“I tinted it, Mr. Mergenthaler.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My daughter tints her hair,” Mr. Mergenthaler said. “Why do you women do that, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Does it look awful, Mr. Mergenthaler?”
“Awful? No, it’s very nice. In fact...” He pursed his lips and frowned at her, looking extremely puzzled. “Well, never mind,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to do this morning.”
It wasn’t until after lunch that he buzzed her again and said, “Now I know what it is.”
“What what is, Mr. Mergenthaler?”
“Who you look like with your hair this way.”
“Who, Mr. Mergenthaler?”
“That movie star,” he said. “Kim Novak. Did you ever hear of her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, there’s a very strong resemblance between you two girls.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mergenthaler.”
“Don’t mention it. Did you give my message to the cutting room foreman?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“Good,” Mr. Mergenthaler said, and clicked off.
When Jerry Schneider saw her later that afternoon, he immediately slapped his forehead and said, “Wow! Now you’ve done it, Nora, I mean it. Now you look just like her!”
“Do you think so, Jerry?”
“Boy, do I!” Jerry said. “Listen, Nora, if I bring a camera to work tomorrow, will you take a picture with me in front of the building? On our lunch hour?”
“Why?”
“So when I get back to school, I can show it to the guys and they’ll think I know Kim Novak.”
Nora smiled and said, “All right,” and then shrugged.
She put off going into Marvin’s office until late in the afternoon. Marvin, busily adding a column of figures, barely glanced up at her as she put a batch of invoices on his desk.
“Hello, Nora,” he said. “Did you have a nice weekend?”
“Very nice, Marvin.”
She waited by his desk, hoping he would look up, but he kept working with his head bent.
“Marvin?” she said at last.
“Mmm?” he said, without looking up.
“Look at me.”
He raised his eyes.
“Do you like my hair this way?”
Marvin studied her for a moment and then said, “It’s blond. When did you do that?”
“Friday night. After you dropped me off.”
“Why?”
“I thought it would be fun.”
“You look very pretty, Nora,” Marvin said. “But then, you’ve always looked pretty.”
“Do you like it better?”
“I like it the same.”
“But don’t you think I...?” She hesitated and then shrugged.
“Don’t I think you what?”
“Nothing,” she said, and left his office. She began practicing her new voice when she got home that night. She’d been thinking about it all the way uptown on the subway, so that by the time she got home she could almost hear it inside her head. When her father went into the spare room after dinner, to watch television, Nora and her grandmother began doing the dishes, and that was when she tried the new voice for the first time.
“Speak up,” her grandmother said. “I can’t hear you.”
“Grandma, I’m purposely trying not to shout like a fishwife.”
“Yes, so instead you’re whispering like somebody in a hospital, God forbid.”
“I’m trying to cultivate my voice,” Nora said.
“For what?”
“Just to sound better.”
“Then speak up,” her grandmother said, “and you’ll sound better.”
She practiced the new voice all through the next morning, answering the telephone in a breathy whisper that was a little startling to some of the customers of Mergenthaler and Harris. Just before lunch, in fact, one of the customers said, “Excuse me, this is Mergenthaler and Harris?”
“Yes, sir,” Nora said in the same voice. “Whom did you wish to speak with?”
“I’ll tell you the truth, young lady, you almost make me forget,” the man said, and Nora laughed a funny sort of laugh that seemed to originate somewhere way back in her throat.
On her lunch hour, she posed for a whole roll of pictures with Jerry Schneider outside the building. After lunch, she surprised Mr. Schwartz, who ran an outlet store in a Pennsylvania farmer’s market, by using her new phone voice on him. And later, she caused poor Mr. Harris to puff very anxiously on his cigar when she gave him the funny laugh from the back of her throat. For the remainder of that week, she practiced the voice and the laugh almost constantly. She also went all the way down to Fourteenth Street to see Kim Novak in a revival of The Man With The Golden Arm, and she bought as many movie magazines as she could find, searching for photos of Kim Novak and remembering what Jerry had said about that distant look in her eyes. Nora studied the look, and tried imitating it in her bathroom mirror, but she only looked either stupid or sleepy until one night she just stumbled upon it accidentally and almost scared herself half to death.
Oh my God, Nora thought, look at that.
Fascinated, she stared at this person in the mirror. Then she shivered and went to bed.
On Tuesday of the second week after she’d bleached her hair, Nora wore high heels to work.
“Where are you going?” her grandmother asked as she was leaving the apartment. “To a party?”
“I’m going to work.”
“With shoes like that?”
“What’s the matter with these shoes?” Nora asked.
“Speak up, I can’t hear you,” her grandmother said.
“This is my normal speaking voice,” Nora whispered.
“It sounds to me like laryngitis.”
“I’m terribly sorry-,” Nora said.
“Such shoes to work,” her grandmother said, and shook her head.
The shoes were a bit high perhaps, and Nora felt a little self-conscious throughout part of the morning, but only until she got used to the extra two inches they added to her height. Some of the girls in the office told her they’d never realized how tall she was, and one of the salesmen said, “Nora, you are positively statuesque. Did anyone ever tell you you look like Kim Novak?”
“Yes, a few people,” she said.
“You even sound like her.”
“Do you think so?” Nora whispered, and then laughed her throaty laugh and gave him her look.
“I’ll be damned,” the salesman said.
That night, on her way home from the elevated station, she walked past the boys on the park bench with her head very high, her heels clicking on the pavement, the distant smoldering look on her face. The boys on the bench were dead silent. There were no whistles and no catcalls. They stared at her as she walked past, and didn’t even begin whispering about her until she was well past the bench. Her eyes heavy-lidded, her face inscrutable, she allowed a tiny half-smile of triumph to play about her lips.
The next day, it really began happening.
It began happening on her lunch hour. She had walked cross-town to Fifth Avenue and then decided to have lunch in Schrafft’s. She was wearing her favorite color, which was lavender, and her blond hair was combed loosely about her face. She walked with a confident sway in the high-heeled shoes, coming into the restaurant and pausing to look for the hostess, a distant expression on her face.
She was unaware of anything around her because she was frankly very hungry and was thinking of what she would order. The hostess led her to a table, and Nora smiled at her and then picked up the menu and looked at it. A waitress came over and stood grinning a little foolishly, her pencil poised over her order pad. Nora looked up and said, in her breathy quiet voice, “I’d like a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee.”