sweet"?
Why not? Oh, not in the mail room or the freight elevator, but didn't she probably have an apartment somewhere, with a roommate, and wouldn't the roommate probably be out all day?
Jack Ordway was talking to him, requiring him against his will to look up and say "What's that?" An intrusion by almost anyone else wouldn't have mattered—he could have nodded and made the right replies while keeping most of his mind free for Maureen Grube—but Ordway was different.
"I said I'm going to need your help this morning, Franklin," he was saying. "This is an emergency. I'm dead serious, old scout." He was apparently studying a sheaf of typewritten papers on his desk, the picture of concentration; only someone who knew what to look for could have told that the hand which seemed to be shading his eyes was really holding his head up, and that his eyes were shut. In his early forties, slight and trim, with the graying hair and wittily handsome face of a romantic actor, he was the kind of borderline alcoholic whose salvation seems to lie in endless renewals of his ability to laugh the whole thing off, and he was the sentimental hero of the office. Everybody loved Jack Ordway. Today he was wearing his English suit—the suit he had ordered from a touring London tailor some years before, at the cost of half a month's salary, the suit whose cuff buttons really buttoned and whose high-backed trousers could only be worn with suspenders, or "braces," the suit that was never seen without a fresh linen handkerchief spilling from its breast pocket—but his long narrow feet, which lay splayed with childish awkwardness under the desk, betrayed a pitifully all-American look. They were encased in cheap orange-brown loafers, badly scuffed; and the reason for this clashing note was that the one thing Jack Ordway could not do in the grip of a really bad hangover was to tie a pair of shoelaces.
"For the next—" he was saying in a hoarse, unsteady voice, "for the next two or possibly three hours you're to warn me of Bandy's every approach; you're to protect me from Mrs. Jorgensen, and you may have to screen me from public view in case I begin to throw up. It's that bad."
The capsuled story of Jack Ordway's life had become a minor legend of the Fifteenth Floor: everyone knew of how he'd married a rich girl and lived on her inheritance until it vanished just before the war, how since then his business career had been spent entirely in the Knox Building, in one glass cubicle after another, and how it had been distinguished by an almost flawless lack of work. Even here in Sales Promotion, where nobody worked very hard except old Bandy, the manager, he had managed to retain his unique reputation. Except when a really bad hangover laid him low he was up and around and talking all day, setting off little choruses of laughter wherever he went, sometimes even winning a tolerant chuckle from Bandy himself, driving Mrs. Jorgensen into fits of helpless giggles that made her weep.
"First of all," he was saying now, "on Saturday these crazy friends of Sally's flew in from the Coast all eager for the treat. Could we show them the town? Oh, indeed we could. Old, old buddies of hers and all that, and besides, they always bring pocketfuls of loot. So. Started off with lunch at André's, and dear God you've never seen such whopping great martinis in your life. Oh, and none of this sissy business of one or two apiece, either, buddy. I lost count. And then let's see. Oh, yes. Then there was nothing to do but sit around and drink until cocktail time. Then came cocktail time." He had abandoned his working posture now, pushed the false papers aside and leaned delicately back in the chair to hold his head with both hands; he was moving it from side to side in the rhythm of his narrative, laughing and talking through his laughter, while Frank watched him with a mixture of pity and distaste. Most of his hangover stories seemed to begin with a
Why not? Oh, not in the mail room or the freight elevator, but didn't she probably have an apartment somewhere, with a roommate, and wouldn't the roommate probably be out all day?
Jack Ordway was talking to him, requiring him against his will to look up and say "What's that?" An intrusion by almost anyone else wouldn't have mattered—he could have nodded and made the right replies while keeping most of his mind free for Maureen Grube—but Ordway was different.
"I said I'm going to need your help this morning, Franklin," he was saying. "This is an emergency. I'm dead serious, old scout." He was apparently studying a sheaf of typewritten papers on his desk, the picture of concentration; only someone who knew what to look for could have told that the hand which seemed to be shading his eyes was really holding his head up, and that his eyes were shut. In his early forties, slight and trim, with the graying hair and wittily handsome face of a romantic actor, he was the kind of borderline alcoholic whose salvation seems to lie in endless renewals of his ability to laugh the whole thing off, and he was the sentimental hero of the office. Everybody loved Jack Ordway. Today he was wearing his English suit—the suit he had ordered from a touring London tailor some years before, at the cost of half a month's salary, the suit whose cuff buttons really buttoned and whose high-backed trousers could only be worn with suspenders, or "braces," the suit that was never seen without a fresh linen handkerchief spilling from its breast pocket—but his long narrow feet, which lay splayed with childish awkwardness under the desk, betrayed a pitifully all-American look. They were encased in cheap orange-brown loafers, badly scuffed; and the reason for this clashing note was that the one thing Jack Ordway could not do in the grip of a really bad hangover was to tie a pair of shoelaces.
"For the next—" he was saying in a hoarse, unsteady voice, "for the next two or possibly three hours you're to warn me of Bandy's every approach; you're to protect me from Mrs. Jorgensen, and you may have to screen me from public view in case I begin to throw up. It's that bad."
The capsuled story of Jack Ordway's life had become a minor legend of the Fifteenth Floor: everyone knew of how he'd married a rich girl and lived on her inheritance until it vanished just before the war, how since then his business career had been spent entirely in the Knox Building, in one glass cubicle after another, and how it had been distinguished by an almost flawless lack of work. Even here in Sales Promotion, where nobody worked very hard except old Bandy, the manager, he had managed to retain his unique reputation. Except when a really bad hangover laid him low he was up and around and talking all day, setting off little choruses of laughter wherever he went, sometimes even winning a tolerant chuckle from Bandy himself, driving Mrs. Jorgensen into fits of helpless giggles that made her weep.
"First of all," he was saying now, "on Saturday these crazy friends of Sally's flew in from the Coast all eager for the treat. Could we show them the town? Oh, indeed we could. Old, old buddies of hers and all that, and besides, they always bring pocketfuls of loot. So. Started off with lunch at André's, and dear God you've never seen such whopping great martinis in your life. Oh, and none of this sissy business of one or two apiece, either, buddy. I lost count. And then let's see. Oh, yes. Then there was nothing to do but sit around and drink until cocktail time. Then came cocktail time." He had abandoned his working posture now, pushed the false papers aside and leaned delicately back in the chair to hold his head with both hands; he was moving it from side to side in the rhythm of his narrative, laughing and talking through his laughter, while Frank watched him with a mixture of pity and distaste. Most of his hangover stories seemed to begin with a
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