Читать книгу The Last Government Girl - Ellen Herbert - Страница 11

5

“Stay close,” Eddie told Rachel.

Union Station’s covered platform overflowed with people shouting to be heard. Thunder rumbled overhead. Pandemonium reigned.

With her pulse in her throat, Eddie couldn’t stop looking around. She was finally, finally, finally here.

“Never been in a city before.” Pearl squeezed Eddie’s forearm. “I’m so scared.”

Eddie patted Pearl’s hand. “I feel like a country mouse, too.” The city’s vastness loomed around her. Mut, she told herself, courage.

They stood beside their stacked luggage. Rachel had two suitcases in addition to her compact case and hat box. Eddie’s giant suitcase, so heavy she could barely lift it, contained her typewriter and her beloved German-English dictionary.

How would they find their way with all their baggage?

Eddie noticed Pearl carried only a feed sack. Her curiosity pricked, she said, “By the way, Pearl, where are you staying in Washington?”

Pearl didn’t answer.

Rachel took hold of Pearl’s shoulders. “Where are you billeted, Pearl?”

“Same as you two, with Eddie’s aunt.” Pearl’s grip on Eddie tightened. “Don’t leave me, please.”

“Of course, we won’t,” Rachel told her.

Eddie didn’t believe Pearl, but it was almost midnight, too late to argue. They had to find Aunt Viola’s house and get ready for tomorrow, their first day working for the government.

Rachel summoned a porter to help with their suitcases. Rachel had traveled to Washington before, even to New York City with her father on buying trips for their department store. She had seen the world and it showed.

They helped the wiry cinnamon-colored man load their things onto a cart. “Coming through,” he called and pushed the cart. The crowd parted. He led them onto an elevator.

Upstairs in the lobby, Eddie craned her neck to take in the gorgeous vaulted ceiling and arched doorways. She felt as if they had joined a huge party. The lobby pulsed with young women, other soon-to-be government girls, who wore their skirts short, long and in-between, and spoke English with strange accents. Few wore hats, none had on gloves. They were modern women, and Eddie felt kinship with them. They had come to Washington to be typists, file clerks, secretaries, but they were soldiers in this war as much as men in uniforms.

The porter stacked their suitcases beside a revolving door and accepted the tip Rachel gave him. “Can we get a taxi out there?” Rachel pointed to the portico.

“Yes, Ma’am.” He touched his cap’s bill. “But tonight there are too many folks and not enough taxicabs. One of you needs to stand in that line and wait. Sorry I…”

“Rachel, look.” Eddie pointed to a sign above the crowd that read Miss Rachel Margolis. Eddie started toward the sign when Rachel pulled her back.

“Papa must have called our cousin and asked for someone to meet us.” Rachel bit her bottom lip. “I want nothing to do with whoever it is.”

“Bless your father for sending someone to take us to Aunt Viola’s.”

The sign moved closer, held by a young man in starched overalls.

“Please, I have money for a taxi.” Rachel squeezed Eddie’s hand.

Eddie understood. They wanted to be independent.

Outside a crowd jostled for taxis. “Rachel, look at me.” When their eyes met, Eddie said, “If we have to wait for a taxi, we might be here for hours, and we need to report to the Pentagon by 9:00 tomorrow morning.”

Rachel huffed, brought her hair over her shoulders, and made her way through the crowd toward the man with the sign. After Eddie told Pearl to wait beside the door and watch their things, she followed.

“Whoever you are, please put that sign away,” Rachel said to the man. “It’s embarrassing.”

“You must be Rachel.” The man folded the sign and slipped it under his arm. “I’m Dan Wozniak. I work for your cousin, Mr. Meyer Rosen.”

Dan, tall and barrel-chested, had sullen cupid bow lips, a thick curtain of lashes above small dark eyes that focused on Rachel. In that way he was like most men for Rachel was head-turning gorgeous. Even in this huge crowd of young women, she stood out.

“Mr. Rosen sent me to take you and your friend to Georgia Avenue.”

“Do you have identification?” Rachel crossed her arms over her chest.

From his wallet, he took his driver’s license and handed it to her. “But since you’ve never heard of me, there’s this, too.” He pointed to the patch on his pocket, where a long- stemmed red rose and the words, Rose Clothing, were stitched.

“If he knows your name and that we’re staying on Georgia Avenue, Mr. Rosen must have sent him,” Eddie said to Rachel. To Dan, Eddie asked, “Doesn’t your factory make uniforms for the military?”

“Right. Rose is the second largest military uniform supplier on the East Coast.” This said with pride.

“Okay, I guess you are who you say you are.” Rachel pointed to their pile of luggage. “Those are our things.”

They walked to the revolving door, where Eddie introduced everyone.

Pearl said, “Howdy, Dan.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Okay, Rubes. Get your suitcases. Let’s go.”

“You mean you’re not going to carry our things?” Rachel’s face turned fiery.

“That’s not how it works in DC these days, Princess. I’m betting most of this luggage is yours.” He thrust a thumb at their things. “You brought it, you carry it.”

Eddie sighed. She was accustomed to dealing with difficult people like her mother, her father, even her students. “If we each take two bags, we can make it in one trip.”

“Okay, Eddie. It’s a deal.” Dan took her heavy suitcase.

“I guess chivalry isn’t dead after all.” Rachel’s flush receded.

“Dead as a doornail in this town,” Dan said. “We got a factory full of gals doing men’s work. Women don’t need knights in shining armor anymore.”

“Lucky,” Rachel told him, “since all the knights are Over There and we women are left with the schlubs.”

Eddie swallowed a laugh, hoping Dan wouldn’t get insulted and leave them.

He lowered his lashes halfway, his expression sly. “The fewer guys here, the more gals I gotta fight off, and I got the scars to prove it. I’d like to show them to you sometime.” He winked at Rachel before he went through the revolving door.

Under a low muddy sky, they lugged their things down the sidewalk behind him. In front of Union Station, an artillery gun was pointed upward, a reminder of the enemy.

Dan stopped beside a white truck, which resembled a milkman’s van, and opened its back, lined with canvas floor to ceiling. He jumped in. “Pass ‘em up here.”

Once everything was loaded, Dan leapt down, and Pearl hoisted herself into the back. “I’ll ride in here.”

Before Eddie could protest, Dan said, “No, you won’t, Red.” He took Pearl’s hand and helped her back onto the pavement. In the process, he stroked her bottom. Pearl’s grin went wide as a hammock, and she winked at him.

Eddie and Rachel exchanged a look of disgust.

“Nothing rides in back, except uniforms,” Dan said. “We all got to squeeze in the truck’s cab, cozy-like.” He lowered the door, which rumbled like soft thunder.

Eddie and Rachel let Pearl get in next to Dan. Rachel whispered to Eddie, “My cousin’s employee is a real peach.”

“Dummkopf,” Eddie said. Stupid head. Often German words sounded like what they meant as did Yiddish. Saying them released emotion.

Pearl scooted close to Dan on the bench seat, Eddie and Rachel beside her.

Dan maneuvered his way through taxis and cars, coming so close to a brightly lit streetcar, Eddie had to close her eyes. They pulled up to a red light on North Capitol Street lined with turreted row houses that reminded Eddie of a block-long castle. She drank in the city, trying to remember street names and storefronts. Once she knew Washington, she would feel as if she belonged. How she wanted to belong.

Soon he turned onto Georgia Avenue, where houses appeared behind picket fences and the aroma of baking bread wafted. A bakery was nearby. He stopped in front of a narrow yellow three-story. A streetlight lit the patch of front lawn planted with staked tomatoes and peppers, a victory garden.

Rachel opened the passenger door, and they spilled onto the sidewalk.

Three men emerged from the vine-covered porch. One of them ran down the sidewalk and opened the gate. “Hey there, Edwina, I’m your cousin, Bert.” He was a big florid man with a handsome face, his parted hair shiny with Vitalis, wearing some sort of uniform. He threw his arms around her and squeezed so hard he lifted her off her feet. “I’m so glad you and your friend have come to live with us.”

Warmed by his welcome, Eddie took his hand, which felt rough to the touch. Bert, a decade older than Eddie, had been described by her dad as a strange overgrown mama’s boy. As usual, her father’s judgment was too harsh.

She introduced her cousin to Rachel and Pearl.

Bert said, “And these men here are from Rose Clothing, waiting for a ride back to Silver Spring.”

“I’m Luca,” the shorter one told them. “And this is my friend, Tony.”

Luca, a short freckled redhead, was almost Pearl’s doppelganger. Slender Tony had dark good looks, but wore his shyness like armor, his eyes meeting only Luca’s.

Dan emerged from the truck, a cigarette dangling from his mouth like a movie gangster.

“Hey, Dan,” Luca said. “Remember you said you’d give us a ride if we met you here?”

“Sure, cutters. How else you gonna get back to work?”

Luca turned to them. “See, we’re cloth cutters at Rose Clothing, and Dan’s our boss.”

“First, give me a hand here,” Dan said to the men and lifted the truck’s backdoor. “These hillbilly gals brought everything they own from Southwest Virginia.”

Once their things were on the porch, Dan gave Rachel a letter. “This is from Mrs. Rosen. They expect you next Friday night for Shabbat. I’ll pick you up here at 7:30.”

Frowning, Rachel took the letter. “But what if I don’t want…”

“The Rosens remember you from when you were little.” He dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk and pressed his toe into it. “They’re swell, you’ll see.”

He turned to Luca and Tony. “Let’s go, cutters. The midnight shift calls.” He went down the walk and through the gate toward his truck, Tony in his wake.

“Wait a minute, boss,” Luca yelled and drew Pearl aside. “May I have your telephone number, Pearl? Sure would like to show you Washington.” He offered her a pen and a matchbook.

Matches reminded Eddie of her mother, who sometimes set fires. She needed to send a list of things her sisters must do before Mama returned home. At the top of the list: hide the matches.

“All righty.” Pearl smiled at Luca and handed the matchbook to Bert. “Could you write your telephone number?” Grinning, Bert wrote and passed it back to Luca.

This exchange was wartime and romantic. Everyone wanted to live their own version of Casablanca.

Dan eased the truck away from the curb and honked. Luca ran and got aboard.

“Okay, Eddie.” Bert gestured to the house. They followed him onto the porch. “Mama’s in the parlor waiting for ya’ll.” He opened the front door and stood back.

Eddie hesitated. This was what she dreaded.