Please Don't Talk to Me--I'm in Training

A graying, rather pudgy, casually dressed (expensive black-cashmere sports jacket and light-gray slacks) executive in his late 40s sat behind the large period desk. His name was Mr. Gelber. His hands were folded. He was smiling.

"Bill De Costa was telling me, "he began, " that he had a nice chat with you after lunch, Perry. Now, let's see--ah--so you'd like to work for Zander's?"

"Yes, sir, I certainly would, gee, like to," I bubbled enthusiastically.

"Why?"

"Well, sir, when I saw the ad in the morning Times, I said to myself, 'I can't believe it--I just can't believe it. An opportunity like this. I'd better get there right away. Why, there'll easily be a line twice around the block.' "

"Not quite," he grinned, stretching, and biting off the end of a long brown cigar.

"Sir," I went on, "if you could give me a chance to show you and the company what I could do--how much I'd appreciate that opportunity, how hard I'd work to prove myself as an executive merchandising trainee. I realize that in the beginning it'll be tough sledding," I said, pouring it on.

"How do you know this, Perry?" he asked.

"Well, sir, in the half hour I had between seeing Mr. De Costa and you, three to three-thirty, well, sir, and I hope you won't think badly of me--but I sort of surveyed the operation here. First, I watched the employees. Then I studied as much of your complicated modus operandi as I could and, sir, to tell you the truth, I liked what I saw. I really did!" From three to three-thirty I had had a quick egg-salad sandwich at the Malt House.

Mr. Gelber fingered the long brown cigar.

"You're quite an enthusiastic young man, Perry."

"Sir, I want to be," I began, summing up, a little out of control but completely determined, "I want to be an executive merchandising trainee here at Zander's. It's something I've wanted my whole adult life." And you know how long that's been.

"Perry," he said, blowing smoke in my eyes, "I'd like you to come back at four-thirty and talk with Mr. Zander. His office is penthouse B. All right?" For a moment my face dropped. Another interview? Jesus Christ! But there was no stopping now.

"Sir," I told him, standing up and holding out my hand, "you don't know how much I appreciate your interest in my career. Thank you."

"It's been a pleasure meeting you, Perry," Mr. Gelber replied, shaking my hand. "It's unfortunate there's not more men--more young men, I mean, like you around today."

"Thank you, sir," I said. Remind (continued on page 214)Please don't Talk to Me(continued from page 125) me to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge the next time I see you.

• • •

Penthouse B was tremendous. Sort of like the Palladium Ballroom in Hollywood, only with rugs; thick, deep, rich wall-to-wall rugs, surrounded on four sides by bright-red Italian-silk, fully lined drapes and original 18th Century furnishings by Hepplewhite and Adam.

"You've got an appointment?" the little old gray-haired secretary asked, looking up over a glass of hot tea.

"I'm Perry Wayne," I told her. "Yes, I do."

"So, wait a minute," she said, and shuffled across the monstrous office. She was back in a minute. "OK, go on in. Here, take this with you." She handed me a Kaiser roll wrapped in waxed paper. "See that he eats it." I nodded and started walking.

Mr. Zander, very tanned, in an open-necked sport shirt in extremely bad taste, was a pleasant-looking white-haired gentleman in his early 60s. The 2000-year-Old Man, I thought to myself, remembering the Mel Brooks album. On his desk were four phones, three empty cardboard containers of buttermilk, a pair of rusty scissors and a check, made out to the Fruit of the Loom underwear company for $93,416, that he had just signed.

"Sit down, my son, sit down," he said in his best Mittel-europa accent. I never had a grandfather--at least, not one I can remember, but I did my best.

"Sir, I'd like to begin work immediately here at Zander's. I'm sorry I can't sit, but the excitement of just meeting you face to face, Mr. Zander--sir, I am ready!" He gave me a strange, quizzical look, and for a second I thought that maybe I had gone too far.

"Sit down, sit down, boychik," he said. "I was like that once. No, no, don't apologize. It's a good quality. I'm not making fun at you. Here, would you like some buttermilk?" I declined gracefully, and he went on.

"No? Well, then, perhaps you'd like to tell me a little something about yourself--your background, your schooling, your family. Why you want, why you have this tremendous desire to be with us here at Zander's." I was glad he asked me. Oh, I was glad.

"Sir," I began, "when I was a little boy----"

"When you were a little boy?" he interrupted, breaking the roll in two.

"Yes, sir, when I was a little boy. I remember I was just three years old. My father brought me here one day to buy a nightgown for my mother--a black nightgown. Of course, the store wasn't as modern or beautiful as it is now; but from the first moment I set foot here on the main floor, right next to the Budget Bag Counter, honestly, sir, honestly...a feeling came over me--a feeling of belonging--something warm, something I had never felt before, or since, for that matter. Sir," I concluded emotionally, "Zander's is the first memory I ever had."

Just then a door opened in back of me and in walked a tall, thin young man about my age. I didn't see the resemblance he had to the man behind the desk, but I did recognize the expensive hopsack jacket he was wearing. I had one just like it in my closet in New Haven. He approached the desk, golf clubs rattling in the leather bag over his shoulder. And then I recognized him. Jeff Zander from Columbia. My roommate at camp for two months one summer. I turned my head toward the wall, hoping I had changed enough in nine years to remain anonymous. What bad luck. Here I was almost in, and in walks Jeff Zander.

"I'm taking off now, Daddy."

"Will I see you tomorrow?" Mr. Zander wanted to know.

"If this damn cold gets any worse, you won't," he said, smiling cheerily, and then he was gone.

"My son," he said finally.

"Oh, really?" I answered.

Mr. Zander blew his nose in a Kleenex, and when he finally spoke again, it was with great tenderness.

"A black nightgown. You don't say?"

"A sheer black nightgown," I repeated, feeling sure that I now had him in, like, my back pocket, "that sold for twelve dollars and ninety-eight cents, sir. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was a wedding-anniversary gift--their tenth anniversary. She cried when she saw it--my mother cried for three hours--and she never wore it----" I almost broke down.

"Never?" he asked, his tired old eyes wide in wonderment.

"No, sir, it's still in her dresser drawer--still unwrapped."

"Twelve ninety-eight," he clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Yes, yes, I remember the goods. I remember them."

"Sir, what else can I say?" except, maybe, like where's my office?

"Son, I'd like for you to report back to Mr.--Mr.--what's his name? That Italian fellow?"

"De Costa," I helped him.

"Yeah, De Costa, that's right. Report back to him right away--would you do that?" I grabbed the old man's hand and shook it gratefully.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you."

"It's all right. Twelve ninety-eight--nineteen forty-two; that was some beautiful merchandise--beautiful," and I swear he had tears in his eyes.

De Costa's office again. The clock on the wall read 4:45.

"Well, Wayne, you did it!" he said, his face beaming good-naturedly.

"Thanks, old man," I said, like the jerk that I am.

"Three is the magic number, and three you saw. Gelber, Zander and I. You're on your way," he told me.

"Thanks, and I won't forget the good word you put in for me, De Costa. That's the kind of guy I am," I said.

"Now, if you'll proceed to room nine-oh-three for your special aptitude tests with the others--you have about ten minutes to rest up and have a Coke in the lounge, if you'd like."

Is there a stronger word in the English language than "stunned"? Maybe "horrified" or "dazed" or "thunderstruck"?

"Aptitude tests, old man, I mean, sir?"

"It's a type of I.Q. adaptability test we give to all final applicants. Don't worry, I think you'll do fairly well," he chattered away.

"You mean I don't have the job yet?" That's right, dope. You don't have the job yet.

"Not yet," Bill De Costa said, smiling brightly.

"Will I be the only one taking the tests, sir?" I asked, trying to recover my mental balance.

"No, you'll have company," he informed me. "There'll be--let's see, now. There'll be thirty-four others." The buzzer rang on his desk.

"Could I ask a rather personal and perhaps stupid question, sir?" I said.

"Yes, Wayne?"

"How many executive merchandising trainees are you hiring, sir?"

"Well, that is rather top-secret, Wayne; but I'd say, offhand, in the neighborhood of five." The buzzer rang again and I could see he was getting impatient for me to leave.

"Five?" I asked, my voice shaking. "Five out of thirty-five," I mumbled.

"Thirty-four? Oh, no. There'll be more taking the test tomorrow. We're interviewing all week. Now, we'd better stop chatting. Your ten minutes are almost up and you'll have to hurry if you want that Coke."

"Did you say room nine-oh-three?"

"Nine-oh-three," he repeated.

I sat across from the psychologist, a thin-faced, nervous man in his late 30s. He looked very tired as he shoved a piece of paper at me with an ink blot on it that obviously resembled a woman--the full figure of a woman in nude repose, a side view.

"What does this look like to you?"

I thought about it for a second, carefully. "A lady's handbag?"

"And this?" He showed me another ink blot that also obviously resembled a woman, this time a rear view.

"The same handbag, only open this time." He shook his head sadly, apparently having come to some monumental conclusion about me.

"All right. Now tell me, Goldman, have you always felt this unconscious hostility toward gentiles?"

"Doctor, I love gentiles. Some of my best friends, including my father, are gentiles. My name isn't Goldman."

"Oh," was all he could say, as he searched through a fat wad of index cards, looking for the right one.

"Wayne, doctor. Perry Wayne." He found it finally.

"Ah, yes. Here it is," he said, turning it over and over again in his hands. "Tell me, Wayne, how long have you felt this hostility toward Jewish people?"

The I.Q. test was a little more reasonable. Harder, but saner. I sat there in the front row trying to remember how much I had forgotten since college. All around me sat other real college graduates; and, man, they were perspiring as if there were a boat outside leaving for Vietnam in ten minutes with the losers on it. I breezed through the math and vocabulary and was having a little trouble with physics when I looked up and saw that the proctor had left the room for a minute and there, not five feet from me, spread out on his desk, were the uncoded answers to pages 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 of the test. All I had to do was to lean forward maybe a foot and a half and look. But I didn't. Instead, I remembered a story Jeff Zander had told me one chilly night in the Adirondacks, huddled around a campfire--a story about his illustrious father. It had happened only a few months before he had met me, when he was 16 and had gone to his father to ask him for a raise in his allowance. His father had told him no; emphatically no. No raise, and guess what? No more allowance. From now on, you work in the store after school. How much? Jeff had asked him. I don't know, his father had replied. We'll see how much you're worth. Well, to make a long story short, it was decided Jeff was worth nothing. So after three weeks of this, with no alternative for getting money for dates and basketball games, except maybe selling his blood for five dollars a pint, Jeff decided to take action. At his station in Ladies Overcoats he began underringing on the register. If a lady bought a coat for $29.95, he'd give her change from an open register and then ring up $19.98 after she had left. Dangerous? Of course; but when you're Jeff Zander, who's going to tell your father you're stealing, even if they catch you?

By the end of three months, Jeff had $2009 in dollar bills, half dollars, quarters, etc., stashed on the top shelf of his closet. And then it happened. As he tells it, one night his father, who's like any other normal father, counts his neckties before he goes to sleep, discovers a necktie missing. He storms into Jeff's room at three in the morning and before Jeff can clear his head sufficiently from a guilty dream he's having, the old man flings open the closet. Within seconds, old man Zander is noisily covered with thousands of dollars in half dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels and a confettilike shower of greenbacks.

"He just stood there looking at me in the dark, a murderous expression on his face, and I knew I was going to get it, but good." Jeff shivered, remembering the moment.

"So what did he do?" I asked Jeff, anxiously.

"He didn't do nothing," Jeff answered blankly.

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'What's the matter with you? Ain't you never heard of banks?' And then he left."

"That's all?" I wanted to know. "What happened next?"

"Nothing--except he raised my salary from zero to fifteen thousand dollars a year, starting the next Monday," he replied, a funny expression on his face.

"Whew!" is all I remember saying as I stared into the fire, thanking the dear Lord that I was I and not Jeff Zander.

I leaned forward to look at the answers on the proctor's desk, hoping against hope that Jeff Zander's father had a secret camera somewhere watching me.

• • •

It was Monday morning and I was late. I swallowed the last of the hot bitter coffee, burning my throat, and then kissed Helen goodbye at the front door.

Half-past seven, I thought. I'll never make it in half an hour. God, look at all the people on the street. Where the hell are they all going so early in the morning? I wondered. Look at that traffic. Gee, it's kinda exciting. Here I am, right in the middle of life with everybody else. Just like the opening of an old MGM musical with Tony and Sally De Marco dancing out in the middle of Sixth Avenue--with no garbage and very few Negroes to confuse the issue.

Somebody must have gotten killed, I told myself. Just look at the mob on the subway platform. This isn't going to do my suit any good. Oh, boy--oh, I'm sorry, lady, I mean, sir.

By 59th Street, things were back to normal again. I found myself a seat and began reading half a copy of the morning edition of the Daily News that somebody had left on the floor near my feet.

The subway ground to a screeching halt. I carefully placed the Daily News back on the floor, where I had found it, and started out the closing door.

It was only a short walk from the station to Zander's, and I hurried across the street against the light, dodging cars and ignoring the subsequent horn blasts.

• • •

"Men," Mr. De Costa began. There were five of us sitting in his small office. "Congratulations and welcome to the Zander family. This is as big a moment for me as it is for you. In the years to come, I hope you will look back upon this first day here with the same warm memories that I have.

"Now, before I send you out into the store, I'd like to tell you a little more about our operation here at Zander's. First of all, you will all be covered by our compulsory management group health, sickness and accident insurance policy. Two dollars and fifty cents a week will be deducted from your salary for this. This brings us to our wonderful Executive Employees' Profit Sharing Plan. For every five dollars a week that we hold back from your salary, Mr. Zander adds another fifty cents. The money goes into an investment fund, where it grows and grows and grows, so that if you stay with the company and live to be sixty-five it's all yours again. I know sixty-five may seem to you young men a long ways from now, but tempus fugit--time flies. You'll be old before you know what's happened to you."

He stopped for a second and glanced at his watch. I looked at mine. It was almost nine. The store opened at 9:30.

"Now, about lunch," he began again. "Mr. Zander would like all his young executives to have their twenty-five-minute lunch break with him in the Executive Dining Room every day. He feels that, in this manner, he will be able to discuss immediately store problems that will arise daily, without having to disrupt your work. Eight dollars a week will be deducted for lunch." He made another check with his pencil.

"Now, in addition to lunch, there will be the full-scale executive board meetings every Tuesday and Thursday nights, from seven to ten in the evening. All of you will be expected to attend these twice-weekly meetings, without exception, of course--which brings us down to the last three items on the agenda. Compensation, individual assignments and the washrooms." He walked to the door, looked out as if to see if anybody was listening, and then returned to sit on the edge of his desk.

"Starting salary," and I swear he had lowered his voice, "is sixty-five dollars a week--before deductions." My heart sank and I saw a number of spots before my eyes. He was kidding!? He had to be! "After three months," he continued, "there is one four-dollar-and-fifty-cent raise, and after that, men, well, just let me say this: The sky's the limit! The washrooms. The executive washrooms are on the seventh floor. Don't use them, please. They are not constructed to handle large crowds--and since we are completely filled up now, your names will be placed on a waiting list, and as soon as there is a vacancy, you will individually receive your keys. Let me see--oh, yes--the employees' washrooms are on the first, third and fifth floors. Don't use these, either! As you may know, this store is organized, and the employees are all members of Local Six-fifty-seven, Department Store Workers. They feel the washrooms should be used solely for union members; and even though Mr. Zander denied it emphatically, when they accused us last year of bugging the third-floor washroom, we lost the case in arbitration. There are, however, several nice washrooms on the main floor that are for customers. Please bear with us and use these for the time being.

"OK," he said, "that covers that. Finally, we get to assignments. Burdick..."

"Yes, sir," the young man in the dark flannel suit replied.

"You will be in Men's Shoes."

"Thank you, sir." He stood up and approached the desk. De Costa reached into a cardboard box and handed him a large round yellow button, about the size of a softball.

"Put this on, Burdick, and wear it at all times." The button read, in large black letters:

Please don't Talk to Me--I'm in Training

"Is that all, sir?" Burdick wanted to know, sliding the pin of the button into his lapel.

"It is for now, Burdick. Report to Mr. Higgins in Men's Shoes and he'll get you started."

"Thank you, sir."

"Good luck." We all shook his hand and he left, his face glowing, his jaw set.

"Wayne." I stood up and got my button. "Wayne, you're going to be in Budget Bags." I smiled wanly. "I thought you'd like that, Wayne," Mr. De Costa said.

"It's what I was hoping for, sir," I replied, still slightly dazed from the salary letdown, but always game.

"Main floor, Wayne. Mr. Ryan is waiting."

"Thank you, sir. So long, fellows."

"So long," they all waved back.

• • •

It was 9:27 and there I was. All dressed up in my new suit and poised for action. Mr. Ryan introduced me to the eight girls in my department and then disappeared. Probably to see if his name had come up on the washroom list yet, I thought.

It was a very strange sensation, let me tell you, standing there in a deserted department store next to eight girls and nine booths filled with hundreds of $1.98, $2.48, $3.19, $3.49, $3.98 and $4.28 ladies' handbags. I rocked back and forth on my heels and lit a cigarette. One of the girls saw me and shook her head. Another girl pointed to a large sign on the wall: No Smoking.

Oh, that was a nice touch, I told myself as I ground the cigarette out under my shoe. Then I looked, for the first time, toward the front of the store, and what I saw gave me a nervous jolt I still, to this day, haven't fully recovered from. My God, it was awful!

Hundreds of them waiting to get in, their faces pressed in grotesque distortion up against the glass doors. I walked closer to the huge front doors and smiled out at them. They didn't smile back. I held up my hand and wriggled my fingers in a friendly greeting. Several of them held up their hands and waved their fists back at me in obvious hostility.

And then the gong sounded and I saw two uniformed guards approach the doors from either side of the store. Thank God, I thought, they're going to chase them away.

"Ready, Harry?" the first guard asked, his lower lip trembling.

"Ready, Lou," the second guard whispered, kneeling down, his face white, a key in his hand.

"Don't let them in!" I yelled, when I realized what they were about to do; but it was too late. My scream was lost in an explosion of thundering feet, smashing, hurtling bodies and calls of:

"C'mon, Laura, the elastic stockings are this way!"

"Shut your mouth, Jeffrey, or I'll really give you something to cry about!"

"Quick, Marge, stick it in your pocket and nobody'll notice." Stunned, I fought my way back to my department.

"Mr. Wayne," I heard a voice. "We're over here." It was one of the girls in Budget Bags, holding out an arm. I reached for it, but just then an elderly lady gave me a shove and I was knocked off balance and into Men's Toiletries.

"Excuse me," I said to a dark-haired lad, also wearing a Please Don't Talk to Me--I'm in Training button.

"You'll get used to it," he smiled, showing a mouth full of missing teeth and pointing to his button when somebody tried to ask him a question.

"I'll be seeing you," I said, making headway back to my area.

• • •

The little 17-year-old Puerto Rican boy in the dirty overalls was trying to tell me something.

"I can't talk to you," I said, pointing to the talisman on my lapel.

"Sure you can," he raised his voice. "I'm Joe Gomez, Mr. Wayne, your assistant."

"Oh, I see. Hi." I put my hand out and he hesitated for a beat before shaking it.

"It's ten o'clock now," he began.

"Time to go down cellar and bring up more bags."

"All right," I told him. "Go ahead."

"You, too," he said. "I need help." I looked over at one of the girls and she nodded.

"We need two hundred Model A-twenty-twos, three hundred B-sixty-fives, one hundred F-thirty-fours----"

"Wait a second, I'll get a pencil," I told her.

"Here, Mr. Wayne," Joe said, tossing me a black crayon.

"Thanks, Joe. Go ahead, dear."

"My name is Celia Rogers, Mr. Wayne. And I'm not a dear," she frowned.

"I'm sorry," I apologized. "I'll be sure to remember that from now on." I looked over at Joe and he was laughing, but not at me, I later found out.

Five minutes later, we were in the cellar loading hundreds of handbags into huge cardboard containers on wheels.

"You'd better take off your jacket, Mr. Wayne, before it gets ruined."

"Thanks, Joe," I said.

"Here, let me help you," he offered.

"I can manage," I told him. I removed the jacket and hung it on a nail. Then we went back to loading.

"Some job, huh?" Joe commented as we laboriously pushed the big containers toward the elevator.

"Awful," I smiled, happy at least to find someone who was sharing this terrible experience.

"I hate it, too," he said. "I would've quit long time ago, except money is so good."

"Good?" I laughed, as we rode upstairs in the giant freight elevator. I could imagine, if I got $65 a week, what he got must have been meager.

"I can't complain," he began. "Ninety-five a week ain't bad for forty hours." I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, furious that anyone would want to "put me on" at a moment like this.

"You're a liar!" I yelled.

"About what?" he yelped, tearing himself loose.

"About getting ninety-five dollars a week," I charged. "I only get sixty-five, and you're my assistant." I felt ashamed of myself the moment I said it, so help me, but Joe looked up at me and smiled warmly.

"Yeah, I know that, Mr. Wayne. But I belong to the union," and he showed me his button--not a big yellow one, but a small black one, pinned on his thin gray wallet, "and you don't."

"Could I join?" I asked him as the elevator came to a slow halt.

We pushed the cartons across the store and over to my department. It was a long journey. There must be something about merchandise that is being taken somewhere, anywhere, that lends it a certain attraction. It's a kind of "Let's grab it, girls, before they hide it on us" attitude.

It was hard to believe, but by the time we reached the Budget Bag Center, we had a following of over 20 fiercely competitive, hysterical women--all trying to purchase only those bags in the large containers that we had brought up from the cellar.

However, the minute we put the bags into the glass showcases and onto the shelves of the wooden booths, these same women seemed to lose interest and drifted away to other parts of the store.

Seven trips I made with Joe Gomez that morning to the cellar of Zander's. Seven times we loaded up on ladies' handbags and then fought our way back to our department.

"It's a slow morning," Joe told me as we started down for our eighth trip.

"What's it like when business is good?" I wanted to know. He showed me two little white scars on his shin.

"Last Christmas," he recalled, painfully, "I was carrying some A-twenty-twos up from cellar when she saw me. I start to run for like to hide in men's room. But it is no good. She catch me by water fountain."

"She kicked you with her heel?" I asked sympathetically.

"No, she bit me with her teeth," he told me.

Lunchtime finally came. I left Joe Gomez in the cool cellar with his brown paper bag and hurried to the men's room on the main floor. There I washed my face and hands, then slipped back into my white shirt and jacket, tied my tie, shined my shoes with my handkerchief and headed for the Executive Dining Room. God, I was tired.

I staggered into the long, wood-paneled dining room that was already half filled, found myself a seat at the far end of the 50-foot table and flopped down, exhausted, my head spinning.

First you get your fruit cup, I remembered a girl I once knew saying as she described a certain restaurant she had liked in Darien. Then you get your soup. Then you get your bread and butter, or your hot rolls.

At the head of the table, a million miles away, it seemed, Mr. Zander was sitting. Was he speaking? I couldn't tell over the roar of the other voices and the steady piping of the Muzak that filled the air. I reached for my glass of water and it slipped out of my hand, crashing to the floor. Two waiters in white came running over with mops--or were they nets? They should be nets, I thought. Yes, they should. For me. That's right, for me, because I'm crazy. Crazy to be sitting here like this. Then I suddenly asked myself why I was sitting there like that, and I began to tremble all over.

I dimly know that I got up and started out of the dining room, and somebody whispered, "Sit down, he's talking," and I halfway heard him and ignored him altogether. And then I was out on a fire escape, sweating in an icy breeze and breathing fast and deep.

Is this me? Yes. Am I really here? You are really here. Why? I got no answer from myself.

"Why?!" I blared, banging on a smoke-blackened railing until I split the sides of my hands. "Why?! For what?!"

What's with you, Helen? I asked myself. And what's with you? I asked myself. How did she do this to me? Why did you let her?

"Because you wanted to be a man," I told myself dolefully. "Don't blame her because you can't make the grade. The fault, dear Brutus, is----"

"Up yours!" I yelled at myself.

For $65 a week this degradation! Sixty-five minus deductions! That's $52 and then it commences with $8 for lunch and $5 for profit sharing and $2.50 for nose blowing. What does that amount to? What will I have to put in my pocket to buy me a piece of the great American dream?! What exactly?! No con! Dollars and cents! Thirty-six dollars and fifty cents! That was it! The grand, grimy, gamy total!

Screw you, too, I stated to the noonday sun.

• • •

I walked past the empty desk of his secretary and, without breaking stride, flung open the door of the gigantic inner office. Mr. Zander looked up, asking with his eyes what the hell I was doing in his office. With his mouth, he said:

"Come in." I walked over to the desk and rested my weight on the palms of my hands. "What is it that you want?"

"I want to thank you," I said. Mr. Zander raised his eyebrows.

"You don't have to thank me," he said. "We have to take new men on. Nothing personal," he added.

But I said I thanked him just the same.

"For what?" Mr. Zander asked.

"I've learned a lot here," I told him.

"Yes," Mr. Zander smiled. "So soon?"

"It didn't take long," I said. "Just in these few hours, I have realized the importance of something that I thought I should forget about. Not that I blame other people, but they thought I should forget about it, too. If I had never become an employee here, Mr. Zander, the chances are that I might never have figured out that to me it is the most important thing in the world."

"What is?" Mr. Zander asked, and I told him.

"My father's money," I said. Mr. Zander's forehead crinkled and he squinted up through startled eyes, as narrow as a Chinaman's.

"How's that?" he asked.

"My father," I told him, "could buy you and sell you with one telephone call, Mr. Zander." Mr. Zander sat back and folded his hands as if he thought I was maybe going to make him an offer. "I do not need this job. Clap, R.O.T.C. and this job are three of the many things I want no part of. I'm here because I was mixed up. I am not mixed up any longer. I have plans now, Mr. Zander. Plans!" Mr. Zander popped his eyes up at me, maybe waiting to hear what my plans might be.

"I plan," I said, "to make the most of life in as pleasant and comfortable and expensive a way as I know how! I will be deaf, dumb and blind to all people with a purpose, and never again as long as I live will I miss a chance to sleep late and enjoy myself without breaking my ass." I felt my heart rising and heard my voice rising with it.

"I thank you, Mr. Zander. I thank you for teaching me to take advantage of my real opportunities and to make the most of the chance I've got to make sure that never again will I be in a position to be victimized by a person like yourself. A person who makes a point of getting fifty times his money's worth for every dime he pays his employees--nonunionized, of course, I mean."

By now, I did feel kind of grateful to the owner of Zander's, third largest department store in the world; and however it sounded, I meant it the way I said it.

"My purpose in life from now on will be to avoid, in every way, proving that I can make it on my own!" Mr. Zander sat staring up at me, and then he cleared his throat with such a harsh harrumph that I stepped back a little, half expecting he might attack me. He stood up with a very somber look on his face and then, to my surprise, stretched out his hand.

"OK," he told me. "Have a real nice time."

• • •

I have never been in jail and gotten out, but I have been in Zander's. Zander's will do. For me there is no prison like Zander's. Leavenworth, Dartmoor, Sing-Sing. Bad enough. But most of the people who get put in them get out in time, and all of them can hope. Only those who go to Zander's never get out. It is either Zander's or another Zander's. Or a coal mine or an insurance office or a steel mill or a canning factory. Zander's--all Zander's. The trapped can go from one to another, up, down or sideways, but they can never break out of the orbit. Only the dead can beat the rap. Only the dead and the mad...

"... And me," I gritted through clenched teeth to myself, "I can get out. It proves not one damned thing that I can escape, but thank God I can!"

I had a drink at a bar on Charles Street to wash the taste of the day out of my mouth--and the thought of all the trapped who had to stay and could never leave and were stuck in the pits forever.

"My God," I said to myself, "my God in heaven."

• • •

When I opened the door of our apartment, I knew I had to be careful. The rage inside me was like a rage I'd never known. Pure white and one-dimensional.

I heard the water running in the shower, and then she came out of the bathroom and we stood face to face.

Her eyebrows went up.

"Home early, aren't you?"

"I got a reprieve from the governor," I said.

"What's that?"

"I have a very interesting theory about slavery," I said. "Want to hear it?"

"No."

"It stinks," I told her.

"What the devil are you talking about, Perry?"

"It was a case of mistaken identity, Helen. I thought I was somebody else," I said. "I thought I was a fellow named John Doe who had to let himself be beaten over the head daily from nine to five."

She wasn't following me, so I laid it out simply. "I don't like working at Zander's," I told her.

"You'll get used to it," she said.

"I don't think so, Helen."

"It may take a little time."

"It won't take any part of my time."

"You've been drinking."

"Just celebrating."

"What?"

"My liberation," I told her. "I've quit."

She stood, frozen, staring at me. "You haven't."

"I turned in my handcuffs and walked out."

"This--isn't possible."

I sat down in a chair and looked up at her.

"Helen, it was sixty-five dollars a week. And there was no big office. Only the cellar and a lot of two-dollar, forty-eight-cent handbags----"

"Look," she began to plead, "we'll give back the house and the cars. It doesn't matter. I love the furniture. So we'll buy better stuff someday. Go back--tell them you weren't feeling well-- we can manage, somehow."

"Helen," and I tried to keep my voice as steady as I could, under the circumstances, "I'm going to work for my father."

At this announcement, she flung herself on the bed, hands in her hair, feet kicking against the wall, as she built herself up into a real first-class tantrum. I tried one last time.

"Helen, I spend the whole day at Zander's. Helen--stop chewing the bedspread and listen--beneath all the phony tinsel and promises, Zander's is the same business as my father's business. But there, in Connecticut, since I was lucky enough to be born my father's son, I'll be my father's son, instead of a glorified stock clerk who would, if he should live through it, get to be in twenty years what I can be tomorrow morning!" She stopped tearing the sheets into strips long enough to look dry-eyed up at me and answer.

"What about your promise? What about the way I feel? What about your own self-respect?"

"One at a time, please," I told her. "First, my promise. I'm breaking it. My life is more important. Second, what about the way you feel? I think you'd rather have me love you the way I am than hate you later for what I couldn't be. Third, what about my own self-respect...?"

"Well, what about it?" she taunted. "If you don't make it on your own, you'll never have any, that's what!"

"Really? What about Alexander the Great? He didn't make it on his own. His father was Philip of Macedon. Did that stop him?"

That's when she threw the clock radio at me.

"And Jefferson, and Tolstoy and Freud, and don't forget Moses, who was a prince of Egypt"--I continued, as she now stood there, feet planted firmly in the rug, head down, beating her fists on my chest--"all sons of rich men who, because they did have money, had time to watch and observe the inequalities of society and then eventually change the world, each in his own way."

"You dare to compare----" she shrieked, now slamming about the apartment, breaking dishes--the cheap set.

"And Kennedy, and Shakespeare, and Grace Kelly, not to forget your troops." I was following her around now, laughing, slapping at her behind with a big wooden salad spoon. Whack!

She spun around suddenly and there we were, eyeball to eyeball, on the 54th parallel. Our moment of truth.

"I'm not Horatio Alger, Helen," I said quietly.

"Who are you, then?" she asked, and she meant it, cold, scalpel clear. "Who the hell are you?"

"I don't know," I told her, happy to be telling someone who wasn't a doctor the truth for the first time in six months. "I thought maybe you'd know." She just stood there staring at me. It must have been at least a minute, and then for the first time since I can remember, tears, big wet ones, started rolling down one cheek.

"You're a weak shit!"

"Among other things," I said.

"Oh, God..." her lower lip began shaking. "I'm all screwed up, too, Perry. The way I think and the way I feel are eight million miles apart." I took her by the shoulders and pulled her close into me.

"Love counts for something, Helen."

"No, not enough," and her whole body was shaking.

"C'mon," I told her, but gently, "if we hurry, maybe we can beat the traffic back home."

• • •

Breakfast was delicious. Marie was getting to be a more proficient cook every day. I reminded myself to raise her salary ten dollars at the end of the month.

"Marie," I said.

"Yes, sir," and her simple, honest British face was wreathed in smiles.

"No one," I said, "makes eggs Benedict quite like you do." She blushed as if I had told her she looked like Gina Lollo-brigida, and though Helen does not like me to spoil the servants, she nevertheless could not help smiling at this display of generosity.

"I thank you, sir," Marie said, dropping a little curtsy. Things like this curtsy, and her way of saying "No, mum" and "Very good, sir" cost me an extra $55 a month, but what the hell!

She showed her gratitude by being at the door, all smiles, when I came out of the sunroom ready for the day ahead. Though it was not her place, she held my Inquahart Burberry for me, presented me with my Borsalino homburg and the monogrammed black thorn that I have recently learned to think of as my boon companion.

"Good morning, sir," she said, and then Helen, lovely in a capricious little breakfast gown by Molyneux, trailed out and kissed me.

"The Mouton-Rothschild blanc is running low," she reminded me, and I promised to have Hawthorne and Bleakley send in a case.

The morning air was a little chill and I was dubious for a moment whether the car was going to start. But when I switched the key and stroked the starter, the motor sprang into that rich, harmonious throbbing that I love. Not an ostentatious little car, I thought, but a credit to Aston Martin. The tires rattled through the brown leaves of the driveway, and I reminded myself to speak to Charles about them.

• • •

The railroad platform in Westport was crowded with commuters; haggard, worried, harassed men, most of them my own age, hastily dressed and half breakfasted in their anxiety lest they miss the 8:45 for New York. It was not a merry sight, but, to me, it was a small annoyance. Very small, since the crowded platform was across the tracks from me.

As the poor souls pushed and packed their way into the coaches, my own train, New Haven bound, rolled quietly into place and Perkins, the sexagenarian conductor who had come to know me, said:

"Good morning, Mr. Wayne," his breath smoking in the nippish air and his shoulders slightly stooped with years of honest toil.

It occurred to me that I should give him something fitting for Christmas. Then, into the coach and my own old seat near the center, thankful that, though I could make no use of all the seats, they were all empty and available.

An easy stirring jolt and the train was off through the varicolored stretches of autumnal Connecticut, and I glanced at my Lucian Piccard horologue and saw, with mild pleasure, that I would have time to finish the last ten pages of The Charterhouse of Parma.

• • •

Later that afternoon, Jeff Zander and I stood on the first tee of the Riviera Country Club in North Branford. The sky was blue, the wind brisk off the Sound. I borrowed a ball from my old friend and selected a driver from one of the Negro caddies.

"A hundred a hole?" Jeff asked, the brim of his cap flapping in the breeze.

"Sure," I told him, bending over to tee the ball. "You know, it's funny, we're victims of our own attitudes. I thought I'd feel guilty about all of this. Instead, I find myself with more time to read, to listen to good music, to go to the theater. It's marvelous. Isn't it? Or--did we sell out?"

"For Christ's sake, Perry!"

"Look, if we did, we're still young enough, I mean, we could----"

"Per, it's such a beautiful Thursday afternoon. Feel that sun. Smell that fresh air, and then think about all the others and what they're doing right now."

"Ugh. But aren't we different, better, Jeff? Couldn't we have done----"

"Perry, will you stop talking and just play the game?"

"But----"

"Just hit the ball, Perry, hit it nice and straight right up the middle of the fairway."

I did.