Kept Women Can’t Quit

“You’re not obvious,” I said. “It’s simply the lack of transparency that enables me to know you’re deep and loyal and true and just a little bit lonely.”

“Donald, you’re trying to let me down easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a wallflower,” she said. “I know it, and you’re smart enough to know it. You’re smart enough to describe a wallflower so she sounds attractive. I don’t know why I always team up with beautiful women as my roommates, but I do. I guess it’s because I have some kind of a self-punishment complex or something.

“Now, you take Bernie. She’s out almost every night. She doesn’t have any regular fellow. She plays the field and she keeps them all on the string. They’re simply ga-ga over her.

“She likes to have me around because when she’s going out I do the heavy end of the housekeeping. I like to have her around because early in the evening before she goes out, and while she’s dressing for her date, I turn her inside out. I make her tell me all of the details of where she went the night before, what she did and all the conversation — all the passes the fellows made, how they went about it and everything.

“I pump her about her job, about what she’s doing during the day. I make her give me all the gossip at the hotel and... well, a less patient girl would throw me out on my ear. However, Bernie is a wonderful companion. She’s very understanding, and, frankly, Donald, I think she understands me and knows that I’m suffering from some sort of a deep-seated frustration. I can’t live the kind of life I want myself and so I live a vicarious existence.”

“What do you do, Ernestine?” I asked.

“A bookkeeper,” she said. “I would have to study bookkeeping! Of course, I had some secretarial training, too, but I like figures and figures like me. I write a neat hand, I add columns of figures accurately, I can play tunes on an adding machine while I’m reading figures off of a column. I play the adding machine by touch and never make a mistake.

“That’s another thing about me. The other girls, who are secretaries, doll themselves up in good-looking clothes, take dictation from the boss and he notices them. He’s not offensive about it, but he sure notices when the girls have on nice-looking clothes. But a bookkeeper gets tucked away in a corner and no one ever notices what she’s got on.

“That’s me. That’s my niche in life.”

“You know what?” I told her.

“What?”

“You would make a jim-dandy female detective.”

“I would?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“Well, in the first place, you don’t stand out too much. The very qualities that you’ve been complaining about that cause you to be pushed back into a corner somewhere in an office would be ideal for detective work. You could get around without being noticed. You’re good at deduction and you have remarkable powers of observation. You have a retentive memory and you’re a pretty good judge of character — including your own.

“When I get back to Los Angeles I’m going to look around and see what I can find down there. The next time we have a case where we can use a woman operative I’m going to see if you want to get out of this bookkeeping niche and really get into the swim of life.”

“Would that mean quitting my job up here?” she asked.

I nodded. “How much of a sacrifice would that be?”

“Not too much.”

“You could get another job in case it didn’t pan out?”

“I could get a job anywhere any time. What’s your real name?”

I gave her one of my cards. She handled it as though it had been printed on platinum.

“How long have you been working at your present job?” I asked.

“Seven years.”

“Exactly,” I said. “You’re the type that keeps things running quietly and efficiently. That’s the reason Bernice likes to have you in the apartment. You keep things spick-and-span. I’ll bet that Bernice runs out about half the time leaving clothes scattered around the place and when she comes back she finds the bed turned down, her clothes all folded and put away — and I have an idea you do the same thing around the office. I think you pick up after the other girls. I think you cover up their mistakes. I think you keep things running with such quiet efficiency that nobody really knows you’re on the job. All they know is that whenever they want information it’s there on their desks, neatly typed, accurate, and produced at a moment’s notice.

“I have an idea that if you quit and they tried to hire someone to take your place, the whole shebang would go into chaos. People would be running around tearing their hair and the boss would be saying, ‘What the hell happened to Ernestine? Get her back. No matter what you have to pay, get her back.’ ”

Ernestine looked at me and her eyes began to blaze with enthusiasm. “Donald,” she said, “I’ve often wondered about that myself, only I’ve put the thought out of my mind and felt that I was just too conceited.”

“Conceited, nothing!” I told her. “Why don’t you make the experiment?”

“Donald, I’m going to do it. I’ve got some money saved up. I can get along for a while and... I’m giving my notice tomorrow.”