Irving Wallace - The Man

She lifted her head and there was George, talking to the waiter. He was neat as always, but had grown shorter-was it possible? Yes, because maybe he had worn out his shoe lifts. He stooped and kissed her caked forehead, and squeezed her hand, and sat across from her, pushing the table lamp aside.

“Have you been here long, honey?” he wanted to know.

“George,” she said, “I’m quitting.” She hiccuped. “I’m quitting next week after I come back from Paris.”

Poor George looked not stricken exactly, but sort of moody. “Edna, we’ve been through this two times already-”

“And three times is out. The President can call me out.”

George Murdock, possessing the impatient air of one who had wanted to speak about himself but had first politely inquired how-are-you, and then had had to listen to his companion at length, said, “What is it now, Edna?”

“Don’t you read the papers, George? Huh? Last night. Most secretaries put the cover on their typewriters, lock the files, wash out the coffee cup and go home like anybody. Me, I have to be scared out of my wits, right outside my office, the President lying there, Otto Beggs half dead, that-that Thomas completely dead, a corpse. They never taught me that was part of it in secretarial school. I couldn’t sleep most of the night, George. I took three sodium butisols and had ten nightmares. That’s why I look so haggard.”

He reached out and touched her hand. “No matter how you feel, honey, you look great.”

“Thank you, George, but I mean it.”

His fingers left her hand, and began pinching his pitted cheeks. She wished that he wouldn’t. He said, “Edna, these things happen. They’ve been happening ever since that Lawrence fellow, the house painter, took a pot shot at President Jackson in 1835, and practically in the same place. That’s part of being President, knowing certain people will be sore at you and some of them are nuts. I’m sure Dilman was not surprised. That Burleigh Thomas was an out-and-out extremist, and he decided Dilman was hindering the Negro cause. So he took matters in his own hands. No one approved of it. Even the anti-Dilman press was dismayed.”

“Hypocrites, the papers, George. Forgive me. Next week they’ll resume their hate campaign and inflame some other assassin. No, George, this time I mean it. Don’t try to stop me. The first time, I wanted to resign because I missed T. C. and didn’t see how I could work for a stranger. Last time, I was just getting too sorry for Dilman, sickened by the hate he was suffering from. This time it’s different. He’s in danger, and so is everyone around him, and I’m scared.”

“Well-” said Murdock. He shrugged, then sat back, resigned and waiting, as the waiter served the Gibson and the Scotch-and-soda.

They both took their drinks and sipped them, and then, worrying about his displeasure, she said, “Don’t be mad at me, George.”

“I’m not mad at you,” he said curtly. “I’m mad at myself.”

She was too befogged to understand him. She said, “Why do you want me staying on that miserable old job? It’s not as if I’ve been able to be of any help to you, like a real girl friend should. Each time I want to give you a tip, without hurting security, I choke up, because I know so much, too much. I’m a detriment to you, that’s what. You see, you’ll be better off when I’m somewhere else. Pa called from Milwaukee this morning. Can you imagine? First time in all this time. Even he wanted me to quit.”

“I’m not saying you should stay on, Edna.” He drank, coughed, put down the Scotch. “I was just trying to buy a little time for us. If I thought you were in danger, I’d bodily remove you from that office, you believe me.”

She felt comforted, but determined. “Thank you, George. I-I just don’t think you can see the position I’m in like any ordinary person would. You’re a newspaperman, and it’s natural for you to-to look on what happened like a story-like part of a play that isn’t real-but if you’d been in the garden last night, not as a reporter-”

“Edna,” he said.

The quavering urgency in his tone made her stop. “What?”

“Edna, I’m not a newspaperman or reporter any longer. I’m unemployed. I haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

Her concern with herself, tied to her dream of their future, popped like a pricked balloon and disappeared into thin air. She stared at him. “Oh, George.” Her hands went to his sleeve. “No,” she said. “Did they fire you?”

He clutched to self-esteem as firmly as he now held his highball glass. “Not exactly, although it might look that way.” Involuntarily, his thin nostrils quivered. “Tri-State lost another of my papers. That brought me down to eight, and the low-paying ones at that. Weidner called and said carrying the column was a losing proposition-like hell it is, but that’s what he said-and unless I wanted to continue on a so-much-per-published-inch rate, making me virtually a stringer, he was taking on one of the more established names. So I told him, in effect, not on your life, you skinflint. I was even a little abusive about his ingratitude.”

“Good for you, George.”

“Then he backed down a bit and said-” Murdock hesitated. “Aw, what’s the use. Let’s have another round. I can use it.” He held up his glass, called the order, and finished his drink.

“What do you mean, he backed down?” Edna asked. In her heart she knew what was coming and wanted to run away from it, but this was too important, her whole life in the balance.

“You won’t like it, so never-”

“Please, George.”

“He said, ‘Of course, there’s still that so-called friend of yours right on the inside. If she’d become a source for you, one like all the name columnists have, and you’d promise to deliver a couple of whoppers in the next few weeks, we’d reconsider.’ I said, ‘Not on your life, Weidner, I don’t mix business with my personal life,’ and so I quit, two days ago I quit.”

Edna had been holding her breath. She let it go in a gasp. “George, why didn’t you tell him yes? Really, if I had known this before-how serious-George, I can help without hurting the President or my job. After all, what can hurt him or me any more? Look, George, maybe I can tell you some real exclusive things nobody has about the assassination attempt, or when we go to Chantilly and Versailles, maybe I can see if-”

“You’re sweet, darling. No use, now. I wouldn’t know what to do with the copy. I told you I quit. I’m out of work. I don’t have a column.” He considered her. “Don’t look so-so tragic, Edna. You can take the newspaper away from a boy, but you can’t take a boy away from the newspaper. I’ve got my lines out. There are some big people who think more of me than that crumb-bum hayseed in the Midwest does. You yourself heard Reb Blaser tell me how much his publisher thinks of my writing.”

“You wouldn’t work for them ?”

“I’d work any place where I could be independent and write as I please. That includes the Miller chain or any other. What the hell, Edna. I’d rather be reporting for a reactionary paper where I can get a chance to give them a breath of fresh air, proselytize, than a paper whose readers believe what I believe and know what I know.”

As ever, George’s infallible logic subdued Edna. “You’re right, I guess,” she said.

The fresh drinks came. They drank in silence. It was wonderful, she thought, despite all this, how positive and clearheaded she felt.

“Let’s enjoy ourselves,” George Murdock was saying. “Rome hasn’t burned yet. Leave it to your Georgie. I’ll find another spot.”

“And I’ll help you!” she cried out. “This time I will, I promise. It’s only right. This time, every evening, I’ll tell you what I can about what goes on in the President’s office.”