The Lottery and Other Stories (19 page)

The mail on her desk was bad. A bill from her dentist, a letter from a client in Oregon, a couple of ads, a letter from her father, and the bulky envelope that was certainly a manuscript. She threw out the ads and the dentist’s bill, which was marked “Please remit,” set the manuscript and the other letter aside, and opened the letter from her father.

It was in his own peculiar style, beginning, “Dearest Daughter,” and ending, “Yr. Afft. Father,” and told her that the feed store was doing badly, that her sister in California was pregnant again, that old Mrs. Gill had asked after her the other day, and that he found himself very much alone since her mother’s death. And he hoped she was well. She threw the letter into the wastebasket on top of the dentist’s bill.

The letter from the client in Oregon wanted to know what had happened to a manuscript sent in three months before; the large bulky envelope contained a manuscript written in longhand, from a young man in Allentown who wanted it sold immediately and their fee taken out of the editor’s check. She glanced through the manuscript carelessly, turning over the pages and reading a few words on each; halfway through she stopped and read a whole page, and then turned back a little and read more. With her eyes still on the manuscript, she leaned over and reached into the bottom drawer of her desk, stirring papers around until she found a small, ten-cent notebook, partly filled with notes. She opened the notebook to a blank page, copied out a paragraph from the manuscript, thinking, I can switch that around and make it a woman instead of a man; and she made another note, “make W., use any name but Helen,” which was the name of the woman in the story. Then she put the notebook away and set the manuscript to one side of her desk in order to swing up the panel of the desk that brought the typewriter upright. She took out a sheet of notepaper labeled “ROBERT SHAX, Literary Agents, Elizabeth Style, Fiction Department,” and put it into the typewriter; she was just typing the young man’s name and the address: General Delivery, Allentown, when she heard the outer door open and close.

“Hello,” she called, without looking up.

“Good morning.”

She looked up then; it was such a high, girlish voice. The girl who had come in was big and blonde, and walked across the little reception room as though she were prepared to be impressed no matter what happened to her there.

“Did you want to see me?” Elizabeth asked, her hands still resting on the typewriter keys. If God should have sent me a client, she thought, it won’t hurt to look literary.

“I wanted Mr. Shax,” the girl said. She waited in the doorway of Elizabeth’s office.

“He was called out on very pressing business,” Elizabeth said. “Did you have an appointment?”

The girl hesitated, as though doubting Elizabeth’s authority. “Not exactly,” she said finally. “I’m supposed to be working here, I guess.”

Seemed like there was something he wanted to tell me, Elizabeth thought, that coward. “I see,” she said. “Come in and sit down.”

The girl came in shyly, although with no apparent timidity. She figured it was his business to tell me, not hers, Elizabeth thought. “Did Mr. Shax tell you to come to work here?”

“Well,” the girl said, deciding it was all right to trust Elizabeth, “on Monday about five o’clock I was asking for a job in all the offices in this building and I came here and Mr. Shax showed me around the office and he said he thought I could do the work all right.” She thought back over what she had said. “You weren’t here,” she added.

“I couldn’t have been,” Elizabeth agreed. He’s known since Monday and I find out, she thought, what is this, Wednesday? I find out on Wednesday when she shows up for work. “I didn’t ask your name.”

“Daphne Hill,” the girl said meekly.

Elizabeth wrote “Daphne Hill” down on her memorandum and looked at it, partly to seem as if she was coming to an important decision and partly to see what “Daphne Hill” looked like written down.

“Mr. Shax said,” the girl began, and stopped. Her voice was high and when she was anxious she opened her small brown eyes wide and blinked. Except for her hair, which was a pale blonde and curled all over the top of her head, she was clumsy and awkward, all dressed up for her first day at work.

“What did Mr. Shax say?” Elizabeth asked when the girl seemed to have subsided permanently.

“He said he wasn’t satisfied with the girl he had now and I was to learn her job and get to do it and I was to come today because he was going to tell her yesterday that I was coming.”

“Fine,” Elizabeth said. “Can you type, do you suppose?”

“I guess so,” the girl said.

Elizabeth looked at the letter in the typewriter on her desk and then said, “Well, you go on outside and sit at the desk out there and if the phone rings you answer it. Read or something.”

“Yes, Miss Style,” the girl said.

“And please close my office door,” Elizabeth said. She watched the girl go out and close the door carefully. The things she had wanted to say to the girl were waiting to be said: maybe she could rephrase some of them for Robbie at lunch.

What does this mean, she thought suddenly in panic, Miss Wilson has been here almost as long as I have. Is he trying in his own heavy-handed fashion to beautify the office? He might better buy a bookcase; who is going to teach this incredible girl to answer the phone and write letters, even as well as Miss Wilson? Me, she thought at last. I’m going to have to drag Robbie out of this last beautiful impulsive gesture like always; the things I do for a miserable little office and a chance to make money. Anyway, maybe Daphne will help me paint the walls after five some day; maybe the one thing Daphne knows how to do is paint.

She turned back to the letter in the typewriter. An encouraging letter to a new client; it fell into a simple formula in her mind and she wrote it without hesitating, typing clumsily and amateurishly, but quickly. “Dear Mr. Burton,” she wrote. “We have read your story with a good deal of interest. Your plot is well thought out, and we believe that the character of—” She stopped for a minute and turned back to the manuscript, opening it at random—“Lady Montague, in particular, is of more than usual merit. Naturally, in order to appeal to the better-paying markets, the story needs touching up by a skilled professional editor, a decisive selling service we are able to offer our clients. Our rates—”

“Miss Style?”

In spite of the beaverboard partitions, Elizabeth said, “If you want to talk to me, Miss Hill, come in.”

After a minute Miss Hill opened the door and came in. Elizabeth could see her pocketbook on the desk outside, the lipstick and compact sitting next to it. “When does Mr. Shax get back?”

“Probably not till this afternoon. He went out on important business with a client,” Elizabeth said. “Why, did anyone call?”

“No, I just wondered,” Miss Hill said. She closed the door and went heavily back to her desk. Elizabeth looked again at the letter in the typewriter and then turned her chair around to put her still-wet feet on the radiator under the window. After a minute she opened the bottom drawer of her desk again and this time took out a pocket reprint of a mystery story. With her feet on the radiator she settled down to read.

Because it was raining, and because she was depressed and out of sorts, and because Robbie had not come by quarter to one, Elizabeth treated herself to a Martini while she was waiting, sitting uncomfortably on a narrow chair in the restaurant, watching other unimpressive people go in and out. The restaurant was crowded, the floors wet from the feet coming in from the rain, and it was dark and dismal. Elizabeth and Robbie had come here for lunch two or three times a week, ever since they had opened the office in the building near-by. The first day they had come had been in summer, and Elizabeth, in a sheer black dress—she remembered it still; she would be too thin for it now—and a small white hat and white gloves, had been excited and happy over the great new career opening out for her. She and Robbie had held hands across the table and talked enthusiastically: they were only going to stay in the old building for a year, or two at the most, and then they would have enough money to move uptown; the good clients who would come to the new Robert Shax Agency would be honest reputable writers, with large best-selling manuscripts; editors would go to lunch with them at sleek uptown restaurants, a drink before lunch would not be an extraordinary thing. The first order of stationery saying “ROBERT SHAX, Literary Agents, Elizabeth Style, Fiction Department,” had not been delivered; they planned the letterhead at lunch that day.

Elizabeth thought about ordering another Martini and then she saw Robbie coming impatiently through the people in the aisles. He saw her across the room and waved at her, aware of people watching him, an executive late for a luncheon appointment, even in a dingy restaurant.

When he got to the table, his back to the room, his face was tired and his voice was quiet. “Finally made it,” he said. He looked surprised at the empty Martini glass. “I haven’t even had breakfast yet,” he said.

“Did you have a bad time with the minister?”

“Terrible,” he said. “He wants a book of his poems published this year.”

“What did you tell him?” Elizabeth tried not to let her voice sound strained. Time enough for that later, she thought, when he feels like answering me.

“I don’t know,” Robbie said. “How the hell do I know what I told the old fool?” He sat down heavily. “Something about we’d do our best.”

That means he’s really made a mess of it, Elizabeth thought. If he did well he’d tell me in detail. She was suddenly so tired that she let her shoulders droop and sat stupidly staring off at the people coming in and out of the door. What am I going to say to him, she thought, what words will Robbie understand best?

“What are you looking so glum about?” Robbie asked suddenly. “No one made you go way the hell uptown without breakfast.”

“I had a tough morning anyway,” Elizabeth said. Robbie looked up, waiting. “I had a new employee to break in.”

Robbie still waited, his face a little flushed, squinting at her; he was waiting to see what she was going to say before he apologized, or lost his temper, or tried to pass the whole thing off as a fine joke.

Elizabeth watched him: this is Robbie, she was thinking, I know what he’s going to do and what he’s going to say and what tie he’s going to wear every day in the week, and for eleven years I have known these things and for eleven years I have been wondering how to say things to make him understand; and eleven years ago we sat here and held hands and he said we were going to be successful. “I was thinking of the day we had lunch here when we first started out together,” she said quietly, and Robbie looked mystified. “The day we started out together,” she repeated more distinctly. “Do you remember Jim Harris?” Robbie nodded, his mouth a little open. “We were going to make a lot of money because Jim was going to bring all his friends to us and then you had a fight with Jim and we haven’t seen him since and none of his friends came to us and now we’ve got your friend the minister for a client and a beautiful picture of Jim on your office wall. Signed,” she said. “Signed, with ‘gratitude,’ and if he was making enough money we’d be around trying to borrow from him even now.”

“Elizabeth,” Robbie said. He was confused between trying to look hurt and trying to see if anyone heard what she was saying.

“Even the boy in my corner drugstore.” Elizabeth looked at him for a minute. “Daphne Hill,” she said. “My God.”

“I see,” Robbie said, with a significant smile. “Daphne Hill.” He turned when he saw the waitress coming. “Miss,” he said loudly, and to Elizabeth, “I think you ought to have another drink. Cheer you up a little.” When the waitress looked at him he said “Two Martinis,” and turned back to Elizabeth, putting on the smile again. “I’m going to drink my breakfast,” he said, and then he reached over and touched Elizabeth’s hand. “Listen,” he said, “Liz, if that’s all that’s bothering you. I was a dope, I thought you’d figured I’d done something wrong about the minister. Listen, Daphne’s all right. I just thought we needed someone around who’d brighten the place up a little.”

“You could have painted the wall,” Elizabeth said tonelessly. When Robbie stared she said, “Nothing,” and he went on, leaning forward seriously.

“Look,” he said, “if you don’t like this Daphne out she goes. There’s no question about it, after all. We’re in business together.” He looked off into space and smiled reminiscently. “I remember those days, all right. We were going to do wonders.” He lowered his voice and looked lovingly at Elizabeth. “I think we still can,” he said.

Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself. “You’ll have to go down the stairs more quietly,” she said. “My janitor’s wife thought you were the man who leaves skis out in the hall. She nearly broke a leg.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Robbie said. “Elizabeth, it really hurts me to see you let someone like Daphne Hill upset you.”

“Of course it does,” Elizabeth said. Robbie suddenly impressed her as funny. If only I could keep on feeling like this, she thought, even while she was laughing at him. “Here comes your breakfast for you to drink,” she said.

“Miss,” Robbie said to the waitress. “We’d like to order our lunch, please.”

He handed the menu ceremoniously to Elizabeth and said to the waitress, “Chicken croquettes and French fried potatoes.” Elizabeth said, “The same, please,” and handed the menu back. When the waitress had gone Robbie picked up one of the Martinis and handed it to Elizabeth. “You need this, old girl,” he said. He picked up the other and looked at her; then he lowered his voice to the same low affectionate tone, and said, “Here’s to you, and our future success.”

Elizabeth smiled at him sweetly and tasted her drink. She could see Robbie debating whether to toss his off all at once or to sip it slowly as though he didn’t need it.

“If you drink it too fast you’ll be sick, dear,” she said. “Without your breakfast.”

He tasted it delicately and then set it down. “Now let’s talk seriously about Daphne,” he said.

“I thought she was leaving,” Elizabeth said.