Read Online The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Suzanne Rindell
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but her voice was too low for me to hear from across the room. She laughed, and then to my horror the Sergeant chuckled a little, too. Am beginning to dread her arrivals in the mornings, for all the silly blustering that comes in the door along with her.
• • •
I ALWAYS ASSUMED my notes were patchy and sporadic at best, but reviewing them now, I see I was quite thorough. There are a great many more entries in my notebook—as I said, the ones I’ve included here only represent a sampling. But there is no great anomaly in my interest, only in my methods. From the very start Odalie was charming, and she could be very friendly and persuasive when she wanted. The false assumption that Odalie was what one might call a people person was an easy one to make. But in those early weeks, I uncovered a small truth: If one observed Odalie more closely, with a more careful eye (as I was wont to do), one might intuit that Odalie—for all her charm—did not care for most people. When people approached her desk, a very fine yet perceptible tension knit itself around the corners of her mouth, always preceding the wide smile she eventually spread superficially upon her face with the distracted, detached ease of someone spreading butter on toast.
And of course people always wanted to talk to her. If they couldn’t talk
to
her, they settled for talking
about
her. The gossip began one lunchtime while a bunch of us were standing around the pushcarts that sold pierogi wrapped in newspaper and little paper cones of watered-down coffee on the street outside our precinct, and entered an immediate and vigorous repeated cycle that often went something like:
“I heard she went out to California with a fella, but he showed her all about how he had a right hook like Jack Delaney. So she stole his money and ran away.”
“I heard she was in a moving picture once. She danced on top o’ the table with Clara Bow.”
“Oh yeah? How come we never seen the movie, then?”
“Will H. Hays got his meathooks on it and got it banned. Said it was too racy to be showed in public. Wasn’t
decent
,
if ya get my meaning.”
“Well, that’s convenient.”
“What’re ya tryin’ to say?”
“I’m just saying I’ll believe it when I see the picture.”
“And I’m just saying I heard what I heard.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. I think she’s a nice girl.”
“I agree. She’s elegant!”
“Well, I don’t know about that. I heard she was a gangster’s girl. Yeah, see, that’s how come she’s got all that fancy loot—it’s from
him
. They planted her here to get the lowdown on the bootlegging racket. You know how those gangsters are—always trying to plant someone on the inside.”
“Careful, now,” frequently interjected whichever good-hearted individual had conscientiously elected himself to serve as the Voice of Reason. “That’s no laughing matter. You’re potentially besmirching someone’s reputation.”
“I ain’t sayin’ it’s true, I’m just sayin’ I heard it. . . .”
It went on like that most of the time. Once started, it was like a steady chorus humming in the background that wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop. No one ever took credit for having started the rumors, but almost everyone was utterly unapologetic about passing them on. I suppose most of us at the precinct had gotten a little bored with the winos, the rapists, and the bootleggers. Odalie had become our sole source of entertainment, and the fabricators of these rumors (Grayben, Marie, and Harley, mostly) had let their romantic imaginations run off with them; they were trying to fit Odalie into the papers’ latest headlines. Clara Bow, William H. Hays—it was all too recent. Just as with the paternity of my landlady’s youngest child, the time-line surrounding these claims made their feasibility dubious at best.
If Odalie was aware of the rumors swirling around her, she did not show it. Her charm was like an electric
• • •
I ALWAYS ASSUMED my notes were patchy and sporadic at best, but reviewing them now, I see I was quite thorough. There are a great many more entries in my notebook—as I said, the ones I’ve included here only represent a sampling. But there is no great anomaly in my interest, only in my methods. From the very start Odalie was charming, and she could be very friendly and persuasive when she wanted. The false assumption that Odalie was what one might call a people person was an easy one to make. But in those early weeks, I uncovered a small truth: If one observed Odalie more closely, with a more careful eye (as I was wont to do), one might intuit that Odalie—for all her charm—did not care for most people. When people approached her desk, a very fine yet perceptible tension knit itself around the corners of her mouth, always preceding the wide smile she eventually spread superficially upon her face with the distracted, detached ease of someone spreading butter on toast.
And of course people always wanted to talk to her. If they couldn’t talk
to
her, they settled for talking
about
her. The gossip began one lunchtime while a bunch of us were standing around the pushcarts that sold pierogi wrapped in newspaper and little paper cones of watered-down coffee on the street outside our precinct, and entered an immediate and vigorous repeated cycle that often went something like:
“I heard she went out to California with a fella, but he showed her all about how he had a right hook like Jack Delaney. So she stole his money and ran away.”
“I heard she was in a moving picture once. She danced on top o’ the table with Clara Bow.”
“Oh yeah? How come we never seen the movie, then?”
“Will H. Hays got his meathooks on it and got it banned. Said it was too racy to be showed in public. Wasn’t
decent
,
if ya get my meaning.”
“Well, that’s convenient.”
“What’re ya tryin’ to say?”
“I’m just saying I’ll believe it when I see the picture.”
“And I’m just saying I heard what I heard.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. I think she’s a nice girl.”
“I agree. She’s elegant!”
“Well, I don’t know about that. I heard she was a gangster’s girl. Yeah, see, that’s how come she’s got all that fancy loot—it’s from
him
. They planted her here to get the lowdown on the bootlegging racket. You know how those gangsters are—always trying to plant someone on the inside.”
“Careful, now,” frequently interjected whichever good-hearted individual had conscientiously elected himself to serve as the Voice of Reason. “That’s no laughing matter. You’re potentially besmirching someone’s reputation.”
“I ain’t sayin’ it’s true, I’m just sayin’ I heard it. . . .”
It went on like that most of the time. Once started, it was like a steady chorus humming in the background that wouldn’t—couldn’t—stop. No one ever took credit for having started the rumors, but almost everyone was utterly unapologetic about passing them on. I suppose most of us at the precinct had gotten a little bored with the winos, the rapists, and the bootleggers. Odalie had become our sole source of entertainment, and the fabricators of these rumors (Grayben, Marie, and Harley, mostly) had let their romantic imaginations run off with them; they were trying to fit Odalie into the papers’ latest headlines. Clara Bow, William H. Hays—it was all too recent. Just as with the paternity of my landlady’s youngest child, the time-line surrounding these claims made their feasibility dubious at best.
If Odalie was aware of the rumors swirling around her, she did not show it. Her charm was like an electric
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