"No, I'm fine."
"All right, let's go." When she stood up, Margaret noticed that her brown feet were bare. She led the way across the kitchen. The chair at the far end of the table stood in a curious sunken area, a foot or two lower than the rest of the floor. They passed into a tiled hallway, down a gentle ramp, and emerged into a vast space with a cathedral ceiling; it must have been thirty feet high. There were Oriental rugs on the tile floor; the walls were oyster white. To their left a broad ramp rose to a balcony at the far end of the room. Under the balcony, through sliding glass doors, she glimpsed a colonnade and a garden with a fountain. The room itself was enormous, more like a museum hall than a living room. The middle part of it was sunken, with a wrought-iron railing around it.
She followed Mrs. Hartz down a hall lined with pictures to a room fitted out with filing cabinets, a desk, an electronic typewriter. "Sit down, honey, and let's talk." Mrs. Hartz took a seat behind a second, smaller desk, and peered at her over her glasses. "Your name is Margaret Morrow -- just like it sounds?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Hartz wrote on a yellow pad. "Age?"
"Thirty."
"M arried?"
"No."
"What was your last job?"
"I was a schoolteacher in Albany."
"Albany, New York? Why did you leave?"
Margaret was silent a moment.
"Honey," said Mrs. Hartz, "I don't want to be nosy, but I have to know all this stuff. If you were fired, you can tell me."
"No, I wasn't fired," Margaret said. "Maybe I was burned out. My mother died in February. She was bedridden for seven years. And -- " She stopped and went on again, trying to keep her voice level. "I don't know, the middle school I taught in was consolidated with a high school that wasn't as good, and some of our programs went downhill. It stopped being fun. One day I caught myself hating one of the kids. It scared me, I thought maybe I was cracking up. The only thing I could think of was just to get out of Albany, and I came here because of the sunshine."
Mrs. Hartz wrote something slowly. "O-kay." She got up and came around the desk. "Have you ever used one of these gadgets?" she asked, indicating a dictation machine beside the typewriter.
"No, not that kind."
"It uses a little plastic disk, like this one. You put it in the machine here. Here's the 'on' button, here's reverse -- 'review,' they call it -- here's forward, and this counter keeps track of where you are." She touched a button, and a man's deep voice said, " . . . items number three seventy-five, three eighty-one, five ninety-seven, and please bill to my account." She pressed the "off" button. "Why don't you fool with this awhile till you get the hang of it, and then type the first letter on the disk. There's a foot pedal under here, and letterheads, envelopes, carbon paper, and all that stuff in these drawers. I'll be in the kitchen. You can bring the letter out when you're finished, or if you run into any trouble, you can call me on this intercom -- press number five." She turned and went out.
Margaret sat down, pressed the "review" button, then played the disk from the beginning. "J. R. Veillot Frčres, dear sirs, referring to your catalog dated November 1983, I would like to order items number one fifteen, two seventy, three seventy-five . . . " She stopped the machine; where was the address? She would feel like a fool to call Mrs. Hartz for help so soon, before she had even started.
There was a rotary file on the desk: she looked under 'V,' and found it: Veillot, with an address in New York. She typed the letter rapidly. The letterhead read "G. Anderson," and she put that under the space for his signature. She typed an envelope, looked over the letter and envelope for errors, and carried them back to the kitchen.
Mrs. Hartz was sitting where Margaret had first seen her; behind her, in an alcove, there was an intercom and a television screen. She looked up and smiled. "All done? Let's see." She took the letter and envelope. "Perfect," she said firmly. "Good as I could do. How's your shorthand?"
"Pretty poor."
"Well, let's try it." Mrs. Hartz picked up a stenographic notebook and pencil, handed them to her. "Ready?" She turned a page of the account book before her and began to read. "Two hundred twenty square yards wool carpeting at seventy-three dollars, sixteen thousand and sixty dollars. Four pairs damask drapes . . . " It was a long list. When she was done, Mrs. Hartz put out her hand for the notebook. "Can I see?"
Margaret handed it over: it was a mixture of half-remembered Gregg shorthand, abbreviations, and figures.
"That's a mess," Mrs. Hartz said, "but if you can read it back, what's the difference?" She handed Margaret the notebook again. "See if you can."
"Two hundred twenty square yards wool carpeting," Margaret began, and went through to the end of the list.
"Okay," said Mrs. Hartz. "Let's see if we can find the boss." She reached back to the intercom and pressed a button. "Gene, are you there?"
"Yes," said a voice promptly.
"You want to come in and meet Miss Morrow, or should I bring her out?"
A pause. "Bring her out. I'm too dirty to come in."
"Okay." Mrs. Hartz went to a closet, came back with a pair of sneakers without laces, and put them on. Margaret followed her through the sliding doors at the far end of the living room, across the colonnade to a long building behind the house. The interior was brilliantly lit by the glass panes in the north side of the roof. Down at the far end a bearded man stood at a workbench, cutting something on a jigsaw. Only when he turned off the saw and began walking toward them did she realize that perspective had misled her in that enormous room: the man was grotesquely, impossibly tall.
He picked up a bench casually with one hand as he approached; he put it down in front of them and sat on it. Even then, he loomed over the two women until he bent over to put his elbows on his knees, like a man leaning over to talk to children. That was almost worse, because his leonine head was so big and so close. His skin was deeply tanned, but not as dark as Richards'; bits of wood dust were clinging to his beard and to the bleached hairs of his arms and chest. He looked at Margaret attentively when Mrs. Hartz introduced them, and took her hand in his for a moment; his huge fingers were calloused and warm. His face was heavy-boned, perfectly in proportion except for his eyes, which were no larger than hers. His voice was unexpectedly quiet. "Three or four hours a day," he was saying. "Would that suit you?"
She stammered something.
"Fine, then. Tomorrow?"
"Yes, tomorrow."
Mrs. Hartz led her back through the garden." Didn't Pongo tell you?" she asked.
"What?"
"Pongo -- Bill Richards -- the man who brought you out. Didn't he say anything?"
"He said Mr. Anderson was a very big man."
Mrs. Hartz snorted. "That's Pongo." They crossed the living room again, went through the hall into the kitchen. It was cool here; Margaret sat down gratefully at the table. She looked at the huge Spanish chair at the far end where the floor was sunken. How could she not have understood?
"Second thoughts?" Mrs. Hartz asked, coming over with a cup and a pot of coffee. "This is dark Colombian. Would you rather have something else? Tea, or a Coke?"
"No, this is fine. Thank you."
Mrs. Hartz sat down and put her elbows on the table. "Well, you can have the job if you want it. He likes you."
"How could you tell ?"
"If he didn't, he would've let me know. Then it would be up to me to tell you to leave your number and pretend we'd call you later. Gene won't tell a lie if he can help it, but he doesn't care if I do."
Margaret sipped her coffee, put it down. "Mrs. Hartz -- "
"Irma."
"Irma, would you take this job if you were me?"
"Sure. I'm here, aren't I? Any dumbbell could do the work; I did it myself until last week. But it doesn't hurt to be smart, no matter what you're doing, unless it bores you out of your mind."