I went in and bought some at a quick-lunch place, peeled a stick, and examined myself in a weighing-machine mirror, chewing. Something lacking still. Blue eyelids, that was it. I headed for one of the big shops.
I was beginning to wish mightily for Franz Bach, who is the only person I’ve ever known who’s as ready as I am to follow impulses just to see what happens. I suppose it was all those hours and hours we spent together prowling aimlessly about foreign cities waiting for Dad and Herr Bach and Jeanne. Just putting in time like that, in big cities where you know nobody, you think up quite mad things to do. Once, in Lisbon, Franz and I bought his whole new summer outfit while pretending we were both deaf and dumb.
I think it was missing Franz that suddenly gave me the notion of extending my reasonable facsimile of Opyl to include more than looks. Imitating her flat Midwestern vowels and voice would be no harder than adopting some thick European accent and improvising whole nonexistent families and life stories, which Franz and I did often to enliven a long tram ride.
I found a big shop and bought my blue eye shadow, using the glass at the cosmetic counter to put it on, meanwhile trying out my performance a bit on the clerk. She apparently noticed nothing wrong. I bought some largish pearl earrings, too—the hairdo seemed to need ballast—then remembered that I needed shoes anyway, and after some window-shopping found near duplicates of the ones Opyl had been wearing: white flats with gold leather bows. There were alternate buckles and ornaments available, which you could substitute for the bows as the spirit moved you. I thought, Why not?—and bought several, still practicing my gum-chewing and expressionless expression. Then some remnant of common sense told me I’d better quit buying things. It was now past one o’clock. I waited at the nearest bus stop till a behemoth labeled COLLEGE STREET—FREMONT PARK came rumbling up to me. Then, feeling perfectly secure behind my bangs and gum, I climbed aboard.
2
As soon as I got off the bus, I spotted the boardinghouse, across the street and half a block down. The “Room for Rent” sign was still tacked on one of the white wooden pillars of the porch, right under the big numerals, “1234.” The house itself was big and old, painted a fading but decent gray. It was one of a row of similar houses, all old and decent and fading, like retired governesses living in reduced circumstances. They stood well back from the street and high above it, had a near-vertical scrap of lawn apiece, and lots of concrete corseting—retaining walls to hold up the lawns—and sloping front walks that turned into long flights of steps descending to the sidewalk. Behind the roofs you could see the tops of trees, but the concrete and the street had won out—they, and the buses wheezing by, and the traffic lights, and the tired-looking little grocery on the corner, with a sign like a big milk bottle revolving lethargically on its roof. There was a chiropractor’s sign in the window of a house on my side of the street; the ground floor of another was a photographer’s studio. Directly across from me, a shiny little café with neon scrawled across its windows had been built at sidewalk level, jammed up against the knees of the dim old granny of a house behind it. The neighborhood had lost its battle with commerce. Very likely Fremont College, which was only two blocks away, would eventually buy the whole row of houses and build a dormitory.
Meanwhile, here they still were, rather less interesting than most houses—in fact, unrelievedly ordinary—and there was no point in standing on the sidewalk gaping at them any longer. I wondered what I’d expected, anyway. Suddenly, I was convinced none of this was going to be the least bit of fun. If there’s anything I loathe, it’s an anticlimax.
However, I could scarcely climb on the next bus and head tamely back to town—incidentally leaving Uncle Frosty in the lurch. Reluctantly, I started across the street. At once my life was brightened by the sight of an ancient parked car with a rain-washed message straggling across its side: “Butch is a goo”—the rest was illegible. It reminded me of a very different announcement I’d once seen chalked in schoolboy capitals on a London wall: “Colin is a lackey’s lackey.” London was a long, long way from College Street. At least, I thought, I’m here, not there. And I’m not going to leave this place until I’ve seen something interesting.
I saw it as I was passing the little café—the Rainbow Café, according to the pink neon on one of the big front windows. Under the improbably vivid rainbow painted on the glass, there was neat gold lettering. It read: “Owner and Proprietor, H. G. Bruce.”
Henry G. Bruce? Executor of the will, chairman of the Neighborhood Masterminds? It could be nobody else. I’d scarcely finished the thought before I was opening the door to go in.
The place was a bit larger than I expected, but it was all visible at a glance, and I failed to spot anybody who looked as if he might be Henry G. Bruce—unless it was a habit of his to sit at his own counter wearing his hat and eating a hamburger. Behind the counter was a gloomy-looking blonde of the Brünnhilde type, resentfully excavating for ice cream. Two women who should have been sternly slimming were eating banana splits at the table by the farther front window, and college boys filled the back corner booth. Otherwise, the room was empty, except for the disembodied spirit of a singer moaning from a juke box as elaborately lighted as Trafalgar Square at Christmas.
I walked over to the counter, chewing my gum, and asked Brünnhilde if Mr. Bruce happened to be around.
“Just left,” she said.
In a way, this was a relief, since I had no idea what to do with Mr. Bruce if she produced him, but it was a disappointment, too.
“He’ll be right back,” she added. She turned away to hook a milk shake into the mixing gadget, which immediately began to compete with the moaning singer. “He’s just gone home to change his shoes. His feet give ’im trouble.” She snatched two slices of toast from a toaster, slathered on mayonnaise, clapped cheese and lettuce between, cut the sandwich in two, and had it on a plate with a pickle and an olive with the speed of prestidigitation. “Mine give me trouble, too,” she added. “But changing shoes wouldn’t help, unless I could sit down an hour after I’d done it. Say—you wouldn’t be after the job?”
For an unreasoning instant I thought she must know exactly who I was and all about me—then my panic vanished as I noticed the sign taped onto the long mirror behind the counter. It said, “Waitress Wanted,” and inspired me with another impulse. I could be interviewed—that’s what I could do with Mr. Bruce.
I murmured, “Mm-hm,” and casually adjusted my bangs in the glass.
“Boy, I hope you get it. I can sure use you.” She was making a chocolate soda by this time. “Sit down and wait, why don’t you? Had your lunch?”
I certainly hadn’t, and the mélange of food smells was making me forcibly aware of it. Sliding onto one of the stools, I said, “I’ll have a sandwich, I guess, if you’ve got time to make one.”
She remarked that I’d never get one if I waited till she had time, and approximately thirty seconds later slid a grilled cheese and a Coke across the counter. “Fall to. He won’t be ten minutes.”
Ten minutes. I reached for the Coke, suddenly feeling a bit dry-mouthed under my air of Opylescent calm. Even five minutes was a long time for an impulse to hold up, not to mention my nerve. Besides, it had belatedly occurred to me that a spurious job application might not be the best beginning for my three weeks’ stay in the neighborhood. Think of it from Mr. Bruce’s point of view. He interviews a girl, he turns her down, and she immediately moves in next door. Not the most logical behavior. Or would he merely assume that I needed a room as well as a job? Maybe he wouldn’t think about it at all. On the other hand, maybe I’d better bolt my sandwich and get out of here.
All this jumpy conjecturing took no more time than to chew a bite or two. “He must not live very far away,” I said to Brünnhilde, who was scooping ice cream into another milkshake container.
“No. Right behind here, in the old house. It’s practically the same building. The rest
runt kitchen used to be the garage or something . . . OK, I’m coming!”
This last was aimed at the college boys in the corner booth, who were shouting for her to hurry. She unhooked the milk shake, hooked the second one in, and made another soda, grumbling under her breath. Just as she assembled the order on a tray and started for the booth, the hamburger customer got up to pay, the banana-split ladies waved for her attention, and two more people came in. It was clear she needed help.
About all there was to the café was the long soda-fountain counter, some booths and tables, and lots of color. The “rainbow” idea came through loud and clear; it only missed being garish because the walls of the room were natural maple. Everything else was either lavender, pink, green, or yellow, even the wide mats around a row of big flower prints on the side wall, and the seats of the counter stools. Brünnhilde’s uniform-frock, of which I could see little under her starched white pinafore except the voluminous gathered sleeves, matched the yellow of every fourth stool. The swinging doors to the kitchen were upholstered in plastic—one pink, one lavender—and the upholstery tacks were green.
I was just blinking at them, reflecting that Brünnhilde was now going to think it rather eccentric behavior if I didn’t apply for the job, when the lavender door opened and a tall, somehow odd-looking man in a shirt striped to match the decor came in from the kitchen.
“There he is,” said Brünnhilde, striding back with her empty tray. “Good luck. Oh, Mr. Bruce, here’s somebody about the job.”
She snatched the hamburger customer’s check and started stabbing at the cash register, and I slid off my stool to go meet Mr. Henry Bruce.
He gave me a grave, courteous little bow and led me back through the lavender door to a little office off the kitchen, where he waved me to a seat on one side of a desk, sank into the swivel chair on the other, and unhurriedly looked me over. I looked him over, too, chewing my gum and reminding myself reassuringly that my eyelids were bright blue. He was a quiet, impassive sort of man—tall and neat, with a round bald head and a round face that looked as if it ought to belong to a fat man, which he wasn’t. It gave him the odd appearance of having swapped heads with a friend. He didn’t fit my idea of a crook, though, except perhaps for his eyes, which were fog-gray and unsurprised, and looked older than the rest of him. I hoped uneasily that they couldn’t see right through my collar, which he was studying, and decipher the London label underneath.
“You’re interested in becoming a waitress?” he asked finally.
I murmured, “Mm-hm,” but it came out so nearly inaudible that I added in a rather shaky voice, “Well, I’m interested in a job.”
“Have you done this sort of work before?”
Now, steady on, I warned myself, and said “Hmp’mm” in a nearer approximation of Opyl’s tone.
He moved a paper on his desk. “Of course, the work isn’t very difficult to catch onto. It isn’t very highly paid, either. The salary is fifty-two eighty a week. Plus tips, of course. The girls say they amount to another twenty or so usually.”
“Mm-hm, that’d be OK,” I said. I was fatalistically beginning to enjoy this.
“Have you any references?” Mr. Bruce said, picking up a pencil.
“Hmp’mm. I mean, I would have, but my last boss went bankrupt. In fact, he died.”
“I see.” Mr. Bruce put the pencil down. “Where was the job?”
“Idaho,” I improvised. “A five-and-dime, in Idaho. I clerked in the ribbons.” I held my breath, realizing I’d said “clarked,” the British way.
Apparently he hadn’t noticed. “You’ve just recently come to Portland, then?” he asked, leaning back in a relaxed way.
“Mm-hm.”
“Well. I hope you’ll like it. A pleasant city. Where did you live in Idaho?”
I gave him a small smile while I tried in vain to remember the name of even one town in Idaho—even the capital. “It was just a little bitty place. You wouldn’t have heard of it.” That sounded so unconvincing that I added, “Morton Center.”
Morton Center, I thought in disgust. Surely I could have done better than that. It ought to have been something vaguely Indian. Skallamaloosa. Wawkanap.
Mr. Bruce suddenly leaned forward again and reached for the pencil. “Well, suppose we say your hours will be eleven to seven. That’s the lunch-and-dinner shift. You’ll eat in the kitchen, whenever there’s a lull. There’ll always be somebody else on duty with you—I employ three waitresses and try to stagger the shifts so you’re all there during rush hours but only two of you between. There’ll be a lot to learn at first, but Rose will teach you.” He opened a drawer and took out a form sheet of some kind, while I stared at him in utter disbelief.
“You mean—you’re hiring me?”
Mr. Bruce gave me a mildly interrogative glance and said, “Oh, yes, I think we’ll try you.” He pulled the paper toward him, glancing up at me again. “Unless you find the terms unsatisfactory?”
“Oh . . . no . . . they’re fine.” This was pure surrealism. I located my gum and began to chew.
“Good. Your name, then, Miss—”
“Georgetta Einszweiler Smith,” I heard myself, as in a dream sequence, saying.
It seemed not to surprise him. I wondered if anything had ever surprised him.
“Address?” That stumped me long enough for him to glance up. “Where do you live, Miss Smith?”
“Nowhere. I mean, I don’t actually—”
“Haven’t found a room yet? There’s one for rent a few doors down the street, if you’re interested. We can fill that in later. Last position—salesgirl.” I watched his pen wiggle across the sheet, realizing I should have said that, instead of “clerk.” “Former residence—Morton Center, Idaho. References—unobtainable. Social security number?” He glanced up, then back to his paper. “We can fill that in later if you don’t remember. Let’s see—I expect your age is around eighteen . . .”
He went right on calmly filling out that unbelievable paper with all those unsatisfactory answers. How could he want to hire me—no references, no experience, less than no personality? Maybe he was thinking I’d do for the scullery work, anyway, or until he could get somebody better. Actually, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. First Opyl, then him; it seemed to be my day for meeting inscrutable people. When I left a few minutes later, I’d learned less about Mr. Henry Bruce than he’d learned about Georgetta Einszweiler Smith. In fact, I did not know one thing about the man except that his feet hurt—and that I was supposed to start working for him the next morning.
Out on the sidewalk again, in the sane, ordinary light of day, I could scarcely believe I’d let things get so out of hand. But there it was, and I began to feel remarkably silly and guilty about it. To let myself be hired for a job I had no intention of working at—what could I have been thinking? Answer—I hadn’t been thinking, I had just idiotically been saying “Why not?” to everything that came up. Now I’d have to slog through the embarrassing aftermath—either ring up Mr. Bruce and tell him some plausible lie (I hate lying when it’s not for entertainment) or go back and confess flat out that I hadn’t meant a word of it. And wouldn’t that be fine inconspicuous behavior!
It was the first time all day that I’d felt trapped. But the only alternative I could see was simply to take the job.
Simply take the job.
Why not? said a little voice inside me.
Now, stop that, I told it. There’ll be a phone in the grocer’s shop—go use it to get yourself out of this.
But why? That’s what I want, a job. Why not take this one? And then very logically go rent the room in the boardinghouse? And just carry right on all summer in this common, ordinary, lovely College Street, where nobody knows me from Adam, and learn to make milk shakes?
And also carry right on being Georgetta Einszweiler Smith?
I was in front of th
e grocer’s by now, staring feverishly at a pile of oranges in the window. Not Georgetta, my word! I thought. It does sound like dress goods or something. Mary E. Smith maybe—oh, never mind that now. I’ve got to examine this . . . I’d better walk around the block.
I walked around the block, examining, and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. All I asked was to be kept occupied and solvent. What did it matter what my name was, so long as it wasn’t my own? When the detective showed up, I could find some other room to live in. Or . . . the little voice piped up again, but so outlandishly that I shushed it on the first try, or thought I did.
After a short deliberation on ways and means, I ended up after all in the grocer’s phone booth, where I rang up Uncle Frosty at his office and told him where I was and that I’d found myself a job and was just about to go rent his room, so he needn’t give me another thought until late August.
I guess he was still picturing me at home in bed. “You’re where?” he said in a confused voice.
“Half a block from 1234 College Street, at a grocer’s with a milk bottle on it. Listen, if you won’t interrupt for five minutes, I’ll explain all about today.”
It took me ten. He didn’t interrupt. When I finished, there was a long but busy silence.
“Georgetta Einszweiler Smith?” he repeated, as if he were trying hard to believe it.
“Well, I didn’t plan the name—it just came out, like a hiccup. I mean to change it to something more—wearable.”
“But you mean to stay incognito? All summer long?”
“Why not? I was going to be incommunicado anyhow. And I’ll be earning my own money and working hard and keeping my mind off college, and our bargain still goes, so why not?”
“Why not, indeed?” Uncle Frosty said, after another pause. “There must be some reason why not, but I seem too rattled just now to find it. Have you got any money?”