Call to Arms

Chapter Six

(One)

420 Lexington Avenue

New York City

1135 Hours, 8 January 1942

When her telephone rang, Miss Ernestine Sage was sitting pushed back in her chair with her hands-their fingers intertwined-on top of her head, looking at the preliminary artwork for a Mint-Fresh Tooth Paste advertisement, which would eventually appear in Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and sixteen other magazines; and on several thousand billboards across the nation.

The preliminary artwork showed a good-looking, wholesome blonde with marvelous teeth saying something. A balloon was drawn on the preliminary drawing. When Miss Sage decided exactly what Miss Mint-Fresh was going to say (and after that had been approved by her senior copywriter, her assistant account executive; her vice president and account executive; the vice president, creative; and, of course, the client) it would be put inside the balloon.

Right now the balloon was empty. The preliminary artwork gave the impression, Miss Sage had just been thinking, that someone had just whispered an obscenity in Miss Mint-Fresh's ear, and Miss Mint-Fresh had been rendered speechless.

Miss Ernestine Sage took one hand from the top of her head and reached for the telephone.

"Mint- Fresh," she said to the telephone. "Ernie Sage."

"Hello, honey," her caller said. "I'm glad I caught you."

"Hello, Daddy," Ernie Sage said. She had been expecting the call. She had, in fact, expected it yesterday.

She spun in her chair so that she could rest her feet on the windowsill. The window in Miss Ernestine Sage's closet-sized office at J. Walter Thompson Advertising, Inc. offered a splendid view of the roof of a smaller building next door, and then of the windows of the building next to that.

Miss Sage was a copywriter, which was a rank in the J. Walter Thompson hierarchy as well as a description of her function. In the Creative Division, the low man on the corporate totem pole was a "trainee." Next above that came "editorial assistant," then "juniorcopywriter." Above "copywriter" came "senior copywriter." Beyond that, one who kept one's nose to the grindstone could expect to move upward over the years to "assistant account executive" and "account executive" and possibly even into the "vice president and account executive" and plain "vice president" categories.

It had taken Miss Sage about three weeks to figure out that JWT, as it was known to the advertising cognoscenti, passed out titles in one or both of two ways. The first was in lieu of a substantial increase in salary, and the other was with an eye on JWT's clients. Just as JWT sold a myriad of products to the public by extolling their virtues, so it sold itself to its clients with manifestations of the degree of importance in which it held them.

A very important client, "a multimillion biller," for example, such as American Personal Pharmaceutical, Inc., who the previous year had spent "12.3 mil" in bringing its array of products before the American public, had one JWT vice president, four JWT vice presidents and account executives, eight JWT account executives, and God only knew how many JWT assistant account executives and senior copywriters devoting their full attention to American Personal Pharmaceutical's products.

Miss Sage was in the "Mint-Fresh" shop. Mint-Fresh was the third best-selling of American Personal Pharmaceutical's family of five products intended to brighten America's (and for that matter, the world's) teeth.

Miss Sage was one of three copywriters reporting to a senior copywriter, who reported to the Mint-Fresh account executive, who reported to the vice president and account executive, APP Dental Products. There were three other vice presidents and account executives, one for APP Cosmetic Products (shampoos, acne medicines, hair tonics, et cetera); one for APP Health Products (cold remedies, cough syrups, et cetera); and one for APP Personal Products (originally nostrums for feminine complaints, but now-after APP had acquired controlling interest in the companies involved in their manufacture-including three brands of sanitary napkins and eleven brands of rubber prophylactics).

Each of the vice presidents and account executives had his own empire of account executives, assistant account executives, and so on through the hierarchy, under him.

Miss Sage knew more than just about any other copywriter about the upper echelons of the "APP Family" for the same reason that she had had very little trouble getting herself hired by JWT. That was not, as the vice president, creative personnel had publicly announced, because she had proved herself to be a very bright girl, indeed, by coming out of Sarah Lawrence with a summa cum laude degree (BA, English), just the kind of person JWT was always on the lookout for. Rather it was because the grandson of the founder of American Personal Pharmaceuticals (Ezekiel Handley, M.D., whose first product was "Dr. Handley's Female Elixir") was now chairman of the board and chief executive officer. His name was Ernest Sage, and he was Ernie's father.

This is not to suggest that Ernie Sage regarded her job as a sort of hobby, a socially acceptable, even chic, way to pass the time until she made a suitable marriage and took her proper place in society. She had decided in her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence that she wanted to make (as opposed to inherit) a lot of money. And after an investigation of the means to do that open to females, she had decided the way to do it was in advertising.

She had learned as much about the business as she could while in college, and she had taken courses she thought would be of value to that end. When she graduated, she had two choices. The summa cum laude would have been enough to get her a job on Madison Avenue if her name hadn't been Sage. But she decided two things about JWT. First, that they were arguably the best and biggest of all the large agencies and would thus offer her the opportunity to learn all facets of the business; and, second, with APP as their next-to-largest client, she would have certain privileges, while learning her chosen profession, that she would not have elsewhere.

It was her intention-once she felt secure, once she had learned the way things worked in the real world, once she had a portfolio of work she had done-to open her own agency. Just her, and an artist, and a secretary. She would find some small manufacturer of something who was bright enough to figure out that he wasn't getting JWT's full attention with billings under a hundred thou and convince him that she could give him more for his money than he would get elsewhere. She would build on that; she grew more and more convinced that she could.

Everything had gone according to plan, including the exercise of special privilege. She had almost bluntly told the vice president and account executive, APP Personal Products, that, substantial jump in pay or not, promotion to senior copywriter or not, she would not want to "move over into his shop" and put her now-demonstrated talents to work there.

There were a number of nice things about being rich, she told herself, and one of them was not needing a job so badly that she would have to spend her time thinking up appealing ways to sell Kotex-by-another-name and rubbers.

And then Ken McCoy had come along. And the best-laid plans of mice and men, et cetera.

The call she was taking from her father right now came about as a result of a call he had made to her the day after Thanksgiving. You were not supposed to make or receive personal calls at JWT, and rumor had it that there was official eavesdropping to make sure the rule was obeyed. No one had ever said anything to Ernie Sage about her personal calls.

"Honey, am I interrupting anything?" he'd said that Thanksgiving Friday.

"Actually, I'm flying paper airplanes out the window," she'd told him, truthfully. The way the air currents moved outside her window, paper airplanes would fly for astonishingly long periods of time.

"Has Pick called?"

"Any reason he should?" she'd replied. "I didn't even know he was in town."

Malcolm "Pick" Pickering had grown up calling her father "Uncle Ernie." Ernie Sage knew that sometimes her father wished she had been born a boy, since there was to be only one child. But since she was a girl, there was little secret that everybody concerned would be thrilled to death if Pick suddenly looked at her like Clark Gable had looked at Scarlett before carrying her up the stairs.

"He is," Ernest Sage had said. "He's at the Foster Park."

"He called you?" she had asked.

"He left a message on the bulletin board at the Harvard Club," her father had said.

"Why didn't he just call?" she had asked. "Wouldn't that have been easier?"

"He didn't leave a message for me," her father had said, as realization dawned that he was having his leg pulled. "Don't be such a wise-ass. Nobody likes a wise-ass in skirts."

"Sorry," she'd laughed.

"He's having a party."

"I thought he was in Virginia playing Marine," she'd replied.

"I don't think he's playing Marine," her father had said, more than a little sharply.

"Sorry," she'd said again, this time meaning it.

"He's giving a party," her father had said. "Cocktails. I think you should go."

"I haven't been invited," she'd replied, simply.

"The thing on the bulletin board said 'all friends and acquaintances.' You would seem to qualify."

"If Pick wanted me, he knows my phone number," she'd said.

"I just thought you might be interested," her father had said, and from the tone of his voice and the swiftness of his getting off the line, she knew that she had hurt his feelings. Again.

Several hours later, sitting in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel with two girls and three young then as they debated the monumental decision where to have dinner and go afterward, she had remembered both Pick's party and her father's disappointment. And the Foster Park Hotel was only a block away.

Doing her duty, she had taken the others there. Penthouse C, overlooking Central Park, had been crowded with people, among them Ken McCoy, in a uniform like Pick's. He'd been sitting on a low brick wall on the patio, twenty-six floors above Fifty-ninth Street, looking as if he was making a valiant effort not to spit over the side.

That had turned into a very interesting evening, far more interesting than it had first promised to be. Instead of catching a cab uptown to some absolutely fascinating restaurant Billy had discovered, she'd ridden the subway downtown with Platoon Leader Candidate, McCoy, K. After he had taken her to a tiny Chinese restaurant on the third floor of a building on a Chinatown alley, she had taken him to her apartment, where she gave him a drink and her virtue.

Quite willingly. This was all the more astonishing because she had ridden downtown on the subway a virgin. More than willingly given it to him, she subsequently considered quite often; she'd done everything but put a red ribbon on it and hand it to him on a silver platter.

And he had not been humbly grateful, either. He'd been astonished and then angry, and she'd thought for a moment that he was about to march out of the apartment in high moral outrage. He didn't in the end. He stayed.

But as he and Pick drove back to Quantico, Pick had told him about her family. Until Pick opened his fat mouth, Ken McCoy had thought she lived in the small apartment in the Village because that was all she could afford.

The result was that her letters to him had gone unanswered. And when she sent him a registered letter, it had came back marked REFUSED. At the time, she'd been firmly convinced he was ignoring her because he was a Marine officer, and Marine officers do not enter into long-term relationships with young women who enthusiastically bestow upon them their pearl of great price two hours after meeting them.

"Wham, bang, thank you, Ma'am," of course. But nothing enduring. The Marine Corps equivalent of "We must lunch sometime. I'll call you."

At first she'd been angry, then ashamed, then angry and ashamed, and then shameless. And on The Day That Will Live In Infamy, after hearing from her mother, who'd heard it from Pick's mother, that Pick had been commissioned and was in Washington, she'd gone down there to ask Pick to help.

There Pick had explained that it was not her freedom with her sexual favors that was bothering Ken McCoy; it was her money.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"After a lot of solemn thought," Pick had replied, "I have concluded that he is afraid that you regard him as an interesting way to pass an otherwise dull evening."

"That's just not so!"

"That the minute he lets his guard down, you're going to make a fool of him. There was a woman in China who did a pretty good job on his ego."

"A Chinese woman?"

"An American. Missionary's wife. He had it pretty bad for her, the proof being that he was going to get out of the Marine Corps to marry her. For him, the supreme sacrifice."

"What happened? What did she do to him?"

"What he's afraid you're going to do to him," Pick told her. "Humiliate him."

"Goddamn her," Ernie had said. And then: "Pick, it's not that way with me. I've got to see him."

"It'll be a little difficult at the moment," Pick had said. "He's in Hawaii right now, on his way to the Philippines."

"Oh, God!" she'd waited.

"But he'll be back," Pick had said. "He's a courier. Sort of a Marine Corps mailman."

"When?"

"A week, maybe. Ten days."

"You'll let me know when he's back?"

"I will even arrange a chance meeting under the best possible circumstances," Pick had said. "Here. He's living here with me. You can be waiting for him, soaked in perfume, wearing something transparent, with violin music on the phonograph."

"You tell me when," she'd said. Things were looking up.

When she'd walked through the lobby of the hotel, on her way to the station, NBC was broadcasting the bulletin that the Japanese had attacked the U.S. Naval Station at Pearl Harbor.

And a week after that, Pick had called her and told her that there had been word from the Philippines that Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, was missing in action and presumed dead.

Ernestine Sage's reaction to that was not what she would have thought. She had not screamed and moaned and torn her hair. She hadn't even cried. She'd just died inside. Gone completely numb.

And then, a week later, Pick had called again, his voice breaking. "I thought you might like to know that our boy just called from San Francisco. As Mark Twain said, the report of his death is somewhat exaggerated."

She'd been waiting in Pick's suite at the Foster Lafayette Hotel when McCoy returned. Not soaked in My Sin, or wearing a black negligee, which had been her intention; but, because he was an hour early, she was in a cotton bathrobe with soap in her ears and her hair shower-plastered to her head.

He hadn't seemed to notice. They'd turned the Louis XIV bedroom into the Garden of Eden, and she'd wept with joy when she felt him in her. And as perverse as it sounded, with joy again when she'd changed his bandages, for it seemed proof that she was a woman who had found her mate and was caring for him.

That had been the result of her father's phone call on Thanksgiving Friday. Now he was on the line again, and there was no doubt in Miss Ernestine Sage's mind that he had on his mind now the relationship between his daughter and her Marine officer; her mother had gone to him and told him that she knew for a fact that their daughter had left her own bed in the middle of the night so that she could get in bed with Ken McCoy.

"Are you free for lunch?" Ernest Sage asked his daughter.

"Sure," she said.

"Could you come here?" he asked. "It would be better for me."

She wondered how he meant that; was his schedule tight? Or did he just want to have his little talk with her on his own ground?

He picked up on her hesitation.

"Anywhere would be fine, honey," her father said.

"Twelve- fifteen?" Ernie Sage said.

"Would you like anything in particular?" her father asked. "I think Juan's making medallions of veal."

"That'll be fine, Daddy," she said.

"Look forward to it," he said, and hung up.

The hell you do. Daddy.

At five minutes to twelve, Miss Ernestine Sage put on her overcoat and galoshes and left her office. She walked the two blocks from JWT to Madison Avenue and then the half block to the American Personal Pharmaceutical Products Building. This was a nearly new (1939) fifty-nine-story, sandstone-sheathed structure, the upper twenty floors of which housed the executive offices of APP.

She walked across the marble floor and entered an elevator.

"Fifty- six," she told the operator.

The APP building's top formed a four-sided cone, with each floor from fifty-nine down to fifty-two somewhat smaller than the floor below, from which point the walls descended straight to the street level. The fifty-sixth floor was the highest office floor, the top three floors being dedicated to various operating functions for the building itself.

Her father's office was on fifty-five. Fifty-six was the Executive Dining Room, something of a misnomer as there were actually four dining rooms on that floor, plus the kitchen and a bar. APP, like JWT, had a hierarchy. Individuals attaining certain upper levels of responsibility received with their promotions permission to take their lunch on fifty-six, on the company, or to stop by fifty-six for a little nip, also on the company, at the end of the business day.

Fully two-thirds of the floor was occupied by the Executive Dining Room itself. That establishment looked like any good restaurant in a club. And then, in addition to the Executive Dining Room, there were Dining Rooms A, B, and C. Of these, Dining Room C was the smallest, containing but one table and a small serving bar. Its use was controlled by Mrs. Zoe Fegelbinder, executive secretary to the chairman of the board of APP. And it was reserved for special occasions.

When Ernie Sage got off the elevator, the maitre d'hotel spotted her right away and walked quickly to her.

"Good afternoon, Miss Sage," he said. "How nice to see you again. You're in 'C.'"

She was not surprised. This was a special occasion. The chairman of the board of APP did not want to show off his daughter in the Executive Dining Room today.

Today, the chairman of the board wanted to be alone with his daughter, so that he could talk to her about her screwing a Marine, or words to that effect.

As the maitre d' ushered her across the lobby, a path was made for her and people smiled, and she heard herself being identified. She had often thought that it must be like this for Princess Elizabeth; for around here, she was sort of like royalty.

Her father was not in 'C,' but Juan was, in his chef's whites.

"Hallo, Miss Ernie," he said, smiling, apparently genuinely pleased to see her.

"Hello, Juan," she said.

She remembered now that Juan was a Filipino. As in invaded by the Japanese. As in the place where Japanese artillery had damned near killed Ken.

"Your poppa say veal medallions," Juan said. "But I think maybe you really like a little steak… with marchand de vins sauce?"

"Yes, I would," she said. "Thank you, Juan."

"Pommes frites? Haricots verts? And I find a place sells American Camembert, not bad. You try for dessert?"

"Sounds fine," she said.

"You wanna little glass wine, while you wait? Got a real nice Cal'fornia Cabernet sauvignon?"

What I really would like to have is a triple shot of cognac.

"Thank you, Juan," she said, smiling at him. "That sounds fine."

He opened the bottle and poured a glass for her.

"You wanna try?" he asked, as he gave it to her.

She took a healthy sip.

"Fine," she said. "Thank you."

"You think your poppa want a steak, too?" Juan asked.

"I thought we were having medallions of veal," Ernest Sage said, as he walked into the room.

He was a tall and heavyset man, with a full head of curly black hair, gray only at the temples. Her father, Ernie Sage often thought, looked like a chairman of the board is supposed to look, and seldom does.

"Miss Ernie," Juan said, "really wanna steak. You wanna steak, too?"

"I'll have the veal, thank you, Juan," Ernest Sage said, "with green beans and oven-roasted potatoes, if you have them. And a sliced tomato."

"Yes, sair," Juan said, and left the room.

Ernest Sage looked at his daughter as if he was going to say something, and then changed his mind. He flashed her a smile, somewhat nervously, Ernie thought, and then picked up the telephone on the table.

"No calls," he announced. "I don't care who it is."

"Said the hangman, as he began to knot the rope," Ernie Sage said.

Her father looked at her, and smiled. "Conscience bothering you?"

"Not at all," Ernie said.

"What are you drinking?" he asked.

She walked to him and handed her glass. When he'd taken a sip and nodded his approval, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

"So what's new in advertising?" he asked.

She poured him a glass of wine.

"Everyone is all agog with 'Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War,'" Ernie said.

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing, that's why everyone is all agog," she said.

"Not that I really give a damn, but you've aroused my curiosity."

"They changed the color on the package," she said. "It used to be predominantly green. Now it's white, with the red Lucky Strike ball in the middle. The pitch is, with appropriate trumpets and martial drums, 'Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War.'"

"Why'd they do that?"

"Maybe they wanted a new image. Maybe they wanted to save the price of the green ink. Who knows?"

"What's that got to do with the war?"

"Nothing," she said. "That's why everyone is all agog. It's regarded as a move right up there with 'Twice as Much for a Nickel Too, Pepsi-Cola Is the Drink for You,' which was the jingle Pepsi-Cola came onto the market with. Better even. Pure genius. It makes smoking Lucky Strike seem to be your patriotic duty."

"You sound as if you disapprove," he said.

"Only because I didn't think of it," she said. "Whoever thought that up is going to get rich."

Juan entered the room with shrimp cocktails in silver bowls on a bed of rice.

"Appetizer," he announced. "Hard as hell to get."

He walked out of the room.

Ernest Sage chuckled, and motioned for his daughter to sit down.

He ate a shrimp and took a sip of wine. "I was sorry to have missed Pick's friend at the house. Your mother was rather taken with him."

"Was that before or after she found out I was sleeping with him?" Ernie Sage asked.

Ernest Sage nearly choked on a shrimp. "Good God, honey!" he said.

"I'm a chip-maybe a chippie?-off the old block," Ernie said, "who is frequently prone to suggest that people 'cut the crap.'"

"Whatever you are-and that probably includes a fool," Ernest Sage said, "you're not a chippie."

"Thank you, Daddy," Ernie said. "I'm sorry you missed him, too. I think you would have liked him."

"At the moment, I doubt that," he said. "I wonder what the penalty is for shooting a Marine?"

"In this case, the electric chair, plus losing your daughter," Ernie said.

"That bad, eh?" her father said, looking at her.

She nodded.

"God, you're only twenty-one."

"So's he," she said. "Which means that we're both old enough to vote, et cetera, et cetera."

"Okay, so tell me about him," Ernest Sage said.

"Mother hasn't?" Ernie asked, as she finished her last shrimp.

"I'd rather hear it from you," he said.

"He's very unsuitable," Ernie Sage said. "We have nothing in common. He has no money and no education."

"That's the debit side," her father said. "Surely there is a credit?"

"Pick likes him so much he almost calls him 'sir,'" Ernie

said.

Her father nodded. "Well, that's something," he said.

"He speaks Chinese and Japanese… and some others."

"I'm impressed," her father said.

"No, you're not," Ernie said. "You're looking for an opening. I'm not going to give you one. Not that it would matter if I did. You're just going to have to adjust to this, Daddy."

"You're thinking of marriage, obviously?"

"I am," she said. "He's not."

"Any particular reason? Or is he against marriage on general principles?"

"He's against girls marrying Marine officers during wartime," she said. "For the obvious reasons."

"Well, there's one other point in his favor," her father said. "He's right about that. There's nothing sadder than a young widow with a fatherless child."

"Except a young widow without a child," Ernie Sage said.

"That doesn't make any sense, Ernie," he said sternly. "And you know it."

"I'm tempted to debate that," she said. "It's not as if I would have to go rooting in garbage cans to feed the little urchin. But it's a moot point. Ken agrees with you. There will be no child. Not now."

He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke again.

"You have to look down the line, honey," he said. "And you have to look at things the way they are, not the way you would wish them to be. Have you considered, really considered, what your life with this young man would be, removed from this initial flush of excitement, without the thrill…?"

"I had occasion to consider what my life would be like without him," Ernie said. "He was reported missing and presumed dead. I died inside."

He looked at her with curiosity on his face.

"He's an intelligence officer," she said. "He was in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded. For a week they thought he was dead. But he wasn't, and he came home, and I came back to life."

Ernest Sage looked at his daughter, his tongue moving behind his lip as it did when he was in deep thought. "There seems to be only one thing I can do about this situation, honey," he said finally. "I go see your young man, carrying a shotgun, and demand that he do right by my daughter. Would you like me to do that?"

She got up and bent over her father and put her arms around him and kissed him. And laughed. "Thank you, Daddy," she said. "But no thanks."

"Why is that funny?" he asked.

"There is one little detail I seem to have skipped over. He didn't tell me. Pick did. They call him 'Killer' McCoy in the Marine Corps."

"Because of the Philippines? What he did there?"

"What he did in China," Ernie said. "I think I'll skip the. details, but I think threatening him with a shotgun, or anything' else, would be very dangerous."

"I'd love to hear the details," her father said.

"He was once attacked by four Italian Marines," Ernie said, after obviously thinking it over. "He killed two of them."

"My God!"

"And, another time, he was attacked by a gang of Chinese bandits," she went on. "He killed either twelve or fourteen of them. Nobody knows for sure."

"I think we can spare your mother those stories," her father said.

"You asked," she said simply.

"Have you considered, honey, that just maybe-considering your background-"

She interrupted him by laughing again. "That I am thrilled by close association with a killer?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I fell in love with him, Daddy," she said, "the first time I saw him. When I thought he was some friend of Pick's from Harvard. He was sitting on the patio wall of one of the penthouse suites at the Foster Park. The very first thought I had about Ken was that the Marine Corps was crazy if they thought they could take someone so gentle, so sweet, so vulnerable, and turn him into an officer."

"And when you found out what he's really like?"

"I found that out the same day," Ernie Sage said. "I didn't find out about the Italians and the Chinese until later."

Her father looked at her (she met his eyes, but her face did blush a little) until he was sure he had correctly taken her meaning, then asked, "When do I get to meet Mr. Wonderful?"

"Soon," she said. "Now that he's back in Washington, he doesn't think they'll be sending him anywhere else. Not soon, anyway."

Twenty minutes after Miss Ernestine Sage returned to her office at J. Walter Thompson, she received a telephone call from Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, from Washington, D.C.

Lieutenant McCoy told Miss Sage that he had been transferred to a Marine base near San Diego, California. He would write. Or call, if he had access to a phone. He was sorry, but there would be no chance for him to come to New York; he was getting in the car the moment he got off the phone.

If he was going by car, Miss Sage argued, there was no reason he couldn't go to the West Coast by way of New York. If not New York, then Philadelphia. If she left right now from New York, she could be at the Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia just about the time he could get there by car from Washington.

"Honey, goddamnit," Miss Sage argued. "You can't go without saying good-bye."

Lieutenant McCoy agreed to meet Miss Sage at the Thirtieth Street Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Philadelphia.

"But that's it, baby," Lieutenant McCoy said. "There won't be any time for anything else."

"I'll be standing on the curb," Ernie Sage said, and hung up.