The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates Page B

him.
    â€œJoe,” Walter said. “I’m leaving. Got the ax.”
    â€œNo!” But Collins’s look of shock was plainly an act of kindness; it couldn’t have been much of a surprise. “Jesus, Walt, what the hell’s the matter with these people?”
    Then Fred Holmes chimed in, very grave and sorry, clearly pleased with the news: “Gee, boy, that’s a damn shame.”
    Walter led the two of them away to the elevators, where he pressed the “down” button; and suddenly other men were bearing down on him from all comers of the office, their faces stiff with sorrow, their hands held out.
    â€œAwful sorry, Walt . . .”
    â€œGood luck, boy . . .”
    â€œKeep in touch, okay, Walt? . . .”
    Nodding and smiling, shaking hands, Walter said, “Thanks,” and “So long,” and “I certainly will”; then the red light came on over one of the elevators with its little mechanical ding! and in another few seconds the doors slid open and the operator’s voice said, “Down!” He backed into the car, still wearing his fixed smile and waving a jaunty salute to their earnest, talking faces, and the scene found its perfect conclusion as the doors slid shut, clamped, and the car dropped in silence through space.
    All the way down he stood with the ruddy, bright-eyed look of a man fulfilled by pleasure; it wasn’t until he was out on the street, walking rapidly, that he realized how completely he had enjoyed himself.
    The heavy shock of this knowledge slowed him down, until he came to a stop and stood against a building front for the better part of a minute. His scalp prickled under his hat, and his fingers began to fumble with the knot of his tie and the button of his coat. He felt as if he had surprised himself in some obscene and shameful act, and he had never felt more helpless, or more frightened.
    Then in a burst of action he set off again, squaring his hat and setting his jaw, bringing his heels down hard on the pavement, trying to look hurried and impatient and impelled by business. A man could drive himself crazy trying to psychoanalyze himself in the middle of Lexington Avenue, in the middle of the afternoon. The thing to do was get busy now, and start looking for a job.
    The only trouble, he realized, coming to a stop again and looking around, was that he didn’t know where he was going. He was somewhere in the upper Forties, on a corner that was bright with florist shops and taxicabs, alive with well-dressed men and women walking in the clear spring air. A telephone was what he needed first. He hurried across the street to a drugstore and made his way through smells of toilet soap and perfume and ketchup and bacon to the rank of phone booths along the rear wall; he got out his address book and found the page showing the several employment agencies where his applications were filed; then he got his dimes ready and shut himself into one of the booths.
    But all the agencies told him the same thing: no openings in his field at the moment; no point in his coming in until they called him. When he was finished he dug for the address book again, to check the number of an acquaintance who had told him, a month before, that there might soon be an opening in his office. The book wasn’t in his inside pocket; he plunged his hands into the other pockets of his coat and then his pants, cracking an elbow painfully against the wall of the booth, but all he could find were the old letters and the piece of chocolate from his desk. Cursing, he dropped the chocolate on the floor and, as if it were a lighted cigarette, stepped on it. These exertions in the heat of the booth made his breathing rapid and shallow. He was feeling faint by the time he saw the address book right in front of him, on top of the coin box, where he’d left it. His finger trembled in the dial, and when he started to speak, clawing the collar