‘Now tell me the truth,’ she said.
‘I’m twenty-nine,’ I told her. ‘My parents are dead. I’ve had a college education. I’m reasonably intelligent. I’m willing to do almost anything. I need the money. If you give me the job, I’ll try and be loyal.’
‘Is that all?’ she asked.
‘That’s all.’
‘What’s your name?’
I smiled.
‘Then I take it Lam isn’t your real name?’
I said, ‘I’ve told you the truth. Now, I can keep on talking if you want — I’m rather good at that.’
‘I fancy you are,’ she said. ‘Now tell me, what did you really study in college?’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘But it was the way you answered questions about your college education that made me realize you were lying. You never went to college, now, did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t graduate?’
‘Yes, I did!’
‘You weren’t expelled?’
‘No.’
She pursed her lips. ‘Do you know anything about anatomy?’
‘No, not much.’
‘What did you study in college?’
‘Want me to improvise?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not now — yes, I do, too. This job needs a liar. It also needs a convincing talker. I didn’t like your first lie. It wasn’t convincing.’
‘I’m telling you the truth, now,’ I pointed out.
‘Quit it, then. Lie to me for a while.’
‘What about?’
‘Anything,’ she said, ‘only make it sound convincing. Build it up. Embroider it. What did you study in college?’
‘The love life of microbes,’ I said. ‘So far scientists have only considered the propagation of microbes in terms of guinea pigs. No one has ever considered it from the standpoint of the microbe. Now, when I refer to the love life of a microbe, you are doubtless inclined to interpret it in terms of your own—’
‘I haven’t any,’ she interrupted.
‘—outlook on life,’ I went on smoothly without paying any attention to her interruption. ‘Now, given an even temperature, a reasonable amount of nourishing food, microbes become exceedingly ardent. In fact, the—’
She held up her hand palm outward as though she were pushing the words back in my mouth. ‘That’s enough of that God damn tripe,’ she said. ‘It’s glib, but it isn’t good lying because nobody cares. Tell me the truth. Do you know one single damn thing about microbes?’
‘No,’ I told her.
Her eyes glittered. ‘How did you stop them from pushing you around when you were in college?’
‘I’d prefer not to go into that — if you want the truth.’
‘I want the truth, and I want the information.’
‘I used my head. I have been called mean,’ I said. ‘Everyone has to protect himself in life. When he’s weak somewhere, nature makes him strong elsewhere: I figure things out. I always have. If a man starts pushing me around, I find a way to make him stop, and before I’m through he’s sorry he ever started pushing. I don’t mind hitting below the belt if I have to. I guess I even get a kick out of it. That’s because of the way I’m made. A little runt is apt to be mean.
‘Now if you’re through amusing yourself at my expense, I’ll be going. I hate being laughed at. Some day you’ll find it’s been rather expensive amusement. I’ll work out a scheme and get even with you.’
She sighed, not the wheezy sigh of a fatigued fat woman, but a sigh that marked a load off her mind. She picked up the telephone on her desk, and said, ‘Elsie, Donald Lam gets the job. Clear that riffraff out of the office. Put a sign on the door that the position has been filled. There have been enough bums in the office for one day.’
She slammed the receiver back on its hook, opened a drawer, took out some papers and started reading. After a few moments, I heard the scrape of chairs and muffled sounds from the outer office as the waiting applicants filed out.
I sat still, speechless with surprise, waiting.
‘Got any money?’ the woman asked abruptly.
‘Yes,’ I said, and then added after a moment, ‘some.’
‘How much?’
‘Enough to last me,’ I told her, ‘for a while.’
She looked at me over the tops of her bifocal glasses, and said, ‘Amateurish lying again. It’s worse than the microbes. That shirt’s in bad shape. You can get one for eighty-five cents. Throw that necktie away. You can get a good one for twenty-five or thirty-five cents. Get your shoes shined. Get a haircut. I suppose your socks are full of holes. Are you hungry?’
‘I’m all right,’ I said.
‘For God’s sake, don’t pull that line with me. My God, look at yourself in the mirror. Your complexion is like a fish’s belly.
Your cheeks are hollow, and there are dark spots under your eyes. I’ll bet you haven’t eaten for a week. Go get yourself a good breakfast. We’ll figure twenty cents for that, and you’ve got to do something about a suit, but you can’t do that today. You’re working for me now, and I don’t want you to get the idea you can go shopping on my time. You can get a suit of clothes after five o’clock tonight. I’ll give you an advance on salary, and God help you if you double-cross me on it. Here, here’s twenty dollars.’
I took the money.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘be back here by eleven. Get started.’
As I reached the door, she raised her voice. ‘Now listen, Donald, don’t you go blowing that money. Twenty-five cents is absolutely tops on breakfast.’
Chapter 2
The secretary was banging away on the typewriter when I opened the door of the office which said ‘B. L. Cool — Confidential Investigations.’
‘Hello,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘Is — er — what is she, Mrs. or Miss?’
‘Mrs.’
‘Is she in?’
‘No.’
‘What,’ I asked, ‘do I call you besides “say”?’
‘Miss Brand.’
I said, ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Brand. I’m Donald Lam. Mrs. Cool hired me to fill the position mentioned in the ad.’
She went on typing.
‘Since I’m going to work here,’ I went on, ‘I expect we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other. You don’t like me, and I don’t think I’m going to like you. You can let it go at that if you want to.’
She stopped typing to turn over a page on her shorthand book. She looked up at me and said, ‘Oh, all right,’ and dropped her fingers back to the keyboard.
I walked over and sat down.
‘Anything for me to do except wait?’ I asked after a few minutes.
She shook her head.
‘Mrs. Cool told me to be back here by eleven.’
‘You’re here,’ she said, and went on clacking away at the typewriter.
I took a package of cigarettes from my pocket. I’d been without smokes for a week, not because I wanted to, but because I had to.
The door of the outer office opened. Mrs. Cool came barging into the room with a trim-looking chestnut-haired trick a step behind her.
I sized up my new boss as she walked across the office, and revised my first estimate of her weight by adding twenty pounds. She evidently didn’t believe in confining herself to tight clothes. She wiggled and jiggled around inside her loose apparel like a cylinder of currant jelly on a plate. But she wasn’t wheezy, and she didn’t waddle. She walked with a smooth, easy rhythm. It wasn’t a stride. You weren’t conscious of her legs at all. She flowed past like a river.
I looked at the girl behind her, and the girl looked at me.
She was trim-ankled, slender, and seemed to have her body and mind on frightened tiptoes. I had the impression that if I’d yell ‘Boo!’ at the top of my voice, she’d be out of the office in two bounds. She had deep brown eyes, sun-tanned skin — or powder — and clothes which were cut to show her figure and did. It was a figure worth showing.