If you think this was a petty hustle, remember the janitors had their own angles. But it wasn't hard work, my hours were my own, and I never got tough with anybody or looked for trouble.
Life moved smoothly. I moved to a room on East 37th Street, which wasn't much, but the address was “good.” I lived correctly, wore the correct brands of clothes and, by scrimping, I could even take a babe out to a correct bar now and then—vaguely mention I was “something in real estate,” or “something in advertising,” depending on what brand of bull I was dishing out. It was all a phony front, and I didn't like playing the four-flusher, but it was a way of life, and good for a few fast tumbles.
Of course, after a week or so I got hep to the office set-up. Kimball was the brains of the firm—she was everything. She could write copy, lay out ads, butter up accounts when necessary. She was extremely capable and efficient. She was never off guard or relaxed, was in there pitching all the time... yet there was a sort of sensuous warmth about her I could never figure out I could feel it in the way she'd glance at me now and then, like the promise of an expensive mistress. Like the glowing of a match before it bursts into flame. It was all in contrast to her cold, super-efficiency. I never kidded around or made a pass, but I often wondered what she'd do if I pinched her ass, fire me or pinch me back.
Kimball was always barking, full of razor-like sarcasm. Everyone was lashed by her biting voice, even Barrett... but I had the feeling he slept with her any time he wanted.
Barrett was easier to figure—he was all boss, knew only one way of doing things—to keep plugging. He dashed at each new account like a bulldog, bluntly hanging on till he either had the account or was completely knocked out. He worked hard, worried hard, had his ulcers and a soggy wife —whom I only saw once, and who probably only saw him once or twice a week, if that often.
Barrett would have gotten nowheres, except to a padded cell, without Kimball. She was behind him every step of the way, calmly soothing and smoothing things out with her charm and cleverness. Barrett had either married or inherited money. With his houses, the agency, his stocks, he never had any real financial worries, yet he kept plugging after the buck as though he was on the ragged rim of poverty. I didn't try to understand his frantic rushing, killing himself for more dough, treating his wife as though she were an old pet dog.
I did try to understand Kimball—that was something else.
She always handled me like a child, as if everything I did was some secret joke to her. The first week there, I came tear-assing into the office every day before lunch, anxious to get a layout assignment—only to hang around the rest of the day, doing nothing. When I did the same thing the following week, Kimball asked, “Jameson, don't you take your lunch hour?”
“Grab a bite while going to the houses, Miss Kimball.”
“Cut the beaver act. From now on take an hour for lunch—even if you eat on the job. And for Christsake, stop rushing around with that pathetic eager smile on your kisser. Quiet down.”
The two other artists, and a copywriter, had desks in one large workroom, which was headed by Kimball's glass-partitioned office, where she kept an eye on us.
The copywriter was a tweedy old man, a beaten hack writer who I heard had done a fair novel in his youth, and whose only ambition now was to sip beer and figure the races.
Neither of the two artists bothered much with me. One was a snobbish middle-aged nance who flew into a loud tantrum if anything on his drawing board was touched. The other was a sloppy young woman who wore wrinkled stockings and always looked like she needed a bath—although she didn't smell. She was one of these overserious types, who get into a blue mood when they're old enough to stop playing jacks—and never snap out of it. But she really had talent, a wonderful sense of colors.
Then there was a receptionist-typist, a flashy redhead, who seemed to spend all her time in figuring out new ways of making her small breasts look bigger. She frankly told me she “never went out with any guy making under fifty per.” She was said to be a friend of Barrett's wife, but I wouldn't have been surprised if Barrett got into her bloomers. In fact maybe he got into the nance. Barrett went after sex with the same boorish tact he went after business— smashing right through the center of the line.
In the beginning, I'd sit around all afternoon, waiting at my drawing board. No one said anything to me, minded my amusing myself with cartoons, or whatever came to mind. Now and then Kimball would realize I was alive and send me on some goddamn errand. I tried reading a book or the paper all afternoon, but she didn't seem to notice.
One day when I came breezing into the office at about two, she said, “Jameson, before you get settled for the day, go down to the drugstore and find out what those bastards did with the tongue sandwich I ordered a half hour ago. On whole wheat toast, no butter or anything. And a container of iced tea—no sugar.”
Kimball was always watching her figure. I was, too— whether I wanted to or not. At the drugstore I got a gooey ham salad sandwich and a big chocolate sundae swimming in whipped cream and nuts. When Kimball opened the bag, she called me in, asked, “What's the bright joke, shorty?”
“Couldn't remember what you asked for, Miss Kimball. I'm not used to running errands.”
“I see. You don't like my...?”
“Didn't say I didn't like it, merely that I'm not used to doing errands. Anyway, this is my treat. I'm loaded today.”
“Did that would-be copywriter, that pseudo-Hemingway, give you a horse?”
“No, Miss Kimball. No, I hocked my paints and brushes —never be missed around here.”
For a moment she stared at me with those steady, hard, clear eyes, then the expertly painted red lips broke into a smile and she giggled. “Cute, Jameson. Not overbright, but still kind of cute, brash kid stuff. Guess it won't kill me to eat this junk—send you out again and who knows what you'll come back with. In about an hour—after I've digested this crap, I want to see you. And get your brushes out of hock.”
I went out and had a bite myself and, when I returned, Kimball told me, “I'm lining up a campaign for a girdle company. Give me a couple of roughs along these lines— we want to get across the idea that with these girdles women don't look like stuffed sausages. Some copy like... Look your boudoir best, no matter what you're doing... That's tripe, but you get the idea. I want sketches of women at work—sweeping the house, taking the kids to school, cooking... all that housewife bull. Sketch them in plain dresses, but with a transparent deal around their hips-showing how trim and sexy the girdle is making them look. Maybe throw in some long, sheer, black stockings—they say that's sexy. Black stockings get you, Jameson?”
“They do.”
“Always wondered why. Well, you get what I'm after?”
“Yes.” I almost said, “Yes Ma'am.”
“Okay, give me a half dozen roughs, and take your time. Maybe I can make something out of it.”
I dashed back to my board and sketched like mad the rest of the afternoon. I had half a dozen complete drawings, not roughs, by five, but Kimball said she was too busy to see them.
I felt good that night, sure of my drawings. Next morning I covered most of the houses by phone and was in the office at eleven. I marched into Kimball's office, put the sketches on her desk—and waited. She glanced at them quickly, sneered, “Jameson, how the hell old are you?”
“Almost twenty-one.”
“Well, you should know the facts of life. Girdles are worn by women, not these slim kids you've drawn. Women, with thick hips and fat bellies and hanging tits—that's why they buy girdles. We tell them our product will improve their looks, and it will, but it won't make them look like any eighteen-year-old model. You can only kid the customer when she doesn't know she's being kidded. Hell, if the women we're trying to sell looked like the slim babes in your drawings, they wouldn't need a girdle, or even read our ads. Try again—and give me women.”
I went back to my desk, sore as a boil. But when I calmed down and examined my work, I saw Kimball was right. I'd drawn slim gals who certainly didn't need girdles. I tossed the sketches into the waste basket and started over. By the end of the afternoon I had it—women who looked like they should be using girdles.
I showed them to Kimball just as she was going home. She took off her hat, lit a cigarette, and backed away like a ham patron of the arts to study the sketches. Then she shook her head, said, “No good.”
“What's wrong now?” I asked, trying to keep anger out of my voice.
Kimball turned and practically laughed in my face. “Jameson, I love the way you keep yourself under control. What's your first name, again?”
“Marshal.”
“That fits. From a wide-spot-in-the-tobacco-road South?”
“Almost.”
She shook her head, and slowly ran her eyes over me. “Cocky kid, going to make good in the big city or bust those big shoulders in the...”
“Look, Miss Kimball, it's after five. I'm on my own time, so how about getting down to cases? What's wrong with these sketches?”
“Nothing,” she said, putting them in a folder and into a file cabinet. “The sketching is rather simple, but good.”
“But...?”
“The entire idea stinks. I wanted you to visualize my idea; you did, and now I see the idea was wrong. That's all. Not your fault. And since I've kept you overtime, I'll buy you a drink.”
“Sorry, have to take a rain-check on that,” I said, trying to sound casual as I lied. “But I have a supper date.”
“Have fun,” she said.
I had an idea Kimball was interested in me, but she never asked me out for a drink again. Nor paid any special attention to me. But she did keep me busy putting her ideas on paper, most of which she discarded. The few times she liked my work, she gave it to the queer to do. When I asked her why, she said, “Slow, Jameson, slow. You're getting valuable experience here, but the fruit is a more finished artist than you are. He's been at this rat race longer.”
For some six or seven months things went on like this. Along about February Kimball bawled the hell out of the red-headed receptionist for failing to type a couple of letters Kimball wanted in a hurry. The redhead burst into tears, said she had more work than she could handle, showed pages of dictation Barrett had given her the same day. Kimball marched into Barrett's office—there was a short argument during which I heard the boss yell several times, “But the damn overhead...”; then Kimball came out and called up one of the government employment agencies.
The new typist had a desk next to me and she was a cute kid. When she said her name was Kraus, Mary Jane Kraus, you smiled because somehow it went with her country-girl face, the strawberry blonde hair done in a bun atop her head, the naive baby-blue eyes set in the soft, round face. She wore print dresses that didn't do a thing for her stocky figure, she rarely spoke, and all in all she was so unsophisticated you wanted to take her in hand, protect her from the big city slickers.
Kraus was sort of fun. When I took her to a Village bar, she was shocked by the homos, but after one drink she would giggle and make moon eyes. It was all good fun, like teasing a kitten. When one of the painters slipped me some tickets and I took her to a play, she was walking on air. She had the usual story: came from a little upstate town, rushed to New York as soon as she graduated business school.
I took her out now and then. I never kissed her or tried to neck her. She looked so healthy and well-scrubbed, somehow sex never entered my mind. I mean, I had some backward ideas myself in those days about sex.
Kimball treated Kraus with her usual, sarcastic manner, correcting her mistakes, roaring when Mary Jane blushed at Kimball's cuss words—telling her to stop wearing those flowery dresses that made her look as though she was on her way to milk a cow.
And from the start, Barrett was too nice to Mary. He hardly ever raised his voice to her, and when Mary told me, “Mr. Barrett is just too wonderful,” I was a little worried about Miss Kraus.
Kimball began to take a sudden interest in me. Maybe she was jealous of the boss making a play for Mary Jane. Whatever the reason, she began to joke with me, making fun of Barrett and Miss Kraus. Nothing nasty, merely clever digs. One afternoon, when I'd fast-changed Barrett out of a ten spot, I sat at my desk and watched the lines in Kimball's figure as she bent over the copywriter's desk.
When she came over to look at a layout I'd done for her, she asked, “Where's Kraus?”
“Guess she's in Big Business's office.”
“She'll soon be getting the business,” Kimball said.
“Forget her. I'd like to take up my rain-check on that drink you once offered me. I also have a couple of seats for a show. Suppose I take you to supper? How about Mori's?”
“That's so sweet of you. What will you do for the next two weeks, diet?”
“What do you mean?” I asked stiffly. I'd never been to Mori's, but people had told me about the place.
“Come off it, Jameson, I make out your pay check every week. Mori's will set you back a week's salary, even with your side rackets. I'll...”
“What side rackets?”
“Don't kid the kidder, Marshal. I know this real estate business, from the petty rackets up to the big ones. Forget about Mori's, and I'll go dutch treat to some less expensive place, if you wish.”
I laughed—to cover my embarrassment. Kimball had a red roadster and she took me to a Chinese restaurant near Columbia University that I'd never heard of, and I made it a point to supposedly know all the good eating spots in the city; it was part of my big-New-Yorker front. It was a small place, but they had real Chinese food, I didn't even know what I was eating half the time, and of course Kimball could use chopsticks. Then we drove downtown and she parked her car near Ninth Avenue and we stopped for a few drinks.
