You're All Alone (illustrated) (2 page)

Still she didn’t look at him.

“I suppose you did fill out a folder and that you were sent to me?”

Then he saw that she was trembling and once again the life seemed to drain out of everything—except her. It was as if the whole office—Chicago—the world—had become mere background for a chalk-faced girl in a sloppy cardigan, arms huddled tight around her, hands gripping her thin elbows, staring at him horrorstruck.

For some incredible reason, she seemed to be frightened of
him.

She shrank down in the chair, her white-circled eyes fixed on his. As they followed her movements, another shudder went through her. The tip of her tongue licked her upper lip. Then she said in a small, terrified voice, “All right, you’ve got me. But don’t draw it out. Don’t play with me. Get it over with.”

Carr checked the impulse to grimace incredulously. He chuckled and said, “I know how you feel. Coming into a big employment office does seem an awful plunge. But we won’t chain you to a rivet gun,” he went on, with a wild attempt at humor, “or sell you to the white slavers. It’s still a free country. You can do as you please.” She did not react. He looked away uneasily. The big blonde was still watching from the doorway, her manner implying that she owned the place. Her eyes looked whiter than they should be and they didn’t seem quite to focus.

He looked back at the frightened girl. Her hands still gripped her elbows, but she was leaning forward now and studying his face, as if everything in the world depended on what she saw there.

“You’re not one of them?” she asked.

He frowned puzzledly. “Them? Who?”

“You’re not?” she repeated, still watching his eyes.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Don’t you know what you are?” she asked with sudden fierceness. “Don’t you know whether you’re one of them or not?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he assured her, “and I haven’t the faintest idea of whom you mean by ‘them.’”

Slowly her hands loosened their hold on her elbows and trailed into her lap. “No,” she said, “I guess you’re not. You haven’t their filthy look.”

“You’d better explain things from the beginning,” Carr told her.

“Please, not now,” she begged. “Who’s that woman following you?” he pressed. “Is she one of ‘them?’” The terror returned to her face. “I can’t tell you that. Please don’t ask me. And please don’t look at her. It’s terribly important that she doesn’t think I’ve seen her.”

“But how could she possibly think otherwise after the way she planked herself down beside you?”

“Please, oh please.” She was almost whimpering. “I can’t tell you why. It’s just terribly important that we act naturally, that we seem to be doing whatever we’re supposed to be doing. Can we?”

Carr studied her. She was obviously close to hysteria. “Sure,” he said. He leaned back in his chair, smiled at her, and raised his voice a trifle. “Just what sort of a job do you feel would make the best use of your abilities, Miss . . .?”

“Job? Oh yes, that’s why I’d have come here, isn’t it?”

For a moment she stared at him helplessly. Then, the words tumbling over each other, she began to talk. “Let’s see, I can play the piano. Not very well. Mostly classical. I’ve studied it a lot, though. I once wanted to be a concert pianist. And I’ve done some amateur acting. And I used to play a mediocre game of tennis—” Her grotesquely animated expression froze. “But that isn’t the sort of thing you want to know, is it?”

CARR shrugged. “Helps give me a picture. Did some amateur acting myself once, in college.” He kept his voice casual. “Have you had any regular jobs?”

“Once I worked for a little while is an architect’s office.”

“Did you learn to read blueprints?” he asked.

“Blueprints?” The girl shivered. “Not much, I’m afraid. I hate patterns. Patterns are traps. If you live according to a pattern, other people know how to get control of you.” She leaned forward confidingly, her fingers touching the edge of the desk. “Oh, and I’m a good judge of people. I have to be. I suppose you have to be too.” She looked at him strangely. “Don’t you really know what you are?” she asked softly. “Haven’t you found out yet? Why, you must be almost forty. Surely in that time . . . Oh, you must know.”

“I still haven’t the ghost of an idea what you’re talking about,” Carr said. “What am I?”

The girl hesitated.

“Tell me,” he said.

She shook her head. “If you honestly don’t know, I don’t think I should tell you. As long as you don’t know, you’re relatively safe.”

“From what? Please stop being mysterious,” Carr said. “Just what is it about me that’s so important?”

“But if I don’t tell you,” she went on, disregarding his question, “then I’m letting you run a blind risk. Not a big one, but very horrible. And with them so close and perhaps suspecting . . . Oh, it’s hard to decide.”

A clerk dropped an application folder in the wire basket on Carr’s desk. He looked at it. It wasn’t for a girl at all. It started, “Jimmie Kozacs. Male. Age 43.”

He realized that the frightened girl was studying his face again.

“Maybe you weren’t what I think you are, until today,” she was saying, more to herself than him. “Maybe my bursting in here was what did it. Maybe I was the one who awakened you.” She clenched her hands, torturing the palms with the long, untapering fingers. “To think that I would ever do that to anyone! To think that I would ever cause anyone the agony that
he
caused me!”

The bleak misery in her voice caught at Carr. “What
is
the matter?” He pleaded. “Now we’ve got a ‘he’ as well as a ‘they.’ And what is this business about ‘awakening?’ Please tell me everything.”

The girl looked shocked. “Now?” Her glance half-circled the room, strayed toward the glass wall. “No, not here. I can’t.” Her right hand suddenly dived into the pocket of her cardigan and came out with a stubby, chewed pencil. She ripped a sheet from Carr’s scratch pad and began to scribble hurriedly.

Carr started to lean forward, but just then a big area of serge suit swam into view. Big Tom Elvested had ambled over from the next desk. The girl gave him an odd look, then went on scribbling. Tom ignored her.

“Say, Carr,” he boomed amiably, “remember the girl Midge and I wanted you to go on a double date with? I’ve told you about her—Jane Gregg. Well, she’s going to be dropping in here a little later and I want you to meet her. Midge had an idea the four of us might be able to go out together tonight.”

“Sorry, I’ve got a date,” Carr told him sharply. It annoyed Carr that Tom should discuss private matters so loudly in front of an applicant.

“Okay, okay,” Tom retorted a bit huffily. “I’m not asking you to do social service work. This girl’s darn good-looking.”

“That’s swell,” Carr told him.

TOM LOOKED at him skeptically.

“Anyway,” he warned, “I’ll be bringing her over when she comes in.” And he faded back toward his desk. As he did so, the frightened girl shot him an even odder look, but her pencil kept on scribbling. The scratch of it seemed to Carr the only real sound in the whole office. He glanced guardedly down the aisle. The big blonde with the queer eyes was still at the door, but she had moved ungraciously aside to make way for a dumpy man in blue jeans, who was looking around uncertainly.

The dumpy man veered toward one of the typists. Her head bobbed up and she said something to him. He gave her an “I gotcha, pal” nod and headed for Carr’s desk.

The frightened girl noticed him coming, shoved aside paper and pencil in a flurry of haste, and stood up.

“Sit down,” Carr said. “That fellow can wait. Incidently, do you know Tom Elvested?”

She disregarded the question and quickly moved into the aisle.

Carr followed her. “I really want to talk with you,” he said.

“No,” she breathed, edging away from him.

“But we haven’t got anywhere yet,” he objected.

Suddenly she smiled like a toothpaste ad. “Thank you for being so helpful,” she said in a loud voice. “I’ll think over what you’ve told me, though I don’t think the job is one which would appeal to me.” She poked out her hand. Automatically Carr took it. It was icy.

“Don’t follow me,” she whispered. “And if you care the least bit for me or my safety, don’t do anything, whatever happens.”

“But I don’t even know your name . . .” His voice trailed off. She was striding rapidly down the aisle. The big blonde was standing squarely in her path. The girl did not swerve an inch. Then, just as they were about to collide, the big blonde lifted her hand and gave the girl a stinging slap across the cheek.

Carr started, winced, took a forward step, froze.

The big blonde stepped aside, smiling sardonically.

The girl rocked, wavered for a step or two, then walked on without turning her head.

No one said anything, no one did anything, no one even looked up, at least not obviously, though everyone in the office must have heard the slap if they hadn’t seen it. But with the universal middle-class reluctance, Carr thought, to recognize that nasty things happened in the world, they pretended not to notice.

The big blonde flicked into place a shellacked curl, glancing around her as if at so much dirt. Leisurely she turned and stalked out.

The most terrible secret in the world? Here’s a hint. Think about the people closest to you. What do you know about what’s really going on inside their heads? Nothing, brother, nothing at all . . .

CARR walked back to his desk.

His face felt hot, his mind turbulent, the office sinister. The dumpy man in blue jeans had already taken the girl’s place, but Carr ignored him. He didn’t sit down. The scrap of paper on which the girl had scribbled caught his eye. He picked it up.

Watch out for the wall-eyed blonde, the young man without a hand, and the affable-seeming older man. But the small dark man with glasses may be your friend.

Carr frowned grotesquely.
“. . .
walleyed blonde . . .”—that must be the woman who had watched. But as for the other three—“. . . small dark man with glasses may be your friend . . .”—why, it sounded like a charade.

“Carr, if you can spare a moment . . .” Carr recognized Tom Elvested’s voice but for the moment he ignored it. He started to turn over the paper to see if the frightened girl had scribbled anything on the other side, when—

“. . . I would like to introduce Jane Gregg,” Tom finished.

Carr looked around at Tom—and forgot everything else.

Big Tom Elvested was smiling fatuously. “Jane,” he said, “this is Carr Mackay. Carr, this is Jane.” And he moved his hand in the gesture of one who gives a friendly squeeze to the elbow of the person standing beside him.

Only there was no person standing beside him.

Where Tom’s gesture had indicated Jane Gregg should be standing, there was only empty air.

Tom’s smiling face went from empty air to Carr and back again. He said, “I’ve been wanting to get you two together for a long time.”

Carr almost laughed, there was something so droll about the realism of Tom’s actions. He remembered the pantomimes in the acting class at college, when you pretended to eat a dinner or drive an automobile, without any props, just going through the motions. In that class Tom Elvested would have rated an A-plus.

Tom nodded his head and coyly asked the empty air, “And does he seem as interesting, now that you’ve actually met him?”

Suddenly Carr didn’t want to laugh at all. If there was anything big Tom Elvested ordinarily wasn’t, it was an actor.

“She’s a cute little trick, isn’t she, Carr?” Tom continued, giving the air another playful pat.

Carr moved forward, incidently running a hand through the air, which was quite as empty as it looked. “Cut the kidding, Tom,” he said.

Tom merely rocked on his heels, like an elephant being silly. Once again his hand moved out, this time to flick the air at a point a foot higher. “And such lovely hair. I always go for the page boy style myself.”

“Cut it out, Tom, please,” Carr said seriously.

“Of course, maybe she’s a little young for you,” Tom babbled on.

“Cut it out!” Carr snapped. His face was hardly a foot from Tom’s, but Tom didn’t seem to see him at all. Instead he kept looking through Carr toward where Carr had been standing before. And he kept on playfully patting the air.

“Oh yes,” he assured the air with a smirk, “Carr’s quite a wolf. That’s the reason he had those few gray hairs. They’re a wolf insignia. You’ll have to watch your step with him.”

“Cut it out!” Carr repeated angrily and grabbed Tom firmly by the shoulders.

What happened made Carr wish he hadn’t. Tom Elvested’s face grew strained and red, like an enraged baby’s. An intense throbbing was transmitted to Carr’s hands. And from Tom’s lips came a mounting, meaningless mutter, like a sound tape running backwards.

CARR JERKED away. He felt craven and weak, as helpless as a child. He edged off until there were three desks between himself and Tom, and he was standing behind Ernie Acosta, who was busy with a client.

He could hardly bring his voice to a whisper.