A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Blonde Beauty Slain

The delivery truck drove up and parked alongside the newsstand at exactly 9:29 P.M. This was very good time, since its contents were what was loosely called the “Nine O’Clock Edition.” This in itself was wholly inaccurate since the edition itself bore tomorrow’s dateline. To simplify, it was the next day’s paper going on sale the day before. Tomorrow’s paper in turn would really be the day after’s, with a new headline and make-up. But no one was the slightest bit confused — least of all, the reading public.

The newsstand was out at the curb, but it faced inward, toward the subway entrance. This was highly advantageous and Mrs. Maloney, the lessee, had to pay considerable for the concession. However, she made considerable, so the arrangement was to no one’s disadvantage. Mrs. Maloney was a woman of remarkable hardihood and, considering her occupation, surprising years. She habitually wore a coat-sweater in the colder seasons, and drank hot coffee from a container, but never stayed away from her stand. She must by all appearances have already been at the very top of her sixties. She had, however, a nephew — himself far from a youth — who spelled her at mealtimes and performed the harder details for her, such as lifting the papers from the ground to counter. She was, incidentally, called simply “Mom” by all and sundry. Very few actually knew her name.

The driver called out, “Hello, Mom,” jumped down, ran around to the open back of his truck, and hoisted a towering bale of 9 o’clocks, bound around with hairy hempen cord. He staggered a few bow-legged steps, then dropped the newspapers on the sidewalk with a detonating and dust-producing thud.

He said, “Any returns?”

Mom said, “Twanny-four.”

He scowled — he didn’t like returns — but picked them up from her counter and went back to his truck with them. He had to — that was the arrangement.

This completed their dealings until tomorrow night. The truck speeded off to feed the next stand along its delivery route.

Mom’s aforementioned nephew ran out with a short sharp-edged implement and flicked the hempen binding apart. Then he hoisted the massive bale — but by segments, not all at one time — to the counter. Mom in turn disposed a portion of them underneath the counter to wait their turn, placed the rest on top of the counter for immediate sale. The topmost paper invariably — and tonight was no exception — had to be discarded as unsalable. Either the rope had cut it into tatters at the edges, or the pitch to the pavement had smudged obliterating dust into it.

Mom glanced, but with only perfunctory interest, at the undamaged one right below as she threw away the top copy. The covering leaf which folded and went around to the back, was a peculiar pale-green color. The fill, however, was white. On the pale-green outer page, in lettering the size of the top line of an optician’s chart, blazed the words: BLONDE BEAUTY SLAIN. In the space left was a photograph. The two, however, had nothing to do with one another; for in minuscule print, almost invisible compared to its titanic reference, was the footnote: story on page 2. This was called a teaser or hook, the idea being first to catch the reader on the outside and then draw him into the inside. Its psychology was, to say the least, illogical — for it could have been assumed that the reader had already purchased the paper by that time anyway.

Mom sat back, propped her elbows up, and waited. From that point on it was up to the customers.

A man came along, peeled the top newspaper off the pile, threw a dime onto the one below. Quick as a flash, Mom threw down a nickel, and the dime was gone.

The man—

The man put his key in the door and went in, and he was finally home. It always surprised him that so small a flat could produce so much noise. Not that he minded it; he would have missed it — it wouldn’t have been home without it. He wouldn’t have wanted to come in here and find it deathly quiet; it would have frightened him.

She had just spanked Terry and he was howling in the corner. The little girl, who made much less direct noise, but far more indirect, than her brother, was squatting on the floor in front of the blaring television. Even the meat balls were contributing to the din, hissing and sputtering away.

The little girl ran to him and kissed him. Then the little boy. Then he went to her and kissed her. She was harassed, he could tell. He didn’t blame her.

“What kind of day did you have?” he said. It was the wrong thing to have said — he could tell right away.

“What kind of a day did I have?” she declaimed. “You can well ask that! You can well ask!”

She interrupted the recital that he knew was about to come by turning her head sharply. “Milly, turn off that thing! You’ve had enough now! It’s giving me a headache.”

Then back to him again. “I had my usual glamorous day. What else? You didn’t expect it to be any different, did you? I know I don’t — not any more.”

He turned away from her, sought out his usual chair, and sank into it, weary, the paper he had just bought unopened on his lap. This had to be got through, he knew. More and more frequently lately, this had to be got through.

“It’s housework, housework, all day long!” she went on gratingly. She was coming and going, putting plates on the table now. “Doing the dishes, making the beds, cleaning, cleaning! And when it comes to washing clothes, I never get through. I no sooner turn around, and they’ve gotten themselves all dirty again.”

“Kid are kids,” he said leniently. “You were that way when you were a kid. I was too. You can’t keep them locked up in a glass case. It isn’t right.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have to wash their things.” The meat balls had finally appeared. They all gathered around the table, which was in the one main room. She resumed: “Then when I do get to go out, in the afternoons, where do I go? The A. and P. or Safeway, Safeway or the A. and P. That’s my outing. That’s my recreation. I have to push a cart through the street both ways, coming and going. I’m so sick of standing on check-out lines and having arguments with people in back of me, people in front of me. I’m so sick of looking cans of corned beef in the face. Today they short-changed me a dollar, a whole dollar.”

“Don’t they give out those little paper tapes with the items listed on them?”

“It wasn’t on there. It was in the change he handed back to me; I had a terrible time about it. They had to empty out the whole cash register. Then coming back, a taxi made a right turn into Amsterdam Avenue and tipped over my shopping cart, and I had to pick up everything all over the street.”

“Were you crossing against the light?” he said uneasily. “Don’t ever—”

“No, but they changed too quick for me.”

“My day wasn’t good either,” he said. But he said it uncomplainingly, as if to show her what to do with a day that wasn’t so good.

“Yes, but with a man it’s different,” she caught him up immediately. “You get out of the house at least, the first thing in the morning, and don’t come back to it again until the evening. You don’t have the kids in your hair the whole livelong day—”

She had stopped eating now, overcome by her frustration.

“Eat,” he urged gently. “Don’t let it get you.”

“I can’t help it. I should never have—”

He seemed to know what she’d been about to say. “Should never have married me?” He finished it for her ruefully.

“No, not you. I should never have married at all. I should have been like my sister. I should have listened to her—”

Here comes her sister again, he thought, but forbearingly.

“She has a maid, she has a gorgeous apartment, she dresses like a queen—”

“I know, I know,” he said patiently. “You told me many times.”

She put the kids in the bedroom. When she came back he laid down the paper and looked at her, with a sort of understanding pity, a sort of pitying understanding. “Let the dishes go,” he said. “For once. Come on, I’ll take you to the movies. Get your hat. It’ll take your mind off things.”

“The kids?” Her smile was bleak. “You forget.”

“They’re old enough now, they’ll be all right. It’s only for a couple of hours. Mrs. Silvano next door can look in on them now and then.”

“The movies,” she said. Suddenly she laughed. It wasn’t a good sound. “Oh, you’re too good to me. You’re spoiling me!”

“Don’t,” he said.

The days and weeks of pent-up discontent, the years of it, seemed to brim over all at once. She sat down heavily at the cleared table, began to pound it at spaced intervals with her clenched fist, to underscore the torrent of words that suddenly poured from her.

“She gets night clubs, I get the movies. She gets lobster Newburg, I get meat balls. She gets champagne, I get Seven Up. She has charge accounts in all the swellest stores in town, I go to Woolworth’s. She was up here a couple weeks ago — you should have seen how she was dressed. A mink. A diamond on her finger as big as — pearls around her neck.”

“You told me, you told me,” he mumbled wearily. “How often.”

“She felt sorry for me. I could tell it, she didn’t have to say so. When she left, I found a hundred dollars hiding under the coffee pot She didn’t want to hurt my pride.” And then in tragic summation: “Oh, why did I throw away my life this way!”

“Here,” he said. “Here.” He handed the paper to her.

“What’s this for, something to keep me quiet?” She stared at him as if she couldn’t make up her mind for a moment whether he was making fun of her or was serious. “Now it’s the paper I get for my evening’s recreation. A big five-cent tabloid to keep me amused.”

“Open it,” he said quietly. “Read the second page.”

Her face was suddenly one big scar of shock, and just as white as such a scar is. A great gust of breath was drawn from her.

“Beatrice Barrett,” she gasped, almost voiceless. “That’s Bessie, that’s the name she used in her career.”

For a long time there was silence in the room. He just sat there holding his head, like the failures in life who’ve tried to do their best but are failures just the same. Then after a while she moved over toward him, softly, quietly. Almost like a kiss.

She sank to her knees beside him.

“What’re you doing?” he asked her. But not abruptly, in that same quiet way he always had with her.

“Thanking God.” And he saw that her eyes were moist.

When she’d finished weeping, she raised her head and smiled at him.

“Does that offer to go to the movies still hold?”

He smiled back, nodding his head.

“Just one more thing,” she said, like a little girl coaxing.

“Anything.”

“No, not anything. Just one more thing. Just a bag of popcorn. That’ll make my evening.”

And as they went out together, arm in arm, like the sweethearts they’d been ten years before, they passed the fallen newspaper.

She looked up at him, not down at it.

“I’ll settle for this,” she said. “The two kids, and a guy like you; and if I have to spend all the rest of my life cleaning and shopping for groceries and fixing meals and washing clothes, I won’t complain — not any more.”

The delivery truck drove up and parked at exactly 9:29 P.M.

The driver said, “Any returns?”

Mom said, “Twanny-four.”

The headline said BLONDE BEAUTY SLAIN.

Mom sat back, propped her elbows up, and waited.

A woman came along walking quickly. She had red hair, and mistrustful hazel eyes that darted wary little glances to the left and right. Many people look both ways in crossing through traffic, but she was already on the sidewalk, had finished crossing. She stepped up to the stand, snapped open her handbag, and fumbled in it for change. But while she fumbled she still found time to look to the right, look to the left. She came up with a quarter, put it down, and took the uppermost paper from the pile.

Long before she had finished folding it and wedging it under her arm, Mom had two dimes waiting for her on the next one under.

The woman scooped them up, and one dime escaped her, fell to the sidewalk with a little tink.

She glanced down just once, but didn’t bend over and look for it. She snapped her handbag shut on the rest of the change.

“I see it,” Mom said, trying to be helpful. “There it is, over there.”

“Never mind, let it go,” the woman answered in a muffled voice, and walked away at the same quick gait with which she had approached, looking to the right, looking to the left.

Mom gazed after her and shrugged. If it had been a penny, maybe; but a dime? Then she darted out to pick up the coin.

The woman—

The woman, still wary-eyed, went chip-chopping up a violet-black side street studded with glaring white disks like outsize polka dots. They came at wide-spaced intervals though — the ground-pools of brightness from the street lights. She went around the outside of each, instead of cutting straight through as ordinary walkers would have. The whole block was one long row of brownstone, compartmented into furnished rooms. She either missed the one she wanted, or else knew it only too well when she saw it. She strolled past it, four or five houses past it, then turned unhesitatingly and came back. The way she turned unhesitatingly, you knew she’d seen it the first time.

She hurried up the stoop and darted in, looking to the right, looking to the left. She keyed the inner door, then ran up the inside stairs which were linoleum-matted. She stopped in front of the door she wanted, and the way she knocked you could tell it was a signal. Two taps, then one, then two again. Very quietly, almost impossible to hear — unless it was being waited for.

A bolt slid back, a chain went off, and the door opened. A man was standing there. He didn’t look at her — he looked past her to where she’d just come from. She didn’t look at him either — she too looked back to where she’d just come from. They didn’t say hello.

She squeezed past him, and he rebolted and rechained the door.

He was unkempt. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair was on end from being ground into a pillow. His shirt was off; he just had trousers and undershirt on him. He would have been handsome — apparently he once had been — if he hadn’t been so incredibly vicious-looking. Everything about him bespoke viciousness — the eyes, the mouth, down to a vicious scar like a Band-Aid, diagonally across one cheek. Some women like their men vicious.

He followed her into the depths of the room, to get as far away from the door as possible, before either said a word.

There was a bottle of whiskey on a table and two glasses, one empty, one with about an inch of tan in it. Riffed about on the floor, as though it had been feverishly searched through, was an ancestor of the tabloid she had just brought in — a much earlier edition, almost a full day earlier, and with a different headline.

“Get it?” he said. His lips scarcely moved when he spoke. They say that men learn that in jail.

“It’s in,” she said. Her own voice was shaky. And now that she was indoors under light, it could be seen how white she was, almost gloweringly white with fright. “This time it hit. It hit finally. I knew it wouldn’t stay out much longer.”

He took it from her, looked. “Hoddaya know that’s it? Je stop and look at it on the street?”

“No, I didn’t dare stop. I didn’t have to. It hit me in the eye right as I picked it off the stand.” She was beginning to shake noticeably now.

He seemed to see her do it, even though his eyes were riveted on the paper. “Cut that out,” he said.

“I can’t help it, Al,” she said. “I can’t help it.”

“Take a drink.”

“This is one time I’m too scared even for that,” she quaked. “I’m afraid what it might do to me.”

He put both glasses and the bottle on the floor, to gain enough room on the table top for his reading. He spread the paper open on it. There was a chair there, but he read standing up, just bending forward, with his hands flat on the table.

She put the back of her hand to her forehead several times, as if distracted. She came up next to him finally, tried to read from over his shoulder.

“Quit shaking the table,” he said.

She took her hand off it. “I’m getting better,” she said. She tried to light a cigarette, but it shook too much in her mouth, and the match flame couldn’t pin it down.

“I never saw you like this,” he said.

“I never was this way before, like I am now.”

“Beatrice Barrett,” he said, from the paper.

“Was that her name?” she asked him.

“I never knew her name,” he said. “We only met about an hour before.”

Her own feminine eye now selected a detail. “Twenty-eight,” she said. Her throat gave a hiccup of derision. “Wanna bet? Sure, I’m twenty-eight too.”

“Shut up,” he said, but without animosity. He wanted to concentrate on what he was reading.

“Anything about—?”

He seemed to know what, rather whom, she meant.

“Not yet. They wouldn’t put it in even if there was. They jump first.”

“Oh, God,” she whimpered.

“You’re going to fix us good,” he said. “I can’t take you down to the street, that way.”

“I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try.”

“Is it the first time it ever happened to anyone?” he wanted to know disparagingly.

“For me it is,” she said.

He swore scaldingly. Not at her, but at the contents of the newspaper. He pasted his open hand down on it with vicious impact. “Damn them! They can’t wait till they break out with it.”

“You didn’t figure they were going to hold it back, did you?”

He didn’t answer.

“What do we do?”

He turned on her then — almost spun around he turned so swiftly. “We get the hell out of here but fast, while we can still make it!” he said intensely.

As if it were a signal, the two of them broke into a flurry of fast, frenzied action. He flung himself down into a chair, began shoveling his feet into his shoes, which he had discarded while she was out. She hauled a small valise out from under the bed and flung things into it.

She moaned, at one point, “Just when I thought we could sit tight for a day or two.”

“You don’t sit tight when you’ve got a rap like this coming at you.”

“Where do we go?”

“Where doesn’t matter. Just go and keep on going.”

“We’ll never make it.”

“Sometimes when you don’t think that, is just when you do.” He pulled a hat down low over his face, shading it.

“You carry the bag,” he said. “I may need both arms free.”

She whitened even more.

“Don’t leave anything behind, now,” he cautioned. “That’s just what they’re looking for.”

He went up close to the door and pressed his head sideward to it. He held still. Then the bolt slipped, die chain dropped.

He opened it and went out first, making a furtive gesture at her, with his hand held down low, to follow.

She looked around to make sure nothing had been forgotten — nothing that might betray them.

She saw the paper, left wide open at that particular story, lying conspicuously on the table under the light. She took it by both outer edges at once and closed it.

Then she stopped a minute, her arms wide, the paper between.

He went “Sssst” warningly through the open door, to hurry her up.

She turned and ran out after him, as if she had just been reminded that he was waiting for her. But she left the valise standing in the room.

He was at the end of the stairs, waiting to go down. He gave her a black look.

“Wait minute, Al!” she whispered urgently, running all the way over to him so that she could keep her voice low. “Wait a minute. Not the same one.”

“Whaddaya mean not the same one?”

“East, not West.” She was hissing like a tea kettle with her strenuous sibilancy. “The same street — but East, not West.”

“That’s a misprint,” he whispered back to her. “Can’t take a chance — papers are full of ’em.”

“No, it isn’t. Come back in, I’ll show you.”

He followed her back. They re-closed the door, then bent over the paper again, her finger guiding him.

“There it is. East. And there it is down there again.”

“It’s a misprint,” he said. “It’s got to be. They came out with it in a hurry.”

Then suddenly he stopped and fixed his eyes.

“No,” he agreed slowly. “You’re right. It isn’t the same one. ‘The victim’s apartment was located upstairs over a fashionable restaurant, Luigi and Manfredo’s.’ And—” He turned and looked at her. They stared at each other eye to eye. “And — where I was — there was a dry cleaning establishment down below.”

She finished putting back the bolt and chain. “Pour me one too,” she said, luxuriating. “All the way to the top.”

When it was halfway down to the bottom again, she held it up and gazed at the light through it, musingly.

“You know, that’s something that could never happen in a story. Two blondes, both the same night, both the same street. Only, one east, one west. Could happen only in real life.”

The truck drove up at 9:29 P.M.

The batch hit the ground.

“Twanny-four returns,” Mom said to the driver.

Her nephew ran out from in back and sheared the twine binding. He hoisted the free bale in sections to the top of the counter. Mom stowed some of them below the shelf, left the rest on view for immediate sale. She adjusted the wick of the oil lantern, which had begun to flicker a little. She propped up her elbows. The rest was up to the buying public.

A boy and a girl came along, thin as clothespins—

The place was empty and unlighted until the boy and the girl came into it together. She looked around after he’d turned on the light.

“Hey, how’d you find this place?”

Her voice was shrill, splitting. Not naturally so, purposely so, as if she were calling to him across the width of a street.

“Dusty told me about it. He came here with Marge the other night.”

“Ho, what I know about Marge!” she chortled brassily. Every remark was pitched in a raucous key. She couldn’t seem to keep her voice moderate. Or even try to.

They were both approximately the same age, perhaps a year or two in his favor — that evanescent slot just in between the end of adolescence and the onset of maturity. Childhood’s final sunset.

They were dressed alike too. He wore a coat-shirt of vivid scarlet, hers was electric blue. His trousers were legging-tight, hers were too. Her hair was long, his was too. The only difference was that hers was bound into a mane and lifted away from the back of the head; his mane clung to the back of his neck and went down inside his collar. And they were both thin as inverted exclamation-points.

“What’s wrong with Marge?” he answered her last remark. “Think she’s a square?”

“I know she isn’t,” his companion agreed with ready gang-loyalty.

He began to dump cans of beer out of a brown-paper bag they’d brought in with them.

“You’re the square,” he told her.

“I’m here, ennI?” she squalled protestingly. “So what more do you want?”

He chopped at the top of one of the beer cans with an opener, and it overbalanced, rolled off the table, and clouted to the floor. He used a filthy expletive, but she was neither surprised nor offended.

From a second paper bag he pawed out a number of soft, rounded buns, split through the middle and spread with hamburger.

“What’d you do, buy out the whole store?” she shrieked in an appalling cat-call.

“We’re gunna be here for a while, ain’t we?”

Her lack of comment indicated complete acquiescence.

“Wuddle your old lady say?” he jeered. The jeer was meant for the old lady, not for her.

A dripping beer can in one hand, crumbling hamburger in the other, he flung himself full-length on the white-enamel bedstead, crossed his heels and elevated them to the foot-rail.

“Ah, she’s a pain in the neck,” the girl screeched impatiently.

“They all are. Mine was too, until I got too big for her. Now she don’t make a peep. She better not, boy.”

She was still intent on her own maternal difficulties, not his previous ones. “She already thinks I’ve done this.”

“How diya know?” he shot at her.

“She’s all the time warning me about it.” She performed a savage parody, clasping her hands before her face, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling, and dragging down the corners of her mouth dolorously. ‘Oh, I only hope I’m not too late,’ she keeps moaning, ‘I only hope I’m not too late.’ ”

“Y’ better go around wearing a sign after tonight. ‘You’re too late.’ So she don’t have to worry about you any more.”

They both went into thunderclaps of laughter, as shattering as the dropping of ashcan lids on a cement pavement.

When the guffaws had stilled finally, he up-ended the beer can so that the last remaining drops would fall through the puncture into his open mouth, then cast it away from him with a clatter.

By now she was seated on the edge of the bed, with her back to him, head bent to the newspaper he had brought in.

“Whattiya gunna do, sit there all night reading the paper?” He pawed clumsily at her shoulder from behind, so that momentarily she half toppled over, then immediately righted herself again like a rubber plaything. She slashed her arm backwards at him, to ward him off. It was more a reflex than an intended blow. “Come on, babe,” he whispered.

“Lemme finish reading about this blonde first.”

“Why? Whadda you care? She’s dead, ain’t she? So what’s to read?”

Absorbed, she didn’t answer. “Ah, she was just a high-class tramp,” he said airily.

“But she wasn’t until she started,” she pointed out. “She wasn’t before. Everyone, even one of them, s’got to start sometime.”

She read a little further.

“I wonder what she was like. Then, I mean. At the start.”

“Like you are now,” he shrugged. She got up from the bed abruptly, went over to the tarnished mirror, peered into it, still holding the paper.

“Whattiya looking at?” he said idly, without watching her, blowing smoke toward the ceiling.

“Me, like I am now,” the girl said, bending forward even closer. Then she moved her head aside and down, and stared with equal intentness at the photo in the paper.

“Matter, you don’t know what you look like?” he mocked, but still without watching her.

“I know what I look like now,” she replied thoughtfully, “but I wonder what I’ll look like—” She didn’t finish it and her eyes went back to the paper once more.

She came away at last, still staring at the picture in the paper.

All of a sudden the paper rippled to the floor, its pages molting.

“I’m going home, Frankie.” She didn’t squall it. For the first time all evening — maybe all year and the year before — she spoke quietly.

“You — what?” He sat bolt upright on the bed.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said, almost inaudibly. “I’m — I’m afraid.”

“Whatsa matter with you anyway,” he yelled. “I lived on the same street with you all my life.”

Her thoughts now seemed to be elsewhere.

“They always do. They always do. The first one of them all. And then after a while, they don’t live on the same street with you. And then after a while, they find you dead. Like her.”

Then, without saying anything more, she flung the door open and ran out.

He leaped from the bed and started after her. His foot stepped squarely on the face of the woman in the discarded paper as he flew through the open door after her.

The room was high up in the building. He leaned over the stair-rail and looked down. Her feet were pattering below him, around and around.

“Hey, Ginny, come on back!” he shouted down the stairwell. “Come on back, will ya!”

But the way she ran, the terrified way she ran, he knew she wouldn’t return. And he knew something else too. She wasn’t running like that because she was afraid of being pursued — she was running like that because she was afraid of the future.

The delivery truck drove up alongside the stand at exactly 9:29 P.M.

“Twanny-four returns,” Mom said.

The headline said, BLONDE BEAUTY SLAIN.

Mom sat back, propped her elbows, and waited.

The expensive black limousine had had to wait there for a traffic light. The man in the back leaned forward and said something to his chauffeur. The young colored driver, spruce in his uniform, immediately got out, crossed over on foot, and came up to the stand.

“Times?” he said.

“Not up yet,” said Mom.

“How about the Herald-Trib, then?”

“Not up yet either,” Mom said. “They don’t come up until eleven thirty.”

He looked a little disconcerted. He even glanced over to where he’d left the car, as if weighing the possibility of going back for further instructions.

But the light had changed meanwhile and the impeding limousine was being honked at by several blocked cars in back of it. “All right, I’ll take a tab,” he said quickly.

He snatched one up, turned away, and hustled back to his driver’s seat. He closed the door after him, started the car off then handed the paper over the seat to the man in the back.

The latter put the light on. When he saw the name of the paper he looked up questioningly. “What’s this, Bruce?”

“That’s the best I could do, Mr. Elliott,” the young chauffeur explained. “The Times isn’t out yet.”

His employer tucked it away in his coat-pocket sight unseen. “Oh, well,” he drawled good-naturedly. “I’ll just have to do without reading tonight.”

Bruce chuckled a little.

Mr. Elliott lit a cigar and watched the sights go by.

In the morning he found his wife June at the table ahead of him, as he always did. He liked to. Not that she had anything to do with preparing breakfast — that was the cook’s job; but, he always said to himself, she brightened up the table just by being there. With her yellow-jersey jumper and her little-girl hair hanging loose all about her head, she could have passed for a teenager.

He kissed her good morning, then once more for good measure.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, indicating what was outside the picture window.

“Each morning gets better than the one before. People who live in the city are such fools.”

His Times was there now, waiting for him. It came in every morning, of course. It was just that he had wanted to kill time by having something to read on the drive home last night. He furled it over, all the way back at the financial section. Those pages were the only ones he ever read carefully. However, before he’d quite finished, they had a problem on their hands. Oh, not a very large one, but one concerning Dickie, and any problem concerning Dickie always received full consideration. They were that kind of parents.

Amy brought him in with her. Amy was his governess (Bryn Mawr, post-graduate course in child care and training), and Bruce’s wife.

“This is one I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on to you,” she said, when good mornings had been said, “considering its source. I’m no expert.”

Dickie didn’t wait for any further preamble. “Daddy, do canaries really go ffft? Tommy Holden has one at his house and I never heard it do anything but chirp.”

“Where’d you get that from?” Elliott looked completely blank for a moment. June stifled a burst of laughter.

“The paper says a canary went ffft at someone.”

“This,” said Amy sternly, producing the newspaper. “I always encourage him to read for himself as much as possible, and help him with the hard words. I saw he was having trouble, and it was only after I’d read the line to him that I realized what I was reading it from.”

Elliott smote himself on the forehead in dismay, then held a hand to one cheek. “Oh, Lord, a gossip column, no less,” he said in an undertone, giving his wife a plaintive look. “What do I do with that?”

“It’s your job, dear,” said June pertly.

“Buck passer,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s hear how he gets out of this one,” June whispered to Amy. “This is going to be good.”

He glanced upward for a moment, for inspiration.

“Cats really are the only ones that go ffft,” he began.

“You didn’t get the ffft quite right, dear,” said June. She was in one of her mischievous moods. She had her elbows on the table and her chin propped in her cupped hands, trying to throw him off by staring at him earnestly.

“Please,” he said ruefully. “This is tough enough without being heckled.”

He went back to the task in hand. “Now, real canaries don’t go ffft—”

“You got that ffft better,” said June.

He ignored her. “Ladies who sing are sometimes called canaries, because they sing so pretty,” he went on laboredly. “And if they get mad at somebody, sometimes they do go ffft.”

Dickie turned aggrievedly to his mother. “I didn’t understand a word Daddy told me,” he complained.

June turned her head sharply one way, Amy the other. In fact, the only two people in the room who weren’t convulsed with laughter were the two males, king-size and pint-size.

June patted the little boy’s head. “And you weren’t the only one, dear,” she whispered consolingly — a whisper she somehow managed to direct so that it reached Elliott’s ears.

“Let’s see you try it if you’re so good at it,” he whispered her way.

“I know someone who’s going to hear from me about bringing that rag into the house in the first place,” vowed Amy darkly. “That’s one thing I can’t compete with, a tabloid. I don’t know the right slang.”

“Bruce?” said Elliott. “Now don’t blame poor Bruce. He had nothing to do with it. I asked him to hop out a minute and get me the Times, and it hadn’t arrived at the stand yet, so he brought this back with him instead.”

“I notice he didn’t bring back Reader’s Digest or Atlantic Monthly” was Amy’s tart comment as she led Dickie out of the room.

June went to the door to see her husband off, as she did every day. Dickie joined the leave-taking, rushing at his father head-first and whiplashing his little arms about him at mid-thigh, which was as high as he could reach.

“See you tonight, Daddy, hunh?” he chirped. “See you tonight!”

June winked at Elliott over the little boy’s head.

She gave him one of her rare compliments when Dickie had been led away a second time, and he was kissing her goodbye — rare, but from the heart. “You’re a good father, Doug,” she said softly. “The best. Sense of humor and everything.”

“Don’t I get any rating as a husband also?” he wanted to know.

She closed her eyes dreamily, to show him that he did.

He became oddly serious for a moment, almost pensive. “That’s all I have,” he told her thoughtfully. “You and him. My family. That’s all I care about — really care about. I wouldn’t let anything — or anyone — stand in their way. I wouldn’t let anything — or anyone — threaten their happiness.” His eyes had a faraway look just then, as if he remembered he’d said that once before — some place, sometime, to someone.

Then he kissed her once more, and hurried down the long sun-dappled walk to where Bruce was waiting for him in the car.

“It’s a shame to go in on a day like this,” he said, taking a panoramic look at the Westchester landscape before getting in and closing the door.

“I can’t tell you how I sympathize with you, sir,” Bruce said, with just a touch of dryness. It was a genial sort of dryness, though, meaning, You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to, and you know it, but you’d still like me to feel sorry for you.

“As for you, young fellow,” Elliott warned him jocularly, “you’re in hot water with Amy. She thinks you were responsible for that tabloid.”

“Greater love hath no man,” quoted Bruce softly, “than he take a rap for his employer.”

“Who’s taking any rap for who?” Elliott brought him up short. “I squared that. I told her it was my fault.”

“I may as well be skinned for a wolf as for a sheep,” Bruce remarked as they sped along. “Amy’s standards of reading are so high I can’t even get up to them with my chin on the crossbar. Anything less than Proust is trash.”

“What sort of reading do you go in for, Bruce?” Elliott asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask you that.”

“Mostly mysteries, I drive a car, and I like things to move fast. They’ve got to be well-written, though.”

“They can be. I read them myself, quite frequently. If a mystery isn’t well-written, it’s not because it’s a mystery, it’s because the writer is a sloppy worker.”

They spent the rest of the drive into town discussing books in general, both mystery and non-mystery, and life itself, the greatest book of them all. Elliott found that he enjoyed it immensely. His driver was a college graduate, which he had always known of course, but in addition he was keenly intelligent, nimble-minded, and ambitious, which didn’t always necessarily follow. He was bound to get some place as soon as the door opened a little wider. This driving job was just temporary.

Elliott liked to know his fellow-men better, because he liked his fellow-men.

“Thank you, sir,” said Bruce when they’d reached the office.

“For what?” asked Elliott.

“At least you didn’t say I’m a credit to my race.”

“What race?” said Elliott blankly. “I don’t know what you mean.” And he actually didn’t.

“Pick you up at the same time, sir,” said Bruce, and drove off.

Elliott went upstairs to what he liked occasionally to refer to as “the grind.” If it was a “grind” (and it had to have some name, apparently), it was the most velvety, well lubricated, chromium-plated, air-conditioned grind conceivable. He didn’t even have to open his own letters. That was done for him. The one out of five that got through to him he could be sure would be worth his personal attention.

A little dictating — into a machine. A little phoning — here, there, around. From him, and more often, to him. Perhaps involving thousands and thousands of dollars — but you never would have guessed. Money was never even mentioned. The calls seemed to be mostly about golf, and the last country club dance, and the nest country club dance, and how’s Evelyn, ‘and June’s fine. And then an appointment for lunch would be set up, and after the lunch had come and gone, he’d be twenty thousand richer, or forty, or sixty, or more. Not at anyone’s expense. Certainly not at the client’s. The client went right along with him — twenty, forty, sixty. Not at the market’s, either. Because for everyone who sold, there was someone who bought. Just “the old grind.” Mystique.

By that time it would be 11:00 or 11:30, and he’d have Rico and Dotty up — Rico to trim his hair, Dotty to trim his nails. Not every day of course, about once in a week. Twice, if he and June had some big engagement on. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to go to a barber — the barber came to him. It was done just right — everything just right. Not too much talk — that would have been clownish; but not too little either — that would have been stiff and ungracious. Then they’d both leave, thanking him, and if he’d given them a little something more than the customary tip, which he did every now and then, he’d repeat his instructions, so they’d be sure to get them right.

“Now remember, buy at twenty, as I told you. Put the order in! right away, so you’ll catch it on the fly first thing die market opens in the morning. But don’t hold on. Put in a ‘sell’ order at twenty-five and you’ll make a nice little profit. And, mind you this is just for you two. If you say a word to anyone, spread it around, it’s the last time I’ll ever—”

“I won’t even tell my own husband,” Dotty would vow.

“Good,” he’d say solemnly. “Because husbands have big mouths. I happen to be one myself, and I know.”

And by then it would be about time for whatever lunch date he had.

Today it was with Don Warren. Don Warren and Doug Elliott had been friends long before they became client and broker. In fact, they had been college classmates together. Don was waiting for him at their usual table, in their usual restaurant.

After he’d shaken hands with him and sat down, Elliott began to worry one fingernail with the corner of his mouth, moistening it and blowing his breath on it. “Dotty’s a very good manicurist, but this split goes down just below the cuticle. Even she couldn’t do anything with it Except smooth it out a little.”

“How’d you come to do it?”

Elliott looked up at him disarmingly. “Strangling blondes,” he said with winning frankness.

Warren uttered the polite chuckle that friendship called for — but no more — then gave him a rueful look. “You’ve always had the weirdest sense of humor,” he complained.

Elliott strugged meekly. “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” he murmured, then opened up the large menu-folder with the concentration of a man whose efforts to be sprightly have not been an unqualified success, and who therefore turns resignedly to something else...