At her desk she took a manila envelope from a drawer and counted out
two hundred dollars. "I'm an old-fashioned girl, Mr. Kent," she said.
"You take _me_ out to lunch." And she pushed the bills over to me.
"What's this?"
"Expense money. There's more when that runs out."
"Want me to sign for it?"
"No. That's petty cash; it's off the books already."
We took a cab to the Algonquin and sat next to each other on the
leather couch along one wall and had Scotches and made small talk
about the waiter with the two-foot-high pepper grinder and the old
Thanatopsis and Inside-Straight Society that used to meet there.
Joy Linx spelled her last name for me, emphasizing that it had no "y,"
and took off her glasses. She said to call her Joy. You can say all you
want about glasses not hiding a girl's beauty, but Joy was much more
of a looker without them. "I'm near-sighted," she said, "and they're
heavy."
"I approve," I said. "How long have you been with Peerless Promotions,
Joy?"
"With the aliens, you mean? You can speak frankly. They hired me last
Friday and I started today. How about you, Mr. Kent?"
I told her to call me Sam, but decided not to say, as I was tempted to,
that I wasn't sure I was _with_ the aliens, exactly, even though I was
on their payroll. "I started today, too, officially," I said. "It's
been very pleasant work so far. Another Scotch?"
"Just one more," she said, and we smiled at each other a bit stiffly
and tentatively.
I ordered the second round and the lunch, trying not to look at the
prices. They were academic, of course, considering the expense money in
my pocket, but I couldn't help contrasting this with my hectic lunches
at World Wide--often a sandwich brought down from the cafeteria and
eaten on the desk with a cup of office-brewed coffee--total cost under
half a dollar.
I risked telling Joy about this. You never know what kind of reception
such a sad little anecdote may have and I was relieved when she laughed
with genuine understanding.
"I used to do the same thing," she said. "Only I brought my own
sandwich. I liked egg salad on whole wheat."
"I'm a liverwurst and swiss cheese on rye man myself. With lettuce and
mustard. Who were you with before Peerless?"
"A theatrical agency. I had some far-fetched dream of becoming an
actress by association one day."
"You've certainly got the looks for it."
"Thanks, Sam, but I'm afraid my only talent lies in being a secretary."
I made some gallant reply, then asked what she did, exactly, for
Frij--alias Addison Madison.
"Isn't that a scream of a name?" Joy said. "So far all he's told me
is that I'm to be his Girl Friday--I guess he picked that up when he
was studying his role. And to take you out to lunch. It's a fine job."
Joy looked straight at her plate of _beef au jus_ and said, "I suppose
you're married."
"Yes," I said, looking at my scallops.
"Just like to get the facts. I'm divorced, myself. Incompatibility.
Linx is his name. I kept it because it's more euphonious,
professionally, than Kaplan."
"I see."
"I wish you much better luck, Sam."
"Thanks," I said, and almost told her Mae was pregnant. For some reason
I didn't. I don't think it was entirely because I was reluctant to
compare her unhappy state with my excellent one. Joy was a very pretty
girl indeed. "Thanks," I said again, and left it at that. "How about
another drink?"
"Okay." She looked up and smiled. "Forgive the personal history."
"Not at all." I got the waiter's eye and ordered, and a bus boy took
away the plates. "Tell me about this cocktail party. Who all's coming?"
"Some of everybody, I gather. Everybody who is anybody, that is."
"Oh? Big names?" I didn't know anything about the social life of
the aliens, come to think of it. So far all I was familiar with was
their public appearances, in a news sense, and their cloak-and-dagger
intrigues, such as locking me up in that air-conditioned dungeon.
"The biggest," Joy said. "You'll see. They've been mingling like mad."
"What for, I wonder."
"Your guess is as good as mine. Ten times better, probably."
"Will you be going to the party?"
"Yes. In my Girl Friday capacity. Wearing my glasses, so I can
recognize people across the room, and seeing that Addison Madison
shakes hands with everybody."
"How about shaking hands with me now, just in case you're too busy
later?"
"I won't be," Joy smiled. But she put her hand in mine. I neglected to
give it back right away.
Then the drinks came and after a while Joy put her glasses on and we
took a cab back to the office. She sat on her side and I sat on mine
and we talked about the weather. It was hot.
* * * * *
The party had got to the point where everybody seemed to be talking at
once. Enough liquor had been consumed for the initial tentativeness to
have worn off and the Monolithians were no longer standing apart as
they had been at the beginning. It was impossible to tell who was from
where, except that the women were all from Earth, presumably, and I
heard several variations on the question "Are you one of Them or one of
Us?"
The din of the talk, the overworked air conditioners and the mechanics
of barkeeping made every conversation a private one within its own
area, even though it was carried on at the top of the voice.
"I'm one of us," I shouted to a short, stout martini fellow who
cornered me in an alcove where I'd gone to put out a cigarette. "Sam
Kent, World Wide." I'd forgotten for the moment that I'd resigned.
"John Blobber," the martini said. "I'm with the Yarbutta people."
That's what it sounded like. "Good name, Sam. Sam Clemens, Sam
Goldwyn, Sam Spade. Lots of people named Sam. Sam Levene, Sam
Behrman--good American name."
"I never thought it wasn't, Mr. Yarbutta," I told him, trying to edge
away.
"No. John Blasher," he said, approximately. "I'm _with_ the Yollawa
people."
"Oh, sure. I guess I've heard about them."
"Make tunsleys," he said, waving his glass dangerously in my vicinity.
"Business very good, at the moment, thanks to the Monolithians." He
set his glass down on the little wooden table that held the ashtray
I'd sought out, knocked on the wood and picked up his glass. "Sam F.B.
Morse--great inventor. Sam Lincoln, great preshident."
"I think you've got that last one wrong," I said, backing off. "Fellow
named Abe, he was, I believe. Look, Mr. Blasher, you just reminded
me--I've got to see Abe Copeless about that story in Hammerslam this
morning. You know the one I mean."
I left him nodding in polite confusion. At the bar I got a fresh Scotch
and turned around to find myself trapped in a group playing Real Names.
"You with the Scotch," a red-haired woman said. "You can't go till you
tell us who Archibald Leach is."
"Cary Grant," I said instantly out of my storehouse of copy-reader's
lore. I tried to go, but the woman put a hand on my drinking arm and
said, "Oh, this is one we've got to keep. I'll bet you don't know Joe
Yule, Junior."
"Why, madam," I said, "everyone knows Mickey Rooney."
"This man is a gem," the woman--she was a gin and tonic--said.
"Arlington Brugh?"
"S. Arlington Brugh," I corrected. "Robert Taylor. Now may I go?" I
smiled, so she wouldn't think my rude question was rude.
"Not a chance, my dear boy. You're an absolute fount. Irwin, give him
that one that stumped us before." Irwin was a tall, lean Screwdriver.
"Lucille LeSueur," he said defiantly, wrinkling an eyebrow.
"Joan Crawford," I told him instantly.
The gin-and-tonic lady shrieked with glee--"That's right! We all
guessed Lucille Ball. How do you do it?"
"It's really very simple," I said modestly. "You see, I'm their lawyer
and they have no secrets from me."
"I doubt that very much," the third Real Names player said frostily.
He was a Bloody Mary and I figured it served him right. "James
Stewart," he said, as if he were playing the ace of spades. "Let's see
you get out of that."
"You're doing it backwards," the gin lady said reprovingly.
"No, I'm not," the Bloody Mary man insisted.
"No, he's not," I said, lifting my Scotch and her arm for a sip.
"That's Stewart Granger. And Charles Pratt is Boris Karloff and Rita
Hayworth is Margarita Cansino, and Roy Rogers is Leonard Slye and--if
you will unhand me, my good woman--Frederick Bickel is Fredric March."
"Don't let him get away," she shrieked. "He's priceless!"
But I did get away. I weaved my way among clusters of people who were
making sounds of our time touching on Lorca, Kerouac, Glenn Gould,
Lenny Bernstein, Brendan Behan, Sinatra, Astaire, Gielgud, Philip,
Kennedy, Marlon, Ingrid, and Marilyn, and found myself cheek by jowl
with my old friend Eurydice Playfair, who used to be a newspaperwoman
herself.
My Real Names ploy, which I had been savoring along with my umpteenth
Scotch, turned to ashes as it recalled itself forcibly to me that I was
no better than dear Riddie, having sold out to the aliens myself.
"Dear boy!" she said. "Where _have_ you been keeping yourself?"
"Between you and me, Riddie," I said, "between the devil and the deep
blue tax collector, up to just about now. Can I get you a drink?"
This is one way of vanishing. You just don't come back from the bar.
It's understandable at such a conclave. But Riddie was not to be put
off that easily.
"I'm well fixed, Samuel, my old," she said, waving three-quarters of
a bourbon on the rocks at me. "What I want to know is who's running
the store, now that Kent and double-you double-you have phfft? Not old
pinchpurse Hyatt, surely?"
"I have put all those mundane cares behind me," I said in an attempt to
be sprightly. "Greater things are afoot."
"How very true," she said. Riddie was dressed to the hilt in a lamé
thing that clung to her well-preserved curves. "I'm delighted you've
got yourself a handhold. There's room enough for all."
"Listen, Riddie," I said, "I know you can't tell the Monolithians
without a scorecard, they're so assimilable, but what the good hell is
the object of all this? For what greater gain is the tab being picked
up? What's the deal, old pal? Spill, will you?"
"You're too suspicious, Sam. This is conviviality rampant. We drink and
be merry and ask not the reason why. Live, man! Pluck the daisies while
you may. How _is_ Mae, by the way?"
"Just fine," I said. "Just absolutely fine. That's an interesting
philosophy you have there, about plucking."
Riddie gave me a close look. "How many have you had, my friend? How
about a sandwich?"
"Don't worry," I told her. "I'm not going to disgrace anybody. I've had
three, is all." Besides miscounting I was ignoring the three I'd had at
lunch with Joy Linx.
"Well, maybe," Riddie said. She acknowledged a high sign from somebody
(an alien?) at the other side of the room and said quickly, "Don't
worry about a thing. If you have any problems, just take them to Mox or
Frij. Or me. I've got to run now, Sammy."
And she was off.