John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

All that fall Janey went round trying to get work. She got so that the first thing she was conscious of in the morning when she woke up was the black depression of having nothing to do. She ate Christmas dinner with her mother and sisters and told them that she’d been promised twentyfive a week after the first of the year to keep them from sympathizing with her. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

At Christmas she got a torn paper package from Joe through the mail with an embroidered kimono in it. She went through the package again and again hoping to find a letter, but there was nothing but a little piece of paper with Merry Xmas scrawled on it. The package was postmarked St. Nazaire in France and was stamped OUVERT PAR LA CENSURE. It made the war seem very near to her and she hoped Joe wasn’t in any danger over there.

One icy afternoon in January when Janey was lying on the bed reading The Old Wives’ Tale , she heard the voice of Mrs. Baghot, the landlady, calling her. She was afraid it was about the rent that they hadn’t paid that month yet, but it was Alice on the phone. Alice said for her to come right over because there was a man calling up who wanted a stenographer for a few days and none of the girls were in and she thought Janey might just as well go over and see if she wanted the job. “What’s the address? I’ll go right over.” Alice told her the address. Her voice was stuttering excitedly at the other end of the line. “I’m so scared… if Mrs. Robinson finds out she’ll be furious.” “Don’t worry, and I’ll explain it to the man,” said Janey.

The man was at the Hotel Continental on Pennsylvania Avenue. He had a bedroom and a parlor littered with typewritten sheets and papercovered pamphlets. He wore shellrimmed spectacles that he kept pulling off and putting on as if he wasn’t sure whether he saw better with them or without them. He started to dictate without looking at Janey, as soon as she’d taken off her hat and gotten pad and pencil out of her handbag. He talked in jerks as if delivering a speech, striding back and forth on long thin legs all the while. It was some sort of article to be marked “For immediate release,” all about capital and labor and the eighthour day and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. It was with a little feeling of worry that she worked out that he must be a laborleader. When he’d finished dictating he went out of the room abruptly and told her please to type it out as soon as she could that he’d be back in a minute. There was a Remington on the table but she had to change the ribbon and typed in a great hurry for fear he would come back and find her not finished. Then she sat there waiting, with the article and the carbon copies all piled on the table looking neat and crisp. An hour passed and he didn’t come. Janey got restless, roamed about the room, looked into the pamphlets. They were all about labor and economics and didn’t interest her. Then she looked out of the window and tried to crane her neck out to see what time it said by the clock on the postoffice tower. But she couldn’t see it, so she went over to the phone to ask the office if Mr. Barrow was in the hotel please to tell him his manuscript was ready. The desk said it was five o’clock and that Mr. Barrow hadn’t come in yet, although he’d left word that he’d be back immediately. As she set down the receiver she knocked a letter on lavender paper off the stand. When she picked it up, as she had nothing to do and was tired of playing naughts and crosses with herself, she read it. She was ashamed of herself but once she’d started she couldn’t stop.

DEAR G. H.

I hate to do this but honestly, kid, I’m in a hell of a fix for jack. You’ve got to come across with two thousand iron men ($2000) or else I swear I’ll stop behaving like a lady and raise the roof. I hate to do this but I know you’ve got it or else I wouldn’t plague you like I do. I mean business this time

— the little girl you used to love

QUEENIE

Janey blushed and put the letter back exactly the way it had been. Weren’t men awful, always some skeleton in the closet. It was dark outside and Janey was getting hungry and uneasy when the telephone rang. It was Mr. Barrow, who said that he was sorry he’d kept her waiting and that he was at the Shoreham in Mr. Moorehouse’s suite and would she mind coming right over — no, not to bring the manuscript — but he had some more dictation for her right there, J. Ward Moorehouse it was, she must know the name. Janey didn’t know the name, but the idea of going to take dictation at the Shoreham quite thrilled her and this letter and everything. This was some excitement like when she used to go round with Jerry Burnham. She put on her hat and coat, freshened up her face a little in the mirror over the mantel and walked through the stinging January evening to the corner of F and 14th where she stood waiting for the car. She wished she had a muff; the lashing wind bit into her hands in her thin gloves and into her legs just above the shoetops. She wished she was a wealthy married woman living in Chevy Chase and waiting for her limousine to come by and take her home to her husband and children and a roaring open fire. She remembered Jerry Burnham and wondered if she could have married him if she’d handled it right. Or Johnny Edwards; he’d gone to New York when she’d refused him, and was making big money in a broker’s office. Or Morris Byer. But he was a Jew. This year she hadn’t had any beaux. She was on the shelf; that was about the size of it.

At the corner before the Shoreham she got out of the car. The lobby was warm. Welldressed people stood around talking in welldressed voices. It smelt of hothouse flowers. At the desk they told her to go right up to apartment number eight on the first floor. A man with a wrinkled white face under a flat head of sleek black hair opened the door. He wore a sleek black suit and had a discreet skating walk. She said she was the stenographer for Mr. Barrow and he beckoned her into the next room. She stood at the door waiting for someone to notice her. At the end of the room there was a big fireplace where two logs blazed. In front of it was a broad table piled with magazines, newspapers, and typewritten manuscripts. On one end stood a silver teaservice, on the other a tray with decanters, a cocktail shaker and glasses. Everything had a well-polished silvery gleam, chairs, tables, teaset, and the watchchain and the teeth and sleek prematurely gray hair of the man who stood with his back to the fire.

Immediately she saw him Janey thought he must be a fine man. Mr. Barrow and a little baldheaded man sat in deep chairs on either side of the fireplace listening to what he said with great attention.

“It’s a very important thing for the future of this country,” he was saying in a low earnest voice. “I can assure you that the great executives and the powerful interests in manufacturing and financial circles are watching these developments with the deepest interest. Don’t quote me in this; I can assure you confidentially that the President himself…” His eye caught Janey’s. “I guess this is the stenographer. Come right in, Miss…” “Williams is the name,” said Janey.

His eyes were the blue of alcoholflame, with a boyish flicker in them; this must be J. Ward Moorehouse whose name she ought to know.

“Have you a pencil and paper? That’s fine; sit right down at the table. Morton, you’d better carry away those teathings.” Morton made the teathings disappear noiselessly. Janey sat down at the end of the table and brought out her pad and pencil. “Hadn’t you better take off your hat and coat, or you won’t feel them when you go out?” There was something homey in his voice, different when he talked to her than when he talked to the men. She wished she could work for him. Anyway she was glad she had come.