Regiment of Women Read Free Page B

long since earned the right to sit back and—
    Cornell handed his stenographer’s notebook to Charlie, glazed fingernail pointing to the cryptic passage.
    â€œWould you have any idea what I wrote there?” The earlier mgc , he suddenly understood, meant “magic.”
    Charlie was himself typing, sporadically following some copy to the left of his machine while reading an opened book on the right. He took the notebook and provided an instant translation.
    â€œâ€˜Unmistakable reminders of the old magic’”
    â€œNo, this one.”
    â€œâ€˜To break out of the old straitjacket of traditional technique and achieve new meanings.’ What doo-doo.”
    â€œHow can you read my shorthand?”
    Charlie laughed. “I started out here working for Ida. She says the same thing in most of her letters.” He passed the notebook back to Cornell. “Not only is Wally getting the boot, but he also has to read that crap. But, as usual, sympathy is misplaced. That’s precisely the kind of prose for which WWW is himself noted. She probably picked up his style years ago when she was banging him.” Without transition he said: “When are you going to learn real shorthand? Or the Stenotype—then you could become a court reporter and get out of here.”
    â€œWhat about you?” asked Cornell.
    â€œI never get around to anything,” said Charlie. “Including suicide.”
    â€œWhat banned book are you reading today? Certainly nothing published by Huff House.”
    â€œA classic criminal text.” Charlie turned back to it without further identification. He actually did openly read proscribed works, obtained through some underground source of pornography, but always in pocket-sized editions that could be quickly concealed. In the case of some really raw title he might cut off the cover and glue on another from a harmless volume— The Gentle Man’s Guide to Needlepoint , say, disguising the text of Men Without Women , a collection of stories notorious for their shameless perversity, by—
    â€œHey, Charlie, who was the author of Men Without Women?”
    Charlie shushed him and deftly covered the book with a sheaf of correspondence.
    â€œI don’t know, Charlie, you take all kinds of chances, but when it comes to me, I can’t even ask—”
    The motive for Charlie’s furtiveness was soon apparent. Cornell should have known better. A stern voice spoke to the back of his head.
    â€œGeorgie, I want a word with you.”
    He rose and, on weak ankles, followed Ida Hind into her office, across and down the corridor.
    Ida was cleanshaven, skull as well as face, and the latter was naked even of eyebrows. Sometimes while dictating, Ida gave Cornell the treat of watching her apply the electric razor. If he had had to localize his hatred for Ida, he might have done it in her ears, which projected obscenely from her head at 85-degree angles.
    Ida now reached down inside the collar of her turtleneck sweater and relieved an itch in the area of the clavicle.
    â€œGeorgie,” she said, staring with her lashless eyes, “what am I going to do with you?” After she shaved, Ida washed her entire head with alcohol. She glistened.
    â€œCall my analyst,” he answered indignantly. “Go ahead. That’s where I was.”
    â€œI’ve done that already, Georgie. And do you know what Dr. Prine told me?” Ida paused to let the foreboding establish itself. Cornell could happily have lighted her with a match when she was wet with alcohol. “I’ll tell you. ‘Georgie Cornell is hopeless, I’m afraid.’ That’s a direct quote. ‘He’s beyond the reach of effective therapy.’” Ida did something with her throat. “That’s what Dr. Prine told me, and I am telling it to you now, not to be cruel—please believe me when I say that, Georgie—but because I think the time has