“To take it in the early Spring,” she finished, her voice entirely under control. “Is there anything wrong with that, Mr. Balik? That way I don’t have any conflict with the other girls and the firm is sure of a secretary being in the office all through the summer.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that per se. By that I mean,” he explained carefully, “that there is nothing wrong with the arrangement as such. But it makes for loose ends, for organizational confusion. And loose ends, Miss Gresham, loose ends and organizational confusion have no place in a well-regulated office.”
He was pleased to note that she was looking uncomfortable again.
“Does that mean—are you trying to tell me that—I might be laid off?”
“It could happen,” Fabian agreed, neglecting to add that it was, however, very unlikely to happen in the case of a secretary who was as generally efficient on the one hand, and as innocuous on the other, as Wednesday Gresham. He carefully cut a fork-sized portion of roast beef free of its accompanying strip of orange fat before going on. “Look at it this way. How would it be if every girl in the office asked for an additional week’s leave of absence every year—even if it was without pay, as it would have to be? And then, every few years, wanted an additional month’s leave of absence on top of that? What kind of an office would we have, Miss Gresham? Not a well-regulated one, certainly.”
As he chewed the roast beef with the requisite thoroughness he beamed at the thoughtful concern on her face and was mentally grateful that he hadn’t had to present that line of argument to anyone as sharp as Arlette Stein, for example. He knew what the well-hipped thirtyish widow would have immediately replied: “But every girl in the office doesn’t ask for it, Mr. Balik.” A heavy sneer at such sophistry would mean little to Stein.
Wednesday, he appreciated, was not the person to go in for such counterattacks. She was rolling her lips distressedly against each other and trying to think of a polite, good-employee way out. There was only one, and she would have to come to it in a moment.
She did.
“Would it help any,” she began, and stopped. She took a deep breath. “Would it help any, if I told you the reasons—for the leaves-of-absence?”
“It would,” he said heartily. “It would indeed, Miss Gresham. That way I, as office manager, can operate from facts instead of mysteries. I can hear your reasons, weigh them for validity and measure their importance—and your usefulness as a secretary—against the disorganization your absences create in the day-to-day operation of Slaughter, Stark and Slingsby.”
“M-m-m.” She looked troubled, uncertain. “I’d like to think a bit, if you don’t mind.”
Fabian waved a cauliflower-filled fork magnanimously. “Take all the time in the world! Think it out carefully. Don’t tell me anything you aren’t perfectly willing to tell me. Of course anything you do tell me will be, I am sure I need hardly reassure you, completely confidential. I will treat it as official knowledge, Miss Gresham—not personal. And while you’re thinking, you might start eating your raw cabbage. Before it gets cold,” he added with a rich, executive-type chuckle.
She nodded him a half-smile that ended in a sigh and began working at her plate in an absent-minded, not-particularly-hungry fashion.
“You see,” she began abruptly as if she’d found a good point of departure, “some things happen to me that don’t happen to other people.”
“That, I would say, is fairly obvious.”
“They’re not bad things. I mean what, oh, the newspapers would call bad. And they’re not dangerous things, exactly. They’re—they’re more physical-like. They’re things that could happen to my body.”
Fabian finished his plate, sat back and crossed his arms. “Could you be just a little more specific? Unless—” and he was struck by a horrifying thought—“unless they’re what is known as, er, as female difficulties. In that case, of course—”
This time she didn’t even blush. “Oh, no. Not at all. At least there’s very little of that. It’s—other things. Like my appendix. Every year I have to have my appendix out.”
“Your appendix?” He turned that over in his mind. “Every year? But a human being only has one appendix. And once it’s removed, it doesn’t grow back.”
“Mine does. On the tenth of April, every single year, I get appendicitis and have to have an operation. That’s why I take my vacation then. And my teeth. Every five years, I lose all my teeth. I start losing them about this time, and I have some dental plates that were made when I was younger—I use them until my teeth grow back. Then, about the middle of October, the last of them goes and new ones start coming up. I can’t use my dental plates while they’re growing, so I look kind of funny for a while. That’s why I ask for a leave of absence. In the middle of November, the new teeth are almost full-grown, and I come back to work.”
She took a deep breath and timidly lifted her eyes to his face. That was all she evidently had to say. Or wished to.
All through dessert, he thought about it. He was positive she was telling the truth. A girl like Wednesday Gresham didn’t lie. Not to such a fantastic extent. Not to her boss.
“Well,” he said at last. “It’s certainly very unusual.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Very unusual.”
“Do you have anything else the matter with—I mean, are there any other peculiarities—Oh, darn! Is there anything else?”
Wednesday considered. “There are. But, if you don’t mind, Mr. Balik, I’d rather not—”
Fabian decided not to take that. “Now see here, Miss Gresham,” he said firmly. “Let us not play games. You didn’t have to tell me anything, but you decided, for yourself, for your own good reasons, to do so. Now I must insist on the whole story, and nothing but the whole story. What other physical difficulties do you have?”
It worked. She cringed a bit in her chair, straightened up again, but a little weakly, and began: “I’m sorry, Mr. Balik, I wouldn’t dream of—of playing games with you. There are lots of other things, but none of them interfere with my work, really. Like I have some tiny hairs growing on my fingernails. See?”
Fabian glanced at the hand held across the table. A few almost microscopic tendrils on each glittering hard surface of fingernail.
“What else?”
“Well, my tongue. I have a few hairs on the underside of my tongue. They don’t bother me, though, they don’t bother me in anyway. And there’s my—my—”
“Yes?” he prompted. Who could believe that colorless little Wednesday Gresham…
“My navel. I don’t have any navel.”
“You don’t have any—But that’s impossible!” he exploded. He felt his glasses sliding down his nose. “Everyone has a navel! Everyone alive—everyone who’s ever been born.”
Wednesday nodded, her eyes unnaturally bright and large. “Maybe—” she began, and suddenly, unexpectedly, broke into tears. She brought her hands up to her face and sobbed through them, great, pounding, wracking sobs that pulled her shoulders up and down, up and down.
Fabian’s consternation made him completely helpless. He’d never, never in his life, been in a crowded restaurant with a crying girl before.
“Now, Miss Gresham—Wednesday,” he managed to get out, and he was annoyed to hear a high, skittery note in his own voice. “There’s no call for this. Surely, there’s no call for this? Uh—Wednesday?”
“Maybe,” she gasped again, between sobs, “m-maybe that’s the answer.”