“I told you to clean this mess up,” Miss Raines said impatiently when Ivory entered the room. “Let me tell you, Mr. Kells wasn’t impressed. He said that even a sketcher-assistant should have more to do than pile accessories on desks. I agreed with him that you have too much free time, even with my work, so I’m going to let you do alterations, as well. You sew of course?”
It was like a sudden demotion. Ivory felt sick to her stomach. “Well, yes, but...”
“Then we’ll get you started first thing tomorrow,” she said. “The regular girls have too much contract work to stop for repairs. This will work out nicely. Mr. Kells thought it would.”
“Miss Raines, I came here to do design work,” Ivory began.
“Yes, yes, and you will, one day,” she promised indulgently. “But we must crawl before we can walk, Miss Keene.”
Ivory sat down at her desk with an expression of pure anguish. If she had to do repairs as well as accessories and illustrations, she was never going to have time to work on her own designs. But what was the use, anyway? Miss Raines was doing everything in her power, apparently, to make sure that Ivory didn’t have any successes. And so was the elusive Mr. Kells.
Miss Raines had admitted to Ivory early on that she had disagreed with Mr. Kells’s decision to offer a job as a first prize in a nationwide design contest. It had all been a stunt, a promotion, to bring a fading design house back into the limelight. Ivory felt cheated. She’d expected more, somehow, from the description of the prize when it was given to her at graduation.
“You’ll have a dream job in New York at Kells-Meredith,” Mr. Wallace, the president of the school, had assured her after the award was presented at the school’s graduation exercises. “And a nice apartment, rent-free for the first month until you start drawing your salary!”
“I’m very honored that I won,” Ivory had told him.
“And so are we, young lady. It’s a feather in our cap to have one of our graduating seniors do so well.” He’d looked around curiously, because Ivory had come to the awards ceremony alone. “Didn’t your, uh, family care to come tonight, to see you get your design diploma?”
She hadn’t blinked an eye. “My mother is ill and couldn’t make the trip,” she had lied. “My father died years ago.”
“You’re an only child, then?”
She’d studied her feet. “Yes.”
“Sad for you, especially at holidays, I guess.”
She’d composed her face and looked up. “The job...how soon will I start?”
“As soon as you like,” he’d said, beaming. “Next week?”
“That would be fine,” she had assured him.
The dream job was less than dreamy, and the promised apartment too expensive for her to keep on her salary. Her present apartment, while clean and comfortable, was hardly a penthouse. It was in a nice part of Queens, though, and not too long a bus ride from work. There was a kitchenette, a living room and a small bedroom with a double bed. It was a furnished apartment, but Ivory didn’t really like the faded yellow-flowered sofa. With one of her first purchases, a sewing machine, she’d made slipcovers for the sofa and chair and a tablecloth for the small round table.
Ivory had scraped together enough moderately priced dinnerware and silverware to use, and she now had a small, refinished coffee table. It was the best accommodation she’d had in her twenty-two years. Someday, she’d promised herself as she looked around her living room, she would have new wall-to-wall carpeting.
Even if the apartment was less than elegant, the neighbors were something special. Mrs. Horst was an elderly German widow who had immigrated to the United States just before World War II. She made wonderful breads and cakes and liked making them for Ivory, whom she considered delightful company. Two doors down from Mrs. Horst lived Mr. Konieczny from Wisconsin, who worked as a bank clerk and had a small poodle for company. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson occupied a third apartment. He was a World War II veteran who had to get around in a wheelchair. He had lost his legs at Guadalcanal, but he was cheerful and liked to make wooden toys for the three small children who lived on the same floor down the hall with their parents.
It would have been nice to have a handsome young bachelor in the building, Ivory had mused wistfully, but she liked her neighbors very well.
A tap on the door interrupted her thoughts. Dee Grier stuck her blond head in and grinned. “Did you catch hell, too?” Ivory, disconcerted, just stared at the head seamstress.
“Mr. Kells,” Dee explained. “He came. He saw. He grumbled for fifteen minutes. Everybody caught hell. Miss Raines was almost on her knees trying to placate him.”
“Did you...?”
“I hid out in the bathroom,” Dee chuckled. “But I heard him. What a temper! Apparently, we’re sluggish, uninspired and hopelessly straitlaced. Our clothes are being passed over for fresh designs by new designers. Miss Raines actually sputtered trying to think up excuses.”
“It isn’t my fault,” Ivory pointed out. “I have some designs, new and original, that Miss Raines won’t even consider.”
Dee recognized the hurt in the younger woman’s voice and smiled reassuringly. “Cream always rises to the top,” she said. “Don’t give up.”
“She says it will take years,” Ivory groaned.
“If she has her way, it will. She knows talent when she sees it. She’s afraid of you, so she’ll hold you back if she can. Go over her head,” Dee advised. “Take your sketches to Kells himself.”
Ivory’s eyes widened. “She’d fire me.”
“Not if he likes your work.”
“All or nothing, huh?” Ivory murmured.
Dee nodded. “No great risk, no great reward, and something about ‘daring greatly.’” She frowned. “Who said that? I can’t remember.”
“Helen Keller and Teddy Roosevelt, I think, but not at the same time.”
“Well?”
Ivory sat down. “I’m not brave enough yet,” she said with a rueful smile. “I have a job and an apartment and Christmas is next month.”
Dee laughed. “Okay. How about in the spring?”
“Good enough. The homeless shelter should be pretty warm by then.”
“You idiot. A woman of your talents won’t have to go on the streets.”
“I can name you three people who felt that way, and they ended up there,” Ivory said solemnly. “You ought to remember, too, because you introduced them to me at the shelter. Two of them had five-figure salaries and the third worked in real estate. They went from Lincolns to park benches in a few weeks.”
Dee shuddered. “It’s scary.”
“Scary, indeed,” came the reply. “What does Mr. Kells look like, do you know?” she asked Dee curiously.
“I caught only a glimpse of him. He’s tall and visually challenged. I’ll ask around, if you’re really curious.”
Visually challenged. Did Dee mean that he wore glasses? Probably. “I just wondered if he was old and set in his ways or young enough to entertain new ideas,” she replied.
Dee fingered her collar. “He took over the company months ago, just before you came, and he hasn’t fired Miss Raines yet,” she said firmly. “What does that tell you?”
“That he admires loyalty to the company and that he doesn’t like change, even though he would like to see some originality.”
“Bingo.”
“Then why did you suggest that I take