Chapter 14
The following morning, I was the one hurrying my father out the door.
We got into the car, and as soon as we were on Sixteenth Street, he turned his head toward me. “You got a story, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Judy. I’ve never seen anyone this excited to go to work. They’re letting you write today?”
My shoulders sagged. “No. Not yet.”
“Then what’s this about?”
I explained about being moved to the managing editor’s desk, but didn’t tell my father about the cryptic message I had taken the evening before.
“So a secretary, then?” His brow furrowed. “Why the rush?”
“If I impress him enough, Miss Kelly—she’s the one who runs the typing pool—she thought I might have a better chance. Eventually.”
“Why not just keep applying at some of the local women’s sections?” he asked. “Then at least you’d be writing.”
“Because that section is all cooking and cleaning and fashion.” I knew I sounded petulant, but I didn’t care. “I want to write actual news. I want to write about the government and uncover scandals and—”
“Muckrake?”
“No.” He glanced over, saw my wounded face, and patted my shoulder awkwardly. “I want to write stories that matter.”
“But wouldn’t a women’s section be a stepping—”
“It’s a death sentence is what it is. No one leaves the women’s section.”
“No one has yet. They haven’t met Judy Greenberg.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
We rode in silence past Rock Creek Park as I periodically checked my bag to make sure the message was still there. Not that it mattered—I could have rewritten it from memory. Mass goal in sight. What could that mean?
We pulled up in front of The Digest, and my father stopped me before I got out of the car. “You’ll make this work,” he said. “I believe in you.”
I smiled, then hurried into the building, anxious to make sure Mr. Pullman saw how trustworthy and savvy I was.
I brewed the coffee immediately, waiting to pour him a cup to ensure it would be hot.
The elevator dinged, and the secretaries flowed out in their colored dresses, bobbed hairdos, and Chanel No 5.
I had the dress and the perfume, but my hair was still longer than theirs.
They looked like a line of paper dolls, practically impossible to distinguish from one another, and infinitely more glamorous than the typing pool.
The editors would be arriving next. I went to get Mr. Pullman’s coffee.
The next time the elevator bell sounded, he stepped out, surrounded by the male equivalent of paper dolls, all in suits and ties, three in spectacles, two without, clean shaven, and smelling of Aramis.
Mr. Pullman nodded at me as he passed, and I followed him into his office before he could shut the door.
He turned around, surprised. “Yes, Judy?”
I shut the door behind me, forgetting Florence’s warning, and he began to smile lasciviously. He thought I—no, I needed to relieve him of that assumption and quickly.
“Your coffee,” I said, holding out the cup. He took it and turned back to me. “And this.” I handed him the slip of paper. “Your phone rang after you left yesterday—I took a message. I thought it sounded important.”
A cloud crossed his face, and he practically snatched the message from my hand. “Your job is to answer the phone out there, not in here. Understood?”
I swallowed. This wasn’t going how I expected at all. “Yes, sir. I just didn’t want you to miss anything important.”
He read the message, then ripped the paper into tiny shreds, which he pocketed instead of tossing it in the wastepaper basket.
“It was nothing,” he said. “Not worth the effort of entering my office.”
“It didn’t seem like nothing,” I said, hating how high my voice sounded. “The man on the phone insisted you would know who he was. He—he had a Russian accent.”
“I said it was nothing. Forget you ever answered my phone.”
The words slipped out before I could stop myself. “But Havana is with Texas—is there an invas—”
“I said forget it,” he roared.
“Yes, sir,” I said meekly, doubting I would forget that message as long as I lived. If it were nothing, he wouldn’t care this much.
“Do your actual job, or you won’t have one any longer. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Pullman.”
Grumpily, he sat in his desk chair. “That’ll be all, Miss Greenberg.”
He had called me Judy the previous two days. None of the editors called their secretaries by their last name. This was bad.
After lunch, Florence approached me. “Mr. Davis says Mr. Pullman is madder than hell. What happened?”
“I answered the phone in his office after he left last night.”
She sat on the edge of my desk, pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, removed one, and lit it. “Was it a mistress? Or did his wife think that’s who you were?”
“Neither. It was a man. I just took a message and gave it to Mr. Pullman this morning.”
“Huh,” she said. “You’d think he’d thank you.”
“That’s what I thought too. But he was mad.” I thought for a moment. “Does Mr. Davis lock his desk when he leaves for the day?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “No. Why would he do that?”
“Just curious.”
“What was the message anyway?”
I thought of Mr. Pullman’s face when I suggested an invasion. “I don’t even remember,” I lied. “That’s why I wrote it down.”
She shrugged. “Story tip maybe?”
“If so, it was in code. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. And the man wouldn’t leave his name. Said Mr. Pullman would know who it was.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she said. Then she stood up. “Probably nothing though. If he doesn’t like you answering that phone, don’t do it again and you’ll be fine.”
I hoped she was right.
At the end of the day, Patricia rode the elevator up from the third floor to tell me that Miss Kelly wanted to see me when my shift was done.
I swore quietly. She hadn’t been in her office when I stopped by the previous afternoon to tell her I wanted the job.
And she had said she needed to know by today.
After the morning I’d had, I didn’t actually want it.
Getting yelled at by the same man who made a comment about my being Jewish wasn’t exactly appealing.
But whatever that tip was yesterday, it had awakened every journalistic nerve in my body, and I wanted to investigate.
I wanted to pick the lock on his desk with a hairpin and find all the mysteries this newspaper held.
Okay, I wasn’t going to do that last part. If I landed myself in jail for stealing company secrets, the only newspaper I would be writing for was a prison one.
Still, I could win Mr. Pullman’s trust. I knew it. And so when he left at the end of the day, without even looking at me, I took the elevator down to three.
I crossed the room and rapped on Miss Kelly’s open door. “Miss Kelly? Patricia said you wanted to see me?”
She shook her head. “So you didn’t want the job, then.”
I was confused. “No, I do actually—I meant to tell you yesterday that—”
“Then you should have been more competent. Mr. Pullman told me to find him a ‘real secretary.’”
“Oh,” I said, deflating entirely. It wasn’t an unfair criticism. But I had just talked myself into wanting it. Returning to the typing pool meant friends, but no extra money and no leads that hadn’t already been written about. “I understand.”
“Close the door.”
I did as she told me and then she gestured for me to sit. She steepled her fingers and stared at me for an awkwardly long time before speaking. “What happened?”
I hesitated. Lying to Miss Kelly would surely have consequences. But so would telling her when Mr. Pullman had told me to forget I had answered his phone.
“I think—I think it was just what he said. He wants a real secretary.”
She studied me again, but I maintained eye contact, unsure if I was being demoted back to the typing pool or fired.
But eventually she nodded. “You’ll go back to your desk on this floor tomorrow.
A girl with secretarial training will take over for the rest of the week until we hire someone.
” She scrawled a note on a legal pad in front of her, then looked up and seemed surprised to see me still sitting there.
“You’re dismissed.” She waved a hand airily in my direction.
I rose to leave, then stopped. “Miss Kelly?”
“Hm?” She didn’t look up.
“What happened to Myrtle?”
That got her attention. “Excuse me?”
“You said she’s not coming back. But her things are still at her desk—she’s got a picture of a young man, and—”
“Family emergency,” she said brusquely. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I would eventually like to be able to go home too.”
I apologized and left, dejected at having failed and extremely confused about why that message had relegated me back to the typing pool, but hadn’t gotten me fired.