I didn’t want to get fired. I was making money. And spending it. I shopped at ritzy stores on Union Square if only to buy a pair of nylons at I Magnin’s, rather than walk down to The Emporium on Market. I liked feeling rich, forget for a while that I lived in a third-floor walk-up, share-the-bath apartment on Grove off Divisadero with my Dad. One day, a big, raw-boned girl, with straight, light brown hair, wearing a flowery dress, flounced in sans lighter. She gave me a huge smile and asked for Mr. Tilles. She had an appointment. I sent her on back. The next day, Ken called me into his office. He was going to fire me for screwing up again. I'd had maybe one cash imbalance in over a week. I decided to come clean. I would let him do all the talking then I’d tell him. He motioned me to a chair.
“Look, sweetheart, I’m afraid . . .” was how he began. “ . . . I have to take you off the counter.” I tightened my lips and nodded. “You are not working out. I like you, you’re a cute kid, and I know you’re saving for college.” I cringed, inwardly.
“I understand, Mr. Tilles,” I heard myself stammer, “I haven’t been - -”
“Let me finish, please?” he said, sitting on the edge of his desk, “So I’m putting you in Shipping and Receiving. You’ll give Linda a hand,” he spoke fast, “I think you’ll work out well there. I’ve hired a new counter girl. She’s starting tomorrow. So when you come in, report to Linda.” He nodded, went behind his desk, “Oh,” he added as he sat down, “you’ll get the same pay.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tilles, thank you.” I’d just been demoted from counter-girl to shipping clerk. I held my arms tight to my sides, hoping to stop the sweat I felt streaming down my ribs from pooling on the floor when I stood up to leave. My skirt stuck to the back of my legs. I reached behind me and pulled it free. I knew he was watching. I didn’t care. I still had a job.
Beth, the new hire for counter-girl ended up being that tall, raw-boned girl, with a penchant for flowery dresses. She gave me her big sugary smile when I passed the counter the next day and pushed through the door in the partition. Shipping and Receiving was off to the side of Ken’s office and the repair area.
Linda turned out to be a gravelly-voiced, mannish-woman with straight brown hair down to her shoulders. She reminded me of my junior-high PE teacher. She gave me a limp, but clean, jacket. “Hey, I know they’re ugly, but it’ll keep your duds clean. On the plus side, hon, you can wear flats. We can smoke back here, too.”
(Rules forbade John and Pete from lighting up while they worked, but they could smoke in the back. On breaks they sat on the sills of huge windows of opaque, pebbled glass, which you opened by pulling on heavy chains, overlooking a narrow alley. Ironically, we all used book matches. Pete told me they didn’t own a Ronson. “Nah,” he explained, “we mess with ‘em all day, don’t want to see ‘em if we don’t have to.” Smoking was not allowed at the counter, except for customers who puffed on cigarettes and blew smoke in my face. I thought nothing of it. This was the ‘50s; everyone smoked. My crutch was Pall Mall; but “Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should,” and doctors all agreed that Camels were the best.)
Linda explained my duties as I slipped into my jacket: “People mail in lighters for repairs. The crew fixes ‘em and we ship ‘em out. And we get supplies and store ‘em up on those shelves. Piece a cake.” She snapped her fingers. During a break, I pulled Philip Wylie’s novel, The Disappearance, out of my bag; Linda told me she’d read it. I knew we’d get along fine. Later, she demonstrated how to package lighters so they wouldn’t get damaged in the mail, how to label stuff, and use the postage meter. Along the wall were rolls of heavy brown paper and on the shelves below, cardboard that folded into boxes, with stiff flaps that cut my fingers when I overlapped them. (Holding up her bandaged fingers, Linda showed me a cabinet stocked with first aid supplies.) Heavy metal containers that looked like giant scotch tape dispensers held big rolls of brown paper tape, with glue on one side. A brush, wet from a water well in the container that we had to keep filled, brushed the gluey side of the paper as we pulled it out to the desired length, ripped it off and slapped it onto a package. This took some skill. At first I got tangled up in the wet, sticky brown tape that smelled like stale urine. We weighed the packages then Linda showed me how to use the postage meter. She gave me the onerous job of hauling the heavy machine to the post office two blocks away to get reset. Still, I could relax, smoke, and sit on the wrapping counter and talk when work was slow. Linda blabbed about John one day, during a break.
“He looks at you like a wounded animal,” she said. “You like him, don’t you?”
“Well . . . . he just seems like he’s in pain all the time, weak, too. I feel sorry for him.”
“His wife just had a baby,” she said, “Huh! Where do you suppose his career as a Ronson lighter repairman will take him?”
“I didn’t think about that,” I said, thinking I wanted to do something for him, make him happy, but what? “He’s twice my age," I added, "I never imagined myself involved with a married man. Older men intimidate me, anyway. Like I said, I just feel sorry for him.”
“Watch it, hon. It’s easy to mistake feeling sorry for something else. Look at Pete and Louise,” she gestured to the work station, “They are perfectly happy. They pride themselves in their work, 'n' feel awful when a lighter's returned with the same problem. John’s are never returned. I’d hate to seem him when one is sent back.”
“He’ll probably break down and cry, get tears all over the work station, everything gets rusty.”
We started laughing and couldn’t stop. I glanced at Mr. Tilles’s office and saw him raise his black, bushy head and frown.
One Saturday, I had to work overtime with him to catch up on the billing. Patty, the billing clerk, was out sick. Ken gave me a bunch of bills to type invoices for. I struggled all morning to finish maybe three. Passing by, on the way out of his office, he laughed, looking at me over his half-glasses.
“You’re really burning up that typewriter, aren’t you?” I felt my face heat up.
“I didn’t apply for the job of typist in the billing department,” I said into the keys. I stopped short of telling him I had flunked typing last semester with a final score of minus six correct words a minute. The lowest score in the class. My friends couldn’t believe it. How was it possible to get a minus score? Ken gave up and handed me a stack of stuff to file, instead. That I could do. He sat down and typed invoices himself - - thick brown fingers, sprouting black hair, stabbing at the keys.
Beth didn't work out. Sales went down; repeat customers kept asking for the “cute little brunette.” Ken put me back behind the counter. He admonished me to count change carefully, pay more attention, and stop flirting with the customers. My liking for him grew, along with my guilt.
I told my fourth lie the last week of August. I gave notice, explaining to Ken I decided, after all, to go to City College when I was really only going into my senior year of high school. He and the others gave me this huge “Good Luck in College” card, which they all had signed. I felt like crying and almost ratted on myself, but got a grip, figuring they’d never find out. Now and then, throughout the school term, I would brazenly drop in on Ken and the rest of the crew after class, dragging out my sham, telling them all about my “college” courses. When Ken Tilles’s jazz quartet played at the Stonestown Mall, I’d be there. Years later, I read that he’d become a bail-bondsman; his name appeared often in Herb Caen’s column. Decades passed. I heard he had died and tons of people attended his funeral. He spoiled me. I thought all bosses would be like Ken Tilles. I was wrong.
Next: Chapter Two - - A Taste of Fame.
In my senior year, I am recruited by The Emporium as a “fashion representative” from Mission High, where I model clothes at in-house fashion shows and do part-time sales on Saturdays. Lee Meriwether, former Miss America and a well-known actress, is selected to represent Washington High.
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