Hilda was thundering away in the back shop, producing the bomb. Jones had gone to cover a car accident, would spend the rest of the day in bars and clubs, scouting out the reaction for features tomorrow. There was an agitated stir up front, the girls gasping and whispering, carriers arguing and trying to explain to each other what it all meant. The boy who had the Bruno house on his route was king for the night. Miller leaned back in his swivel chair, gloating over the edition. Better than he had expected even, a work of art. He wished he’d had a copy to hand Whimple on his way out the door a couple hours before.
He knocked out some five or six galleys of stuff for tomorrow, taken in large part from the articles he was shipping elsewhere. He discovered he had enough photos, spacing them out, to last him right up to the 19th, though he and Marcella were in several of them. Anyway, as long as they were willing to convene out on the hill, there was no reason not to get more. Hooking the copy up, he asked the typesetters to help the other guys clean up the press after the run and knock off early tonight. He explained that they may have some busy days ahead. They offered to stay on, but he wanted them out of there. His mind was on the collar, and how to make of it an amulet against Christ and Domiron and all like fiends of the hagridden western world. He planned to start out slowly, reasonably, parabolically, and if he saw he wasn’t breaking through her shell, he’d throw it straight at her, hard right to that delectable midriff, the night’s paper, the wireservice stories, his real motives, what he thought of her brother and all those other types, everything. He’d tell her bluntly he was through as of right now, would never go back. He loved her and wanted her to marry him, wanted her to leave the cult with him now. Tonight. No pretenses. Sounded too cold. And where did the brass collar fit in? Better write it out. He realized he was back at his typewriter, but he didn’t recall having said anything when he walked away from the guys in the back shop. He rolled copypaper into his old Underwood, sat there for ten minutes, maybe longer, drumming his fingers on the keys. He wrote MARCELLA and added a comma. He heard Hilda groan to a halt. He x’d out the comma, typed a colon. Maybe it’d be easy. Maybe he was making too much of it.
The phone started to ring and the populace to whoop and scream. He told the girls to take the phones off the hook and go on home. He wanted to lock the door after them, but couldn’t until Marcella had arrived. He hoped she’d make it before seeing a copy of the paper. He helped the ad force wind up its day and get out, hurried carriers out on their routes, pushed old Jerry through his clean-up rituals.
Waiting for Marcella, he perched on a stool near the front door, behind the counter, peddling copies to people who pushed in, answering no questions, smiling absently at all comment. Most of them seemed to like it. One of his customers was Happy Bottom. Pert and fresh in spring green with a soft green cap atilt in her sandy hair, eyes full of challenge and unconcealable delight. She carried a black-bordered envelope. “Special delivery,” she said, hanging on to it. “Postage in advance.”
Miller smiled, trying to keep calm, hoping to get her out somehow without incident, showed her a copy of the paper. He glanced at his watch: didn’t think he could make it. “Eleven more days,” he said. “Christ, I’ll be glad when it’s over!” But he made no commitments.
She hardly glanced at the paper. “Listen, Tiger,” she said, but just then Carl Schwartz and a couple other back shop guys passed through on their way home.
“Hey!” praised Schwartz, openly surveying what she had. Miller was half afraid the guy might goose her on the way by.
When they were gone, and he was suddenly alone in the plant with Happy, she said, “Tell me the truth. Am I just wasting my time?”
“No,” he said, but then Marcella came through the door to contradict him. Young in a crisp blouse and the coffee skirt, a beige sweater over her narrow shoulders. Marcella gave the same distracted glance at Happy Bottom that Happy had given his evening edition, then turned her brown-eyed gaze full on him, exalting him with a soft smile.
Happy, whose eyes had not left the girl since her entrance, now tucked the envelope back in her purse. Her face was tugged gently downward in hurt, her lips parted. She folded the newspaper under her arm and clanked a nickel onto the counter. “Happy end of the world,” she said softly, and left. It had to happen, he supposed, but he was sorry about it.
He sighed, got down from the stool, came around and locked the door. He asked Marcella if she would like a tour of the plant. With a smile, she said she would. Full hopeful ingenuous mouth, slight fault in the smile that perfected her face — he kissed it, felt her press up into him. Though she clung to him, he eased her away, led her toward the back. He showed her his news office, but her eyes were on him. She told him she had finished his tunic. The teletype thumpety-clacked, repeating, he noticed, his story on the cult. They went on back, through the swinging door, to the composing and press rooms, where he pulled on a few lights, four-studded fluorescent fixtures big as desktops with blackened cotton cords, scant to the touch. He realized for the first time how dull and lumpy the back shop was, watching her pass through it. How was it the girl moved? Not a case merely of her legs propelling her, rather all of her seemed to participate at once, yet without effort, an easy light laborless motion. She seemed always to have been here, he the stranger.
On the concrete floor by a linotype lay a small pile of lead slugs, rejected lines of type. He picked one up, showed her his type-reading trick, how you had to read it upsidedown—
given into his hand for a time, tow times,
He had a talent not only for reading it at a glance, but for proofing it faultlessly as well. Had learned the knack back in his carrier days. He snapped the small rectangle of lead in two, pitched the halves into a metal bucket some six or seven yards away. She laughed at his accuracy and clapped.
Holding hands, he led her past the stone with its locked-up forms, his Brunist special, black, greasy, and all backwards. She studied it, or pretended to, her hips pressed back into the cavity between his thighs, his hands held in hers at her breasts. She fingered the long graceful arm of a linotype, remarked on the patterns in a fontcase, asked how the old flatbed press had got its name Hilda. He told her it was the name of the pressman’s useless gun-shy bird dog. She laughed, but insisted Hilda was a sphinx, not a dog. In the basket there in front of her was the last of tonight’s run, but she noticed nothing. All the time, he looked for entries, yet each mention of the subject got ignored by her. She smiled at everything he said, and he realized suddenly she wasn’t really listening.
They returned to the jobroom, where he got out some Old English and set her name. She asked him to set his, too. He put twelve points of space between the two names, but she took the spacing out, pressed the type up flush. He inked it, pulled a trial. The T in his name was broken, and she made him change it. The next one, she liked. He pulled half a dozen proofs for her, conscious that she had stepped a pace away, was watching his face while he worked. There was the leather sofa in there and he couldn’t get his mind off it. He lay the proofs out to dry. She stood against his side, cheek against his shoulder, corresponding metaphor to the proofs, to look at them. He started to put his arm around her shoulder, then remembered the ink on his hands. Some on hers, too. They both laughed, a little awkwardly, and, hands at their sides, kissed. He felt the sharp thrust of her young breasts against his ribs, felt the urgency in his groin as she squeezed into it, saw again the couch over her temple. It worked on him, undermined him. They washed at a small sink there. Apologizing for the coarse black soap, he stammered, caught himself losing his goddamn breath. Swore inwardly in a kind of amazement, then gave her the gift