‘I decided that too. That’s why I came here.’

‘How’d you know this place was Jewish?’ she inquired.

‘Why … is it?’

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘Well, the name …’

‘Meyers is a Jew.’

He pretended to consider the fact, and did not speak. What Meyers was did not matter at all now.

‘You don’t want to work here, heh?’ she smiled, as one in the jaws of suffering, to another about to enter.

He raised his eyes to hers, sadly, and inwardly happy that she had identified her plight with his.

‘Well, you better want to.’

He blinked as though helpless and hurt.

‘You’re in a bad way yourself, Mr Newman. I can see it now myself.’

‘Can you?’

‘Oh yeh, it’s there all right.’ Her eyes moved over his face.

‘I’m really sorry I mistook you …’ he began, getting to his point and helping her to hers.

‘It’s all right. God, it wasn’t the first time. The only reason I blew up at you was I thought … well, you know.’

‘You really did?’

‘Well … not exactly. You know how a person does. If you get mad enough at somebody you almost wish they were one of them. It depends on how you look at a person. I mean like now, for instance.’ She looked at him as if he were someone who had asked for a comment on a new way of combing his hair. ‘Right now it wouldn’t ever come into my mind. You know what I mean?’

‘Oh, certainly,’ he said.

Never had he spoken so fluently with a woman he considered beautiful. And looking into her face now he knew somehow that he was her first confidant too. A moment of calm seemed to have arrived, a moment of contented silence. For the first time there was nothing to make them tense and Newman examined the pause with gratitude and expectation. And when she spoke he felt he was hearing her private voice, as surely as he was seeing the relaxation of her shining eyelids for the first time.

‘I can’t hire you,’ she said quietly, looking down, ‘but if you come back in about an hour Ardell will be here and I’ll tell him about you.’

‘Fine. Is there a position open?’

‘Well, it ain’t exactly your old line but it’s a decent kind of a job. They want a man who could interview people coming here to sell the company things. You’d send them to the right department. You’ll have to learn something about the kind of things they make but they’ll teach you. It’s kind of a sales-traffic-control thing … I think they call it that. The company’s bigger than it looks. They’re taking two more floors in this building in October. What you do is keep salesmen from cluttering up the wrong offices. I got an idea it’s going to be an after-the-war job unless the whole country closes down when peace comes.’

‘What is this Ardell?’

‘Oh he’s all right. He’s Catholic. Don’t get the idea they only hire foreigners from that receptionist out there. Peterson’s a Swede or something, you know. There’s all kinds here. They got a nigger for a bookkeeper, even.’