Read Online Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson by Shirley Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

afraid you were one of the sort comes into a shop like this for no good. You know what I mean. Do you know, we’ve had two burglaries in the neighborhood since we’ve been here?”
    Miss Morgan took the hatbox out of her hand and handed her the ten-dollar bill. “I’m in rather a hurry,” Miss Morgan said. The woman disappeared behind a curtain at the back of the shop and came back after a minute with the change. Miss Morgan put the change in her pocketbook; I won’t have enough for a taxi there and back, she thought.
    Wearing the new hat, and carrying the hatbox and her pocketbook and the package, she left the shop, while the woman stared curiously after her. Miss Morgan found that she was a block and a half away from her bus stop, so she started again for it, and she was nearly on the corner before the sound truck came out of a side street, blaring, “Find Miss X, find Miss X, win a Thoroughbred horse and a castle on the Rhine.”
    Miss Morgan settled herself comfortably inside her coat. She had only to cross the street to get to her bus stop, and the bus was coming; she could see it a block away. She stopped to get the fare out of her pocketbook, shifting the package and the hatbox to do so, when the sound truck went slowly past her, shouting, “Miss X has changed her clothes now, but she is still walking alone through the streets of the city, find Miss X! Miss X is now wearing a gray and red hat, and is carrying two packages; don’t forget, two packages.”
    Miss Morgan dropped her pocketbook and the hatbox, and stopped to pick up the small articles that had rolled out of her pocketbook, hiding her face. Her lipstick was in the gutter, her compact lay shattered, her cigarettes had fallen out of the case and rolled wide. She gathered them together as well as she could and turned and began to walk back the way she had come. When she came to a drugstore she went inside and to the phones. By the clock in the drugstore she had been gone just an hour and was only three or four blocks away from her office. Hastily, her hatbox and the package on the floor of the phone booth, she dialed her office number. A familiar voice answered—Miss Martin in the back room, Miss Walpole?—and Miss Morgan said, “Mr. Lang, please?”
    “Who is calling, please?”
    “This is Toni Morgan. I’ve got to speak to Mr. Lang right away, please.”
    “He’s busy on another call. Will you wait, please?”
    Miss Morgan waited; through the dirty glass of the phone booth she could see, dimly, the line of the soda fountain, the busy clerk, the office girls sitting on the high stools.
    “Hello?” Miss Morgan said impatiently. “Hello, hello?”
    “Who did you wish to speak to, please?” the voice said—it might have been Miss Kittredge, in accounting.
    “Mr. Lang, please,” Miss Morgan said urgently. “It’s important.”
    “Just a moment, please.” There was silence, and Miss Morgan waited. After a few minutes impatience seized her again and she hung up and found another nickel and dialed the number again. A different voice, a man’s voice this time, one Miss Morgan did not know, answered.
    “Mr. Lang, please,” Miss Morgan said.
    “Who’s calling, please?”
    “This is Miss Morgan, I must speak to Mr. Lang at once.”
    “Just a moment, please,” the man said.
    Miss Morgan waited, and then said, “Hello? Hello? What is the matter here?”
    “Hello?” the man said.
    “Is Mr. Lang there?” Miss Morgan said. “Let me speak to him at once.”
    “He’s busy on another call. Will you wait?”
    He’s answering my other call, Miss Morgan thought wildly, and hung up. Carrying the package and the hatbox, she went out again into the street. The sound truck was gone and everything was quiet except for the “Find Miss X” posters on all the lampposts. They all described Miss X as wearing a red and gray cap and carrying two packages. One of the prizes, she noticed, was a bulletproof car, another was a life membership in the