Nikki (21 page)

“You and the shop foremen and supervisors and all?”

“Oh, no. The department people aren’t at the management level and can’t see objectively. They’re pretty narrow in their viewpoints and grasp of the whole. No, the various coordinators from Office, Sales, Plant, Personnel, etc., along with us assistants, meet weekly and go over the whole picture; then twice a month we have tri-plant board meetings, including management of all three plants. The managers fill us in on over-all policy matters from division headquarters—that’s in L.A. Then the managers ask for our ideas; it’s all very democratic and informal.”

“But you all pretty well agree with the managerial viewpoint on these things,” she said impishly.

“If we have any constructive criticism to make, we’re not only free to make it but obliged to,” he said stiffly. “It’s a team, and naturally there are going to be differences of individual viewpoint. Hell, you should hear some of those skull sessions, if you think we’re just a bunch of stooges.”

“Calm down, Archer dear,” she said so affectionately that he relaxed visibly.

“Yeah, we throw the batter in the doughnut machine and see if we can punch holes in it.”

She laughed.

“The only thing is,” she said worriedly, “doesn’t it give you a sort of superficial understanding of things? For instance, should you be so vague about the actual processes in the factory? Shouldn’t you know just how this and that machine works, why it’s part of the process?”

He nodded gravely, an utterly fascinating little frown across his brows, giving him a look of enormous seriousness, which somehow reminded her of little Jimmy’s super-earnest involvement in games.

“I should make it my business to study up on all that. You’re right, Nikki. I remember on several occasions how middle and even top-management men visited the plant and took a lot of pride in knowing all these things. They’d come up through the ranks and were experts in their fields. Yes, I’ll get some books on the subject, and also learn all I can on the job. Of course those old boys are pretty much of the old school, sort of museum pieces, the ones that specialized in techniques of things. The old know-how individualists,” he said with a short laugh.

“What’s the new school?” she said. “The know-not-how group character?”

He gave her a narrowed, angry look. “Of course, being an aggressive individualist yourself, you wouldn’t understand the necessity for team play, for getting along with people. I just happen to consider people more important than things.”

“How full of heart!” she said sweetly. “And besides,” she added, “it takes more than personality to get anywhere with mere ‘things.’ It might even require know-how.”

“You want to drive me away, don’t you?”

“I’m not completely sure.”

“While you’re making up your mind,” he said, getting to his feet, “I think I’ll just be off.”

“Well, after Jim and Dolores get home and go to bed,” she said with a small leer, “we might, you know … Sit down.” He sat. “Now, as I understand your viewpoint, there’s something inhuman about the people who have the know-how to produce the products that your corporation sells. In fact, the making and selling of these products is the reason for its existence.”

“Of course,” he said exasperatedly, “we need experts. But such people are too individualistic and they have to be subordinated; we on the management team …”

“I get it,” she broke in. “A puppet show. The people actually doing the work are behind the curtain. The little figures out front are taking the bows.

He paled under his tan. “You’re rough, baby.”

“Why don’t you go?”

“Tonight,” he said in an injured tone, “I walked away from a nice girl who’s in love with me.”

“Walk back!”

“And came here—with the serious, loving hope that my mother could be wrong, that there needn’t be a conflict between my career and my love for you.”

“Love?”

“Love!”

She turned her face. “Can’t you see that I don’t think of you as a man, that I don’t respect you? I believe a man should want to be a whole man, not a splinter, not proud of himself for nothing better than an ability to be inoffensive, a smiling part of a group? You’re proud of being valuable merely because of charm and personality. You sneer at competence and real ability as if it were slightly neurotic. The things you sneer at are what I honor.”

“I’m more than you think, more than I said I was. Use your head. I have to be more than a charm boy. I made things too simple. It’s not that I wouldn’t rather run the whole show myself if I could. Hell, I’d like to be the splendid hero. I’m no less egotistical than anybody else; do you think it’s easy to subordinate myself? But do you think I could survive for ten minutes if I didn’t? It’s how things are.”

Abruptly he came over, dropped to his knees beside her chair, took her hand in both of his and looked at her with adoring eyes. He said huskily, “Nikki, please don’t abuse me for what I can’t help, because I’m in love with you.”

The sight of him, so handsome, so vulnerable, touched her meltingly. “You’re such a sweet, loving guy, Archer. Please don’t be in love with me.” She put a hand softly on his cheek.

“I need you. I need you to love me and help me. You could love me just a little. We could have a future; I’d make you happy. I want you to be my wife.”

“No,” she cried, unhappily, “you can’t want me, you musn’t want me.”

“Your eyes and your voice and,” he turned, kissed her fingers, “and your hand say the truth—that you love me.”

“I’m touched, I’m tender toward you, but love? I don’t know. The other girl, Archer, she does love you, you said, and I’m sure she feels just as you do about that corporation you work for, and thinks your career is wonderful and I don’t. If I loved you I
would
feel it was wonderful, no matter what it was. A man needs to have his woman feel that way.” She shook her head hopelessly. “You know how cutting and mean I can be, and that would be dreadful in a wife. But I’d be that way.”

He pressed his lips softly against her palm. He looked up into her eyes, then bent his face again and kissed her palm.

“I don’t mind your being mean to me, Nikki. I like your being that way.”

“Don’t say that, Archer!” she said, horrified. She pulled her hand free. “You musn’t say that! Please get up now.”

He got to his feet and stood by, looking at her and waiting, as if—she cringed inwardly—as if for the next command. She waved a hand, a gesture of dismissal. “You must go now.”

“Now?”

“There’s no chance of our making love tonight.” (Or ever, she thought) I wouldn’t want it. And if you’re serious, you won’t want to get my mind on something like that.”

“You haven’t said no? You’re going to think it over?”

“I have said no, or I thought I did. Still, if you want me to, I’ll think it over.”

“I want you to.”

She stepped close, turned her face up to his. “Kiss me good night, and if you still want to we’ll have the golf date.”

“I want to.”

It was past noon as Archer and Nikki drove out the meandering blacktop roadway, leaving the golf club. He glanced at the rearview mirror and said in a conspiratorial whisper:

“Are we alone? Shake, pardner. We whipped em!”

“I don’t feel playful, Archer.”

“And the polite, gracious way you rubbed their noses in it. I swear you made them feel happy about losing. God, you’ve got it, Nikki. When Gloria and I would sometimes beat the chief and his wife, she’d practically get the sweats, as if it were something very dangerous to do. So it was no fun. You had fun, didn’t you?”

She nodded, unsmilingly.

“Well, see how easy it was to enjoy yourself. And at the same time you managed to subordinate yourself just a little, without in the slightest losing a bit of yourself. And you have splendid social background. If only you could love me, everything would come easy; you’d be a touch of magic for my career. For all her good intentions, Gloria lacks the touch.”

“That sounds colder than you mean it to, I’m sure,” Nikki said, looking at him nervously. “You wouldn’t dump a girl you loved just because she wouldn’t be a good corporation wife.”

“Come off it. I’ve had Gloria on the string for five or six years. Does that sound like love?” He laughed. “The oddity is that I’ve known you no time at all, yet it seems the other way around, as if she’s the stranger.”

“Unless you planned on lunch, you’d better take me home. I didn’t sleep very well, and I’m irritable.”

“Bad sleep on account of thinking me over?”

She nodded.

“Sit close, you doll,” he said, pulling her over. “Where I’m taking you is home and to lunch. My home. I want you to meet the
original
bombshell. She used to be a high-spirited mean beauty like you. She’s still got her spirit and meanness.”

“And pretty, too, I think,” Nikki said honestly.

“Ah-ha, already you’re appeasing Mama. See, you’re getting to love me, subordinating that old ego. But,” he added joyously, “not for long. I can’t wait to see this match. She’ll bust an artery and maybe a vase over my head when you strut in. For me she wants a nice safe dull thing like Gloria, but we’ll show her!”

“I’d rather not go, not in this mood of mine—or yours. The prankish naughty-little-boy way you’re approaching it—Does she even expect me?”

“Oh, heavens no. Surprise is half the battle. This time I’ll beat her to the punch. Hope she hasn’t got her face on yet, and woke up with a hideous hangover.” He slapped the wheel, laughing. “Oh, boy! Nikki, you’re going to be a match for her. Baby, with you in my corner, the victory is mine.”

“You sound silly. I don’t get into pointless fights, or anyway I don’t go into them thinking they’re pointless. In this case, since I’m positive I don’t want to marry you …”

“Don’t decide yet!” he said with abrupt seriousness.

“Do you really clash with your mother very much?”

“Openly? No. Things usually stay at a simmer; we attempt to tolerate each other. She likes to pose as the concerned Mama, and that gives her an excuse to give me hell. If I paid any attention it would drive me crazy. I wait for her to get old and weak so I can kick her around, but she’s still full of steam, and dangerous. My father chickened out after only five years of her.

“One thing I’ll say for her, she supplied me with more uncles than any boy on the continent. Why, even today that woman has two old goats on the string. Always two at a time, for emotional balance; one she can dominate, the other who dominates her … the one she looks up to with respect,” he said with a brief wry sideglance at Nikki, “a character unlike me, of course.

“Well, that one she gets advice and such from. And in maternal moods the advice she asks is what the hell shall we do with the worthless young bum. Not that I was quite worthless, having come into a couple of million from a grandfather when I was twenty-one, but it irritated her to see me having so much fun. Having no character of her own, she admired character profoundly and thought it would look cute on me.

“From her I could take a certain amount of advice, because underneath it all she’s my favorite mother. But when she would start her mouth going with somebody else’s words—one of these ‘uncles’ that she respected and listened to—well, damn it to hell, I’d set my whole character to the job of being characterless.”

“Watch your driving! I don’t see why you don’t get away from her.”

“I should. I should let her flounder. It frazzles her nerves to think of me in a bachelor apartment. She just knows I’ll drink too much and never sleep, and pretty soon the job will get in the way of my life, and I’ll be unanchored and this and that. It’s not that she’s so possessive. She wants me to get married, and actually, jokes aside, she’d welcome you as my wife.” He broke off and sighed. “I know that’s out, though. No use kidding about it. I accept the fact you aren’t interested in that.”

“Don’t sound so end-of-the-world, silly.”

“It had to be this way. You saw through that job of mine. I hang onto it like a kid to Big Daddy. It’s that bigness about IGC that I find emotionally satisfying, which in a man is contemptible. You know I never realized why I was so sold on anything as basically dreary as business. Here I was skipping along imagining I was into something good and right and worthwhile. I had myself really hypnotized. Then you came along and snapped your fingers and woke me up. So I say to hell with being a puppet, a splinter man; to hell with IGC!”

“No, you don’t,” she cried. “You’re not going to blame me for this. Listen, Archer, don’t be silly. I didn’t understand. You mustn’t let what I said influence you.”

“I was sick of it anyway. It has no meaning.”

“It had. For you it had. You mustn’t be that easily swayed. I can’t bear feeling I’ve knocked you off balance this way about a thing you considered your life’s work.”

“Well, you did. You couldn’t have done it to a first-rate man, granted. He’d have more confidence and stability and whatever it takes.”

“You’re being unjust to yourself. I don’t know why I’m getting so upset, anyway. I’m tired. Take me home, please, and you’d better go home and have a rest or a drink, or a talk with your mother, or something. Anyway, you’re bluffing. You have no intention of doing anything whatsoever about your situation.”

“You’ll see!”

Neither said another word for the rest of the drive.

He negotiated the climbing hill road and turned, slowing almost to a stop, into the Thelton driveway. Nikki unlatched the door and got out. She watched him coldly as he let the car coast back, then accelerate down the hill out of view.

Jim spotted her walking and came out of the house toward her. “Didn’t he bring you home?” Jim said angrily.

She nodded. “To the bottom of the drive.”

“And made you walk up?”

“It was my doing,” she cut in.

She went in the house and up to her room to sleep. It was almost dark when she awoke.

She was chilly and had to force herself to shower; she felt unalive and to counteract that feeling put on a bright blue jumper with gauzily pretty long-sleeved yellow blouse. Going downstairs, she felt dull gray inside and wanted coffee or a sudden hot jolt of whiskey in her belly to stab her senses alive. Then the scene in the front room banished the dullness in her, alerting her like a red flag.