Call Me a Cab

19

There are two Kansas Citys, and therefore there are two Kansas City airports. The one in Kansas City, Kansas is called Fairfax Municipal Airport, and the one in Kansas City, Missouri is called Kansas City Municipal Airport. They are diagonally across the Missouri River from one another, and neither of them was the one we wanted.

Which we learned when we pulled in at Kansas City Municipal Airport in Kansas City, Missouri. It seems there was another airport, called Kansas City International Airport, over on the Kansas side, about twelve or fifteen miles north of all the Kansas Citys, along Interstate Route 29. (We’d already passed an East Kansas City and a North Kansas City on our way into town; you could get pretty sick of that name after a while. “If I ever see The Wizard of Oz again,” I told Katharine, “I’m going to root for the tornado.”)

Since it was already after one o’clock when we reached the wrong airport, Katharine phoned ahead to the right one, leaving the messenger a message; then we picked our way through the supermarkets and used-car lots and machine-parts shops in overgrown clapboard garages out onto Interstate 29 and ran north to something called Ferrelview. Not knowing what a ferrel is, I can’t say whether or not we viewed it, but that was also the exit for the airport, a sprawling sunbaked assemblage of stucco and asphalt, where the plane from the east had long since landed and no one had given the messenger the message.

And now I saw Katharine the executive at work. When her first enquiry at the Information counter got her nothing but smiling bewilderment from the friendly mindless girl on duty there, Katharine smiled coldly back and said, “Your supervisor, please.”

“Ma’am, I’ve been on duty here the last three hours, and there hasn’t been any such message.”

“Since I’m the one who phoned it in,” Katharine said, “I do know it exists. Your supervisor, please.”

The girl, not delighted, went away. Katharine stood fuming, passing her attaché case from hand to hand. Trying to relax her, I said, “Things never do run smoothly.”

“Oh, yes, they do,” she said.

In about three minutes the girl herself came back, with an envelope. “It hadn’t been sent down,” she said, rather snippily, and handed the envelope to Katharine.

Looking over Katharine’s shoulder, I saw it was some sort of standard message form, and that it was addressed to Katharine Scott. “Arriving soon, reserve office. Messenger, Willson, Garfield & Co.” I stepped a pace to one side, wanting a clear view of the explosion.

But she didn’t explode. Refolding the message, she said, more quietly than ever, “Your supervisor, please.”

“Well, that’s the message, isn’t it?”

“Your super-visor, please.”

The girl’s attention had been belatedly caught. Looking a bit worried, she said, “If you’ll tell me what’s wrong, Madam, I’m certain we can—”

“Are you refusing to call your supervisor?”

The girl thought about that one for maybe six seconds, then her face closed down into a total defensive stolidity and she picked up a phone from under her counter. She spoke briefly, then hung up and pointedly turned to the person on line behind us, who wanted to know about direct flights to Nashville. Nashville? When you’re in Kansas City, what’s the point in going to Nashville?

The supervisor arrived promptly, and was a mid-fortyish stocky woman with a thick black skirt and a no-nonsense manner. “Is there something you don’t understand, Madam?”

“I don’t understand how anybody can be so stupid,” Katharine answered.

The woman blinked. “Madam?”

“This message.” Katharine handed it over, and while the woman looked at it Katharine said, “The first stupidity is that the girl here insisted the message didn’t exist. It was only when I asked to speak to you that she went looking for it.”

“Yes, I see,” the woman said. “Well, it was found, wasn’t it? And you wanted to reserve an office?”

“I want to talk about the second stupidity,” Katharine told her. “You’ll see it’s addressed to me.”

“Is your name spelled wrong? Sometimes over the phone—”

“And you’ll see it’s from a messenger from Willson, Garfield and Company.”

“Madam, I’m sorry, I don’t understand the complaint. True, there was a breakdown, it took a few extra moments to deliver the message—”

“I sent it,” Katharine said.

The woman looked blank. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What was that?”

“I sent the message. I sent the message to the messenger from Willson, Garfield and Company, who got off the plane from New York—” she consulted her watch “—twenty-five minutes ago and is by now God knows where.”

The woman was thunderstruck. “This message isn’t for you?”

“This message is from me. You have not only lost my message, you have lost my messenger.” She looked at her watch again — for effect, no doubt. “And how much longer do you intend to keep me standing here before you find my messenger?”

The woman opened her mouth, closed it, looked at the message still in her hand, looked at Katharine, and stepped briskly to the Information counter, shunting aside the Nashville-bound person with a no-nonsense hip. “Did anyone from Flight six-two-three leave a message here, or ask for a message?”

The girl’s reaction time was too slow for longterm survival. This was the moment to stop being sullen and start expressing all kinds of helpfulness, but she missed it. Face still closed, she told her own immediate superior, “I’m sure I don’t know.”

“We’ll see about that, Miss. Give me the phone.”

Too late, the girl noticed that the signals had changed. Quickly producing the phone, she said, “I don’t remember anybody. Should I go through all the messages?”

“Continue with this other gentleman,” the woman said, gesturing at our friend from Nashville. Then, with briskly efficient fingers, she dialed a three-digit number, spoke briefly, read off the message, listened to a response, spoke again, and broke the connection. Another three-digit number was dialed, and an even briefer conversation took place, during which the public address system suddenly announced: “Will the messenger from Willson, Garfield and Company go to the main Information Desk? Will the messenger from Willson, Garfield and Company go to the main Information Desk, please?”

Her phoning done, the woman turned to Katharine and said, “I’m terribly sorry about this, Madam. If you’ll come with me, I have the office reserved.” Then, turning back to the girl, she said, “When the messenger arrives, have him escorted at once to conference room six.”

“Yes, certainly,” the girl said. “I’ll do it myself.”

“Yes, do that. And then come see me.”

Leaving the girl with her eyes and mouth blinking like a fish in an aquarium, the woman led us away, across the polished composition floor and up a flight of stairs and through an unmarked white door, all the while apologizing for the mix-up. Beyond the white door was a white corridor, flanked by doorways, each revealing a conference room containing a long oval table surrounded by leatherette chairs.

Ours — a black metal 6 was screwed to the white door — was midway down the right side. Showing us in, the woman said, “I’m sure the messenger will be along very shortly.”

Katharine looked around. “Is there a phone?”

“Certainly, Madam, right here.” And she picked it up from a stand to one side and moved it with its long cord over to the conference table. “You dial nine for an outside line, then give the number to the operator.”

Katharine had opened her attaché case on the table and brought out pen and legal pad. “May I have your name and extension?”

The woman hesitated, but had no choice: “I’m Mrs. Fairborne. One twenty-seven.” Watching Katharine write it down, she said, “I intend to speak severely to that young lady.”

“She isn’t the one who took the message.”

“Oh, I’ll certainly look into that as well. It’s so hard to find reasonably competent people these days.”

“That’s why competent supervision is so important,” Katharine said.

Mrs. Fairborne didn’t like that. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Well, I have no doubt everything will be all right now. If there’s any problem, just get right in touch with me.”

“Thank you, I will.”

Mrs. Fairborne bowed herself out, closing the door very gently, and I grinned at Katharine, saying, “You’re tough.”

“You have to be,” she said, still grim-faced. Then she shook her head, as though forcing herself into a different gear. “As a matter of fact, you do have to be,” she said. “A woman does. A woman has to be much tougher than a man if she’s going to be taken seriously.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Seating herself at the end of the oval table, she pulled her open attaché case closer, then glanced into it and seemed very troubled by something she saw there. “Barry,” she said, and gave me a helpless look.

“No decision, huh?”

“Well, how can I?” She was being very irritable now. “The whole idea of this trip was to get away from scenes like this, have some leisurely time to myself, to think things out without interruption.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, how can I think in this atmosphere? Doing that woman’s job for her. If she’s the supervisor, let her supervise.”

“There’s still the original plan,” I said. “Another three, four days to Los Angeles.”

“I’d so wanted to get everything resolved now. I hate being indecisive. You probably find that hard to believe, but you’re seeing me in a very unusual light.”

“I’d already figured that out,” I assured her.

“Normally I’m very decisive, very sure of myself.” She took a deep breath, gripping the edge of the table, and let it forcefully out. “Think,” she told herself. “It’s time to get your head together.”

I sat midway along the table and watched her frown at the walnut-grain formica top. With her jaw clenched, her facial bone structure was rather more pronounced; she had beautiful cheekbones. I had a sudden urge to kiss her. I did not make that mistake.

There was a knock at the door. “Puff,” Katharine said, letting air out again, sagging in a defeated way, and I got up to open the door.

The messenger was a surprise. I’d expected some skinny kid, but he was probably in his late forties, hair very gray and rather long and unkempt, face jowly and thick-featured, body out of shape and tending to fat. He wore a thin darkish tie, a medium-gray and rather shabby suit, a wrinkled white shirt, ordinary black shoes, and hornrim glasses. He was carrying an attaché case like Katharine’s, only thicker. He looked like a not very successful druggist. What was he doing being a messenger?

He looked at me. “Katharine Scott?”

“No,” I said, and pointed. “That’s her there.”

He already knew her. “Afternoon, Miss Scott,” he said, coming in.

She smiled at him, in a brisk impersonal way. “Hello, Roy. Sorry about the mix-up.”

“Oh, that’s okay, Miss Scott.”

I closed the door and returned to my seat. Roy didn’t sit down, nor did Katharine ask him to. Putting his attaché case on the table near hers, he opened it and withdrew a thin sheaf of papers. “This is the presentation on the Mall,” he said. “Mr. Willson said you wanted to go over it before copies were run off.”

“Oh, yes. Fine.”

For the next fifteen minutes or so, I sat there and watched Katharine play executive, while Roy stood attentively at her side, handing her papers, taking papers back, occasionally writing down on a memo pad instructions she would give him, such as, “Tell Henry to leave the people out of the drawing. This isn’t an automobile ad, it’s an architectural presentation.” And, “Tell Frank I just don’t think we can deal with those people. I’ve met them three times, and they’re simply not serious in terms of cost. All they really want to do is plant a few rhododendron and look the other way. If Frank wants to pursue it, that’s up to him, but he should certainly not tender any suggestions.” Each time, Roy nodded and wrote it all down in what seemed to be shorthand, and at the end he took the last papers back, put them with the memo pad into his attaché case, closed it, and said, “Thank you, Miss Scott.”

“Thank you, Roy.” Katharine got to her feet and stretched. “What time is your flight back?”

“Three-twenty.”

She looked at her watch. My own was still in the cab, but I estimated it was now a bit after two-thirty. I saw Katharine look thoughtful for a few seconds; then she glanced over at me with a rueful expression, and said to Roy, “Have a good flight.”

“Thanks, Miss Scott.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, getting to my feet, as he turned toward the door.

He nodded to me, with a noncommittal expression, and left. At no point had he shown the slightest curiosity about anything; not about me, or what Katharine was doing, or anything else.

“Well,” Katharine said, with a happy smile. “That’s a relief.”

Meaning she wouldn’t have to think about the office anymore. But I knew what the real relief was; she’d put off the decision yet again.

Looking over at me, she said, “On to Los Angeles?”

“Sure,” I said.

She frowned. “Something’s wrong.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Yes, there is. Something’s wrong.”

“We’re wasting time,” I said. “On to Los Angeles.” And I held the door open.

She went on frowning at me a moment longer, then shrugged and picked up her attaché case. “Have it your own way.”

“There’s nothing wrong,” I insisted. There was, of course; but I didn’t want to talk about it.