And Tuesday through Saturday, there was Marjorie’s Doris Day — platinum bob bent over a customer’s bright talons in the window at Kay’s.
“Okay if I take my break now?” I asked the cook. He nodded, so I stepped around the counter and pushed through the glass doors onto the simmering sidewalk.
Inside the salon it was even steamier, the hair dryers fighting a losing battle with the humidity. Kay was doing a manicure on a longtime client at Marjorie’s station. She was clearly rusty, fumbling in exasperation with the unfamiliar tools and supplies.
“Is Marjie sick or something?” I asked.
Kay wielded her emery board laboriously, not looking up. “This is the second day she’s missed without calling. I don’t know if she’s sick, but I can tell you one thing: She’s fired.”
“Such a sweet little thing,” chirped the customer, a mousey little woman I’d mentally dubbed Peachy due to her perennial choice of lipstick and nail polish hues. “It’s hard to believe she would just run off on you. Hope she’s okay.”
I looked around the room but the other operators, taking their cue from Kay, continued their work in silence.
“If anyone hears from her, please let me know,” I said. “You know where to find me.”
Back inside Cunningham’s, I leaned against the ledge in the phone booth and leafed through the directory. Marjorie and I were after-work buddies, just shopping and the movies, that sort of thing. But I knew she lived a bit south, off Plymouth Road somewhere, with her parents and younger sister.
Here it was — John Sklar, 9980 Asbury Park, Vermont 5-2537.
I wrote the number on the back of an order slip but didn’t dial the phone. A brisk rap on the open booth door startled me and there was the drugstore boss and pharmacist, Mr. Smith, frowning and jerking his head toward the far end of the counter. Some of my best tippers were taking their customary seats.
There were a handful of the neighborhood’s bigwigs, including the banker, the undertaker, the pastor, and the dentist — their daily get-together was a years-long tradition. Smith joined them as usual on their afternoon break.
It had been a busy day for them too. Payday check-cash-ers swamped Mr. Littmann’s corner bank. Families were taking advantage of the summer break to get teeth pulled and cavities filled, Dr. Foster said. And of course there was never any shortage of work for Mr. Bishop, especially in this kind of heat wave.
In a nod to the weather, they wanted iced tea instead of coffee — though Dr. Foster, with an exaggerated look around to make sure no clients were watching, switched his order to a large Coke.
I obliged him with appreciative laughter, hoping it didn’t sound too fake, and pocketed their dollar bonus. Then as usual I drifted away and they drew closer, talking business deals or gossip in lower tones.
The others looked more frazzled by the heat than amused. Mr. Bishop tamped his pack of Chesterfields on the counter and then lit up, exhaling the smoke with an exasperated sigh. Banker Littmann wiped his brow and then painstakingly refolded his handkerchief. Reverend Gruenwald looked miserable, plastered inside his black suit and tight collar.
When my relief finally arrived at 6:00, I went down the wide, worn oak stairs to the staff rooms in the basement. Alone in the ladies’, I shrugged out of my damp Dacron uniform, peeled off the white stockings, and drenched a stack of pleated brown paper towels, wiping my sweaty skin from forehead to ankles. I redid my French twist and slipped into the full-skirted cotton dress in my locker, then wiggled bare, sore feet into flat sandals. Toting my soiled clothing in a paper sack, I crossed Greenfield and slowly strolled around the corner. No one familiar was in sight and it took just a minute to slip down an alley and up the wooden stairs to the apartment above Leonard’s.
Jerry, one of the bartenders, was waiting with a bottle of Canadian Club and a bucket of ice. Smiling, he pulled his necktie off over his head and began to unbutton his shirt.
Later, while he dozed beneath the ceiling fan, I stepped into my slip and perched on the arm of a chair near the wide-open west window. Miles distant, probably over the infamous De-HoCo — Detroit House of Corrections — prison in rural Plymouth, black clouds swelled with the weathercasters’ promised thunderstorm heading our way.
It was near dusk and people were happily milling the streets, enjoying a respite with ice cream, window shopping at shuttered boutiques.
The door at Leonard’s swung open at rhythmic intervals, letting out blasts of “Little Darlin’” and other juke box hits.
One girl drew my attention, as she walked slowly away from the intersection. Despite the heat and the twilight, she wore a dark green chiffon scarf tied beneath her chin, and cat’s-eye sunglasses. If her step had been more chipper, I’d have thought she were a starstruck teenager attempting the Hollywood look, but her pace was slow and her chin hung low.
My curiosity was answered when she turned the corner and headed up the steps to Bishop’s.
I shuddered and sipped my tepid whiskey. What a night to have gloomy dealings with the undertaker, in contrast to the midsummer carnival atmosphere of the business district. As I watched, the front door of the sprawling brick Victorian opened and she slipped into the dark foyer. You’d think they could turn a few lamps on.
By contrast, the white blinds at the windows of the funeral home’s rear quarters — a recent addition to the original house — were lit up like a hospital operating theater. In a way, that’s what it was. The embalming room.
How often I’d grimaced lately, trying to tune out Bishop as he boasted with relish to his cronies, between bites of oozing cherry pie, about the envious modernity of his facilities. As I watched the shadows moving behind the shades, I recalled his loving description of the gadgets and techniques he used on the dead. Littmann, who’d lent him the money, seemed fascinated by the inner workings of the mortuary, and Dr. Foster asked lots of questions, with the air of one scientist quizzing another. The reverend always looked a little queasy, though.
The thunder had moved closer when Jerry stretched and dressed and joined me at the window with a fresh drink. I told him about Marjie.
“Yeah, I heard,” he said. “Lennie told me the cops were asking around, but no dice. She’s probably just shacked up with some guy you never heard of.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Her parents keep her on a pretty tight rein. She went out with Carl a few times, but who hasn’t? And I know she has a thing for that guy Steven, the pressman for the News. That’s about it.”
“Well, she ain’t with him,” Jerry said, tightening the knot of his tie. “He’s downstairs right now — or was. Want to come see for yourself? I got to get back.”
I wasn’t in the mood to strike up a chat with the shy, dapper workman who sipped many an afternoon milkshake at my counter. His job was wrestling the giant rolls of paper onto the presses, and disposing of the heavy hollow cardboard cores. Aside from Steve’s surprisingly savvy clothes sense, I thought him dull, but Marjie had chosen to interpret him as the strong, silent type. She’d taken to delaying her late break to coincide with his, and for a time he seemed awkwardly flattered by her sparkly admiration.
“But Jer, do me a favor. If that Steven is still down there, ask him what he knows about Marjie, okay?”
He sighed elaborately but I knew he’d come through.
When the coast was clear I hurried down the alley and headed home. Abruptly the storm began and I dashed down Bishop’s driveway. Cutting through the yard beside the funeral parlor would shave a block off my rainy walk.