Chapter 27

Marshall Fields and a Green Kitchen

 

Nick was starting up the steps of the Continental when he spotted her. He’d held off until after 5 the next evening, figuring he’d give her plenty of time to rest. Everybody knows women get depressed when they’re tired. He had planned to knock on her door and tell her to put on her best duds and he’d splurge for a fancy dinner, either here or at the Caravelle across the street. Couldn’t go far with this curfew.

But there she was, at a table just at the top of the steps, and she looked radiant. Her face had a glowing pink tinge to it almost as though her translucent skin were reflecting the watermelon silk shirt she was wearing. Then Nick realized with a jolt that the animation in her face was the raptness with which she was listening to something Ford Curtis was saying, as she leaned across the small table, seemingly hanging on his every word.

Nick wanted to duck aside, but there was no way.

“Nick, hi.” Angela had spotted him. “Why don’t you join us?”

Curtis didn’t look any happier about the invitation than Nick felt, and of course Nick said he was meeting some friends.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Angela said, as Nick started to head for the standup bar off the lobby. "I looked for you at Reuters this afternoon,” she caught his arm before he could move on, “but someone there said you'd filed earlier. I sent Harry a story I ran across this morning about a shoe merchant whose business was destroyed in the fallout from the attack on the presidential palace. The guy had worked his way through Northwestern selling shoes at Marshall Fields in Chicago.”

“Wow, great home-town angle,” Nick said as he moved away, “I'm sure Harry’ll love it.”

 

****

As Nick hurried across the square early the next morning on his way to call his foreign editor, he spotted Angela drinking coffee on the Continental terrace. He could tell by her body language that she intended to join him, so he moved quickly to shortstop her at her table. He didn’t want her overhearing another turndown.

When he started to make small talk, she cut in. “Are you on the way to call Harry?” she asked. “Yeah,” Nick replied, blushing. “But I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope for Hue.”

“I’m not,” she said.

Nick tried tackling his foreign editor a short time later from the cavernous, ornate hall of the PTT, but Harry was still adamant. He said the stuff Angela was filing was good, he had no complaints about her work, but she was to continue working under Nick's wing and as an adjunct to him.

Harry’s stubbornness aside, Nick had a fine day. Angela developed a really good tip about an eyewitness who gave much more detail than had previously been reported about the sappers who attacked the runway at Tan Son Nhut. That led them to not one, but two good stories. They both were pleased with themselves and in a happy mood when they got to the terrace for the evening cocktail hour. Several guys stopped off at their table to chat and two or three sat down with them.

Nick leaned back in his wicker chair, stretched out one of his long legs to rest on the seat of a chair on his right and drank his BaBa beer. He felt good, he decided, in spite of the letter he’d gotten from Mary Alice Moriarty hinting that if she didn’t hear from him soon, she was going to give him up for dead. “I know you're alive,” she’d written, “despite having had only two letters in four months, because I see your byline in the Trib nearly every day. But somehow, that’s not quite enough.” The girl always had had a decent sense of humor, he thought. In fact, she was a decent enough sort. “I’m beginning to think mother may have been right,” Mary Alice had continued, “she said all along, you know, that your going off to Vietnam when you didn't have to sounded like a ploy to break our engagement.”

“Now then, Tiger, tell us how t'was you dug up the Marshall Fields shoe salesman.” Ray Corrigan, seated at the terrace table, was razzing Angela. “If it hadn't been for the picture of himself and the address of his store, I would have sworn on me mother you had worked a bit of invention in creating him. Wonderful quote about the building collapse sounding just like the rumble of the Chicago El.”

The easy banter and teasing made it clear to Nick that Angela had acquitted herself well in the last few days not only with himself and Harry, but with whomever she had run into whether it was at a press conference, on the street or banging away at the old upright in the Reuters office while she waited her turn to file. It seemed as though she had indeed finally become one of the boys. With these thoughts running through his head, he asked how she’d patched up things enough with Curtis to have been having drinks with him the night before.

“I ran into him in Reuters. He needed to verify a minor detail before he could file.” The Chinese waiter handed their drinks order around the table. Angela paused for a beat, a wide smile spreading across her face. “I gave him the phone number of a Vietnamese bureaucrat who was able to give him his verification.”

“You look like the cat with the canary,” Nick said.

Angela picked up her Scotch glass and continued as though she hadn’t heard. “Ford seemed to be dumfounded that I had sources of my own,” she said. “As if I wouldn’t, as long as I’ve been here.” An ever so slight condescension crept into her tone. “He's amazingly naive.”

“What's so funny?” she demanded when Nick had started to laugh.

“Nothing,” he insisted.

“You think it's funny because people probably say I'm naive.”

“Well, you did help him. And he’s a competitor.”

“Leave the lass alone,” Corrigan laughed, poking a sharp elbow at Nick, who was seated to his left. “Let her have her fun. She deserves it.”

“I gave him a phone number. That’s all,” Angela was defending herself to the table at large, despite Corrigan’s blessing. “I'm not going to give someone a real tip that would lead him into a competitive story, but I'd never hold back a phone number on someone planning to do the digging himself.” She turned back to Nick. “Ford wasn't startled that I gave him the number, he was startled that I was resourceful enough to have it.”

The terrace was jam-packed and noisy. Corrigan suggested that they all go over to the Caravelle roof or the Rex BOQ for steaks. It was never any problem to find an Army guy around to sign them in for dinner at the officers club, and it was always a treat to dine on Kansas-fed beef flown in from the States.

They ended up settling on the Caravelle, picking up a few more people along the way and taking a big table in the Champs Elysees, the hotel’s roof-top cafe. It was a good evening. Everyone was having a fine time, Angela included, when Nick suddenly realized she had gotten really pissed. He never did find out if someone had made a remark that angered her, or if she was just drunk and brooding and talked herself into a snit. Her moodiness over Harry’s turndown, the strange fear that Curtis seemed to trigger, who knows? Nick couldn’t put his finger on it.

At one point in the evening when someone mentioned Curtis' name in passing, she piped up and said, “He’s a green kitchen.” All the drunken heads swiveled to stare at her, all the foreheads frowned from the strain of focusing on the great wisdom of the remark, then some guy slurred, “Shure, baby, whatever you shay,” and everyone went right on talking and tippling.

“Yeah, he presses in on you just like an avocado stove,” she said to no one in particular.

The nonsensical remarks made Nick realize how drunk she was, and he decided to try to get her home. Half the men in the place were hitting on her, but she seemed to be in her usual top form of keeping her distance without seeming the least bit unfriendly. She didn’t argue when Nick said it was time for her to leave. He was guiding her through the lobby of her hotel, when she suddenly jerked her elbow out of his grasp.

“I don’t think I’m, ah, going to be available to work with you for the next few days,” she said, squinting her eyes in a frown that was an apparent attempt to focus on Nick’s face. “I've got a couple stories I want to develop on my own. Another river to cross.”

He knew of no sane way to field that, especially with a drunk, except by saying, “Suit yourself.”

“That's what I plan to do, suit myself,” she said, with a slur and a wobble as she drew herself up to her full height.

She did a regal curtsey, holding on to the sides of her beige silk slacks as though they were billowing out to the width of a ball gown.

As she pulled herself up, she said, “See ya, Nick, after I check out the perfume,” and strode toward the stairs leading to her room.

~~~~~~