Galveston (49 page)

“What kind?”

“All kinds. I have a phonograph at home and a hundred records or so.”

“You play any instruments?”

“No, only the phonograph.”

He laughed. “I see.” He was older than I. Not that he looked it, yet I could tell by the note of indulgence in the laugh. “Your parents musical, too?”

“Heavens, no. My father has a deaf ear, and Mother is constantly bit—griping because I play the phonograph too loud. Anyway, I'm not really theirs, so it wouldn't matter what they thought of music. I mean, whether or not it ran in the family.”

“I see. Any brothers or sisters?”

“None that I know of. Adopted children don't always know who they really have.”

“You're probably lucky, having a home and two people who've taken care of you.”

“If you mean as opposed to growing up in an orphanage, I guess you're right. I don't know sometimes, though. Not that they're not good to me. It's just, well … I don't know. I've spent my life wondering who I really am, you know?” I said, and began to wonder why I should be confiding in him.

“I suppose so. But the people who raise you are really your parents, as I see it. Doesn't matter who brought you into the world. What counts is the attention you got after you arrived, and, from the looks of you, you've gotten your share.”

“Well, it does matter … to me. Look, now we've covered my life history, how about yours? Do you give out your name, or is it a secret? I mean, that trench coat you're wearing … you could be a spy or something,” I said, lowering my voice.

“Oh? My coat, huh? It dates back to prewar days. My name is Rodney Younger. And I give you my word, the only work I performed for Uncle Sam was down in the trenches.”

“Rodney. Friends call you Rod?”

“Just Rodney.”

“I thought so. You seem more a Rodney than a Rod. Something racy about the name Rod, don't you agree?”

“Maybe. I never thought about it. What's your name?”

“Willa Katherine Frazier.”

“Friends call you Kathy?”

“No, heaven forbid. Willa.”

“I thought so. It suits you. You're sort of willowy.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“You bet your life,” he said, and smiled.

“Well, I've got to get back to work. My father gives his lucky employees only thirty minutes to gobble lunch.”

“Oh, family business?”

“Not exactly. I just work in his office when I have nothing better going, and this summer I've had nothing better going.”

“I see. Which building? Perhaps it'll be on my way to walk you there.”

“Frazier Building, on Commerce,” I told him, and awaited the proverbial reaction.

“Frazier … then your father is
the
Frazier—in oil?”

“The same. Too bad you had to ask, though. Now I'll be certain you're after my money if you should try to see me again.” I was disgusted with my own cattiness even as I made the remark, and I wanted to apologize.

Yet it was too late. “Well, Miss Frazier, it would suit me fine if I never laid eyes on you again, but unfortunately I'm afraid we work in the same building,” he said, his face reddening.

“Oh?”

“My father's real estate brokerage is on the third floor.”

“Oh.”

“You might want to switch to volunteer nursing or something, since you obviously don't need the job,” he said, and with that comment put on his hat and left the table, a tall figure disappearing among the crowd, with broad shoulders covered by the most ghastly trench coat I have ever seen. I murmured under my breath he was probably on his way down to Buffalo Bayou, where he regularly washed that coat, but then I was sorry when I could no longer see him, and thought of how his face lit up when he smiled, and how I wished I hadn't offended him so quickly.

Before that day I'd been unaware of the existence of Rodney Younger, though I learned later he had worked in Dad's building for a month, since returning from the service. Now that we'd met, and I had managed to lower myself in front of him, I seemed to run into him at least three times a week. We'd pass on the stairs, or come face to face on the elevator, or by coincidence be leaving the building at the same time. He might nod or open a door for me, but he wouldn't speak, and I thought it was just as well I'd put him off before I even got to know him; sooner or later I'd wind up driving him off anyway.

I kept working for Dad right into the fall of 1919, and though this fact surprised him, he didn't object. He'd lost a filing clerk early in the summer and as long as I was around, he needn't bother having her replaced. He had only a small staff: one accountant, a secretary, a typist, and me, besides the field staff, whom I rarely saw. His employees worked hard because there was much to do and he didn't believe in hiring excess personnel. Miss Daniel, his spindly, bespectacled secretary, had been with him ten years and I think she fancied herself in love with him. Anyway, she'd go to the world's end for him if necessary, and on her tenth anniversary with the company my father gave her a gold wristwatch. I was on my way to Swanson's Jewelers in the Chronicle Building to have it engraved, when I saw Rodney, walking a few paces ahead.

I noticed then for the first time Rodney Younger had a slight limp; his right leg dragged just a little as he walked down the hall. It wasn't much; I had seen some far worse sights in the months since boys started coming home from the war. Yet something about the way he held his shoulders erect, his head up, as though refusing to acknowledge this physical shortcoming, was very touching as I stood watching him getting further and further away. And then I remembered the warmth of his voice that day we first met, his readiness to like me until I insulted him, and I knew I couldn't let this opportunity pass by to try and make amends. I hurried up even with him.

“Hullo.”

He gave me one quick look askance. “Oh, it's you.”

“Me, the rude one. I want to apologize. I usually don't insult people until I know them better.”

“It's quite all right,” he said, and kept walking.

“Look, I said I was sorry. Don't you believe in forgiving people?”

“I just told you it was all right. Now, I have business to tend to, if you don't mind.”

“Oh, I guess I was wrong then. I thought you were nice, and was wasting all that time hating myself for being ugly to you. I guess you're not so great after all. Good day.” I walked a little further, passing him by. Even then I hoped he would change his mind, call to me.

Several moments later, he did. “Wait up, Willa,” he said, and I stopped walking and smiled to myself, but didn't look around.

“You're right. I could be a little more forgiving, I guess. We had a big sale fall through out in the Heights this morning, and I'm down in the dumps. Have you time for a cup of coffee? We could stop by the Rice.”

“There's just one thing you ought to understand,” he said, after we were seated at a corner table. “You may think everyone wants your father's loot, but you can be sure I've no interest in that direction. As a matter of fact, if I were to marry a rich girl—though it's very unlikely—I would take nothing of hers. She'd have to make do on my money.”

“Is that so? You'd deny a girl her rightful inheritance?”

“She could do with it as she liked—buy fancy clothes and shoes, give it to charity, whatever, as long as she didn't spend it on anything that included me.”

“But as you said, chances of it happening are unlikely. You said you sold houses. Tell me about it.”

“There isn't much to tell. I'd only just begun before the war, and when I got back last month I went in with my father. He's done pretty well … this is a darned good town for real estate, especially since the war. But we had this deal going for a house out on Heights Boulevard—gorgeous thing, built in '98, three-storied, huge lawn, beautifully landscaped. We've had the deal pending for twenty-five days, and it looked promising. It was my sale, and would've been my first commission. Then the buyer phoned this morning to say he'd been transferred by his company to North Dakota or some place out there, and he'd have to back out.”

“That's too bad. How much did you lose?”

“Nine hundred.”

“Well, that isn't so much,” I said, then regretted it because it was obvious from his face the amount meant a great deal to him. “I mean, it's a lot, but not so much it can't be recovered. Anyway, by the time you get your sign back up in the front yard you'll probably have three more prospects. You do have other listings, don't you?”

“Yes … several in South Houston, two in Park Place, three lots on Bellaire Boulevard, and even a house on Lovett Boulevard—a good one—but I'd have to sell several of the smaller properties to make as much commission as I would have on the Heights house.”

“Lovett? I live near there, on Montrose.”

“Well, I might have guessed—the most exclusive area in town.”

“Our house isn't new or anything. We've been there eight years.”

“Boy, I bet if your father sold right now, he could make a whopping profit. Property values over there have really gone high. He isn't thinking of selling, is he?”

“Hold on, now! You'll have us moved out of house and home like evicted tenants if I don't watch you. Tell me more about real estate. What else do you do?”

“We take care of rent properties. You know, the tenants come to us to pay their rent, and we draw commission from the owner for taking care of them. But that's a pain in the neck. Dad got into it while I was away. People can be very bothersome. Their pipes don't work or their heater is broken, or someone threw a rock through a window, or the roof leaks—a thousand problems all the time. He was talking for a while before the war about building some apartments here, but now, under the circumstances, I guess the project will never be carried out …”

“What circumstances?”

“Oh, nothing. Long story.”

“Where are you going now?”

“Out to Harrisburg, to look at a new listing with the owner. It's all right, though. I'd left a little early because I needed some fresh air.”

“But wouldn't it be worth your while getting that sign up in the Heights again as soon as possible? I mean, surely properties in Park Place aren't worth as much as that one?”

He raised an eyebrow. “My, my, you have the mind of a businesswoman. I may be able to use you sometime in my firm. No, the Park Place property will probably go for forty-five hundred or so, but I've had the appointment since yesterday and I've got to keep it. I'll have to go out to the Heights later this evening.”

“Tell me more about that one.”

“Well, it's kind of an ugly mustard green color now, but needs painting anyway. It would really be lovely in white, I think. The roof is deep red. It has a fanlight with stained glass windows, and a steeple on one side, right above the inside staircase so that when you climb up to the second or third floor, you have this feeling of unfathomable height.

“Stairs are polished mahogany—beautiful winding things, with turkey feather graining in the railing and on the base. Oh yes, and the house even has an undercroft.”

“What's that?”

“A little vaultlike room beneath the back side of the house. You enter it from a stairway off the kitchen.”

“Cellars are pretty unusual for this area, aren't they?”

“It isn't a cellar. Too small. The family who built the house used it for wine storage. But the next family who moved in were teetotalers, and tore down the wine racks to replace them with shelves for food. That's the way it's fixed now … You seem so interested in the house. Would you like to go out with me this afternoon and look at it?”

“I thought you'd never ask. What time?”

“Three o'clock?”

“Fine. I'll meet you downstairs by the cigar stand.”

“Right. Now I really must get out of here and meet that client. You surprise me by your interest in real estate. Most women I've gone around with never want to discuss business.”

“Guess I'm my father's daughter in some ways—I mean, my adopted father. Don't tell him, but what you do is a lot more interesting than what he does.”

“Not nearly so profitable, though.”

“By the way, something I promised myself I'd ask you, if you won't be offended—and believe me, I'm trying to wait a while before I do that again—where did you get your limp? Fighting for God and country in the war, all that?”

“Yes, shot in the leg. But I don't care to talk about it.”

“That's good. The war bores me, anyway.”

All the rest of that morning I kept thinking of my offhanded remark to Rodney about being my father's daughter. It nagged at me for it wasn't true, and I didn't want to leave that impression with him. Saying something like that made me feel disloyal to my real father, whoever, wherever he was. I certainly wasn't business-oriented, I told myself. Only a few days before, I'd seen a picture story in the newspaper about the First International Congress of Working Women meeting in Washington, with women attending from all over the world, and the only remark I'd made to Mother at the breakfast table was that the hat worn by the fat woman on the far right was too small for her bulky size, and made her look like a stuffed pig.

After lunch Miss Daniel, who adopted the role of supervisor when Dad was out, put me to work rearranging and updating the index card file on one of the oil fields he has interests in. It was a tedious, monotonous project, more time-consuming than I realized, and when I walked out of the file room and looked at the clock the hands were stationed at three-thirty. I gasped, threw aside the file in my hand, and ran all the way down to the cigar stand.

As I feared, he'd already gone. I rushed to the door and looked both ways down the sidewalks, just to be sure, but no one was around except a blind man selling pencils and a mounted policeman at the intersection, whose horse looked as bored as he did from the lull in afternoon traffic.