Ask for Me Tomorrow

Violet Smith put the tray on the adjustable metal table beside Marco’s chair and cranked the table to the correct height. “I forgot to give you Mr. Smedler’s message. He said eleven o’clock tomorrow morning in his office will be okay.”

“Thanks.”

“Some of these lawyers’ secretaries can be very snippy.”

“Yes, they can. Good night, Violet Smith.”

“Good night, Mrs. Decker. And you, too, Mr. Decker. I’ll be praying for you both.”

Gilly waited until the door closed behind her. Then she said to Marco, trying to sound quite casual, “It’s nothing for you to worry about, dear. I have to talk to Smedler about stocks, bonds, trusts, that sort of thing. Very dull, lawyerish stuff.”

It wasn’t dull, it wasn’t lawyerish, but this was not the time to tell her husband. He had to be told gradually and gently so he would understand that it wasn’t just a whim on her part. She had been thinking about it, no, planning it, for several months now. Each day it seemed more and more the right thing to do until now it was more than right. It was inevitable.

Two

The wind had come up during the night, a Santa Ana that brought with it sand and dust from the desert on the other side of the mountain. By midmorning the city was stalled as if by a blizzard. People huddled in doorways shielding their faces with scarves and handkerchiefs. Cars were abandoned in parking lots, and here and there news racks had overturned and broken and their contents were blowing down the street, rising and falling like battered white birds.

Smedler’s office was in a narrow three-story building in the center of the city a block from the courthouse. The lesser members of the firm shared the two bottom floors. Smedler, who owned the building, kept the third floor for himself. After an earthquake a few years ago he’d remodeled it so that the only inside access to his office was by a grille-fronted elevator. The arrangement gave Smedler a great deal of privacy and power, since the circuit breaker that controlled the electric current was beside his desk. If an overwrought or otherwise undesirable client was on the way up, Smedler could, by the mere thrust of a handle, cut off the electricity and allow the client time to acquire new insights on the situation while trapped between floors.

Gilly knew nothing about the circuit breaker but she had a morbid fear of elevators, which seemed to her like little prisons going up and down. Instead she used the outside entrance, a very steep narrow staircase installed as a fire escape to appease the building-code inspector. The door at the top was locked and Gilly had to wait for Smedler’s secretary, Charity Nelson, to open it.

Charity made much the same use of the bolt as Smedler did of the current breaker. “Who’s there?”

“Mrs. Decker.”

“Who?”

“Decker. Decker.”

“What do you want?”

“I have an appointment with Mr. Smedler at eleven o’clock.”

“Why didn’t you use the elevator?”

“I don’t like elevators.”

“Well, I don’t like taxes but I pay them.”

Charity unlocked the door. She was a short wiry woman past sixty with thick grey eyebrows so lively compared to the rest of her face that they seemed controlled by some outside force. She wore a pumpkin-colored wig, not for the purpose of fooling anyone — she frequently removed it if her scalp itched or if the weather turned warm or if she was especially busy — but because orange was her favorite color. She had been with Smedler for thirty years through five marriages, two of her own, three of his.

“Really, Mrs. Decker, I wish you’d use the elevator like everyone else. It would save me getting up from my desk, walking all the way across the room to unlock the door and then walking all the way back to my desk.”

“Sorry I inconvenienced you.”

“It’s such a lovely little elevator and it would save you all that huffing and puffing. I bet you’re a heavy smoker, aren’t you?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Just out of shape, eh? You should try jogging.”

“Karate appeals to me more at the moment,” Gilly said.

She wondered why so many employees these days acted as though they worked for the government and were not obliged to show respect to anyone. Charity’s general attitude indicated that she was in the pay of the IRS, CIA and FBI and possibly God, in addition to Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, MacFee and Powell.

“Smedler’s waiting for you in his office.” Charity pressed a buzzer. “And Aragon will be up in a few minutes.”

“Who’s Aragon?”

“He’s your boy. You did specify a bilingual. N’est-ce pas?”

“N’est-ce pas. In a private, personal call to Mr. Smedler.”

“All of Smedler’s calls go through me. I am his confidential secretary.”

“You’re also a smart-ass. N’est-ce pas?”

Charity’s bushy eyebrows scurried up into her wig and hid for a moment under the orange curls like startled mice. When they reappeared they looked smaller, as if stunted by the experience. “Crude.”

“Effective, though.”

“We’ll see.”