The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates Page A

just happen.” And he began to fumble with the knobs of his desk drawers, visibly relieved that the worst was over. “Now,” he said, “we’ve made out a check here covering your salary through the end of next month. That’ll give you something in the way of—severance pay, so to speak—to tide you over until you find something.” He held out a long envelope.
    â€œThat’s very generous,” Walter said. Then there was a silence, and Walter realized it was up to him to break it. He got to his feet. “All right, George. I won’t keep you.”
    Crowell got up quickly and came around the desk with both hands held out—one to shake Walter’s hand, the other to put on his shoulder as they walked to the door. The gesture, at once friendly and humiliating, brought a quick rush of blood to Walter’s throat, and for a terrible second he thought he might be going to cry. “Well, boy,” Crowell said, “good luck to you.”
    â€œThanks,” he said, and he was so relieved to find his voice steady that he said it again, smiling. “Thanks. So long, George.”
    There was a distance of some fifty feet to be crossed on the way back to his cubicle, and Walter Henderson accomplished it with style. He was aware of how trim and straight his departing shoulders looked to Crowell; he was aware too, as he threaded his way among desks whose occupants either glanced up shyly at him or looked as if they’d like to, of every subtle play of well-controlled emotion in his face. It was as if the whole thing were a scene in a movie. The camera had opened the action from Crowell’s viewpoint and dollied back to take the entire office as a frame for Walter’s figure in lonely, stately passage; now it came in for a long-held close-up of Walter’s face, switched to other brief views of his colleagues’ turning heads (Joe Collins looking worried, Fred Holmes trying to keep from looking pleased), and switched again to Walter’s viewpoint as it discovered the plain, unsuspecting face of Mary, his secretary, who was waiting for him at his desk with a report he had given her to type.
    â€œI hope this is all right, Mr. Henderson.”
    Walter took it and dropped it on the desk. “Forget it, Mary,” he said. “Look, you might as well take the rest of the day off, and go see the personnel manager in the morning. You’ll be getting a new job. I’ve just been fired.”
    Her first expression was a faint, suspicious smile—she thought he was kidding—but then she began to look pale and shaken. She was very young and not too bright; they had probably never told her in secretarial school that it was possible for your boss to get fired. “Why, that’s terrible, Mr. Henderson. I—well, but why would they do such a thing?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” he said. “Lot of little reasons, I guess.” He was opening and slamming the drawers of his desk, cleaning out his belongings. There wasn’t much: a handful of old personal letters, a dry fountain pen, a cigarette lighter with no flint, and half of a wrapped chocolate bar. He was aware of how poignant each of these objects looked to her, as she watched him sort them out and fill his pockets, and he was aware of the dignity with which he straightened up, turned, took his hat from the stand and put it on.
    â€œDoesn’t affect you, of course, Mary,” he said. “They’ll have a new job for you in the morning. Well.” He held out his hand. “Good luck.”
    â€œThank you; the same to you. Well, then, g’night”—and here she brought her chewed fingernails up to her lips for an uncertain little giggle—“I mean, g’bye, then, Mr. Henderson.”
    The next part of the scene was at the water cooler, where Joe Collins’s sober eyes became enriched with sympathy as Walter approached