“Who do you think keeps the place clean, the Board of Health?”
“Maybe that’s why I find our four-legged friends in the bathtub every now and again.”
“Who do you think sends out the laundry? Who do you think makes the beds? Who do you think—”
“Oh, keep your funnies,” I said. “I’m not end man in a minstrel show.”
She was still standing close to me. It got on my nerves. “Don’t crowd,” I said, and gave her a push.
“Yes.” she said, “that’s what you’re best at!”
“As long as I’m good for something, that’s a help.”
“Well,” she cried, pointing rapidly at this and that, “there’re the chops and there’s the stove and there’s the table — so if you want to eat, go to it! I’m going in and have a good cry. You can go to hell.”
“I’ll stop off at a restaurant on my way,” I called after her. “I’m not pansy enough to get a kick out of doing your work for you!” And picked up my hat and went.
And sitting in state at a table in the “Original Joe’s Restaurant” with a veal stew in front of me, I addressed the image in my mind in this wise: “And I don’t have to have you, either. I can get along without any one. I can get along by myself.” The image was Bernice’s, not Maxine’s. But with the dessert before me, I suddenly stood up and walked into a phone booth, dropping my napkin midway on the floor, where it lay like a challenge.
I pulled the glass slide after me, a light went on, and I got out my little book. “Tha-a-at’s right,” I assured the operator. It started to ring at the other end. It kept on ringing at the other end. I changed the foot I was standing on. Then I changed back again. I was so nervous I felt like going to the men’s room. Wouldn’t it ever stop ringing at the other end? Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seven—. Suddenly the operator got on again. “Your party hasn’t answered yet.” As though I didn’t know that! “Shall I keep on ringing?”
“Do that little thing,” I said, “if it takes all night.” Meantime the dessert out there was getting warm and the coffee getting cold. No one had picked up the napkin yet, either.
And still it rang. “The dirty stay-out!” I commented. I started to work the little hook up and down to get the operator back. I wanted my nickel back. I had given up hope, you see. And suddenly the ringing stopped and there was a faint click at the other end. The receiver had been lifted. But there wasn’t a sound. Whoever it was was waiting to hear my voice first. And she had told me not to open my mouth, not even to say hello, unless I heard her voice first. So a new kind of endurance contest began then and there. But I wasn’t good at it, I had too much at stake. I gave in. “Hello?” I said formally.
“Hello?” a man’s voice answered. “Who do you want?”
I couldn’t’ve gotten off the line if I had wanted to. “Miss Pascal there?” I said mildly.
“Who’re you?” was the immediate result of this.
“Is she or isn’t she?”
“You a friend of hers?”
I knew I’d never get past him to her even if she was there, and why make it tough for her? There was always another day.
“I’m the repair man,” I said, “for the City Service Radio Corporation. We’ve had a call from her saying her instrument needed looking over.”
“Seven in the evening,” he told me, “is a peculiar time to be going around repairing radios.”
“The slip I have here is marked ‘Urgent,’ ” I answered, “and we guarantee our customers day and night service, so I called to find out if it was all right for me to come up.”
“The closest you’ll get to here,” he assured me, “is where you are now.”
“It’s up to you,” I said philosophically. “If you prefer static to good reception, we ain’t gonna cry about it.”
“And thank the City Service Radio Corporation for me,” he remarked emphatically. “It’s darn sweet of them, considering I got the instrument at Landay’s.”
“Y’ dirty punk!” I exploded, and hung up.
So you see the call wasn’t exactly a success.
I went back to my table and started to think it over. The bisque tortoni was just whey by now, anyway. I told myself I might’ve known it would go wrong, I should have waited until some other night. I went over the conversation word by word, and the more I went over it, the more something struck me. About his voice. Especially in the opening phrases. He had sounded more scared than I was. As though he had no right to be where he was, and as though he were afraid of being caught there. “But still, if he bought the radio,” I reminded myself, “he has every right to be there.” There was no getting around that. And yet he hadn’t seemed at all at home, at all at ease.
Just as I stuck my hand in my pocket to get out some money to pay for my dinner, a bell rang, and then a waiter came over to me and asked if I had just put in a call from the middle booth.
“One of ’em, anyway,” I answered. “Yeah, I think it was the middle one, the stuffiest of the lot.”
“Well, they’re calling back,” he said. “You’re wanted on the line.”
“Who they asking for?” I said cautiously, noting my hat within grasping distance.
“All they said was ‘The party that just got off this wire.’ The cashier told me it was you.”
I knew how it had happened: whoever hangs up first on a telephone makes it possible for the other party to trace the call through the operator. In the intrigue racket it’s a good rule to always let the other fellow hang up first, if you don’t want your whereabouts known. He had evidently stayed on after I did, and found out it was a restaurant. I thought I’d go back and give him hell.
But when I got in the booth and picked up the loose receiver, it was Bernice herself.
“Hello,” she said immediately, “is this the manager of the City Service Radio Store?”
“No,” I said, “it’s Wade.”
“Well, I’d like an explanation,” she went on, as though she hadn’t heard me. “Some one just rang my apartment claiming to be a repair man for your concern. And used insulting language—”
“Who was he, honey?” I said softly, “the big stiff that answered the first time?”
“Now, I not only never sent you people any calls, but my radio didn’t come from you in the first place. I want that distinctly understood—”
“Keep on talking,” I said. “Gee, your voice is beautiful!”
“If I’m annoyed like this again,” she threatened, “I’ll notify the police. It’s very embarrassing, to say the least.”
“Have you missed me?” I crooned, “Have you been thinking about me like I’ve been thinking about you?”
She went on improvising beautifully. “Oh, he was drunk? Well, he certainly acted it, my dear man. And I’m surprised at your firm for employing people like that. Now, would you mind telling me just how he got hold of my telephone number and my name?”
“Baby,” I agreed, “that’s going to be a hard one for you to answer.”
But she had ideas of her own. “I beg your pardon, I am not listed,” she contradicted.
“When am I going to see you again? When are you going to give me a break? Tomorrow night? Wednesday night?”
“Oh, he was formerly employed by Landay’s and has a list of their customers? So that’s it! That explains it.”
“How about tomorrow night?” I pleaded. “Just say yes or no, can’t you?”
“No,” she said, and went on, “I don’t want you to discharge him. I’d be afraid he’d hold a grudge against me. Especially if he drinks.”
“The night after, then?” I said. “How about that?”
“Yes,” she said, “please see that it doesn’t happen again.”