Never Leave Me (1953) Read online

  She put the car into gear and we were rolling down the driveway before she answered. Then her tone was matter-of-fact. It had all the patient tolerance of the very young for the very old. “Don’t be an old fuddy-duddy, Dad,” she said plainly.

  I almost smiled to myself at that. I looked over at her. She was driving with that curious concentration of hers. I saw the pink tip of her tongue peeping out from her mouth as she swung out of the driveway into the street. The curve of the driveway always made her do that.

  I felt the car pick up speed as she pressed down on the accelerator. I glanced over at the speedometer. We were hitting forty in less than a block and the needle was still climbing. “Use a light foot, honey,” I cautioned.

  Her eyes glanced away from the road at me for a moment. They told me more than anything she could say. I even began to feel old. I shut up guiltily and looked at the road ahead.

  In a few seconds I began to feel better. She was right. What good was a convertible if the top wasn’t down? There’s something about riding down a country road in the early fall with the open sky above you and the flaming colours all around.

  Her voice took me by surprise. “What are you getting Mother for your anniversary, Dad?”

  I looked at her. Her eyes were still on the road. I stumbled a little over my answer. I hadn’t thought about it. “I don’t know,” I confessed.

  Her eyes flashed over me quickly. “Don’t you think you’d better decide?” she said practically in that way women have when talking about gifts. “It’s less than four weeks away.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I better think of something.” I had an idea. “Maybe you know what she’d like?”

  She shook her head. “Uh-uh, not me. That’s your headache. I was just wondering.”

  “What made you wonder?” I asked, suddenly curious about what went on in that pretty little head.

  She stopped the car for a traffic light and looked over at me. “No special reason,” she smiled slowly. “I was just wondering if you were going to come home with the usual last-minute bouquet.”

  I could feel my face flush. I hadn’t realized those young eyes could see so much. “I never really know what to get her.”

  Her eyes were on my face. “You have absolutely no imagination, have you, Dad?” she asked.

  I began to feel flustered. “Wait a minute, Jeanie,” I said. “I’m a pretty busy guy. I can’t think of everything. Besides, your Mother has everything she wants. What else can I get her?”

  She put the car into gear again and we began to roll. “Sure, Dad,” she said, a certain dryness in her tone. “Mother has everything she wants. A new refrigerator, stove, washing machine.” Her eyes swung back to me. “Did you ever think of getting her something for herself? Something not quite so useful, but that she would get a kick out of having?”

  I was beginning to feel desperate. She had something up her sleeve. “Like what, for instance?”

  “A mink coat, for instance,” she said quickly, her eyes on the road ahead.

  I stared at her. “Is that what she wants?” I asked almost incredulously. “She always said she didn’t want a mink coat.”

  “Daddy, you’re such a dope. What woman wouldn’t like a mink coat, no matter what they say?” She was laughing at me now. “Honest, I don’t know what Mother saw in you. You’re not the least bit romantic.”

  In spite of myself I began to smile. For a moment I felt like asking her if she still thought the stork had brought her, but you just can’t talk like that to a sixteen-year-old who knows everything, even if she is your daughter. I spoke seriously. “You think I ought to get her a mink coat?”

  She nodded her head as she came to a stop across the way from the school.

  “Then I’ll do it,” I said.

  “You’re not really so bad, Dad,” she said, leaning against the door as she closed it.

  I slid over behind the wheel and put my face very close to her. “Thanks,” I said solemnly.

  She kissed my cheek quickly. “Bye now, Dad.”

  I got into the office about eleven. I was feeling pretty good. Don had told me that he would really do something special for her. He had her measurements from the Persian she had ordered last summer. I was sure he’d do all right. He’d better. Sixty-five hundred clams for a mink coat didn’t come off trees.

  Mickey looked up at me as I came in. “Where have you been, boss?” she asked, taking my hat and coat. “Paul Remey’s been calling you from Washington all morning.”

  “Shopping,” I said. I walked into my office. She followed me. I turned around. “What’s he want?”

  “He didn’t say,” she answered. “Only that he had to speak to you right away.”

  “Call him back then,” I told her, sitting down behind my desk. The door closed behind her as I wondered what Paul wanted. I hoped everything was all right with him. You could never tell in a political job, though, no matter how good you were—even if you were a special Presidential assistant as Paul was.

  I really liked the guy. If it weren’t for him I would never be where I was to-day. In a way he was responsible for it. It went all the way back to the early days of the war.

  I had been enthusiastically rejected by all branches of the armed services and finally wound up in the publicity division of the War Production Board. That’s where I first met Paul. He was the chief in charge of a section devoted to building up the scrap drive and I was assigned to his office.

  It was one of those things. Two guys cotton to each other right away. He had been a very successful businessman out West and sold out his business to come to Washington for a dollar a year. I had been working for a picture company and came to Washington because I heard the pickings were good and I had just been canned by the outfit I worked for.

  He did a hell of a job, and he thought I did too. When the war ended he called me into his office. “What’re you going to do now, Brad?” he asked.

  I remember shrugging my shoulders. “Look for a job, I guess,” I had answered.

  “Did you ever think about going into business for yourself?” he had asked.

  I’d shrugged. “That’s a big-time operation,” I’d replied. “I can’t afford it. I ain’t got the dough.”

  “I don’t mean that,” he had said. “I mean public relations. I happen to know a few businessmen who might be interested in the kind of help you can give them. You’d need only a small place to get started.”

  I had looked down across his desk at him. “This is a press agent’s pipe dream,” I had said, sliding into the chair opposite him. “But keep on talking to me. Don’t stop.”

  That was the beginning. It led to a small one-room office with Mickey, my secretary, then to the large offices we had now with more than twenty-five people working. Paul had many friends, and his friends had many friends.

  The phone buzzer rang and I reached for the receiver. Mickey’s voice was in my ear. “Mr. Remey’s on the phone, Brad.”

  I pressed down the through button. “Hello, Paul,” I said. “How’re things?”

  I could hear Paul’s warm chuckle, and then his favourite profanity. “They’ll never improve, Brad,” he finished.

  “Don’t give up hope, boss,” I assured him. “You never can tell.”

  He laughed again, then his voice came through the phone seriously. “I was wondering if you could do me a favour, Brad?”

  “Anything, Paul,” I answered. “Just ask me.”

  “It’s one of those charity things of Edith’s again,” he said.

  Edith was his wife. A sweet woman, but she’d got a taste of the D.C. whirlpool and it went to her head. I had helped out on some of her projects before. It was one of those things you had to do but I didn’t mind as long as it was for Paul. He did enough for me. “Sure, Paul,” I said quickly. “I’ll be glad to. Just shoot me the dope.”

  “I don’t know very much about it, Brad,” he answered. “All I know is that Edith told me to be sure and call you and tel
l you that a Mrs. Hortense E. Schuyler will be in to see you this afternoon and give you all the information,”

  “Okay, Paul,” I said, scribbling down the name. “I’ll take care of things.”

  “And Brad,” Paul said, “Edith cautioned me to tell you to be especially nice to the girl. She says it means a lot to her.”

  I liked the way Edith used the word girl. Edith was in her middle fifties, and all her friends were girls to her. “Tell Edith not to worry,” I said. “I’ll give her the A treatment.”

  He laughed. “Thanks, Brad. You know what these things mean to Edith.”

  “I know,” I answered. “You can count on me.”

  We spoke a few more words and I hung up the phone. I looked down at the scratch paper. Hortense E. Schuyler. All those dames in Washington had names like that. And they looked like it too. I pressed the buzzer.

  Mickey came into the office, her pad and pencil in hand. “Let’s go to work,” I said. “You’ve wasted enough time around here this morning.”

  Chapter Three

  IT was about four-thirty in the afternoon and Chris and I were just getting down to cost factors on institutional steel copy when the intercom’s buzz called me from the wall board. I walked quickly to my desk and flipped the switch.

  “No calls, Mickey,” I said, annoyance in my voice. “I told you before.” I closed the switch and walked back to the wall-board. “So gimme the figures, Chris.”

  His pale blue eyes glittered behind the wide steel rimmed glasses. He looked almost happy. He always looked happy when he spoke about money. “Once a week in four hundred papers,” he said in his nasal, precise voice, “will come to five hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. Our fifteen per cent placement on that amounts to seventy-seven thousand. Art work, copy and make-up charges will be a thousand a week, fifty-two thousand for the year.”

  “Great, great,” I said interrupting him impatiently. “But can we handle it? I don’t want to find myself in the wrong boat like on that Mason job last year.”

  He looked at me calmly. I had taken a job for thirty-five grand that cost us sixty to deliver. He smiled coldly. “That’s what you pay me for,” he pointed out. “To keep you from making mistakes like that again.”

  I nodded my head. “How much?”

  “Cost you four hundred a week,” he said. “We come out a hundred and eight thousand ahead.”

  I smiled at him. “Good boy,” I said clapping him on the shoulder. “Now let’s take a look at the campaign.”

  He permitted himself the vestige of a smile before he turned back to the wallboard on which the first series of ads were placed. There were ten advertisements resting there, all very neat in their grey cardboard mountings.

  I heard the door open behind us. I turned around. Mickey was coming towards me. “I thought I said I didn’t want to be bothered,” I snapped.

  “Mrs. Schuyler is here to see you, Brad,” she said calmly, ignoring my ill temper.

  I stared at her blankly. “Mrs. Schuyler? Who the hell is she?”

  Mickey looked down at a small calling card she held in her hand. “Mrs. Hortense E. Schuyler‚” she read from it. She held it out towards me. “She says she has an appointment with you.”

  I took the card from her hand and looked at it. Just the name in simple type. It rang no bells. I gave it back to her. “I don’t remember any appointment,” I said. “I purposely kept all afternoon open so Chris and I could get through this job.”

  There was a peculiar look in Mickey’s eyes as she took the card from me. “What shall I tell her?” she asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Tell her anything. I went out of town or I’m in conference. Only get rid of her. I want to finish this.” I had already turned back to the wall-board.

  Mickey’s voice came over my shoulder. “She says she’ll understand if you can’t see her because of the short notice. But she’s due back in Washington to-morrow afternoon and would like to know what would be a convenient time.”

  That did it. Now I remembered. This was one of Edith Remey’s ‘girls.’ I turned around quickly. “Why didn’t you say so the first time?” I asked. “That’s why Paul called me this morning. I gotta see her.” I thought. “Hold her for a few minutes. Make some apology for my delay and I’ll call you as soon as I’m through.”

  The peculiar look faded from Mickey’s eyes and something like relief came into them. “Okay, boss,” she snapped smartly, turning on her heel and walking out of the office.

  I looked at Chris. “Well, that does it,” I said disgustedly. “We’ll have to take the rest of this up in the morning.”

  “It doesn’t give you much time to absorb the plan before you see Matt Brady and the committee at two,” he said.

  I started walking back to my desk. “Can’t help it, Chris,” I called back over my shoulder. “If I get stuck I’ll just have to fake it. I’ve done that before.”

  He was standing in front of my desk, a look of disapproval on his face. “These boys are sharp, though.”

  I sat down and looked at him. “Stop worrying, Chris,” I told him. “They’re human, ain’t they? The same as us. They like money, dames, liquor. They wear clothes, not wings. We’ll get to them the same way as we get to anybody else. Everybody can be reached once you know what they’re looking for. And when we find out, we’ll get the job. It’s as easy as that.”

  He was shaking his head as I flipped the intercom switch. I half laughed to myself. Poor old Chris. He still lived in an old-fashioned world where business was just that and no more. I remembered the first time he had heard me get a dame for a customer. He had turned so red I thought the colour would rub off on his starched white collar. “Okay, Mickey,” I said into the intercom. “Send the old bag in.”

  Through the speaker I could hear a sudden swift intake of breath. “What did you say, Brad?” her voice echoed incredulously in my ear.

  “I said send the old bag in. What’s the matter with you this afternoon? You deaf or something?”

  Her whisper was almost a chuckle. “You never saw her before?”

  “No,” I snapped. “And after to-day, I hope I’ll never have to again.”

  She was really laughing now. “Ten to one you change your mind. If you don’t, I’ll really believe you the next time you tell me you gave up women.”

  The intercom clicked off and I looked up at Chris. “She’s gone nuts,” I told him.

  He smiled bleakly and started for the door. Before he got there it started to open. He stepped quickly to one side so that it could swing past him.

  I could hear Mickey’s voice. “Right this way, Mrs. Schuyler.”

  I started slowly to get to my feet as Mickey came through the door. Chris was staring past her into the outer office. There was a look on his face I had never seen before.

  Then she came in, and I knew what the look on his face meant. The guy didn’t have dollar bills running through his veins, after all.

  The expression on my face must have been worth the price of admission, for Mickey was smiling as she closed the door behind Chris and herself. I found myself walking unsteadily around my desk towards her. “Mrs. Schuyler,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m Brad Rowan.”

  She smiled at me, taking my hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Rowan,” she said softly. “Edith told me so much about you.” Her voice sounded like chimes ringing in the office.

  I looked at her. I’d seen dames before. Lots of them. When I worked for a movie company I squired some of the most beautiful dames in the world around. It was my job. They didn’t bother me. I could take ’em or leave ’em. But this one was something special.

  This one was class. Blue chip stocks on the big board. The gold standard. Big white orchids in florists’ windows. A Rodgers and Hammerstein score. A lazy sun in the summer morning. The green, friendly earth. Ruby port after dinner. A Billy Eckstine love chant.

  Her hair was a rich soft brown, short in the front, long in the back, almost to he
r shoulders. Her eyes were dark blue almost violet, with large black pupils that you could almost dive into. Her face was not quite round, her cheekbones high, her mouth soft and generous, her chin not quite square, her nose not quite tilted, her teeth white and even, not dentist’s even but human even.

  I drew a deep breath and sucked in my gut. Suddenly I wished I had got in a little more tennis or golf last summer so that the slight paunch I was developing would not show. “Make it Brad,” I smiled, pulling out a chair for her. “Please sit down.”

  She sat down, and still in a sort of daze I went back behind my big desk to recuperate.

  I looked over at her. She was slipping off her gloves and I could see her hands, white and slim and small-boned with a slight coral polish on the nails. She wore one large white diamond on her left hand, no other ring.

  “Paul told me you were coming in,” I said awkwardly. “But I hadn’t expected you so soon. What can I do for you, Mrs. Schuyler?”

  She smiled again. It was like there were no other lights in the room. “Make it Elaine,” she said.

  “Eh-laine,” I said after her, saying it as she did.

  She smiled again. “I never liked Hortense.” Her voice was gently confidential. “I never forgave Mother for that.”

  I grinned. “I know just what you mean. I was christened Bernard. Everybody called me Bernie.”

  She took a cigarette from a flat golden case and I almost broke my neck getting around the desk to light it for her. She drew on it deeply and let out the smoke slowly.

  I went back to my chair and sat down. I was still arguing with myself. I couldn’t understand it.

  Her eyes were wide as she looked at me. “Edith told me to look you up, because”—she laughed gently—“you were the only man in the world who could help me.”

  I let myself laugh with her. I began to feel better. My control was coming back. I was on ground I could understand now. The old build-up. I looked at her again. I guess what got me was that I had expected somebody else. I never thought Edith’s girls could be anything but carbons of Edith herself. “How?” I asked.