XXVII

There Could Always Be a Palace Revolution

The details of this encounter were pieced together from what the General told me later, like so many other episodes in his career. I knew nothing of them at the time. In fact after Melville Goodwin had left for New York I believed that he had gone more or less for good. If he had made a strong impression on me, so had other people who had also vanished, and in the last analysis one can only give so much of one’s energy to the affairs of other people. I had no way of knowing that Mel Goodwin’s life and mine were each moving to an almost simultaneous crisis. I could only see long afterwards that coming events had cast their shadows during those days at Savin Hill. The General’s interest in Dottie was of course a recognizable shadow, and I should have known that Gilbert Frary’s oblique talk with me at Savin Hill, and the orchids for Helen were dangerous portents; but then, such shadows are usually difficult to perceive until too late. Whenever I thought of Mel Goodwin at all in the next few days, I simply thought of him as being in Washington caught up again in his own routine, disappearing like other friends and acquaintances from the ETO, now that the war was over.

Actually I had not been paying enough attention to my own affairs. As I told Helen, I had professional pride, such as it was. I had never expected to be a radio commentator, but now that I was one, I wanted to be a good one. I was tired of being only a front and a piece of property. I was delighted to have the assistance of an expert script-writer like Art Hertz, but I was beginning to wish to have a final say myself on the writing. I had noticed that Art Hertz sometimes exhibited pain when I made suggestions or asked for a few minor changes, but I had always accepted this reaction as natural, and I would not have respected him if he had not begun to look upon the script as his own property. Nevertheless I did think he should have admitted it was mine in the final analysis, if only because a great many people thought of me as a commentator who wrote his own opinions on world events.

I had never been as conscious of a sort of opposition on the part of Art Hertz as I was just after the Goodwins’ visit. I should have seen earlier that Art and everyone else on the program knew something that I did not. I should have gathered, I suppose, from Art’s manner that I was not as essential to him as I had been, but at the time I was exhilarated by a sense that I was beginning to pull more of my own weight in the boat and that things in the studio were going pretty well. I was also beginning to enjoy writing the script myself with Art and the rest of them to check up on it and I was finally getting the feeling of writing for the air. A welcome aspect of the situation was the fact that Gilbert Frary had left suddenly for the West Coast without asking me again to accompany him, and with Gilbert away I was not quite the Charlie McCarthy I had been around the studio.

One day in the latter part of October at four in the afternoon I was sitting in the elaborate office which the company had supplied for me, going over Art’s revised notes, and I had asked Miss Maynard, the secretary whom the company had supplied for me, to get me some foreign dispatches from the newsroom so that I could check some of Art Hertz’s statements. I had just decided that a lead on the situation in the Orient sounded better than Art’s beginning, which dealt with a Washington investigation, when suddenly the door from Miss Maynard’s office opened, and a tall, youngish man, whom I did not know, peered in. This would not have happened if Miss Maynard had been at her desk but she had just come in to me with the teletype copy.

Strangers were not supposed to pop in at the studio unless there was a visitors’ tour, and I could not say that I was pleased. I had never seen this youngish man around, but something in the careful cut of his double-breasted suit and in the neat fold of the handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket gave me an idea that he knew his way about studios.

“Oh,” he said, and he had a fine sincere voice that reminded me of my own when I heard a broadcast played back to me, “excuse me. I didn’t know anyone was here,” and then he was gone.

“Who was that?” I asked Miss Maynard, and I thought Miss Maynard colored slightly.

“Why, don’t you know him, Mr. Skelton?” Miss Maynard asked.

“No,” I said, “but he’s got a voice and a presence, hasn’t he?”

I should have known right then that Miss Maynard knew something that I did not, but at the time such a thought never crossed my mind.

“Why,” Miss Maynard said, “it’s Mr. Alan Featherbee. You know, he has the nine-o’clock-in-the-morning spot at Acme, the one that’s called ‘Alan Featherbee and the News.’”

I felt a twinge of the unreasoning professional jealousy that is unavoidable in the show business, particularly when I remembered that in my latest conversation with Gilbert Frary he had mentioned that Featherbee was the one who spoke his own commercials.

“Well, what’s he doing here?” I asked.

“I really don’t know, Mr. Skelton,” Miss Maynard said. She looked unusually beautiful against the background of the green carpet and the gay upholstered chairs, but it seemed to me that she was speaking especially carefully and sweetly. “Mr. Featherbee has been around here a good deal during the last few days. Just visiting, I suppose.”

“Oh,” I said, “are we going to take him away from Acme?”

“I really wouldn’t know, I’m sure, Mr. Skelton,” Miss Maynard said, “but he has been around frequently.”

I wanted to ask Miss Maynard some further questions, but I had learned that with studio secretaries there was seldom that loyalty from the bottom up to which Mel Goodwin had so often alluded. At least I had the common sense then to suspect the possible shadow of a coming event.

“Oh,” I said. I wanted very much to ask Miss Maynard to try to find me a record of one of the Featherbee broadcasts, but I thought better of it because of the loyalty angle. “Maybe you’d better go out front and keep out visitors, Miss Maynard. I’m pretty busy now,” but before Miss Maynard could reach her office the door was opened again by one of those nice boys in the Civil-War-gray, military-academy uniforms with all the braid.

“Forgive me, Mr. Skelton,” he said. It must have been a part of the briefing those boys received that made them always ask to be forgiven and not excused. “A gentleman at the floor reception desk would like to see you personally, and your secretary’s telephone did not answer.”

“Oh dear,” Miss Maynard said, “I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Skelton.”

I smiled as sweetly as I could at Miss Maynard.

“All right,” I said, “who is it?”

“Captain Robert Goodwin, sir,” the page boy said.

“I can see him and find out what he wants, Mr. Skelton,” Miss Maynard said, “and I’ll really see this doesn’t happen again.”

“Oh, never mind,” I told her. “Tell him to come in as long as he’s here.”

First it had been Art Hertz’s script, and now I would have to let it go as it stood, and then it had been Alan Featherbee and the News, and now I was back again in the life and times of Melville A. Goodwin. I had never imagined that I might see his older son nor could I understand why he wanted to call. When Miss Maynard showed him in and left us and closed the door, it occurred to me that I had never received a guest of my own in my new private office. I was not at ease with all those blown-up publicity photographs lining the wall, and it did not help to observe that Robert Goodwin began to eye them immediately after we shook hands.

“Don’t blame any of that on me,” I said. “It’s all a part of the show. How did you find I was here?”

Robert Goodwin smiled, and it was the Melville Goodwin smile on a younger face.

“It was really tough tracking you down, Major Skelton,” he said, “but I called up your home in Connecticut and was able to reach Mrs. Skelton. I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. I’m only in New York for a few hours.”

He was in a civilian suit that was too reddish-brown and tweedy. No West Pointer had ever looked right to me in a business suit. They always went hog-wild in men’s clothing or haberdashery shops. They always come out, even from a reliable tailor, with some garment that was slightly out of line or that jarred the notes of convention. Robert Goodwin stood as if he were entering an office in the Pentagon. He was Regular Army from his manner and in spite of his garish costume he almost made me feel like a colonel.

“Take any color chair you like and sit down,” I said. “I thought you were a lieutenant. I didn’t know you were a captain.”

“It just came through the other day, sir,” he answered.

He looked young for the rank until I looked at his eyes. His eyes were older than the rest of his face.

“Help yourself to a cigarette,” I told him. “There ought to be some in the box on the fake Chinese coffee table.”

“Thanks,” he said, “is there an ash tray handy, sir?”

I could think of Muriel Goodwin telling him to be careful about cigarettes. When he saw a mushroomlike ash receiver in a corner, he started up to bring it nearer.

“Sit down,” I said, “and drop your ashes on the carpet. The management cleans it every day.”

“This really is quite a place you have here, sir,” he said.

“That’s right,” I said. “I wish your father could have seen it. It might have built me up with him.”

If I had been young Robert Goodwin with a few hours of my own in New York, I would not have consumed one minute of it looking up one of my father’s civilian friends, unless I had called for a purpose. When he smiled, his eyes narrowed exactly like Mel Goodwin’s. I could see that he was trying to size me up, and that he had probably never seen anything like me or the broadcasting studio. I found myself anxious to make the right impression on him, and I was curious about him, too, because just seeing him put Mel Goodwin in a different light.

He was taller than his father, yet he looked very much as Mel Goodwin must have looked when he was fresh from the Point. He still had a few rough edges but I was thinking that perhaps he had used his father as a model, because his hair was done in the same crew cut and he had the same way of sitting, relaxed and yet not relaxed. His youth still concealed many of the qualities which would later give him the authentic stamp of the professional soldier, though I could tell from previous experiences with other younger officers that he had been in action many times. Action always left an indefinable mark on any face. Though they were not deep as yet, lines were already apparent around the corners of his mouth.

“It was nice seeing your father,” I said. “We had quite a time up at my place with those magazine people.”

Robert Goodwin flicked his cigarette ash on the impeccable office carpet and looked longingly at the ash receiver.

“We’re looking forward to seeing that piece about him,” Robert Goodwin said. “Mother can hardly wait. We all hope the old man didn’t put his foot in his mouth.”

“Don’t worry, he did fine,” I told him. “I suppose he’s right in the groove now and settling down in Washington.”

Captain Goodwin looked straight at me, with the same cool, searching look his father could assume.

“I wouldn’t say the boss was quite settled down yet, sir,” he said. “He’s got some leave and he and Mother are still sort of camping out with some old friends in Alexandria, Colonel and Mrs. Joyce. Maybe you heard the old man speak of them.”

“Yes, I have,” I said. “Your mother and Mrs. Joyce work on picture puzzles, don’t they?”

“That’s right,” he said. “… I’ve just got orders to go to Benning—instructor in recoilless weapons.”

The ice was breaking slightly, and he looked more at ease. He seemed to expect me to make some intelligent comment about recoilless weapons, but when I did not, he went right on, still formally but more confidently.

“We played with those things some in the Pacific,” he said. “The word is they’re better now, but I sort of wish I could stick around Washington. I’d sort of like to get to know the old man again. I haven’t seen him for quite a while.”

Obviously he was planning to talk about the old man, now that the ground was cleared.

“Maybe you’ve noticed, sir,” he said, “or maybe it’s only my own impression, that the old man is sort of restless.”

When our eyes met, I saw that he was watching me carefully, and I thought he handled himself very well. He did not fidget, as a civilian his age might have, but then he was an officer with a record.

“Everyone’s restless sometimes,” I told him.

“Yes, I know,” he said, “I’m that way myself—but then I’m under thirty, if you get my point.”

In the army you took more things for granted than you ever could on the outside. Now and then you had to put all the cards on the table with someone after a few minutes’ acquaintance, and you got to know and to trust people quickly. I must have fitted some of his own standards, and I could not help being pleased.

“Yes, I get your point,” I said.

He glanced at the electric clock on the office wall with its moving second hand, and I wondered whether it gave him the same inevitable sense of pressure that it had always given me.

“Maybe I’d better lay it on the line,” he said. “The old man was saying the other night that you were the only noncombat civilian officer he knew who ever made full sense to him in a service way. Of course the old man’s pretty naïve at some points, but I saw a lot of civilians out in the Pacific myself.” He smiled at me again. “Now if the old man said that about you, I guess that means you sort of like my old man. Jesus, I’m making a long speech!”

Robert Goodwin crossed the room and dropped his cigarette in the ash receptacle, although he had just lighted one, and then he immediately lighted another.

“Perhaps you’d like a little Scotch,” I said. “I have some right here.”

“Thanks, I really would, sir,” Robert Goodwin said.

I fetched a bottle and some glasses out of the cellaret and then I called Miss Maynard and asked her if she would please get a little ice and some soda from the small refrigerator that was in Mr. Frary’s changing room. We talked about the Pacific until Miss Maynard left the room.

“That’s a really nicely stacked up secretary you have, sir,” he said.

“They all are, in the front offices,” I told him. I was not old enough to call him “son” and he was too young to call me “Sid,” but it was remarkable how a little Scotch always eased a situation.

“You know, I’ve seen a lot of generals, sir,” he said, looking up at the clock again, “because I was Priestley’s aide for a while on Saipan, and do you know when I looked my father over the other day in Washington, I was surprised?” He stopped and looked at his drink. “I may be prejudiced, but I think he’s got what it takes, all the way around. I have a hunch he can handle anything right through a four-star job.”

As I waited for him to go on, I found myself beginning to think that he possibly might be right. In the beginning I had discounted Melville Goodwin’s capabilities, which were always getting lost behind his simplicities, but somehow Goodwin was always better than you thought he was going to be. He had always gained something from experience. He had always moved a little further forward and he was still young as generals went.

“A lot of officers can only push beyond a certain level,” the captain was saying, and he moved his hands in a quick gesture to indicate a level. “You can get the feel of this when you meet them—but it’s different with him. I’m not referring to guts. The boss has a mental toughness that is more than guts, and he’s really got a future if he doesn’t stick his neck out.”

He glanced at me, but I did not answer. It was curious to hear him implying what had been so often in my own thoughts.

“There’s nothing in this world quite so naked as a general,” Robert Goodwin said. “He’s up there where everybody can see everything about him including his private life, from every angle, and he must be right; he can’t be wrong. Well, the old man’s up there just now, and they’re looking him over. Every one of them has his own crowd behind him.… All right, I’m naturally in the Goodwin crowd”—Robert Goodwin glanced straight at me again—“and I don’t want to see him fall flat on his face, Mr. Skelton.”

The room, like all the studio offices, was carefully soundproofed, and the silence all around us was distinctly artificial.

“What makes you think he’s going to fall on his face?” I asked.

Robert Goodwin’s face framed itself in that mirthless service smile. It was, of course, a useless question, and of course we both knew it.

“Listen,” he said, “what about this dame he keeps seeing in New York?”

We were surrounded again by an artificial, antiseptic silence and I was conscious of blank helplessness. It was news to me that the General had seen Dottie Peale more than that once in New York.

“Keeps seeing?” I repeated.

“That’s right, sir,” Robert Goodwin said. “He’s commuting up here all the time from Washington.”

“How do you happen to know about this?” I asked him.

His lips twisted again into that mirthless service smile.

“I wouldn’t say the old man was exactly a subtle character, would you, sir?” he said. “He’s talked to me about the dame. He’s one of those people who always has to talk to somebody. He says you introduced her to him in Paris.”

It seemed to me that he was implying that, because of an introduction, I was the one who should do something about it.

“That was quite a while ago,” I said.

“All right,” he said, “that isn’t all.”

“What isn’t all?” I asked.

We were beginning to sound like characters in a soap opera, in that soundproof office.

“Everybody’s beginning to talk,” he said. “They’ve been seen around. It makes a pretty good story. Everyone likes a good story when it’s on a general, sir.”

“Now look,” I asked, and I sounded as cautious as a confidential family lawyer, “don’t you think you’re exaggerating?”

“Maybe,” he answered, “but then, so is everybody else. That’s the way those things go, isn’t it?”

I wished he would not act as though I were responsible, but I could feel his cool accusing glance.

“Now look,” I began, “these things happen sometimes.”

“Yes, sir, you’re damned well right they do,” he answered, “but they ought not to happen to the old man right now.”

“These things happen,” I said again, “and nobody can do much about them, I guess.”

“Well, the point is somebody ought to try. Don’t you agree, sir?” he said, and he looked at me. I wanted to tell him that I had tried in my own way, but there was that gap of age between us and I had my own loyalties.

“Have you tried speaking to your father?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “I brought it up last night and it only made the old man mad. Have you ever tried to argue with him?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’ve tried.”

We sat in silence for a while, both supporting a Leaning Tower of Pisa—the career of Major General Melville A. Goodwin.

“Well,” he said, “somebody’s got to do something. I hope it isn’t as bad as we think.”

“I didn’t say it was so bad,” I told him.

“I know you didn’t say it, sir,” he said. “Well, what about this Mrs. Peale?”

“Well,” I answered, “what about her?”

He sat up straighter and gripped his knees with his heavy fingers.

“Maybe she really likes the old man,” he said. “Maybe she doesn’t realize how this sort of thing might hurt him, from the service point of view, I mean. Maybe she doesn’t know that the old man’s slated for something big just now. I think I ought to meet her and have a talk with her myself.”

It was exactly what someone of his age would have concluded, clear and logical and completely useless, and the worst of it was I knew that Dottie would love to see young Robert Goodwin and that anything he might say would only give Mel Goodwin a new value.

“Listen,” I told him, “I don’t think these things are ever helped by sitting around a table.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t see how doing nothing will help either, sir.”

“All right,” I said, “then you’d better talk to her. She always likes verbiage.”

“Sir, would you consider going with me?” he asked.

“I think she’d like it better,” I answered, “if you went alone.”

“Would you mind telephoning her and telling her I’m coming over?” he asked.

There were a number of things I might have said about Dottie Peale, but somehow they seemed to have all been spoken, wordlessly, already, and I asked Miss Maynard to get Mrs. Henry Peale for me at her private number. It was five o’clock, and she would probably be at home, and it turned out that she was.

“Why, Sid darling,” she said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the office,” I said.

“Well, it’s a good place for you to be, under the circumstances,” she said.

“What circumstances?” I asked.

“Oh,” she answered, “not over the telephone, darling, but there is something I’d like to tell you someday soon.”

“Well,” I said, “Robert Goodwin’s here with me right now. You know, Melville Goodwin’s son.”

There was a slight pause before she answered, which I rather enjoyed.

“Damn it,” she said, “don’t always explain everything with diagrams.”

“There’s no need for a diagram,” I said. “He’s here and he’d like to see you.”

There was another pause.

“Why, I’d love it,” she said. “I think it’s awfully sweet of him to want to see me. Tell him to come right over if he’d like to … and, Sid?”

“Yes?” I said.

“Does he look like Mel?”

“Yes,” I said, “quite a lot.”

“Then tell him to hurry over,” Dottie said.

“It’s all cleared,” I said to Robert Goodwin, “… and you know if there’s anything else I can do …” but of course there was nothing that anyone could do, and I had my own life to lead. Besides being concerned about Mel Goodwin, I found myself wondering why Dottie had said it was nice I was in the office and what it was that she could not tell me over the telephone.

If I was disturbed after Captain Robert Goodwin had left, it was an indefinite sort of disturbance, not a single element of which could be isolated. Uncertainty had begun to lurk in the background of everything I touched. You could start with all the world events which I was trying to put, with the aid of Art Hertz, into an agreeable, intelligent capsule to fit within the limits of fifteen spoken minutes. Nothing was secure in the world any longer, where balances and beliefs were shifting and settling like the foundations of a badly constructed building. I had only to look at that broadcast script to observe how those one-world theories, once so eloquently outlined by the late Wendell Willkie, had flown out of the window. They reminded me of a balloon given me as a child, the string of which had been whisked out of my fingers by an unexpected gust of wind. I could remember staring in pained unbelief after that balloon, watching it rise and rise until it was only an unattainable speck. Europe was in a state of imbalance, and a single push could topple over governments and traditions. Asia was weltering in revolution, and at home our own government was seething with its own involutions. You could gloss over the details, but the facts remained. Once there had been a logical blueprint for the defeat of despotism, and now there was not even a plausible plan. The world itself was like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and so was my own future.

Once I had been able to view all these matters detachedly, but that was before I had stakes in the future and before I had become involved with studios and contracts and people like Gilbert Frary. Now my thoughts moved like a modern statesman’s, in all directions, facing a half dozen unpleasant eventualities. I did not like the broadcast and I did not like Art Hertz or anything in the studio. The work had amused me once, but not any longer. If I had been alone, I should have known exactly what to do and I should have enjoyed doing it, but I was not alone. I remembered what Gilbert Frary said about pinching myself to be sure it was not a dream, and it was not a dream. There was no sense of euphoria any longer.

I was not even alone with my own problems—there was also Melville A. Goodwin. When I toyed with the idea of reaching Gilbert Frary on the Coast and asking him a few curt questions about this Alan Featherbee, who had popped suddenly into the office, along came the shades of Melville Goodwin and Dottie Peale. Again, when I had almost decided to call in Art Hertz and have a frank, tough talk, I found myself wondering about Robert Goodwin and Dottie Peale. Then I began thinking of Melville Goodwin in Washington struggling with his own uncertainties. I was reminded that before long I would be going down to Washington myself to give the broadcast there, thus creating the customary illusion that I was in close touch with the nation’s capital. The details had all been arranged six weeks before. I was enmeshed in personalities and details.

Before I was aware of the time, Art Hertz came in with the final script, walking very softly considering his weight. It seemed to me that Art was more sure of himself and more aggressive than he had been a day or two before. I believed that he was looking at me in a speculative way, as though, like Miss Maynard, he knew something. At any rate, it was six-fifteen, too late for any alterations in the script. While I was reading it and Art was sitting waiting, I still felt that he was watching me, though every time I looked up from the boldly typed and spaced pages he was looking carefully at his hands or playing with a pencil.

“That’s fine, Art,” I said.

“I’m glad if you like it,” Art said.

“I always like what you do, Art,” I told him, “but no two minds ever think exactly alike. You mustn’t worry if I intersperse a few ideas sometimes.”

“Oh, no,” Art said, “that’s all right. I always liked working for you, Sid.”

At certain times you noticed small details if you knew what was good for you. Art had used the past tense when he said he liked working for me, and the disturbing thing was that he noticed it, too.

“And I still like it, Sid,” he said.

He sat waiting as if he expected me to continue on the subject.

“Has Frary called up today?” I asked.

Art Hertz put his pencil in his pocket and smiled to show that we both understood all about Gilbert.

“Oh, yes,” Art said, “he was on the telephone about half an hour ago. He was in a cabaña at some swimming pool. He just wanted to hear the lead of the script. He said the sun was shining and he must leave for his massage in the solarium. You know how Gilbert likes the sun. I could do with some of it myself.”

“Did you tell him I was here?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Art answered, “but when Miss Maynard said you were in conference, he just said give you his love. I guess he was in a hurry to get to the solarium. You know how he is about the sun.”

“Oh, Miss Maynard was in your office when he called, was she?” I asked.

“She just dropped in,” Art said. “You know Maynard; she’s always around everywhere.”

“That’s right,” I said, “everywhere.”

I felt like a sultan in a palace, carefully guarded and yet aware of a palace revolution, and the feeling was all around me.

“You know we’re going down to Washington on the thirteenth,” I said.

“Yes,” Art answered, “everything is set. Someone from the State Department is going to use three minutes, but we don’t know who he is yet. Well, if you haven’t got anything else on your mind …”

Art stood up and took his pencil out of his pocket.

“No, my mind’s a perfect blank,” I said, and I smiled at him.

He knew it was time for him to leave because I wanted to go over the script again by myself.

“By the way, it’s going to be in Studio C,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, Sid.”

You noticed small details if you knew what was good for you. It was the first time I had ever broadcast from Studio C.

“No,” I said, “I don’t mind. I’d just as soon not have a crowd watching me.”

I should have gone over the script again, but instead I began thinking about my contract and I remembered how hurt Gilbert had been when I had shown it, before signing, to a law firm I had selected myself. The firm was Frankel and Jacobs, well known for literary and theatrical work, and as a matter of fact Dottie Peale had introduced me to them. The contract was a long document which I had never read carefully, seeing that I had paid the Frankel firm to read it, but I did remember a clause over which there had been argument, called a mutual dissatisfaction clause, permitting a termination of the contract by either party. The part about either party had been inserted by Mr. Frankel instead of simply applying to the sponsor, as Gilbert Frary had suggested. The clause was number twenty-eight in the contract, and I wanted very much to read it just then. I even thought of asking Miss Maynard for a copy until I thought that this might arouse needless suspicions. Instead I asked her to get me Mrs. Henry Peale again on the telephone.

“Darling,” Dottie said, “I thought you might be calling me. Is anything the matter?”

It went to show that she knew too much about my voice and behavior. I was going to ask her if I might drop over later, and now I hated to ask, simply because she had thought I would call up.

“I was just wondering whether young Goodwin had gone,” I said.

“He just left a minute or two ago,” Dottie said. “He was so sweet. Don’t you think he’s sweet?”

“That’s right,” I said, “sweet.”

“And he does look like Mel, doesn’t he?”

“That’s right,” I said, “he looks like Mel.”

“Why don’t you stop in for a minute on your way home?” she said. “I could give you a bite of supper, darling, up in the study. I haven’t anything to do until nine o’clock.”

I was very glad that she had asked me, and then before I could get to the script again, Helen called me.

“Sid,” Helen said, “is anything the matter?”

I wished that the women in my life did not understand all the inflections of my voice. I told her that of course nothing was the matter.

“Camilla has a temperature,” Helen said, “and Dr. Gordon’s just been here. It’s only a cold, but she’s been asking for you.”

It was not one of my better days. Yet I was surprised by my own voice when I sat in Studio C and said “Good evening, friends.” It sounded as though I did not have a care in the world and as though the world were going on delightfully for everyone.

Everything at Dottie’s always ran like clockwork, although this may have been an archaic way of putting it. Albert, that butler of hers, greeted me like an old family friend and asked whether he should take me up in the lift or whether I cared to go by myself. When I told him that I would try to run the thing alone, he showed me which button to press.

“The doors open and close automatically, as you may remember, sir,” he said.

Automatic elevators always reminded me either of the Arabian Nights or of a journey to a hospital operating room. When I pressed the button and when the doors closed, they physically shut out the immediate present and I seemed to have committed myself to a transition from one phase of life to another. When the elevator doors opened, I could see Dottie, across the entry to her study, sitting there on the sofa. Her feet were curled under her in that manner she had never outgrown, and it was easy to forget all the years and events that had separated us.

She wriggled off the sofa when she saw me, just as she would have years before. There was always something youthful about the way Dottie got herself off a sofa. She was dressed in a greenish afternoon frock which she had undoubtedly hurried into directly after I had told her about Robert Goodwin. In fact Dottie and that whole study hinted at the ending of a little scene. There was still a trace of cigarette smoke in the air and almost the echo of voices.

“Hi, Dot,” I said.

She held her hands out to me, but before I could take them she threw her arms around me and kissed me. It was utterly unexpected, but I could not say I minded it.

“Well, well,” I said, “say I’m weary say I’m sad, but Jennie kissed me.”

“Darling,” she said, “your feathers are all ruffled. You look upset.”

There was no use concealing my feelings, and as I stood with my arm around her, I had to admit that I felt happy, because I suddenly realized that she and I were friends in spite of all our quarrels and competitions. I have never been able to understand exactly what constitutes a friendship between a man and a woman. There were still some echoes of old emotion, but they were not disturbing then. I only knew that Dottie would not go back on me, and that it was safe to tell her anything that worried me.

“Well,” I said, “perhaps I am.”

“Do you want a drink?” she asked me.

“No,” I said, “not right now, thanks.”

“All right,” she said, “if you want to be strong-minded. I had Albert bring up chicken sandwiches and milk. Do you still like chicken sandwiches?”

It was kind of her to remember that I liked chicken sandwiches, but then if she wanted she could remember everything.

“Darling,” she said, “I’m ever so glad you called me up.”

There was no need to make any conversation. I felt again as I had in the elevator, the same sense of motion without my own volition. I was conscious of her possessive instincts. I knew that she always liked to run things, but I did not mind this then. She was back on the sofa again with her feet curled under her.

“Oh, hell,” she said, “why not face it? It’s awfully nice to know you still belong to me a little.”

“I don’t mind it either right now,” I said.

I knew this was one of her moods, but then perhaps it was valid.

“We needn’t be so damned strait-laced about it,” Dottie said. “If two people have ever been in love with each other, they always do belong to each other a little, whether they approve of it or not. It isn’t anything to be ashamed of. It’s only an obvious sort of fact. I don’t even mean that we were very much in love, because we always knew too damn much about each other … and now you’d better pull up your socks and tell me what’s the matter.”

“It’s nice to be on such a friendly basis, Dottie,” I said.

“God, yes,” she said, “it’s nice we’re grown-up, darling.”

Now that she mentioned it, I was almost sorry we were grown-up, which was probably exactly what she wanted. I did not love her any longer and she did not love me, but at the same time I could tell her some things about myself which I could not have told Helen.

“Well,” I began, “this afternoon at the office …”

And there I was, telling Dottie Peale about Alan Featherbee and Gilbert Frary and Art Hertz, moving back and forth, mixing the end with the beginning.

“I know,” Dottie said, “they’re all sons of bitches, darling.”

I had always known they were, but it was very comforting to hear Dottie say so and to feel that I was talking to an expert.

“I don’t want Helen to be disturbed,” I told her. “I suppose I ought to do something. What alarms me is that I don’t seem to care.”

“Don’t you care at all?” she asked.

“Frankly, no,” I said. I would not have dreamed of telling anyone except Dottie that I did not like broadcasting the news and that I welcomed any opportunity of walking out and leaving it.

“God damn it,” Dottie said, “it’s just like you, after you’ve made a success of something. It’s just the way you left and went on that Paris Bureau. God damn it, I suppose I’ll have to make you do something.”

She was delighted, trying to run someone’s life again. She got off the sofa and mixed two highballs and while I watched her I was very glad that we were not married.

“You’re so clever in some ways and so dumb in others,” she said. “Seriously, darling, haven’t you known that Gilbert was out to knife you? I’ve known it for the last six weeks.”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Because I’m not a chump like you,” Dottie said. “You’ve got to start pulling up your socks. You’ve got Helen and Camilla.”

“I know,” I said, “I’ve given that a little thought.”

“You always were so damned irresponsible,” she said. “If you can’t think of Helen and Camilla, I suppose I’ll have to. There’s plenty you can do about Frary. You’re as important as Frary. What are you thinking of doing?”

I took a sip of my highball. I was perfectly glad to drink it, because I was not upset any longer.

“Frankly, I’m thinking of collecting my year’s salary and getting out for good,” I said.

“And then what’ll you do?” she asked.

It was a pleasure to have her ask me instead of asking myself.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe I might do some writing.”

“Oh, my God,” Dottie said, “what sort of writing? Dog stories?”

“I’ve a poodle named Farouche,” I said. “I might do poodle stories.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Dottie said, and then she saw that I was laughing at her. “It’s just the way it was on the paper. All right, I’ll go around myself and see someone tomorrow. You can forget about it now and let me run this.”

It did sound exactly like old times.

“Well, that’s fine,” I said. “You sound exactly like Mrs. Melville A. Goodwin.”

I had never considered the consequences when I mentioned Mrs. Goodwin until I saw Dottie’s face redden and there was a moment’s silence.

“Now just why did you bring her up?” she asked, but now that she was brought up, we both must have realized that the Goodwins had been with us all the time.

“Now, Dottie,” I said, “I didn’t mean to, but how did you like the soldier boy?”

Dottie sighed impatiently and picked up a cigarette and lighter from the table and balanced the lighter on the palm of her hand, as though it were the scales of justice.

“One of your worst troubles,” Dottie said, “is that you never face up to anything. First you come here and tell me all your difficulties and then when I’m considering them, you ask about something else. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to have me help you?”

“Now, Dottie,” I said, “talking this over has been a help, but I don’t want you to go and see someone.”

“Sid,” she said, “I don’t know why you don’t understand that a woman’s never happy unless she’s useful to some man. Now just the other night I was talking to Norman Jones. You know Norman Jones in White Wall Rubber, don’t you? Well, he was just saying the other night that they want to sponsor a news hour.”

I could look into the future and see her talking to Norman Jones.

“God damn it,” Dottie said, “I’m going to see him whether you want me to or not. You never know what you want.”

“Dottie,” I asked her, “does anyone know what he wants?”

“That’s a silly question,” Dottie said. “I know, I’ve always known and I don’t flounder around like you.”

“Well,” I said, “you’ve never got it, have you?”

There is always something embarrassing about naked truth. She scowled at me and then she gave her head an impatient shake.

“That’s right,” she said, “but I’m still in there pitching, darling, and I don’t just slide around.”

I have never known where the talk would have gone from there—whether it would have continued with the White Wall Rubber Company and my problems on the radio or whether it would have centered on the desires of Dottie Peale. I never knew because I saw her move her head sharply and I heard the automatic elevator.

“My God,” Dottie whispered, “what time is it?” and then she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was exactly half past eight. “Darling,” she whispered, “don’t go. Don’t go just yet.”