Mark Dunn - We Five

“A clean breast of what?”

“Oh bother, you have a customer.”

“Oh, it’s only Mrs. Withers. I’ll be with you in a moment, Mrs. Withers. ”

“Hum. Mrs. Withers.” Miss Colthurst nodded pregnantly while pursing her lips.

Ruth drew closer for the purpose of conveying a confidence: “Nearly every other morning I have to contend with that fool woman for longer than I can stand it. She tries on the black lisles and then she tries on the imitation suedes and then she tries on the dogskins, and then just as I’m ready to scream, she ambles off without buying a single pair. I think shopping without buying is her favorite pastime.”

Miss Colthurst shook her head. “It isn’t her pastime, Ruth. It’s her job. She’s a private shopper for I. Magnin’s.”

“A pri—?”

“A spy ! She thinks she’s clever and has been able to hide this fact from us. But everybody knows. Everybody except, apparently, you , Ruth. And so now so do you . So let’s just make her wait until Satan puts on woolens, shall we?” Ruth noted a mischievous twinkle in her supervisor’s eye; she smiled and nodded conspiratorially.

Now Miss Colthurst sighed…rather noisily.

“I have had much better mornings. My toothache has returned, which always puts me in a dreadful mood.” Miss Colthurst took a deep breath. “Here’s the situation: there are five men due here early this afternoon from the Katz Advertising Agency. Mr. Pemberton has fired the somnolent Mr. Leeds, our advertising manager, and given the wide-awake Katz agency our account. That’s the way things are being done with the big stores these days — even stores without advertising managers who’ve been known to fall asleep while standing fully erect. There is to be no more internal advertising, but there will be advertising, and a great deal of it, thanks to the vigorous efforts of the smart young men who run that enterprising concern. Well, the agency wants to start things off with a big bang. It wants to place photo advertisements in the Chronicle and the Call and the Examiner , and in several magazines that have a large readership throughout northern California. It’s quite an outlay of money for the store, but Mr. Pemberton is convinced it will be worth it, since sales have been in such a terrible slump lately. You there! Mrs. Withers! You cannot be putting your hands behind the counter like that. The absolute nerve of that woman. Miss Guinter, would you please wait on Miss Withers… before I lose the last ounce of my sanity right here in the middle of — what was I saying?”

“Something about the new advertising agency doing photo—”

“Yes, thank you. Photo advertisements. So, these young men — and they’re all quite new to the advertising firm — including Mr. Katz Junior, who is the son of the owner…”

“Who, I take it, is named Mr. Katz Senior.”

“Yes, of course. Now don’t play on my last nerve, Ruth dear.”

“I won’t. Go on.”

“All of them, hired on fresh out of Stanford only a few months ago to bring pep and youthful ideas to that firm — they’ll choose five young women from among the ten female salesclerks whom I have chosen for their consideration, and the girls will be escorted to Golden Gate Park on Friday to have their plein-air photographs taken, as it were.”

“All five men are needed for the one photographic session?”

“Oh yes, oh yes. They are each of them responsible for a different aspect of the whole operation. One will work with Miss Dowell and me in selecting the clothes — obviously we’ll want to promote our summer lines — another to photograph, another to write the copy as he is so inspired, and so forth. I’ve never seen anything like it. I understand this represents the future: these scrubbed-face advertising agents pulling out all the stops to make a ‘campaign,’ as they call it — it’s quite like a little military operation, isn’t it?”

Ruth nodded. “So, Miss Colthurst, I take it from the look of disappointment on your face that you’d selected my friends Mag and Molly and Carrie as candidates.”

“Naturally. And you and Jane as well.”

“ Jane ?”

“My goodness, Ruth — how you say it! And Jane being one of your dearest friends.”

“No, no, no. It’s not that I think Jane isn’t—”

“Oh, it most certainly is.” Lowering her voice: “And why shouldn’t a person think such a thing? Jane is a dear, and smart as a whip, and I know that someday she’ll be one of the best buyers this store has ever had, but she is no Gibson girl, and we both know it. Even so, it was she who first spoke to young Mr. Katz when he came to the store last Thursday while I was at the doctor’s having my knee looked at. And there was apparently something about her which the young man deemed ‘photogenic,’ and so when the two of us had our meeting on Friday, he asked that Jane be included in the ten finalists he’ll present to his fellow account men. And it wasn’t my place to dispute the request. I asked Mr. Pemberton later that afternoon how he would feel if Miss Higgins happened to end up in photo ads for his store and he said he’d be perfectly fine with it. I was quite surprised at first, but then I came quickly to realize just why he should be fine with it. Our employer, as you probably know, is the father of a daughter with a harelip. I believe it’s the reason our store mascot has been that damned little bunny rabbit for the last ten years. I think the bunny reminds him of her. Well, of course, that would make him inordinately accommodating when it comes to matters of outward and inward beauty. And he did tell me — to put a topper on things — that plain-looking women have just as much right to look at a Pemberton, Day & Company store advertisement and picture themselves wearing the garments we sell as women who are more prettily disposed.”

“Well, he does have a point, I guess.”

“So the gentlemen will be here at two o’clock and I will cross my fingers we’ll have Maggie and Molly and Carrie with us at that time, because they are so very beautiful, each one of them, and it should be such a credit to the store to have them presenting its merchandise in artful photography.”

“Should I go look for them?”

“I had considered asking you. But I haven’t another clerk to spare. Oh, fiddlesticks! I can take over Gloves for you if you aren’t gone too terribly long.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“Yes, yes. Go. Skiddoo.”

Ruth found her friends exactly where she thought they’d be: Maggie’s uncle’s drugstore on California Street. To be accurate, Maggie’s “Uncle” Whit was no longer Maggie’s uncle-in-actuality, since her aunt — Maggie’s mother’s older sister — had divorced him a couple of years earlier. But Maggie still claimed him as such, since he’d never lost his fondness for her, nor had he ever suspended his willingness to treat Maggie and her friends to free strawberry ice cream sodas or fruit-flavored phosphates or Coca-Colas at his fountain. Today it was lemon and orange phosphates Maggie and Molly and Carrie were drinking at one of the fountain’s little café tables.

Seeing Ruth first, Carrie proclaimed with welcoming silliness, “Behold! The search party has officially arrived!”

“It didn’t take much searching,” admitted Ruth, while pulling a whitewashed wrought-iron chair over to the table. “What’s the opposite of a wild goose chase?”

“I don’t know,” said Molly, in a sullen tone. “Would you like something to drink, Ruth? Mr. Whitten has a new root beer on tap and wants opinions as to whether it’s worth keeping.”