Passion and Affect by Laurie Colwin Page B

I’m your new secretary.”
    â€œDid the temporary agency send you over?”
    â€œNo, my cousin did. Misty Berkowitz. The girlfriend of your friend Vincent Cardworthy.”
    â€œI’ve never had a male secretary before,” said Guido.
    â€œI’m not a secretary, man. I just type very fast. I just got out of Princeton and I used to be a speed freak. I’m in classics.”
    â€œA speed freak?”
    â€œYeah,” said Stanley. Seeing Guido’s blank face he said gently, “How old are you?”
    â€œThirty-four.”
    â€œWell, man,” Stanley said. “A speed freak is someone who does ups, you know, methadrine, amphetamines. You must have read about it in the local media.”
    â€œI see,” said Guido. “What’s it like?”
    â€œIt’s hell, man,” Stanley said. “It turns your brain into pea soup.”
    â€œI’ve never had a speed freak for a secretary before.”
    â€œYou don’t now. I’m an ex-speed freak, but I’m a very nervous type, see.”
    â€œHow nice for you,” Guido said. “Can you take dictation?”
    â€œNo, man. I just write very fast ’cause I’m a nervous type, like I said.”
    Stanley wrote a rapid, legible hand. He made the coffee and spent two hours taking dictation. Shortly before lunch, he presented Guido with a stack of typed letters. All the “w’s” had been left out and were beautifully written in by Italic pen.
    â€œIs the “w” key on that typewriter broken?” Guido asked.
    â€œNo, man. It’s a little device I made up to keep from freaking out. See, you choose a letter and then you leave it out and then you write it in. I started it when I was writing term papers, see. It’s a little sanity device.”
    â€œIt looks very nice,” Guido said.
    â€œWell, it looks like the key is broken, see, but it gives a sort of personal touch. Besides, I hate to type. It makes me edgy.”
    Guido’s office was a long, stylish L. The prints on the walls were mostly Dürers, chastely framed in gilt wood. His desk was mahogany and seemed to have been made by a hinge fanatic. There were brass hinges on the sides, nailed into the front, and on the drawers. It was large enough to take a nap on.
    The windows looked over the roofs of mid-Manhattan and Central Park. On a shelf that ran the length of the wall were back numbers of Runnymede and books by authors subsidized by the foundation or published in the magazine. On a long table was the collection of Peking glass bowls left to Guido by his Newport aunt. There was a brass watering can filled with eggshells and water, a combination suggested by Holly to give his plants a better life. Every morning, Guido watered the hanging fern, the geraniums, the grape ivy, and the potted palms behind which Stanley now sat. In the hall connecting the outer and inner offices was a little refrigerator made of bird’s-eye walnut that when opened contained several cans of shrimp bisque, bottles of Seltzer, and a plastic lime.
    At lunchtime, Vincent Cardworthy appeared. He was Guido’s oldest and closest friend and, by quirk of good fortune, second cousin. They were both tall and lean. Guido was dark and Vincent was ruddy, but they both had happy, boyish, slightly haunted faces.
    Vincent’s office at the Board of City Planning was several blocks from Guido and he frequently walked over for lunch. It was at the City Planning Board that he had fallen in love with Misty Berkowitz, who disapproved of Guido and Vincent with equal venom. Vincent was a free-lance statistician whose special field of expertise was garbage removal and disposal. “I’m in garbage,” he often said but was forgiven, as his studies on the subject were considered to be quite brilliant. They were quoted in The New York Times , and republished in a large number of urban journals.
    He found Stanley eating a pastrami