“And I may quote you?”
“You will, anyway.”
“How many people should there be in that department at Andro?”
“If you make full use of all agency services to which you are entitled, one person and a secretary should be able to handle it.”
“Could I handle it, do you think?”
“Dear girl, I suspect you could head up the teamsters’ union.”
“Would we get top agency talent on our account?”
“Out of gratitude alone, even if there were no other good reasons.”
She wrote a confidential ten-page report to Max Andro, cut the ten pages to six, and the six pages to three. She made an appointment with him and sat very still while he read it.
He sighed and placed it squarely in front of him. “So fourteen people I should let go. Comes to — what is it here? — ninety-seven thousand three hundred dollars annual payroll. Plus overhead factors saved. Pretty little girl is executioner, eh?”
“If you hadn’t felt something was wrong, you wouldn’t have put me in there when Harry obviously didn’t want me around, Mr. Andro.”
His eyes widened momentarily, and then he nodded. “I hear some things in town. Little jokes I don’t understand so good. Each year, Harry talks louder and longer and wants more people working for him. He make you cry some?”
“He came close just once.”
“So you hate him, eh? Clobber him good, eh?”
She stared at Max Andro. “Don’t be ridiculous! I feel terribly sorry for the poor guy. He’s never really understood his own job, and the tension has been ruining his health. He has almost twenty-five years with the company, Mr. Andro. You could fix the pension thing for him. His kids are through college.”
“So easy for you, eh? So kind in the heart. Suppose I call him in and show him this and ask him what the hell?”
“If you insist on doing it that way, I insist on seeing him first. I’ll give him my copy of that thing and tell him just why I had to do it.”
“Ho! You insist? You tell Max Andro a thing or two, eh?”
She shrugged. “Or I walk out.”
“Good-by to career?”
She stared at him. “Career? I’m just working for a little while to help out.”
He hit the report with his fist. “In here, black and white, you say you can take Harry’s job.”
“I had to do that.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t recommend you get rid of a man and then go hide someplace, could I? The least I can do is give myself the opportunity to be clobbered.”
“Such a job when you are twenty-three, it is a career. This is a funny business, full of old-lady gossip. This happens, and you are a legend already overnight. And a target. I become a fat old fool giving a big job to his little blonde girl friend, eh?”
“But nobody could believe—”
“Don’t have such a horror on the face,” he said, chuckling. “It makes an insult to me, eh? What else can they say? That such a pretty young thing has a business brain like IBM can’t invent yet? Zecutive-type peoples should come in such a package? To be such a target as you will be is a career, not working to help hubby.”
“Tom and I want a family. I won’t be working very long.”
“So you leave me. Good-by, Max. That is fair?”
“For goodness’ sake, I’ll find somebody wonderful and have him all trained, and you know it.”
“Why do we let all Harry’s people go?”
“Instead of trying to shift them? Because he’s sort of ruined them. They’re terribly cowed. They can find work, all of them, Max. I’m sorry, Mr. Andro. I didn’t mean to—”
“You call me Max, please. I think we are friends, Molly. With medals, speeches, kind words, Harry Burkett I will push out gentle. And maybe you get the job after Harry is gone a while. If you get it, what do you want? For yourself.”
“I guess — about a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week, Max.”
“Very small.”
“I... I really don’t want to make too much.”
“Jealousy for the husband, eh?”
“Sort of. But I’d like some other things, if I could have them.”
“What are they, Molly?”
“I’d like Harry’s office and a chance to decorate it. And an expense account, and the use of a company car, and the authority to hire my own secretary, and, if I do the work well, a little private bonus at the end of the year I can tuck away for emergencies.”
He shook his head slowly, almost sadly, and said, “Those things you can have if I stay soft in the head and give you such a job. But I wish such hutzpah my two sons could have. Shouldn’t now you remind me how much money you are saving my company?”
“I’d rather not, because I might ask you to spend a lot more than that next year, Max.”
“Go now away on tiptoe, please, because a headache could start on me any minute. You are honest. It is a great strain on an old man. It went out of style in my youth. Go work quietly for Harry.”
One evening two months after that talk with Max Andro, Molly carried the dinner dishes to the kitchen of the small apartment and returned with a tray on which were a new and expensive bottle of brandy and two glasses, gleaming in the candlelight.
“I’m almost certain it isn’t my birthday,” her husband said wonderingly.
“The strangest thing happened to me at the office today.”
“Really?”
“Why, yes. They made me director of sales promotion and advertising. And sort of doubled my pay. Now really, darling! You don’t have to boggle at me. You read my report and everything. I told you it was going to happen.”
He shook his head and murmured, “The emperor’s clothes.”
“What?”
“The child was the one who realized the king was naked. Molly, my darling, you have that perfect clarity of vision that comes from a supra-normal simplicity.”
“Sir! You are speaking of the woman you love!”
“I really couldn’t believe your Mr. Andro would take such a chance. He must be a very wise and very reckless fellow, dear Molly.”
“He’s very sweet and quite old and tired, and I have the feeling I amuse him. I want you to meet him soon. Oh, darling, this job is going to be such wonderful, scary fun!”
“Congratulations,” he said, in a rather dry way, and busied himself with the brandy.
“Are you upset about anything?” she asked.
He looked at her, and she thought his expression oddly remote until he smiled. “I was getting used to living with a typist. Now I find myself consorting with an executive.” They touched glasses, and he said, “Here’s to the most beautiful and unlikely executive in the world.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“Just remember one thing. I do not think you would be terribly happy as an organization woman. You’re not devious in the accepted ways. Remember that Andro is a one-man outfit. He can afford to be impulsive.”