And then Estelle Carey came back into my life, and everything went out the window.
I got a cab at Union Station just before noon, sharing it with two sailors, and sat in the rear holding on to the strap and looking out the window at snowy, grimy streets. I was back in Chicago, all right. It had been less than a year, but the world had changed. Service flags were in every storefront window-one star for each son at war, and most flags bore at least two stars; horse-drawn wagons (“This wagon replaces a truck for the duration!”) mingled with autos, while cabbies caught behind the wagons turned shades of patriotic red, blue and white, swallowing their irritation. The autos all had ration stickers prominently displayed in their windshields, B stickers in evidence mostly, and an occasional C, like my cabbie’s. The sidewalks seemed filled with lovely young women, the edges of their skirts under their winter coats flapping, the city’s famous wind intent on exposing pretty, nylonless legs; but if you had a nickel for every guy under forty you saw on the street, you wouldn’t have busfare-unless you counted the boys in uniform.
Me, I wasn’t in uniform, unlike the gobs I was sharing the cab with, and I wasn’t a boy, either. I was a gray old man in a gray woolen overcoat I’d picked up in D.C. yesterday-under which I was wearing the suit I’d worn to San Diego last year, and it seemed a little big for me, like it belonged to somebody else. Maybe somebody I used to be. I sat there craving a cigarette, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, not giving into it.
The cabbie dropped me in front of the Dill Pickle, the rumble of the El greeting me, making me feel at least a little at home. Up in the window of the A-1 Detective Agency a service flag bore a single star. I wondered if it stood for me, or Frankie Fortunato, who was in the Army. Probably Frankie.
Sea bag slung over my shoulder, I stepped around a wino (4-F or over forty? Hard to say) and started up the familiar narrow stairs; passed some people there, older men, younger women, coming down for lunch, nobody I recognized. I set foot on the fourth floor, feeling like my own ghost. Walked down the familiar hall with its wood and pebbled glass and paused at the door that still had NATHAN HELLER, PRESIDENT, on it. I touched the letters; they didn’t smear.
I turned the knob.
Gladys was sitting behind her desk, on which was a rose in a slender vase. She looked lovely, her brown hair in a slightly longer pageboy, now, her white blouse slightly more feminine and ruffly than I remembered ever seeing her in. She was a little heavier, but it looked good on her-made her bustier. She gave me a big smile.
“Hello, Mr. Heller,” she said.
She stood and came around and hugged me. I hugged her back. It felt good, if a little awkward.
A banner made from a bedsheet said WELCOME HOME, BOSS in crude yet oddly graceful red letters; it was tacked on the wall over that World’s Fair couch where I’d caught Gladys and Frankie humping, years ago.
“You shouldn’t’ve made a fuss,” I said.
“Not that big a fuss,” she said, shrugging.
“No ticker-tape parade?”
She narrowed her eyes; she didn’t get it. Gladys still didn’t have a sense of humor. “This is the extent of it,” she said, gesturing to the banner, which I felt sure she’d made herself. “Except for we have some champagne chilling.”
“That’s fuss enough,” I said. “Lead me to it.”
“You got it,” somebody said.
I turned and saw Lou Sapperstein, looking haggard and wearing a black arm band on one sleeve of his brown suitcoat, standing in the doorway of my inner office, pouring me a Dixie cup of champagne out of a big bottle.
I went over and took the cup with my left hand and shook hands with Lou with my right and drank the champagne and said, “How’s business?”
He was a touch thinner; more lines in his face. He’d switched from wire-rim glasses to tortoise shell, bifocals now; gray tinged the dark hair around his ears. His skull hadn’t lost its shine.
“Business is not bad,” he said. “Let’s have lunch at Binyon’s and I’ll fill you in.”
“Fine. Why the, uh…?”
He lifted the arm with the armband, gently. “My little brother. Fighter pilot. Silliest goddamn thing. Died in the States while still in training.”
“I’m sorry, Lou.”
“I am, too. Hell of a thing.” He looked at Gladys. “Care to join us? We can make it a celebration.”
Gladys was already back behind her desk. “No. Somebody has to hold down the fort.”
Gladys had loosened up, considerably, over the years; but she was still business first.
“Where shall I put this?” I said, referring to the sea bag, currently residing on the couch.
“Why don’t you stick it in the office next door?” Lou said.
“For now,” I said. “But I got to find a place to stay. I should’ve made arrangements while I was still at St. E’s, but it was hard to think that far ahead…”
Gladys said, “They called us, Mr. Heller.”
“For Christ’s sakes, will you call me Nate.”
“Nate,” she said. It was hard for her. “Anyway, one of your doctors called several weeks ago, and we’ve been looking for a room ever since. I’m afraid there’s nothing at the Morrison.”
“Quite a housing shortage,” Lou said, with a fatalistic shrug.
“So we took the liberty of rearranging the office next door,” she said.
“With both you and Frankie gone,” Lou said, “we haven’t been using that office at all. I’ve been working out of your office, of course…” He nodded to my inner office, his expression apologetic.
“That’s as it should be,” I said.
“So we had the partitions taken out next door,” he went on, “and put your desk in there, as well as some of the personal items you’d put in storage. Some furniture from your old suite at the Morrison. You remember that old Murphy bed of yours that’s been stored in the basement, for years?”
I sat down on the couch, put a hand on the sea bag. “Don’t tell me.”
“We had it hauled back upstairs. It’s in there. You can have that whole office to yourself, and live in it, too, temporarily, till you find something else.”
“Full circle,” I said.
“What?” Gladys said.
“Nothing,” I said.
Lou said to her, “He lived in his office when he started out. That office.”
“Oh,” Gladys said, not getting it. Irony wasn’t her strong suit.
I stood. “I appreciate you going to that trouble.”
“If you like,” Lou said, gesturing with two open hands, “I’ll use that office, and you can use the one in here, and just sleep in there. I just figured, with clients used to dealing with me, it wouldn’t hurt to have a transition period, where…”
“Don’t say another word. You stay put, Lou. It’s going to take me a while to get into the swing of things again. For the next few weeks, at least, consider yourself the boss.”
“Am I wrong in assuming you’ll be wanting to get right back to work?”
“No. Anyway, I don’t think you are.”
“Mr. Heller,” Gladys said, her brow knit. I didn’t bother correcting her; “Nate” was just not in her vocabulary. “You do look a little peaked, if you’ll excuse me saying.”
“Gladys,” Lou said, harshly.
“It’s okay, Lou,” I said. “She’s right. I look like hell. But I just spent sixteen hours or so sitting on a train, with no place to sleep, and…” The train had been filthy, crowded; I was lucky to find room to stow my sea bag and plant my butt. The saddest thing had been the pregnant women, of whom there had seemed to be a batallion, and gals with small children in tow, trying to diaper ’em, feed ’em, in the most cramped god-awful conditions, all of these young mothers present and future on their way to see their overseas-bound husbands one last time, or coming back from having seen ’em off.