Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“I didn’t know Mom had that much,” Marie said mournfully. She cried again a little after that, and then she stopped, and didn’t cry any more from then on.

They went into Ruby’s room and sat down side by side on the edge of the bed and talked it over.

“What do you think you’ll do with it?” Ruby asked, awed.

“I know the first thing I’m going to do,” Marie said determinedly, “and that’s get out of this business.”

“They say it’s awfully hard to do that,” Ruby remarked doubtfully.

“Not if you really want to. I’ve wanted to for a long time. Two-and-a-half years is too long. Now with this money to fall back on. I can go out and hunt for a regular job. It’ll tide me over until I find something. If I don’t quit now, I never will. There isn’t any future in it,” she declared vehemently. “If you got a good job, you can keep on with it after you’re fifty, sixty even. With us, we’re through at forty, sometimes even before. Then what’s left? The gutter.”

Ruby nodded. She knew it was the truth.

As word of Marie’s imminent departure spread throughout the house, one by one its other occupants gathered in Ruby’s room, until finally the entire quota was assembled there. Even some who ordinarily weren’t chummy with the others. Rozelle, the Syrian girl with the harem-type beauty; round moon face and dark liquid eyes. And Louise, the Korean-American girl, who had come over as a soldier’s bride and then been discarded. As somebody had once remarked, “We got a regular United Nations among us.” Even Mrs. Burnside herself finally joined them. Questioned as to whether she would put any difficulties in the way of Marie’s departure, she replied: “This isn’t a jail. She’s free to go, just so long’s her bills are all paid up, and just so long’s she don’t try to compete against the house from the outside. I can always get them to send me a replacement.”

Marie sent down for a bottle of champagne to celebrate her windfall and her leavetaking, and an impromptu but sprightly little party got under way. It was only New York State champagne, but it was very good because it was rather old. Not even a visitor had ordered champagne in over a year and a half.

A few of them gave her little going-away presents, so that it almost became like some kind of a bridal shower. Only, instead of matrimony, in celebration of her return to honesty. Ruby gave her a little bottle of toilet-water, Rozelle a pair of silver filigree earrings from the old country, Louise a string of jade beads. Even Mrs. Burnside entered into the spirit of the thing. She went to her own room and came back with a little musical powder-box, that played a tune when you picked it up and stopped when you put it down. “That’s so’s no one can swipe your face-powder without your knowing it,” she snickered.

By now everyone was a little tight.

When a second bottle of champagne had been brought up (Marie paid for that one too, of course), they all took turns kissing her good-bye. Even Mrs. Burnside. She said to Marie, “You’re one of the nicest girls we’ve ever had with us, and we’ll all miss you. And if you ever feel like coming back again, you know you’re always welcome. You’ll always find the door open.”

Marie almost hated to leave them. They were the only friends she’d had for over two-and-a-half years, and they were all good souls. Lost souls, but good souls.

She didn’t remain in Allentown. Although her mother had never known about her, and to the end had innocently written to her thinking she was living in a rooming-house, a lot of the people and neighbors there had known her in her childhood, and she didn’t want anything to mar their recollections or her own. She was afraid something might leak out. So she returned to the city again, where anonymity was so much easier to achieve.

When she came back she look a furnished room — this time in a legitimate rooming-house — banked what was left of the legacy after funeral, medical, tax and legal forfeits had been deducted, and set about looking for a job. To her utter but delighted bewilderment she had found herself one within a day and a half. Remembering the difficulties she had experienced finding anything when she had first come here at seventeen, she had expected a long, disheartening search. She decided that the added five years in age was what accounted for the difference. A girl of twenty-two was far more employable than a youngster of seventeen. She also decided, being a romanticist at heart, that it proved how well and swiftly honesty paid off.

Her job was that of checker at one of the exit-stations in a large supermarket. It was an easy job, but monotonous to the point of anaesthesia. The machine did the computing, so you didn’t even have to be good at figures. You just punched the required keys for each price-item. It wasn’t this that got her down. It was the never-ending stoking and stowing into paper bags that she found tedious. All day long (even though she got two breaks), one after another after another. It was like being on some sort of conveyor belt. Sometimes whole families would come in. to cash their relief checks and buy a month’s supplies at a time.

She stood it for about six weeks, realizing it was better than to have to start looking for a job all over again. But it was a complete dead-end, there was utterly no chance of long-term advancement, for the supermarket was entirely self-service, and in the only two departments where manual workers were employed, the meat counter and the coffee-grinding machine, the pay was no better than where she was and the job almost, if not quite, as tedious. It took years to become a manager, and only men were selected.

Then one night a grouch of an old woman slipped into her lane even after she’d slung the closing-off chain across it. Marie got stuck for an extra five or six minutes, and on a nine-o’clock late-closing night. As if that weren’t bad enough, Marie had no sooner finished packing her than she began a vociferous argument over an alleged seventeen-cent overcharge. Marie went over the long sales-tape with her twice from top to bottom, but she still couldn’t be convinced. The whole towering bundle had to be unpacked first to locate the disputed item, then the manager had to be called, then the store’s price log-book had to be consulted. In the end Marie turned out to have been right.

But she’d had it. She gave in her notice.

She went back the next day simply to finish out the week and round out her pay-check. Then she left for good.

This time she didn’t have to go looking. The job fell into her lap. Since the next day was a Saturday and most places were closed, she decided nothing much could be done until the following Monday. So she went out for a stroll in the sunshine, an element that her last two occupations had almost completely deprived her of. As she was passing a candy-store, one of a well-known chain scattered throughout the city, a sweet tooth she hadn’t realized she had started to kick up. On impulse she went in and bought herself a quarter’s worth of spiced gum-drops. Then noticing that the middle-aged woman who waited on her was alone behind the counter, she asked her: “Could you use any help back there?”

“I have an assistant,” the woman told her. “Only she’s out sick today. But if you’re looking for this kind of work, I’ll give you a tip that may help. We’re opening a new retail store on Monday,” and she gave her the location. “Don’t go there, but go down to the head office and ask for the personnel manager.”

Marie was down there by eight, long before he had arrived himself, and by eleven she had the job. In the interview, she slanted the truth a little, without departing from the letter of it. There had been a candy-store in Allentown she had hung around and haunted as a youngster. More than once she’d been asked to help out behind the counter after school-hours. So that in fact she had previously worked in such a place. All she neglected to add was that she had been twelve, not twenty-two.