John D. MacDonald
The Tempestuous Career of Molly Murdock
The alarm went off at quarter to six. She fumbled for it and turned it off and forced herself to swing her legs out of the bed and sit upright, knowing that she was too exhausted to risk sliding back into the secret depths of her sleep. She sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments, huddled, drowsy — a small blonde woman, trim as a dancer, slowly fitting herself into the urgencies of this special day. As she padded out to put coffee on, she was aware, in a lonely way, of the silence of her house, the emptiness of the other beds. After her shower, she felt the slow return of her energy and the fluttering of excitement. She had packed the night before and laid out what she would wear. She was at her dressing table, combing her hair, when the phone rang. “Hello?”
“I thought maybe I’d missed you, Molly.”
“You’re up very early, Charlie.”
“I couldn’t sleep. I said hard words to you yesterday.”
“Yes, indeed you did.”
She heard his weary sigh. “I’ve been thinking it out. It’s not you making me look bad on this deal. It’s the way that Texan is handling it. You’ll have a big chance to put the knife in me when you get to Houston, honey.”
“So you didn’t want me to go away mad?”
“You’ve worked for me ever since Max died, and we’ve got along pretty good, haven’t we?”
“Charlie dear, please don’t plead. You don’t have to. I’m not in this to build an empire. I’ve got a husband and babies. Why should I knife you? If Mr. Hamilton asks me just why you blocked my program, I can make your reasons sound good, and I will.”
“I’m sorry it ever entered my mind you might do anything else. Ever since Mr. Hamilton bought control, I haven’t been thinking too good.”
“Don’t worry about it, Charlie. I’ll phone you from Houston and tell you how things are going.”
“Maybe I should have been looking for a job lately.”
“Cheer up, boss. It’s a beautiful morning in July. The company is making money. Everything will come up roses.”
Molly Murdock finished her packing and put her suitcase and travel case by the front door. After she had checked the windows, she poured her second cup of coffee and walked restlessly through the house. She stood in the doorway of the children’s room and felt a stir of discontent as she looked at Joanie’s bed and Lucy’s crib. She should be with them and Tom in his mother’s old farmhouse in Vermont, awakening to spend a lazy, golden summer day with them.
As she was rinsing her coffee cup, she heard the sound of John Quinn’s car in the driveway. She carried her luggage out the front door. He came, with long strides, to take the suitcase. He was a year or two younger than Molly, a tall, intent, tumultuous man, with dark hair and brows.
“So you can look like a college senior off to a house-party weekend. Good-morning, and damn your innocent eyes, Molly Murdock.”
“Be civil to your elders, sonny,” she said, and walked with him to his car.
As he backed out of the drive, he said, “It will be twenty minutes to the airport at this time of day, so we’re running a little ahead. How much sleep did you get?”
“Three hours and a bit. And you?”
“I sacked out in the office for nearly an hour. Got home in time to shower and change. Cathy had me all packed, bless her, and roused the little ones to kiss Daddy good-by. Our brain-baby is as good as I could make it, Molly. It’s in my dispatch case, right on top. Take a look.”
She opened the dispatch case and took out a copy of the report, titled “Revised Sales and Promotion Program for Andro Cosmetics.” It was bound in pink plastic. “Pink!” she said.
“A last-minute decision. We are not dealing with forgings, castings, or industrial solvents, Molly. This concerns the adornment of the female, and maybe it looks frivolous, but its quality of research is anything but.”
“I think it works,” she said, and turned to the final section, the summary and recommendations, which had not been finished until almost midnight. She read it slowly and carefully.
“Will it impress the Texan?” he asked.
“How can we tell, Johnny? We made our guess as to the kind of man he is. We decided he likes to give the impression of making compulsive, irrational decisions, but bases them on fact. If we’re wrong, we’re wrong.”
He stopped for a traffic light and looked at her. “It’s so much easier for you, Molly. You have so much less at stake.”
“Your eye is twitching.”
“It’s my built-in danger signal. I’ve got to get some sleep on that plane. When I get too close to the edge, I go around winking at everybody.”
He put the car in the parking lot and locked it. After they had checked in, they still had thirty-five minutes before their flight would load, so they went to the coffee shop.
Quinn stirred his tea and said, “It still doesn’t seem real to me, Molly. He whistles, and we go running off to Houston. And my charming boss, the amiable Mr. C. C. Hollis, is suddenly neither charming nor amiable.”
“Charlie Marks phoned me this morning. Highly nervous. Very friendly.”
Quinn frowned. “I suppose it’s a typical Ross Hamilton move, to summon the flunkies, and make the brass nervous. I suppose it’s a sort of big, brave opportunity for me; but right now, I’m so scared that I keep remembering the whole thing is your fault and — I wonder how smart it was.”
“But I didn’t know this was going to happen, Johnny! I explained how it happened.”
“I know. One innocent little remark, and suddenly my glorious future turns into a table-stakes game.”
As he lapsed into a somewhat moody silence, she pondered all the links of the long chain of accident and circumstance. It took considerably more than one innocent remark to send anyone roaring off to Texas.
It started with a fine marriage eight years before, a marriage that came about merely because she took an elective course called Philosophy 118 (Ethics). At midterm, the professor became ill, and the class was taken over by Mr. Thomas Murdock, a new instructor on a fellowship, a dear, gangling man, concealing both his shyness and his dedication behind a studied irony, a corrosive wit, an impatience with all muddy reasoning and partial effort. There could be no cure for all the tender yearnings except to marry him, a blissful feat accomplished three days after her graduation.
He agreed, after the honeymoon summer, that it made good sense for her to work. Instructors were receiving considerably less than apprentice carpenters, and Molly was, of course, full of such churning, inexhaustible energy that housewifing one tiny apartment was like restricting Univac to the computation of grocery bills. He admitted to a certain medieval distaste for the working-wife concept, but agreed that his objections were emotional rather than practical. With Molly working, they could live better, build up a reserve, and finance his doctorate sooner.
There was never any doubt about Tom’s destiny. He had a rare magic, that articulate ability to spread the wondrous world of ideas in such a compelling way that young minds were inflamed by the adventure and the discovery. Of men who teach, perhaps one in a thousand has that rare gift. It was unthinkable that he might consider some more profitable career. Teaching was his satisfaction and his existence.
They agreed it would be better if she didn’t work at the university; faculty wives have problems of protocol, compounded by such mutual employment. She could type accurately and rapidly. She was good at figures. She could write lean, forceful prose. Andro Cosmetics had just moved into a new plant only three miles from the campus. She applied there and was hired as a file clerk and typist in the sales division at fifty-two fifty a week, a salary heart-breakingly close to what Tom was paid as an instructor.