Free Anybody Can Do Anything by Betty MacDonald

might be accompanied by hoarse shouts. “Maybe I’d better put on my coat and see who it is,” I said nervously. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Mary said, “it might be someout-of-town lumberman who has read your financial bulletin.” We both laughed gaily but I was very relieved when the knocking finally stopped.
    Mary was patting eau de Cologne on her neck and shoulders and I was drying my left thigh on the last of Mr. Chalmers’ hand towels, when I thought I heard the outer-office door open and voices. “Did you hear the door open?” I asked Mary. “No,” she said.
    I heard voices again and this time they sounded as if they were coming from the conference room. “Mary,” I said, “do you hear anything?” Spreading her makeup out on Mr. Chalmers’ desk, she said, “Stop being so nervous! You know we’re going to a lot of trouble considering the fact that all the Navy men I’ve ever met were liars, short and married.” We both laughed.
    Just then the door of Mr. Chalmers’ office opened and in charged Mr. Chalmers like a bull from a chute at the rodeo. His face was pomegranate-colored, his cigar hung from his lips like brown fringe, and his voice was a hoarse croak as he roared, “Who locked the door? What in Hell’s going on here?”
    Behind him stood the building office manager, swinging some keys and looking embarrassed. Mary, sitting at Mr. Chalmers’ desk in petticoat and pin curls with all her makeup spread out on his blotter and her pocket mirror propped against his inkstand, said quite calmly, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
    Mr. Chalmers dropped his briefcase and his suitcase and yelled hoarsely, “I’m not supposed to be here? What in hell’s going on?”
    Mary said, “You said you weren’t coming back until next week.”
    Chalmers said, “I wired you this morning.”
    Mary said, “I didn’t get it.”
    He said, “Of course you didn’t. I found it unopenedunder the door. Here,” and he threw the telegram at her. “Now clean up this Goddamn Chinese laundry and get out! You’re fired!” He tripped over his briefcase, kicked it and slammed through the door.
    Mary and I finished dressing, wiped up the spilled bathwater and eau de Cologne, lowered the Venetian blinds, put Mr. Chalmers’ mail on his desk and prepared to leave. Perhaps because Mr. Chalmers was hot and tired and we looked so clean and fresh, he rescinded the order about firing and in gratitude we took him to dinner with us on board the battleship, where he had some excellent Scotch and sat next to the Executive Officer, who turned out to be a bigger “and then I said to Andrew Mellon” and “Otto Kahn said to me” than Mr. Chalmers.
    By the end of six months, Mr. Chalmers’ office force had been increased to include, besides Mary and me, a certified public accountant and a liaison man between Mr. Chalmers and the lumbermen. I was still killing Mr. Chalmers’ flies and filling his fountain pen but I had to take dictation for the liaison man and so Mr. Chalmers was sending me to nightschool for fifteen dollars a month.
    For reasons of pride I did not go back to the nightschool Mr. Webster had sent me to, but chose one further uptown, nearer to my streetcar. My teacher, a nice motherly woman, grew exasperated with my inability to read my notes and made me read them back aloud in front of the whole class, night after dreary night,
    I grew to dread nightschool and probably would have quit if it hadn’t been for the woman who sat across from me. She worked for an insurance company, dressed in black crepe, musky perfumes and big hats and told me that every single good job in the city of Seattle required that the girl also sleep with her boss. “And they won’t get me to do that for eighty dollars a month,” she told me as she furiously practiced her shorthand. “But they might get me for a lotless!” I told myself, as I tried desperately to figure out whether I had written pupil, purple, purposeless,