Girls In 3-B, The Read Online Free PDF Page A

over again. It was paneled in marble like pressed veal and had two thick, swirly, obviously genuine oil paintings on the wall -- you could see the brush marks. In one, an Indian family was sitting in front of their wigwam, or tepee, with a bunch of pine trees in the background. In the other, a black-robed priest was preaching to a respectful Indian congregation. All of the Indians looked alike, with thin, intellectual faces and long noses.
    Feeling snooty about the paintings made her feel better, but then she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror beside the elevator grille and was depressed again. Her hair was either too long or too short, depending, and much too fuzzy in a town where other people wore theirs lacquered flat. Her navy-blue dress had a couple of buttons missing. I need about five hundred dollars worth of new clothes and a good diet, she thought, stepping into the elevator and seeing with a sinking heart that it was self-service. Automatic elevators always made her nervous, not because she was too dumb to run them, of course -- she was as smart as any elevator boy -- but if the damn thing got stuck between floors she wanted it to be somebody else's fault. She punched the 14 button, put her fingers in her ears to equalize the pressure, and waited for the door to stick when the trip was over.
    The door slid open smoothly, and she got out feeling cheated.
    The gold paint was shiny on the outer door of The Fort Dearborn Press and the reception room, although small, was lushly carpeted and lined with shelves of books. There was a mahogany and plate-glass desk with three wire baskets labelled Incoming, Outgoing, and Proofs. The girl behind the desk was reading a long strip of printed paper, moving a plastic ruler down slowly, line by line. A sharp pencil was stuck through her sleek chignon. A cup half full of coffee sat on the edge of the desk, and three or four pink-stained butts lay in the pottery ashtray. She said, "Minute," and marked the paper in front of her. When she got to the end of a line she moved the ruler down and, raising here eyes, gave Pat a good searching look. "You're the girl Jonni called about. The regular receptionist isn't here, in fact she's quitting. That's why the job is open. I'll see if I can find somebody."
    Pat sat down on a straight chair, looking at all the books in colorful jackets with the log-cabin colophon on the backs, wishing she could open some of them but not wanting to seem too much at home. There were some thin ones that were probably poetry, and she thought about Annice --she ought to be here and not me, this is her kind of place. Beyond the open window, office buildings cut sharply into a deep blue late-summer sky dotted with small cottony clouds. The Loop, she thought; this is a Loop office. And suddenly she wanted to work there more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
    The girl came back. "This way," she said indifferently, and Pat followed her down the corridor, aware that her feet hurt and wishing she had worn her straw sandals. The hall was painted fuchsia and was decorated with book jackets Scotch-taped to the walls. Through partly open doors she could see a man talking quietly into a dictating machine, a boy running dittos, a gray-haired woman typing with machine-gun rapidity. The atmosphere was one of quiet concentration.
    "This is Miss Callahan."
    "Thanks, Phyllis. Won't you sit down, Miss Callahan?"
    Everything about this office said Executive, maybe even Top Executive. Signed photographs of authors covered one wall, there were flowers in a pottery jug on the windowsill, and the rug was what Pat vaguely thought of as Oriental. This at a glance, before she looked at the man behind the desk. The effect of that look was like sticking a wire hairpin into an electric outlet. The same jolt, the same zing down the arm and along the backbone.
    He was tall and handsome, a college-athlete type getting a little heavier maybe, a little thick around the