Skyscraper (30 page)

The apartment was just as you'd think it might be; more long-legged dolls and frilly cushions, decorator's drapes and upholstery, jade ash trays and quartz buttons, bell ropes, lots of furniture, the best radio money could buy. Jennie, in lace and chiffon, trailed about the place dissatisfied.

“Has Tom said anything about Slim?” she asked.

“Not very much,” Lynn answered carefully. “I—I haven't been seeing much of Tom lately.”

Jennie nodded. “So I gathered from what Slim said.” She pointed to a little package, clumsily tied in red paper. “There's what Slim sent me,” she told Lynn. “Give it a glance.”

A pair of gloves—“wrong size,” Jennie explained, some handkerchiefs, a funny little pin fashioned in the shape of a perky Scottie, and a Christmas card. “Sorta sweet,” said Jennie, low.

Bit, in a moment, as Lynn laid the things back in their box, “Drink?” asked Jennie, moving toward the cellarette.

“Heavens, no—at his hour of the morning. Jennie, you're not going to—”

“Believe it or not, I am! Look here, Lynn, I'm bored to blazes. I even look forward to going to work,” Jennie admitted.

The long blue eyes were tired. The wheaten hair, pressed into the deep waves of her new haircut, had lost some of its luster. She was thinner than ever, a little haggard.

“You and Tom been fighting again?” she inquired.

Lynn stiffened. “No—it's over and done with, that's all.”

“Damned shame.” Jennie stared at her, at the angry hurt gray eyes, the set of the pointed chin. “Well, it's not my business,” she conceded. “Sometimes I think it's a mistake for two saps to love each other a lot. I mean so that nothing else matters. What do you get out of it? Precious little pleasure for the rest of the trouble you have to wade through.” Her eyes were moody.

Lynn asked quickly, trying to divert her from the subject of Tom and herself, “Is it Slim, Jennie?'

“Yeah. Damn him anyway,” Jennie said, without anger, “with his long legs and his eyes like a hungry kid's and his coat sleeves that are always a couple of inches too short. I could laugh him off—before. When I was on my own. Free. That's funny, isn't it? But now, Hanging around this dump alone, nights—lonely, it's different. I've got to watch my step,” she said, more to herself than to Lynn.

Lynn left her presently. Standing at the door, Jennie said, discontented, “Wish you wouldn't go. I'll stick around here, go out to dinner, come home and wait for a long-distance call—not that it matters. Lynn, what do you do with yourself now that Tom—”

Lynn said, “I've my work up at Columbia. I see Sarah a lot. Lately David Dwight has been taking me out. We've been to a funny little place out of town, the Cherry Blossom—”

“Yeah, I know it. I saw you there once.”

“You did?” Lynn stared. “Were you out of your mind? Why didn't you come over and speak to us?”

Fat chance! Lynn you
are
a kid! “I was with—oh, a gang. We had a private room. Do you think I wanted to let you know I was there so you could help carry me out?”

“Jennie—”

“Run along and eat your turkey,” said Jennie, and gave her a gentle push, “and don't fret about me. I'm okay—everything,” she said, “is Jake. That's pretty good, isn't it? That hands me a laugh!”

She was still laughing, lonely, forlon laughter, as Lynn closed the door.

Christmas with Sarah was a rather falsely merry affair; a small tree and presents, and a heavy dinner; not much conversation. There was an empty place at the table. Lynn saw it; Sarah saw it.

Afterward, she was glad to escape. Dwight sent the car for her and it took her directly to the penthouse. She went upstairs, wondering a little; not at the unconventionality of her visit,
things that didn't matter any more, but at what he had in store for her. She had been like a child always, greedy for a surprise, for a secret, and she was wondering if she could recapture that. She thought not. Christmas Day. Tom had not even phoned. He might have phoned. But flowers had come, without a card. Could it be possible—?

Where was he?

He was in Child's with Hank, gnawing a turkey bone.

Later he would be back at the studio, working savagely to insure the success of a new, important, sponsored program.

Dwight asked, “Did my flowers come?”

She thanked him, sick with disappointment. She might have known.

“Are you warmly dressed?”

“You told me to be.”

He looked her over from head to foot. “Go upstairs,” he said secretly, “and look in the bedroom. But not now; look at your stockings first.”

It was of wool, it dangled from the fireplace. She took it down and opened it, under his amused and eager eyes. Perfume, lipstick—a gold one—soap, handkerchiefs—

“How—dear!” she said sincerely. But her eyes were absent. If he had planned to send her flowers why hadn't he included his card? She'd rather have known at once than hoped—and prayed.

“We're going riding,” he said, “somewhere where there's snow. Down, in fact, on the Island.”

“Oh, but—”

“Don't talk,” he ordered sternly. “Go upstairs and see what Santa brought you.”

She ran up the stairs under the friendly eyes of the man Wilkins. In the bedroom she found a suitcase, fitted, stamped with her initials; and in the suitcase a winter sports outfit, stockings, sweater, scard, beret, coat, amusing trousers, gloves.

“Oh—” her voice floated down to him.

Wilkins put his head around the door. “Carry it for you, miss?”

She went downstairs laughing.

“Commander Byrd,” she hailed him, and smiled, “shall I put them on now?”

“It's not Antarctic, but it's something of an expedition,” he warned her. “No, wait till we get there.”

Presently, the suitcase and one of his own were put in the car. They drove out of town swiftly, through the twilight. It was a white Christmas. The trees shone lighted from the windows of apartments and houses and from the yards of churches. “It's beautiful,” said Lynn, listening to the chimes.

They had left the town behind them. There was little traffic and Dwight drove fast and securely. Beyond Great Neck he turned off, and into a long snow-rutted lane.

Trees laden with snow, frosty, gleaming, bordered it on either side. A turn, and there was a house waiting, a house from an old-fashioned Christmas card. Every window was lighted, they wore wreaths of holly, there was holly at the door, and two lighted trees outside. The house stood high, on a hill. And as Lynn got out of the car she heard voices, laughter.

But where—? Who—?

“Friends of mine, you'll like them. Lulu and Mike Hayward.”

She did like them. Their hostess, a fat woman, extraordinarily pretty, with the skin of a child, the wide blue eyes of a child—she'd once been the prettiest showgirl in town. The host, her husband, lean, bronzed, smoking a foul pipe. Other people, all in sports clothes. The Carters.

Yule log, punch, a bedroom to change in, the toboggan on the hill, the first wild essay with skis, her feet helplessly slipping from under her, Dwight, laughing, picking her out of a snow bank. And at midnight, supper, dancing—

At nearly three o'clock in the morning they turned out of Hayward's drive and spun through the deadly quiet of the waning night. It was light when he left her at her own door.

“Tired?”

“No”

“But you'll have to work in the morning—this morning.”

“I'll manage.”

“Happy Christmas?” he asked her.

“Awfully—”

She smiled up at him. He took the sprig of mistletoe from his buttonhole and held it over her heard; he kissed her, under the startled eyes of a lone and cold policeman. Not with the light kiss—that other kiss. She drew back, afraid. Not repulsed, but afraid. Not afraid of him but of her loneliness, of her youth, her warm blood, her awakened senses, her longing for creature comfort, for human warmth.

“My
Christmas present,” he said, and drove away.

Trembling a little, she went into the house.

Sleep was out of the question. She thought, standing under a shower cold enough to make her tingle all over, I ought not to see him again—Jennie was right—about its being dangerous—but why? she argued. I like him a lot, I—admire him—but I don't
care
for him—really care—it's Tom, always Tom—only—

Only what? Only that she was unhappy, that she was lonely, that she had become accustomed to the speech and the caress of love.

I won't see him again
, she decided.

But she did.

ONE MORNING IN January the telephone on her desk shrilled loudly. She answered, astonished to hear Jennie's voice, broken, roughened with some unknown anxiety, “Lynn, can you come up here and see me—quick? It's—awfully important.”

Lynn looked at her watch. It was after eleven. “I'll take my lunch hour early,” she said. “What's wrong, Jennie, are you ill?”

“No—oh,
step
on it!” cried Jennie, the self-reliant.

Lynn went into Sarah's office.

“If I'm late getting back from lunch, will it be all right?” she asked. “It's Jennie; she's in trouble of some sort.”

“That's to be expected,” Sarah told her tartly; then, softening: “Of course, it's all right, Lynn. You don't often ask official favors.”

She smiled with a little effort. She had not seen much of Lynn lately. Even without proof it was impossible not to conjecture
with whom the girl had been spending much of her free time.

She thought: I must speak to her, warn her.

But could she?

She was torn between her loyalty to Lynn and her illogical loyalty to David Dwight. She was frightened. She was miserable. And she was ageing under it.

AN OVERSOPHISTICATED MAID admitted Lynn to Jennie's apartment. Jennie was walking around the living-room half-dressed. Her face was gray-white, her eyes had dark circles beneath them, as black as bruises. For the first time Lynn saw Jennie's face bare of make-up, the lips pale and dry. Somehow that startled her. Jennie, when they had shared a home together, had never permitted her face to “go naked.” Carefully removing her make-up at night she would apply it again, if more lightly. “Because,” she had explained, “there might be a fire, or something. Or a handsome burglar. Or I might get up in the night and see myself in a mirror and drop dead of fright if I weren't dolled!”

“What's happened?” asked Lynn, as Jennie stared at her as if she did not know her.

At the sound of her voice Jennie pulled herself together.

“Plenty,” she replied briefly. Lynn cast a look at the vanishing back of the maid. “It doesn't matter,” Jennie told her wanly. “She'll listen at the door anyway. She knows enough as it is.”

“Tell me—heavens, Jennie, you look awful!”

“I feel worse. It's Slim. Oh, I was a fool. It was easy, when—when I didn't know as much as I do now But since—since Jake, it was different somehow. I was bored, too, fed up, couldn't call my soul my own. Lonely. And Slim, he hung around. Last night he came here. Not the first time—the third. Don't look at me like that, for God's sake, Lynn! I can't help it, I couldn't help it! Anyway, Jake showed up. I don't know if he just took it into his head to come on, or whether someone had tipped him off. Everyone knows everyone else's business here, and that girl's in his pay, I suppose. Or was. I pay her plenty more now. Well,
the night elevator man tipped
me
off. Held him down there, while I got Slim out by the freight elevator. It was—pretty bad. If it hadn't been for that night man—he's always liked me, sort of; I've paid him for doing errands for me and he had it in for Jake. Jake bawled hell out of him one night and for no good reason—”

“But,” asked Lynn helplessly, “what do you want me to do?”

“See Slim,” Jennie besought her, “tell him to keep away. I don't care about myself. I can go back to living on my salary. Tell him I'm going to Evanston. Jake said last night he wouldn't be getting to town very often; he wanted me to come and live—nearer. I said I would.”

“Jennie, don't! Let him go; live, as you say, on your salary; there'll be Slim—you'll be happy.”

“Not me. Slim's sick at himself already. I'm sick of myself too. He—he wouldn't marry me now, you know. He's funny that way—old-fashioned,” Jennie told her with a futile attempt at wisecracking, and laughed. Lynn shivered.

“Lynn, see him, please see him.Tell him I'm going away, tell him I never want to see him again.”

“Jennie, don't you care for him at all?”

Jennie turned, in her ceaseless pacing, stopped and looked at her friend. Her eyes were a little mad.

“Lynn, get wise to yourself. Of course I care. If I didn't, I'd stay on and two-time payroll. Or give him the air and become a working girl again—with a sweetie. But it can't be, don't you see that? I'd just—drag him down. I've done it already. God, what a fool I've been!” she said bitterly.