THROUGH HIS SLEEP he heard the telephone ring. He woke sweating and heavy with the familiar weight of depression. For a second he was back in the dragging mornings of California years ago. The radiator spat steam from its leaky valve. It reoriented him; he’d forgotten to turn it off when he’d finally gone to bed. Back of the closed door Tom called, “It’s for you, Dad.” He sprang up.
“Right there.”
The door opened, and Tom said,
“He asked for Lieutenant Green, not Mister. Gram said to wake you.”
“He?” The heaviness hit again. “Who?”
“Gee, I just said to wait. I answered it.”
“O.K. Pretty late, isn’t it?” He glanced at his watch as he went into the living room. It was past noon. The last time he’d checked, it had been nearly eight. He picked up the receiver and offered it an inert “Hello.”
“Phil, it’s Dave.”
“Dave? Why, damn you! Where are you? When’d you get in?” He heard Dave laugh at the burst of pleasure in his own voice. “LaGuardia. Just now. I had a break and got assigned to a plane with my CO.”
“Grab a cab. If you’re broke, hold him downstairs.”
“Hell, I’m not broke. Boy, it’s good to be back.”
“Well, come on. I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”
He showered and then carried a cup of black coffee into the bathroom. He sipped and then gulped it while he shaved. His eyes smarted, his eyelids were too small. Hangover. Only it wasn’t just hangover. He jerked away from remembering. That wound-up spring inside somewhere— that was depression in the clinical sense of the psychiatrist’s office. In the mirror his face looked sullen and dead.
A pan clattered to the floor in the kitchen. He squinted as if sudden light instead of sound offended his nerves. He wished he could be alone in the house, with no noise, no talk, no questions about last night’s party.
Dave was a break. Man’s talk it would be, of the army, the occupation, terminal leave, the old job or a new one. Good old Dave, thank God for Dave, Dave who didn’t know a damn thing about Kathy.
“If things are going to be all tense and solemn all the time.”
“Then what?” He should have said it at once. He should have made her finish the sentence, verbalize the threat implicit in the tone she used. “We’d better not get married after all.” That’s how she’d have ended it. He might as well have heard it, then, not let it hang in the air, a warning to behave, to be lighthearted about things. He had shrunk from hearing it, had gone wise with a soft wisdom and said he’d better leave now. He should have faced her. Told her. “Things will be tense and solemn plenty of the time,” he should have said. “I’m a guy that gets tense, see? I snarl up and I goddam well can’t help myself. I care about a thing and forget about other things. Damn it to hell, that’s the way I am. If you don’t want my kind of man, O.K., no harm done. Better now than later.”
All those things he’d crumpled into a dignified silence while he made a dignified exit. Afraid to slug it out lest he lose her. You love a woman and you lose her—Christ, how do you stand it a second time? You don’t—you crawl into a shell and stifle. All the sentences addressed to her later were so fine and right, but they were spoken only in the safe room of his mind. And so this waking with fear, shame, depression—the clinical trio, the three sisters pursuing—
He leaned down over the basin and slogged his face with the stinging cold of winter water as if he were beating himself.
As he sat talking with Dave, a preference for male companionship beat through him, surly, superior. Women talked of parties, of family, of children and summer cottages and love. This with Dave was what a man needed, this bone and muscle for the mind instead of pale plump softness. This men’s talk was all in the hard clean outlines of battle, impossible bridges to be built under fire, the split of the atom, the greed of looting armies. Dave had begun in Italy and gone on through the whole business of D Day and the rest. He’d been wounded and mended and thrown back in. Women clawed softly at your manhood. War and work and the things you believed in gave it back to you. This gave it back to you, lounging in opposite chairs, taking the good short cuts men could take who’d been through the same things, fiddling through long drinks, arguing, differing or agreeing, but always tight on the tracks of reality.
Separation and time had made him forget how much he liked Dave. He’d told Minify they weren’t especially close any more, yet when Dave had dumped his bag down and they’d stood there foolishly thumping each other on the shoulder, Phil had been seized with the old excess of feeling he’d had as a kid for “my best friend.” Dave seemed taken by the same kind of upheaval, mixed in his case with the emotions of coming home at last. For him this was a homecoming by proxy, with Tom awestruck at his ribbons, Mrs. Green saying, “Well, Dave, why, Dave,” and the house all astir to give him food, make him comfortable.
Phil found himself studying Dave’s face as they talked. He looked older, he seemed quieter. Was it just that three years had passed? Was it still the stamp of war and distance and loneliness, which would rub off soon under the caress of ordinary life? Or was Dave the holder of new knowledge which really aged and toughened the whole stuff of which his body and mind and understanding were compounded? He saw the thinning hair, the uneven groove between the eyebrows which showed clear now even when Dave wasn’t frowning; he saw, too, the ruddy outdoor skin and knew a fleeting envy for the top fitness that army living clamped hard to a man.
“What’s this series?” Dave asked.
“We’ll get to it later.” Inexplicably he wanted to put off talking of what he was doing. A shyness pervaded him, as if he might seem to Dave like a kid caught playing at a man’s game. They went back to their discussion of Dave’s plans. He was going to move his family East as Phil had done and was going to stay on now for part of his terminal leave to look over the ground. He’d already had letters from his old boss assuring him that a good job could be arranged with one of several Eastern firms, but the housing shortage might defeat him, if it was as serious as the papers reported. Phil listened and replied. Yet now, submerged but insistent, the series was fingering his mind again. He looked at the expressive face opposite him with new attention while a silent question nuzzled him back to his endless research.
Does Dave look Jewish?
Yes, he supposed he did, now that he asked it. He simply could not remember that he had ever thought the thing before in all the years they’d known each other. Where was it, this Jewishness? Dave topped six feet as he did, a little heavier, with no fat but of a bigger bone. His nose was short, stubby even, no hint of hook or curve. Hair and eyes were brown, lighter than his own and, where the unshaved stubble caught the last glint of sunlight from the window behind him, tinged with red blond. Yet if you thought, you’d know this man was Jewish. It was there somewhere. In the indented arcs of the nostrils? In the turn of his lips? In the quiet eyes? It was such a damn strong good face.
“What’s eating you, Phil?”
“Me?”
“You’ve been giving me the once-over for five minutes.”
“I got bogged in the series when you asked about it, and I started thinking what makes people look or not look Jewish.”
“Come on, let’s get down to it. Who’s this Minify, anyway?”
Phil started at the beginning, his first jaundiced sureness that “it would be a lousy flop unless I caught hold of some hot idea.” Without surprise, he noted that Dave showed as little steam as he himself had, nodding judiciously, trying to visualize it as if he were also a writer, but not aroused. Obscurely it pleased him that Dave should react also on this low-voltage level. He’d been right—they were just the same about things like this. He shoved back the tenuous shyness that persisted in him as he got nearer the point.
Once Dave interrupted. “You expecting a call, Phil?”
“A call?”
“You keep looking at the phone every few minutes.”
“Hell.” A moment later he added, “I had a scrap with my girl. I guess I want her to be the one to phone.”
“Suppose I take that shower now?”
Phil shook his head and went on. He’d got to the part about the three books and found himself worked up all over again.
“Why shouldn’t they write about swinish Jews?” Dave put in. “Don’t Christians write about swinish Christians?”
It brought him up short. He said, “Sure, but—” and then remained silent. Finally he shook his head, rejecting it.
“It’s a question of timing, Dave. Fire-in-a-crowded-theater.” He walked to the bookcase and took one of the books down holding it flat on his palm as if he were guessing the weight. “These authors aren’t dopes. They know they can add to the panic by this kind of thing.”
“Balls. If they wrote only about big beautiful Jewish heroes—you’d get the business of glorifying. Chosen People Department.” Idly, Dave tapped his thumbnail against the edges of his lower teeth. In the quiet room the clicking sounded like some new Morse code. “A two-thousand-year start on the master-race business,” he said coldly, “by one small bunch of crackpot Jews—and look how many generations haven’t paid it out.”
“That’s a point. I never thought of it.” An excited twinge went through Phil.
“I read it somewhere,” Dave said. “Doesn’t explain the whole thing—too many pat explanations all over the place. The big hole in this one is the world won’t be persecuting Germans two thousand years from now because they fell for the same crap.”
He went to the Scotch and poured himself another drink. He waved the bottle at Phil and then took it over to the glass he held up.
“But that’s not the point right now, Phil. Did you ever get your special angle?”
The odd reluctance arose again. It wasn’t the skeptical mistrust that had sent him in to Minify that morning. It was only that Dave seemed cold about the articles. That had been all right at the start, but now it disturbed him. Politely interested he was, nothing more.
“Don’t you want a good stiff series in a big national magazine, Dave?”
“Me? Sure.”
“You sound bored.”
“Hell, I’m anything but. In my outfit—no, I’ll save that for later. It’s just—” Dave smiled, as if in anticipation of his next sentence. “Well, I’m on the side lines on anti-semitism.” He raised his glass in salute. “It’s your fight, brother.”
Phil thought it over. “O.K., I get it.”
“The Jewish part is, anyway. The rest of it’s everybody’s fight. I bet we’re in for a hell of a scrap, what’s more.”
“I bet. The Jews are always just the first.”
“The hell with the Jews, as Jews.” Dave hitched forward. He wasn’t cold and polite any longer. “It’s the whole thing, not the poor, poor Jews.” He waved toward the windows, as if he were waving to the whole stretch of country beyond.
Involuntarily, Phil looked outside. The last daylight was still there, wan, impotent against the encroaching dark.
Dave’s voice went on, somber now. “The price for anti-semitism is so damn big, Phil. And there’s always a price for it.”
A current of affection shot through Phil. Dave’s face had gone hard; there was neither unease nor concession in it. He was staring into his drink as though there were a speck in it.
“You mean price reckoned in constitutions and preambles, things like that?”
“You know damn well what I mean. Don’t force me to make with the big words.” Dave shrugged, amiable again. “Anyway, let’s hear the rest of it, for Pete’s sake. You still hunting for the angle?”
“No, I finally got it.” Quickly Phil told him what he’d been up to. “I’ve been doing it,” he ended, “for about two weeks.”
Dave didn’t say anything. Phil waited. Dave carefully set his glass down and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Then he remembered they were on the table near him. He got one out and lit it. He inhaled deeply and blew smoke out hard. Then he looked directly at Phil.
“Why, you crazy bastard,” Dave said slowly. “You goddam crazy bastard.”
Phil suddenly remembered the three of them in the pup tent in the woods near the house. The daylight all but gone, fierce rain battering the canvas. Through the open triangle the streaming pepper trees were as black green as sycamore and eucalyptus. They’d be thoroughly scolded when they got home, they knew, but the chilling excitement of the game held them there. Nine, maybe ten, they’d been. Their wooden rifles were at the ready, their eyes strained into the howling gloom.
“There,” Petey had whispered hoarsely, “behind the trees. Lions and the jagers and the big cats. See?”
“Ready, men?” That was Dave.
“Ready, sir.” Petey and he together.
Dave’s voice went majestic.
“Let them have it. The jungle holds no terrors for Cecil Rhodes and his gallant band.”
The delicious feeling of unity, friendship, safety together —whatever it was then, suddenly it stood warm and fresh again in him. He looked across to Dave’s chair.
“Crazy bastard yourself.”
Would she call him? Was she waiting for him to call her? Off and on all afternoon, the question mark had curled its separate existence in his mind. When Dave finally went for his shave and shower, Phil dialed her number. There was no answer.
Suddenly he knew that through all the hours, using Dave’s presence for a screen, he’d been in hiding from his own sense of disaster. If he’d been alone, he’d have watched each hour of silence as a new semaphore of warning. He’d have faced the truth: that she, too, must have been charged with unspoken thoughts, stifled challenges. Dismay must stand thick in her heart, too.
Perhaps he’d dialed the wrong number. Sometimes you got balled up on the simplest mechanical things. He lifted the receiver again. Extreme care went into the operation this time, as if he were Tom adventuring with the delightful fact that if you did thus and so you could really pick Jimmy Kelly’s house out of all the houses in New York. Not until the dial clicked hard against the metal stop each time did Phil release it and regard that step as successful. Then he waited. He counted the rings up to seven. There was no answer.
Just before he and Dave left for dinner, he said, “Oh, I’d better call Kathy.” Dave waited. Phil whistled a phrase of music while he dialed. “Harder to get tickets for a concert than for the theater,” he said, and hung up. “Thought she might join the celebration about your being home,” he added heartily. “Guess she’s out to a movie or something.”
They went to a restaurant in the East Fifties which Kathy liked. As they waited for the Martinis they both ordered, they sat without talk. The tables were all filled; waiters hurried by with platters of charred steaks or creamy mixtures; thick oblongs of butter were forked out to them by a smiling bus boy. When their drinks came Phil swallowed a third of his in the first go.
“Want to talk about it?” Dave asked.
“Just one of those things.” Phil put his drink down and lit a cigarette. “I’d probably be wiser staying on my own,” he said. “You lose the instinct for marriage after seven years alone.”
“Nuts.”
“You and Carol get off on tangents much?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“I don’t mean fights about the kids or money or things. I mean about ideas.”
Dave started to ask something but changed his mind. From anybody else it would have been a direct question about Kathy, Phil thought, and was grateful. He stared at the tip of his cigarette. In the amber light of the room it burned greenish white, without redness. Betty and I never— but that was a bad business to start on, even with himself. Betty was Betty and Kathy, Kathy. Nor had he ever set up yardsticks for Betty’s thinking; he hadn’t himself been moody, susceptible to shift and self-questioning then. Politics and principles hadn’t even cut deeply into his existence in those days. All at once he wanted to find Kathy, apologize to her for being ratchety. And go meekly to Jane’s party and “just not bring it up”? He ground out his cigarette.
“Those are the toughest fights,” Dave said dispassionately, “the ones about ideas. Suppose Carol was a faithful party-line girl—can you imagine our life? Or suppose she’d been an isolationist in the old days or pro-Franco? Families break apart over ideas. In hot times like these, anyway.”
“Like the Civil War. Pro-North husband and pro-South wife.”
“Like anything that’s explosive inside.”
The waiter put large menus before them. They ordered. “Damn it,” Phil said loudly, “let’s cut the gloom.” Asperity edged his manner as though it were all Dave’s fault.
“Sure. I feel like blowing people to drinks. Know anybody to get?”
“Might try Minify.” He laughed. “Not what you had in mind, hey? Trouble is—say, there’s Anne, I’d forgotten her. Anne Dettrey, on the magazine, smart as hell. She’s always fun.”
“Give her a ring, why don’t you?”
In the booth, feeling stealthy, he tried Kathy first. Then he called his house. There were no messages. He found Anne’s number in the book.
“Nonsense, Phil,” she said, “I’m putting my one New Year’s resolution to its first test.”
“I can imagine.”
“To go to bed early—and alone—three times a week.”
“You wouldn’t want to go into a thing like that too easily?” His spirits rose. This was just anything-for-a-laugh talk, yet it seemed exceptionally important to argue her into coming. He explained about Dave and his first night back.
“By golly, patriotism,” she said, and asked where they were.
He watched Dave and Anne as if he were years older, remote forever from the business of flirtation and attraction. Instantly she set in motion a campaign to appeal to Dave; instantly Dave changed, as if he’d peeled off a layer of personality and emerged younger, cleverer, more alive. Phil felt shoved aside. Odd sensations of pride mingled with the thin stridency of jealousy in him. Toward Anne he felt pride that he’d produced Dave; toward Dave it was the reverse. Deftly Dave was managing to inform her that he was a married man with two kids even while he announced that he’d be wanting to catch up on theaters and night clubs while he stayed on in town. She knew he didn’t mean to go alone. She immediately accepted the situation and the invitations to come. They’d have a fine lighthearted time together, Phil thought, and again envy squeaked in his heart. High spirits, carefree hours, distance from loneliness and solemnity—perhaps those were the great desiderata of life after all.
He thought of Kathy.
It’s more than just having fun. All at once he knew she was at no movie. She’d known he would telephone sooner or later; she’d wanted that unanswered ringing to assault him. She’d meant it to bash him, teach him a lesson, bring him to terms. Women knew their weapons well. He glanced across the table. Anne and Dave were laughing about something he’d missed. Two young men in new dark suits, their haircuts still GI, were passing the table, weaving a bit.
“I don’t like offishers,” one announced and stopped uncertainly. Dave looked up, indulgent. The long-suppressed resentment, he thought, to army brass. The young man raised his voice. “An’ shpecially if they’re yids.”
Dave’s arm reached. His hand had the speaker’s wrist before he’d shoved up out of his chair. His free hand was a fist, pulling back for leverage. Phil was up too, fury tearing through him. And yet he had time to notice the control in Dave’s impassive face.
“Sorry, sir,” the other young man cried. “He’s terrible when he’s tanked up, sir.” He pushed angrily at his friend; the loss of balance was too much for the uncertain legs; the buckling body began the slow collapse the expert dancer simulates to get a laugh. Somewhere near, a girl tittered nervously.
Dave’s grip was twisting the arm. As the body crumpled floorward it was only his hold which checked the descent. Waiters were hurrying up; heads were turning. Dave let go, brushing his fingers off against each other as if they were fouled. Anne urgently said, “Please, Phil, Dave.”
They sat down. Anne muttered, “Horrible little fool,” and Phil thought, You’re mad, sure, but you’re out of it. Then it was as if his whole mind gulped. My God, I forgot again.
Around them talk burst forth while a waiter and the mortified friend struggled to lift the drunk. Heads were averted as if near them on the carpet were a sour pool of vomit. Limp as a hammock the drunk was carried off. Anne asked for another drink.
Phil looked over to Dave; their eyes met. Dave’s were hard, but his mouth bore a sardonic twist. “Take it easy, boy,” Dave said.
“Let’s don’t even talk about it,” Anne said. “This isn’t just antisemitism; it’s battle fatigue, too.” Dave laughed, and Phil said, “I told you,” with a gesture toward her as of the producer of a hit show toward its star.
Like a spitting rain, it was over. The new drinks came; their talk moved on to other things. Secretly, though, a core of rage burned inside Phil. There was that sudden need to crack your fist into bone when it happened; only that sagging, falling body had stopped Dave. You couldn’t punch an unconscious man. You had it and you were left brutish when you were balked. He’d read the story about Rankin in Congress; he’d had it; he’d punched no jaws, yelled at no applauding House. Always there were reasons; only rarely was the circumstance so arranged that you could fight back. The rest was this pouring of your adrenalin and this futile dammed-up fury.
He knew. Now he knew. In his own guts and veins and muscles it stood intimate and exact. It wasn’t Dave alone who’d been called “yid.” Anne was the outsider and onlooker, but not he. Once it would have been he as well as Anne. Not now. Not ever again. Identification. Dear God, yes.
“Don’t be grim any more,” she said suddenly.
“Who, me?”
He glanced at her and then again at Dave. Composed and indifferent he looked, but his pulse jumped like a nerve at the side of his throat, just above his collar. The anti-semite offered the effrontery—and then the world was ready with harsh yardsticks to measure the self-control and dignity with which you met it. You were insensitive or too sensitive; you were too timid or too bellicose; they gave you at once the wound and the burden of proper behavior toward it.
“I was thinking we might go somewhere where there’s music,” he said to Anne.
“Not for a while,” Dave said. “I like it here.”
Anne leaned forward so that she addressed both of them impartially. “Tell me why,” she said plaintively, “every man who seems attractive these days is either married or”—she looked at Phil—“barred on a technicality?”
Her woebegone look and exaggerated sigh made them all laugh. Dave patted her hand. “Your timing is lousy,” he said, “but your instincts are just great.”
After an hour they did go on to a night club and later to another. They took turns dancing with Anne; they all laughed a good deal at their own wit. After they’d taken her home, Phil said, “Coffee?” and knew Dave would agree before he could nod. There was something about wanting to stay on together even though they talked of nothing that mattered. In the Third Avenue all-nighter, brilliant with white tile and hundred-watt bulbs, noisy with taxi drivers’ talk and dance music from Hollywood, they hardly bothered with each other, but they stayed for a second mug of the hot black chicory-flavored coffee. The night blurred by. Somewhere there was sleep in it, and then Phil was awake and at once in a sharp hurry to get to the office. He would telephone from there. In his bedroom, Dave was sleeping so deeply that Phil dressed without fear of waking him. He would call Kathy without belligerence, without apology. But he wouldn’t be able to back down either.
Miss Wales greeted him. “Mr. Minify’d like you in there, Mr. Green. It’s some sort of meeting. They’ve already started.”
The personnel manager, Jordan, was there, and Mary Cresson with her dictation book open on her knee. John looked formal, aloof. The round of “Morning’s” was without friendliness.
“I’ve asked Mr. Green in,” Minify said to Jordan, “because he might pick up some detail for his series. You know what he’s working on?”
“Yes,” Jordan said. “But, Mr. Minify, you’ve really got me wrong. I never think about what a person is.”
“It’s what’s done or what’s not done I’m interested in.” He gestured toward Phil without looking at him. “Mr. Green would do well to devote a page or so of his series to me for never thinking to check down the line in my own outfit.”
“If Mr. Green had come right to me—”
Minify turned so sharply in his swivel chair, Jordan stopped.
“My niece told me about Miss Wales,” he said coldly, “so don’t imply that Mr. Green did. She brought it up just to twit me. For a minute I didn’t even catch—then it hit.”
“But I told Mr. Minify’s niece,” Phil said. He stared with hostile eyes at Jordan. “You think that if a bright kid like Wales has to change her name to get a job, nobody should talk up about it?”
Jordan looked back, conciliatory, awkward. But he looked away quickly from Phil’s steady examining, and his shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. “Of course you’d talk up,” the gesture spoke in Phil’s mind. Instantly he doubted his reading of it.
He glanced at John Minify and knew he’d caught the same thing. The lightness of Minify’s eyes above the dark sockets was startling as he looked directly at Jordan. His face looked older. He sat erect and imperative before them. Then he picked up a pencil and began to write on a memo pad as if he’d forgotten they were there. He wrote several words rapidly, read them, changed them, and then turned the pad face down and went on as if there’d been no span of silence.
“Big talk comes easy, Jordan, and my editorials, too. I’ve been a fool to assume they’d mean what they say in my own office. Now I’ll see they do.”
“But really, Mr. Minify, I’ve never made it a matter of policy just to hire—why, it’s just, well, personality.” He brightened. “If a girl’s personality is the type that fits in, I’d never ask—”
“It’s just by chance, you mean, that we haven’t one secretary named Finkelstein or Cohen? In the city of New York?” His voice was soft. “Come off it, Jordan.”
Phil looked over curiously. Jordan was a man you’d never notice if there were other people about. Medium tall, medium color, neat as to clothes, haircut; even the wrinkles about his eyes seemed neatly rayed out in even, definite lengths. Now his face wore tension and fear. He was expecting to be fired. And he’d hate Jews for it.
“Mary, take a help-wanted ad, will you?” Minify picked up the small pad, read what he’d written, then ignored it. “Upper case, ‘EXPERT SECRETARY,’ and a couple lines white space. Then, lower case, ‘for editorial department, national magazine, exacting work, good pay.’ Then single line white space. Then, ‘Religion is a matter of indifference in this office. Write full experience to Box—’ Got that, Mary?”
For the first time since he’d met her, Phil saw expression appear in her prim face. She likes this, he thought, and was surprised to find within himself an odd sense of occasion. “Better state the salary, Mr. Minify,” Mary said matter-of-factly, “instead of just ‘good pay.’ ”
“O.K. O.K. You fix it. Times, Trib?”
“Both. And they don’t allow white space in want ads— they’ll put that special line in caps, though.”
“Right.” With finality he turned to Jordan. “And in case you have to fire Miss Wales on any ground whatever at any time, please remember that I wish to review the case myself first.”
The neat mouth opened, relief shone in the eyes. Minify’s nod was as curt as the bang of a gavel. Jordan went out.
“Think I should fire him, Mary?”
“I don’t know. I thought you were going to.”
“I argued it out with myself for a long time.” He looked at Phil. “Confusing, isn’t it?” Phil said nothing. He knew Minify wasn’t expecting an answer. “But till I do decide, he’s not to interview applicants any more, that’s sure.” He stroked his tan scalp as if he were smoothing down ruffled hair. “Mary, you too busy to take on some personnel management?”
“No Mr. Minify.”
“That’s the tone that means you’re dead from overwork.” They all laughed. “Tell you what. This ad. Get yourself a crack assistant for your regular stuff. Then take over on all new office help. I’ll tell Jordan.”
She stood up, robust, stolid, but she flushed like a young girl over her first tribute from a man.
“Yes, Mr. Minify.”
“In any other ads you run, use that line, please.” Vigorously he turned to Phil. “High time heads of firms took public positions on it.”
Minify watched her decorous progress across the office and through the door. Then, as if the episode had sped up his metabolism, he embarked at once on a spirited harangue with invisible opponents. Once Phil thought, He isn’t as calm and journalistic about it all as he was a few weeks ago, and instantly added, Lord, neither am I. Minify was half shouting at him now. “—the sloppy, slovenly notion that everybody’s busy with bigger things. There just isn’t anything bigger, as an issue, than beating down the complacence of essentially decent people about prejudice. Not what Stalin’s up to, not the bomb or the peace. Because if hatred and bigotry just go on rotting the basis of this damn country”—he glared at Phil—“all the rest is pious hypocrisy.”
He lit a cigarette and clamped it into the corner of his mouth as if it were a cigar. “How’s your stuff coming now, Phil?” While he listened, the cigarette angled upwards, and above it he squinted one eye against the flaring smoke. It gave him the look of a man persistently winking. When the square box on his desk hoarsely announced a caller, Phil was reluctant to quit this lively office for his own.
In the corridor, his way was blocked by Frank Tingler, the fiction editor, the small neat figure of Bill Jayson, and a tall man with a vaguely familiar face.
“Morning, Phil,” Jayson said, and Tingler, “Hi, Green, know Rick Dohen? Mr. Green.”
“ ’Do.” Mr. Dohen said, and offered his hand.
“How do,” Phil answered, and disliked him. They shook hands heartily while Tingler explained in his flat voice, “We’re running Mr. Dohen’s new serial in the first April issue.”
“Oh, yes,” Phil said. “That new illustrator McAnny found in the army—”
“I must stop by and tell McAnny how delighted I am,” Dohen interrupted. “Have you seen the opening spread, Mr. Green? Really a new talent. We were just talking about it. How would you characterize it, Bill?” He looked down at Jayson, and Jayson had to tilt his head back to meet his gaze. Fleetingly Phil hoped Jayson really didn’t mind any more being so short.
“It’s new and it’s right,” Jayson said dryly. “And you’ll have to wait to tell McAnny. He’s out in the Middle West on a special strike layout at G. M.”
Tingler looked at Phil, but the thickly ground lenses hid whatever comment his glance was designed to convey.
“Sort of a combination of Varga girl and Ingrid Bergman, that first illustration of Gracia,” Dohen said, and laughed in his enthusiasm. “That’s it. Bitch and saint. Hard enough to catch in writing, but when I saw that first oil. Tell that boy Herman I’m—fact, I’d really like to tell him personally.” He looked down to Jayson again. “Fix it up, Bill?”
“I’ll do that.” There was no promise in his voice. “Well, I’ll be getting back. So long.”
Phil moved off with him. Jayson didn’t like Dohen, and Tingler was bored with him. This distinguished-looking Richard Dohen, Phil knew, was one of the highest-paid serial writers in the magazine world. “What’s the new one about?” he asked Jayson.
“Well, the gimmick is this gorgeous dame is sitting there exactly ten years from the night her husband walked out to marry the second wife. Sudden impulse. She— Hell, don’t bother me, Phil.”
Phil grinned. But they were nearing his office, and all at once nothing mattered but Kathy. Embarrassment plucked at him. The adult thing would have been to telephone her as soon as he’d waked yesterday, gone to her, straightened this out. Dave would have waited for him without resentment.
There was a note propped against his telephone. Miss Lacey called. E. W. Underneath it the line, Again at 11:10. Please call her.
Without sitting down he dialed the number.