, hidden qualities with which their imagination had endowed it. I am quite sure that Bill got himself to believe implicitly that the Coza chemists after years of patient research had developed an inorganic element named Emul. The more he rang the changes on this idea, the more he actually believed in Emul. I like to think that I was the one who thought of the slogan that was used under the word Coza: “Today the Soap of Tomorrow.” It pleases me sometimes when I look upon a billboard to discover that my slogan has never been discarded, but sometimes it all seems like a dream that I ever worked in such a place.
I must have begun seeing more and more of Marvin Myles without noticing it much, as spring moved on into summer. We used to do all sorts of things together which I have never done since, such as riding through Central Park in one of those Victorias or rowing on the lake. Later I bought a small runabout and I used to take her to the Long Island beaches, and before long she began to worry about my clothes. She used to pick out neckties for me and she made me order three new summer suits, and she went with me to get a picnic basket so that we could have our own lunch if we motored out of town on Sundays, I never realized to what extent I depended on her company. I never thought anything about it until one week end in July when I asked for a Saturday off so that I could go up to see the family at North Harbor. It was the first time since I had moved to New York that I had seen the family. I had talked to her about them a good deal, and I remember what she said when we had dinner on the balcony that overlooked the courtyard of the old Park Avenue Hotel, before I took the night train. She must have seen that I was looking forward to going.
“I wish you were coming,” I told her.
“What would they think of me if you brought me?” Marvin asked. The question had never occurred to me until she asked it, because I had never thought of connecting her with the family.
H. M. Pulham, Esquire Page 16