Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson by Shirley Jackson

was not there. She had a bacon, tomato, and lettuce sandwich and a cup of tea in the drugstore downstairs, and came back early because there was a letter she wanted to finish. During her lunch hour she noticed nothing unusual, nothing that had not happened every day of the six years she had been working for Mr. Lang.
    At two-twenty by the office clock Mr. Lang came back from lunch; he said, “Any calls, Miss Morgan?” as he came through the door, and Miss Morgan smiled at him and said, “No calls, Mr. Lang.” Mr. Lang went into his private office, and there were no calls until three-oh-five, when Mr. Lang came out of his office carrying a large package wrapped in brown paper and tied with an ordinary strong cord.
    “Miss Fishman here?” he asked.
    “She’s ill,” Miss Morgan said, smiling. “She won’t be in today.”
    “Damn,” Mr. Lang said. He looked around hopefully. Miss Fishman’s desk was neatly empty; everything was in perfect order and Miss Morgan sat smiling at him. “I’ve got to get this package delivered,” he said. “Very important.” He looked at Miss Morgan as though he had never seen her before. “Would it be asking too much?” he asked.
    Miss Morgan looked at him courteously for a minute before she understood. Then she said, “Not at all,” with an extremely clear inflection, and stirred to rise from her desk.
    “Good,” Mr. Lang said heartily. “The address is on the label. Way over on the other side of town. Downtown. You won’t have any trouble. Take you about”—he consulted his watch—“about an hour, I’d say, all told, there and back. Give the package directly to Mr. Shax. No secretaries. If he’s out, wait. If he’s not there, go to his home. Call me if you’re going to be more than an hour. Damn Miss Fishman,” he added, and went back into his office.
    All up and down the hall, in offices directed and controlled by Mr. Lang, there were people alert and eager to run errands for him. Miss Morgan and Miss Fishman were only the receptionists, the outer bulwark of Mr. Lang’s defense. Miss Morgan looked apprehensively at the closed door of Mr. Lang’s office as she went to the closet to get her coat. Mr. Lang was being left defenseless, but it was spring outside she had her red topcoat, and Miss Fishman had probably run off under cover of illness to the wide green fields and buttercups of the country. Miss Morgan settled her blue hat by the mirror on the inside of the closet door, slid luxuriously into her red topcoat, and picked up her pocketbook and gloves, and put her hand through the string of the package. It was unexpectedly light. Going toward the elevator, she found that she could carry it easily with the same hand that held her pocketbook, although its bulk would be awkward on the bus. She glanced at the address: “Mr. Ray Shax,” and a street she had never heard of.
    Once in the street in the spring afternoon, she decided to ask at the newspaper stand for the street; the little men in newspaper stands seem to know everything. This one was particularly nice to her, probably because it was spring. He took out a little red book that was a guide to New York, and searched through its columns until he found the street.
    “You ought to take the bus on the corner,” he said. “Going across town. Then get a bus going downtown until you get to the street. Then you’ll have to walk, most likely. Probably a warehouse.”
    “Probably,” Miss Morgan agreed absently. She was staring behind him, at a poster on the inside of the newspaper stand. “Find Miss X,” the poster said in screaming red letters, “Find Miss X. Find Miss X. Find Miss X.” The words were repeated over and over, each line smaller and in a different color; the bottom line was barely visible. “What’s that Miss X thing?” Miss Morgan asked the newspaper man. He turned and looked over his shoulder and shrugged. “One of them contest things,” he said.
    Miss Morgan started for the bus.