“And what else does your Mr. Hodges insist on?”
“That we go to school, night courses; that is, those of us who want to improve ourselves, who want to move up to higher positions in the bank. And he actually checks the courses, talks with the various instructors, finds out how each of us is doing.”
“Do you go to night school?”
“Yes. Every Monday and Wednesday. Post graduate stuff.”
“Why, are you ambitious?”
“In a way. I have no big dreams. I don’t want to rise very high. Credit Manager, and there I’ll stay. I believe Old Man McKnish is going to retire this year, and I sure have been aiming for that job, right since I went to work there.”
“Any chance, do you think?”
“Yes, I do. Mr. Hodges knows of my dream and desire; and he knows me since I was a little boy. The Board does the appointing, but Mr. Hodges has influence, of course. I have the background and the education, I’ve never been in trouble, I’ve never been in any scandal, I’m practically the head-teller right now, and I am in charge of the most important payrolls.”
“Payrolls?” she said. “Don’t most firms pay by check?”
“A great many do. A great many don’t. There are matters of policy. Anyway, Thursdays and Fridays are my payroll days; when I prepare payrolls.”
“Two days?”
“Fridays there are a lot of little ones. Thursdays, there are five big ones: Martin Aircraft, Hughes Construction, Fairfax Electronics, North American Builders, and Marshall Contractors Corp. They all have plants throughout the Metropolitan area, and on Long Island. They have part-time workers, and over-time, aside from regular employees. It gets quite complicated. They call in their payrolls on Thursday mornings. By then, they have an approximation. They make up the rest from their own office safes.
“It mounts up. By one o’clock in the afternoon, I’ve probably packaged up to three hundred thousand dollars, mostly in hundreds and fifties, and then down to twenties, tens, fives, and ones. They pick up at about one or two in the afternoon, each, of course, separately. Their own cashiers distribute the money into pay-envelopes and their own guards do the distributing to the various plants on Friday.”
“Pretty important,” she said, “aren’t you?”
“Not really. Accurate, or let’s call it dependable. I’m glad I have the job because it shows that they depend on me, and that I’m in excellent standing, and that I’m in fairly good shape in my bid for the job I want. Of course, Mr. Hodges says — perhaps he’s kidding — that for the Board of Directors I may be lacking in just one thing.”
“And that?” she said.
“A wife,” he said.
“That all?” she said.
“According to Mr. Hodges, it would add to my stature, stability, something. In the opinion of the Board of directors.”
“And being a bachelor? That would be fatal?”
“I hope not,” he said, and flushed, and changed the subject and told her about the banquet each year on the fifteenth of December at the Grand Ballroom of The Commodore when the speeches were made and the bonuses declared and another thousand dollars added to the First National Mercantile Heroism Award.
“Heroism Award?” she said. “What’s that?”
“It’s been accumulating for twenty-one years.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Last time it was paid was twenty-two years ago to an employee named Edwin Samuelson.”
“But what is it?”
“An award of a thousand dollars if one of the employees of the bank performs an act of heroism. If no one does during that year, another thousand dollars is added the next year, and so on and so on. Right now it stands at twenty-one thousand dollars.”
“No one has been a hero in twenty-one years?”
He smiled, kissed her forehead. “That’s not as strange as it sounds. Very few people, during a lifetime, perform an act of heroism, that is, ordinary people, in ordinary walks of life. There must be both the opportunity, which happens very rarely, and the inclination to act on such opportunity. Actually, an act of heroism is a rare occurrence. We have eighty-two people employed in the bank; nice, ordinary people. In twenty-one years, nobody was a hero. In the bank, there’s never been a holdup, or, really any kind of untoward happening. In our private lives, we just go along, humdrum and normal.”
“How would you like to win a Heroism Award?”
“Me?”
“The Evangeline Ashley Heroism Award.”
“Love it. How?”
“Put your arms around me and kiss me. But like a hero.”
And on the twenty-third day of March he asked her to marry him. He even made a joke. “For me, for Mr. Hodges, for the Board of Directors,” he said. “But especially for me.”
The moment was propitious. She was at low ebb. She was unsettled, at loose ends, disappointed, and fearful. Her brief career as an actress had been preposterous even to her. Her return to Florida had been a descent, step by step, from glorified waitress in the Upstairs Room, to the tumultuous affair with Bill Grant, to the sickening and simultaneous affair with Orgaz, to the tiresome job as hostess in a tea room.
Bill Grant was gone. Orgaz was dead, by her hand. She had no job, no plans, no prospects. And she gave grave heed to the warning she had received, a warning which it would be dangerous to ignore. She was, in fact, grateful for the warning, for she knew, from Bill Grant, that Pedro’s associates were not men who had need to give warnings. If she were an embarrassment to one of them he could have squashed her somewhere in the dark and ended any embarrassment. Instead it had been his whim to send an underling with a warning. She had no intention of staying in Florida beyond the prescribed period.
She remembered that hungover morning with the elderly director just prior to her exodus from Hollywood. She remembered his words. Go home and catch up with a nice young guy your own age and get married and have babies and live happily ever after. What have you to lose?
And so she accepted the proposal of Oscar Blinney.
IX
They were married on the morning of the twenty-sixth day of March. During the forenoon of the twenty-sixth day of March, her worldly goods — her Savings Bank account — under arrangements made by Banker Blinney, were transferred in her name to the Mount Vernon Savings Bank in the State of New York from the Miami Savings Bank in the State of Florida.
Then they packed. At two o’clock of the afternoon of the twenty-sixth day of March they flew north for a short honeymoon in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They checked into the Mayfair Hotel at eight o’clock in the evening of the twenty-sixth day of March. At ten o’clock of the evening of the twenty-seventh day of March, during their short honeymoon in Atlantic City, New Jersey, she was, for the first time, unfaithful to him.
He was sick during that day, the twenty-seventh. Stomach virus, the doctor had said, not unusual when coming from the South to the North. It would pass in a day or two, the doctor said.
She went down to the bar, bought herself a drink, and then was bought a drink by the dark curly-haired man. The dark curly-haired man had a deep voice and an elegant manner. He was a salesman for Rona Plastics which was having their convention tomorrow, but he had arrived a day early. He bought more drinks for her and for himself, told her about his lovely twins aged three, told her about his lovely wife whom he loved dearly, and took her to his room.
She returned to her own room at midnight, cognizant of the fact that she had never learned the name of the salesman from Rona Plastics. She wished his twins well, and his wife, looked down upon Blinney who was snoring peacefully, drank bourbon from the open bottle, undressed, and went to bed.