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“No,” Rudolph said.
“You’re not hiding anything from me, are you?” she asked.
“No. Why would I do that?”
“I would like to see him once more before I die,” she said. “After all he is my own flesh and blood.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “I have a feeling when spring comes, I’m going to feel much better. We can go for walks again.”
“That’s good news,” Rudolph said, finishing his coffee and standing. He kissed her good-bye. “I’ll fix di
“Don’t tell me what it’s going to be,” she said co-quettishly, “surprise me.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll surprise you.”
The night watchman was still on duty at the employees’ entrance when Rudolph got to the store, carrying the morning papers, which he had bought on the way over.
“Good morning, Sam,” Rudolph said.
“Hi, Rudy,” the night watchman said. Rudolph made a point of having all the old employees, who knew him from his first days at the store, call him by his Christian name.
“You sure are an early bird,” the night watchman said. “When I was your age you couldn’t drag me out of bed on a morning like this.”
That’s why you’re a night watchman at your age, Sam, Rudolph thought, but he merely smiled and went on up to his office, through the dimly lit and sleeping store.
His office was neat and bare, with two desks, one for himself and one for Miss Giles, his secretary, a middle-aged, efficient spinster. There were piles of magazines geometrically stacked on wide shelves, Vogue, French Vogue, Seventeen, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, House and Garden, which he combed for ideas for various departments of the store. The quality of the town was changing rapidly; the new people coming up from the city had money and spent it freely. The natives of the town were more prosperous than they had ever been and were begi
He hadn’t seen Boylan since the day of the Commencement exercises. He had called twice that summer to ask if Boylan was free for di
Rudolph spread the newspapers on his desk. There was the Whitby Record, and the edition of the New York Times that came up on the first train of the morning. The front page of the Times reported heavy fighting along the 38th parallel and new accusations of treason and infiltration by Senator McCarthy in Washington. The Record’s front page reported on a vote for new taxes for the school board (not passed) and on the number of skiers who had made use of the new ski area nearby since the season began. Every city to its own interests.
Rudolph turned to the inside pages of the Record. The half-page two-color advertisement for a new line of wool dresses and sweaters was sloppily done, with the colors bleeding out of register, and Rudolph made a note on his desk pad to call the paper that morning about it.
Then he opened to the Stock Exchange figures in the Times and studied them for fifteen minutes. When he had saved a thousand dollars he had gone to Joh
14 across. Heep. Uriah, he printed neatly.
He was almost finished with the puzzle, when the phone rang. He looked at his watch. The switchboard was at work early, he noted approvingly. He picked up the phone with his left hand. “Yes?” he said, printing ubiquitous in one of the vertical columns.
“Jordache? That you?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Denton, Professor Denton.”
“Oh, how are you, sir?” Rudolph said. He puzzled over Sober in five letters, a the third letter.
“I hate to bother you,” Denton said. His voice sounded peculiar, as though he were whispering and was afraid of being overheard. “But can I see you sometime today?”
“Of course,” Rudolph said. He printed staid along the lowest line of the puzzle. He saw Denton quite often, when he wanted to borrow books on business management and economics at the college. “I’m in the store all day.”
Denton’s voice made a fu
“I just take forty-five minutes …”
“That’s all right. We’ll make it someplace near you.” Denton sounded gaspy and hurried. In class he was slow and sonorous. “How about Ripley’s? That’s just around the corner from you, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rudolph said, surprised at Denton’s choice of a restaurant. Ripley’s was more of a saloon than a restaurant and was frequented by workmen with a thirst rather than anybody who was looking for a decent meal. It certainly wasn’t the sort of place you’d think an aging professor of history and economics would seek out. “Is twelve-fifteen all right?”
“I’ll be there, Jordache. Thank you, thank you. It’s most kind of you. Until twelve-fifteen, then,” Denton said, speaking very quickly. “I can’t tell you how I appreciate …” He seemed to hang up in the middle of his last sentence.
Rudolph frowned, wondering what was bothering Denton, then put the phone down. He looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. The doors were open. His secretary came into the office and said, “Good morning, Mr. Jordache.”
“Good morning, Miss Giles,” he said and tossed the Times into the wastebasket, a
He made his first round of the store for the day, walking slowly, smiling at the clerks, not stopping or seeming to notice when his eye caught something amiss. Later in the morning, back in his office, he would dictate polite memos to the appropriate department head that the neck-ties piled on the counter for a sale were not arranged neatly enough, that Miss Kale, in cosmetics, had on too much eye make-up, that the ventilation in the fountain and tea shop was not sufficient.