leave. Don’t say anything to anybody, will you? I’ll figure something out, and I’ll call you. Let’s see, when I call I’ll say I’m-what’s the name of that doctor of your mother’s?-Dr. Gallant. And I’ll arrange to meet you and tell you what we’re going to do. I can count on you, Hester, can’t I?” “Sure, Mitch,” she said breathlessly. “Fine,” I said. “Now you’ll have to convoy me down in the elevator. I haven’t got time to walk, and there’ll be trouble if a guy like me gets caught on the club floor.” I stopped and looked her over. “Speaking of which,” I said, “what in the world are you doing here?” Hester blushed. “Oh, you know how it is,” she said unhappily. “After you were gone there weren’t any other secretarial jobs; the rest of the executives had their girls, and I just couldn’t be a consumer again, Mitch, not with the bills and all. And-well, there was this opening up here, you see. . . .” “Oh,” I said. I hope nothing showed on my face; God knows I tried. Damn you to hell, Runstead, I said to myself, thinking of Hester’s mother and Hester’s young man that she’d maybe been going to marry some day, and the absolute stinking injustice of a man like Runstead taking the law into his own hands and wrecking executive lives-mine-and staff lives-Hester’s-and dragging them down to the level of consumers. “Don’t worry, Hester,” I said gently. “I’ll owe you something for this. And believe me, you won’t have to remind me. I’ll make everything up to you.” And I knew how to do it, too. Quite a lot of the girls on the ZZ contract manage to avoid the automatic renewal and downgrading. It would cost a lot for me to buy out her contract before the year was up, so that was out of the question; but some of the girls do pretty well with single executives after their first year. And I was important enough so that if I made a suggestion to some branch head or bureau chief, he would not be likely to ignore it, or even to treat her badly. I don’t approve of sentiment in business matters, but as you see I’m an absolute sucker for it in any personal relationship. Hester insisted on lending me some money, so I made it to the Met with time to spare by taking a cab. Even though I had paid the driver in advance, he could not refrain from making a nasty comment about high-living consumers as I got out; if I hadn’t had more
important things on my mind I would have taught him a lesson then and there. I have always had a fondness for the Met. I don’t go much for religion-partly, I suppose, because it’s a Taunton account-but there is a grave, ennobling air about the grand old masterpieces in the Met that gives me a feeling of peace and reverence. I mentioned that I was a little ahead of time. I spent those minutes standing silently before the bust of G. Washington Hill, and I felt more relaxed than I had since that first afternoon at the South Pole. At precisely five minutes before midnight I was standing before the big, late-period Maidenform-number thirty-five in the catalogue: “I Dreamed I Was Ice-Fishing in My Maidenform Bra”- when I became conscious of someone whistling in the corridor behind me. The notes were irrelevant; the cadence formed one of the recognition signals I’d learned in the hidey-hole under Chicken Little. One of the guards was strolling away. She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. To all external appearances, it was a casual pickup. We linked arms, and I felt the coded pressure of her fingers on my wrist: “D-O-N-T T-A-L-K W-H-E-N I L-E-A-V-E Y-O-U G-O T-O T-H-E B-A-C-K O-F T-H-E R-O-O-M S-I-T D-O-W-N A-N-D W-A-I-T.” I nodded. She took me to a plastic-finished door, pushed it open, pointed inside. I went in alone. There were ten or fifteen consumers sitting in straight-back chairs, facing an elderly consumer with a lectorial goatee. I found a seat in the back of the room and sat in it. No one paid any particular attention to me. The lecturer was covering the high spots of some particularly boring precommercial period. I listened with half my mind, trying to catch some point of similarity in the varying types around me. All were Consies, I was reasonably sure-else why would I be here? But the basic stigmata, the surface mark of the lurking fanatic inside, that should have been apparent, escaped me. They were all consumers, with the pinched look that soyaburgers and Yeasties inevitably give; but I could have passed any of them in the street without a second glance. Yet-this was New York, and Bo wen had spoken of it as though the Consies I’d meet here were pretty high up in the scale, the Trotskys and Tom Paines of the movement. And that was a consideration too. When I got out of this mess-