The Engagement

THE

ENGAGEMENT

AN OLD FASHIONED STORY

BY

ROXANNE HUNTER

COPYRIGHT © 2015 by Roxanne Hunter

All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual event, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or electronic transference without written permission from the author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII 

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI 

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER I

She never has anyone to take her out, she never goes anywhere except work and the park, and yet she can't be more than twenty-seven, and really, she's not half bad-looking.

It's not looks that attract men, said the other woman with a note of finality. It's something else. She snapped off her words in a tone that suggested extreme disapproval.

What else is there? inquired her conversational partner.

Oh, it's, well, it's something you can’t really put a name to, you just know it when you see it, she replied darkly, It’s what the French call it being ‘très femme’. But it doesn’t matter, whatever you call it, she hasn't got it.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt if she made some effort. Sometimes I think she doesn’t like men, the way she gives them the cold shoulder. You don’t think she’s ...

Actually, I don’t think she likes men, or women, for that matter. She just doesn’t seem to like people getting too close to her, summarized the woman.

Well, I feel sorry for her. I’m sure she would be much happier if she let a nice young man take her out once in a while.

Kristen Brennan listened to their words as her cheeks flushed red with humiliation. She felt as if someone had slapped her. She knew she was the subject of the two women’s comments but she could not laugh or be angry at their words because she knew they were true. She was lonely, she had no male friends to take her out, she never went out with girlfriends, and in fact, she had no real friends, male or female. Despite all that, what really bothered her was how old they thought she was.

Twenty-seven, she muttered indignantly. And to think I turned twenty-four only last November.

Kristen identified the two speakers as Elizabeth Wangle and Alicia Mosscrop. She had been coming downstairs for dinner when through the partly open door of the lounge she had overheard their rather catty, although completely accurate, remarks concerning her social life. She walked quietly into the dining room and took her seat at the table in silence, mechanically acknowledging the greetings of her fellow guests of Galvin House.

Galvin House was a massive early 20th-century mansion located in what was once the outskirts of Los Angeles but now was the center of a thriving urban redevelopment district. The property has been purchased by real estate developers and completely renovated and restored to its original elegance, then subdivided into luxurious suites leased to young urban professional Angelinos seeking upscale housing with all the perks of a hotel and the comforts of family home.

Each suite was designed for a single person and consisted of a living area with a small bedroom and bath. An efficiency kitchen was installed in each suite but it was intended, and the cost included in the lease, that most meals would be served in the communal dining room, with social interaction enhanced by a comfortable and well-stocked lounge and at rooftop swimming pool and fitness center.

The philosophy of the residential hotel was simple. Successful single professional men and women in the city devoted most of their waking hours to their profession, leaving little time for the entrapments of housekeeping, laundry, grocery shopping and property maintenance. At Galvin House, they found housing with all the comforts and convenience of a family, housekeeping staff and a twenty-four-hour kitchen. Although it was non-denominational, Christian morals and behavior were required of all tenants and grace was said before each meal. Every creature comfort was provided the paying residents by the staff of the hotel.

The residential hotel, unfortunately, did not appeal to its targeted demographic, which tended to prefer a more private and secular living experience and instead Galvin House had collected a menagerie of oddball tenants who really did not fit into other quasi-group settings.

What should have been a comfortable existence among others sharing the same lifestyle, however, had become a stifling experience for Kristen Brennan. Primarily the stifling experiences were the residents. Elizabeth Wangle, the first catty female Kristen had overheard, was the great-niece of a bishop, and to have a bishop in heaven is a great social asset on earth, or at least it was at Galvin House. This ecclesiastical distinction seemed to give Elizabeth some claim to leadership at the Galvin House Residential Hotel. Whenever a new resident arrived, the unfortunate bishop was resurrected and brandished before the new tenant’s eyes.

One facetious young man in commercial sales had dubbed her the body-snatcher, and, being inordinately proud of his cleverness, he had worn the nickname threadbare, so that Elizabeth eventually learned of her pet name. The result was the sudden eviction of the salesman. Elizabeth had suggested to Mrs. Morton, the executive manager of the residential hotel, that if he remained a resident, then she would be compelled to move out. Mrs. Morton, a pious and religious woman, believed that Elizabeth Wangle set a certain standard for Galvin House.

Elizabeth Wangle was acid in speech and lacking in empathy. Scandal and the dear bishop were her chief preoccupations. She regularly read the Los Angeles Times, which she bought, and the Daily News, which she borrowed. In her opinions toward government she was conservative, and of the wealthy and influential she could imagine no wrongdoing. In keeping with her heritage, Elizabeth, who proudly informed all new acquaintances that she was named after two queens, was a devoted Anglophile, a charter member of the Princess Diana Society, and a locally renowned expert on all things regarding British royal peerage.

Alicia Mosscrop was Elizabeth’s toady; but she wrapped her venom in Christian tolerance, thus making herself the less obvious but more dangerous of the two.

At Galvin House, no one dared to contradict these two women in their pronouncements. They were generally disliked, but more feared than hated. During the height of the last California water drought Jack Bolton, who considered himself to be the comedian of Galvin House, had hung a notice to the community lounge door, reading, All residents are requested to report their daily toilet flushes to Suites 8 and 18. Of course, those were the suites occupied by Ms. Wangle and Ms. Mosscrop. The pair had made a great fuss about this harmless and feeble joke; and fortunately for Jack, he had taken care to pin his jest on the door when no one was looking. He took the additional precaution of being foremost in his denunciation of the bad taste shown by the person responsible.

At Galvin House, the word ‘guest’ was insisted upon. Mrs. Morton, in announcing the advent of a new arrival, always reached for the pinnacle of refinement. We have another guest coming, she would say, a most interesting man, or a very cultured woman, as the case might be. When the man arrived without his interest or the woman without her culture, no one was disappointed, for no one had expected anything else. The conventions had been observed and that was all that mattered.

Dinner at Galvin House was generally a dismal affair. A progressive-minded guest had once advocated for private tables for those wishing to dine alone or with select companions, which had been totally discouraged by Elizabeth, who announced that if separate tables were introduced then she, for one, would not stay.

I remember the dear bishop once saying to me, she remarked, 'My dear, if people can't say what they have to say at a large table and within the hearing of others, then let it remain unsaid.'

But if someone's dress is stained, or their hair is not quite right, would you announce the fact to the whole table? Kristen had asked, with an innocence that was a little overdone.

Elizabeth had glared; for she wore the most obvious hair extensions that failed to convince anyone that her long tresses were naturally endowed, and served only to enhance her sharp features and highlight her stringy hair.

Because of the seating arrangement, conversation during meals was always general and dull. Jack Bolton told poor jokes, Elizabeth poured vinegar on oily waters, and Alicia dripped with the oil of patience. Harry Cordal ate noisily, Rosie Simpson simpered and Mrs. Morton strove to maintain the appearance of a real hostess entertaining real guests without the damning prefix ‘paying.’

The remaining guests, there were usually around twenty-five in residence at any time, looked as they felt they should look, and never failed to show a befitting reverence for Elizabeth Wangle's ecclesiastical ancestor.

On this particular evening, Kristen was silent. Jack had tried to get her involved in a conversation but failed. As a rule, she was the first to laugh at his jokes in order to encourage the poor little man, as she expressed it; since any man who is fat, bald, a bachelor, and thinks he's a comedian needs all the kindness that the world can lavish upon him.

Kristen glanced around the table, from Elizabeth, lean as a winter wolf, to Alicia Mosscrop, fair, chubby and faded, and on to Harry Cordal, lantern-jawed and ravenous. Aren’t they all lonely? Aren’t they all the leftover creations of God? Kristen asked herself. Yet two of these solitary souls had dared to take pity on her, Kristen Brennan. Well, she thought, at least she had something they no longer possessed, her youth.

The more she thought of the words that had drifted through the half-closed door of the lounge, the more humiliating they became. Her day had been particularly difficult and she was exhausted. She would have enjoyed seeing a cyclone on the horizon, or a gigantic tidal wave or anything to break the monotony of her life. She looked around the table once more. Why had the fates thrown her in among such people!?

The table appointments seemed unusually irritating that evening. The base metal that peeped slyly through the plate silver of the forks and spoons, the tapering knives, victims of too much polishing, with their yellow handles, the salt shakers, the mustard, browning after three days on the table (mustard was replenished on Sundays only), the anemic ferns arranged in artistic pots, every defect seemed emphasized and outsized.

How she hated it all; but most of all she despised the many shaped and multi-colored napkin rings, or as they were called at Galvin House, ‘serviette-rings.’ Variety was necessary to ensure that each guest established a personal interest in one particular napkin. Did they, and their serviettes, ever get mixed up? Kristen shuddered at the thought. By the end of the week, each serviette became a sort of gastronomic diary. By Saturday evening (new serviettes were placed at each setting on Sunday at lunch) each square of white fabric had many meals recorded upon it; but above all, like a king dominating his subjects, was the ineradicable aroma of fish.

On this particular evening, Galvin House seemed especially gray and depressing. Kristen found herself wondering if God had really made all these people in His own image. They seemed so petty, so un-godlike. The way they regarded their food as it was handed to them suggested that they were forever engaged in a comparison of what they paid with what they received in exchange for their money. Did God make people only in His own image and then leave the rest of their character development up to them? Was that where the free will came in?

Lonely.

The word seemed to crash into her thoughts with explosive force. Someone had said it, who exactly she did not know, or in what connection. It brought her back to earth and Galvin House. Lonely. Surely that was the root cause of her depression. She had become an object of pity among her fellow residents. It was intolerable. After living with this group, she understood why other girls ‘did things’ to escape from such surroundings and such faux-pity.

Had she been a domestic servant she could have hooked up with a landscaper or driver. Had she been a secretary or a store clerk, well, there were the park and buses and places where gallant young men approached pretty young working girls. Unfortunately, she was the kind of woman who could not, or would not, do these things, and as a result, she had become the object of pity by the Elizabeth Wangles and the Alicia Mosscrops of the world.

To be fair, she was quite content to be manless. She did not like men; at least none that she had encountered so far in her brief life. Oh, there were plenty of Boltons and Cordals, if she was interested in their types. There were the Haven't-we-met-before? kind too, the hunters who seemed happy to strike up a conversation on the subway, or spend a few dollars to share a drink at a nightclub with any pretty face that attracted their roving eye.

She sighed involuntarily at the ugliness of it all, this cheapening of the things worthy of reverence and respect. She looked across at Rosie Simpson, whose short skirts and floppy tank tops had started her on so many unconventional adventures that the morning glance at her face had ended, as if by magic. The rear end view of Rosie Simpson was deceptive.

Suddenly Kristen made a decision. Had she paused to think about what she was going to do, she might have seen the danger; but she was by nature impulsive, and the conversation she had overheard had angered and humiliated her.

Her resolve to take action was timed with the arrival of a sweet setting. Turning to Mrs. Morton she remarked casually, I will not be here for dinner tomorrow night, Mrs. Morton.

Mrs. Morton always liked her guests to tell her when they were not likely to be there for dinner. It saves the staff laying an extra place setting, she always explained. As a matter of fact, it saved Mrs. Morton the task of preparing a meal for that person.

If Kristen had tossed a bomb into the middle of the dinner table she would not have attracted more attention than by her simple remark that she would not be dining at Galvin House on the following evening.

Everybody stopped eating to stare at her. Rosie Simpson missed her aim with a forkful of apple pie and spent the rest of the evening attempting to remove the stain from a new blue top. It was Elizabeth Wangle who finally broke the silence.

How interesting, she said. We shall miss you, Kristen. I suppose you will be working late.

The whole table waited for Kristen's response with breathless expectancy.

No, she replied nonchalantly.

I know, said Alicia Mosscrop in her even tones and wagging an admonishing finger at her. You're going to a concert, or to see a movie.

Or maybe to sow her wild oats, added Jack Bolton.

At that moment some devil took possession of Kristen. She would give them something to talk about for the next month. They needed a good shock, and it would be good for them.

No, she replied indifferently, attracting the attention of the whole table with her deliberate speech. No, I'm not going to a concert, the theater, or to sow my wild oats. As a matter of fact, she paused. They literally hung on her words. As a matter of fact, I am dining with my fiancé.

The effect was electric. Rosie Simpson stopped dabbing the front of her top. Elizabeth dropped her butter knife on the edge of her plate and it tipped over her water glass. Harry Cordal, a heavy man who seldom spoke but enjoyed his food with noisy gusto, actually exclaimed, What? Almost without exception, the others repeated his exclamation.

Your fiancé? stuttered Elizabeth Wangle.

But, my dear Kristen, exclaimed Alicia Mosscrop, you never told us that you were engaged.

Didn't I? inquired Kristen indifferently.

And you don't wear a ring, interjected Rosie eagerly.

I not into such badges of bondage, remarked Kristen with a laugh.

But an engagement ring, insinuated Rosie with a self-conscious giggle.

One is freer without a ring, added Kristen.

Elizabeth's jaw dropped.

Marriages are … she began.

Made in heaven, I know, broke in Kristen. But you try walking around in slippers in LA, Elizabeth, and you'll soon go back to a good pair of leather soled shoes. It's silly to make things in one sort of place when they are always intended to be worn in another. They never fit right.

Mrs. Morton coughed portentously.

Really, Ms. Brennan, she exclaimed.

Whenever a conversation seemed likely to take an undesirable turn, or she foresaw a storm threatening, Mrs. Morton's Really, Mr. So-and-so invariably guided it back into a safer channel.

Can you really disagree? persisted Kristen. Can you, Mrs. Morton, seriously regard the institution of marriage in this country to be a success? The problems all come about because marriages are thought to be made in heaven and no one takes into consideration our earthly climatic conditions until it’s too late.

Elizabeth Wangle had lost all power of speech. Alicia Mosscrop was staring at Kristen as if she was something strange and unclean, upon which her eyes had never before alit. In the eyes of little Mrs. Worthington, a delightful woman much older that the other residents, there was a glimmer of amusement. Alicia was the first to recover her power of speech.

What does your fiancé do for a living?

Is your fiancé in the military? Is that why we have no met him?

Yes, replied Kristen desperately. She decided to throw all caution to the wind.

Oh, tell us his name, giggled Rosie.

Brown, said Kristen.

An enlisted man? inquired Jack.

No, said Kristen, now thoroughly enjoying herself.

Oh, he's an officer, then, said Alicia.

Is he a first or a second lieutenant? inquired Mrs. Morton.

Major, responded Kristen laconically.

What's he in? was the next question.

Airborne.

What division? inquired Elizabeth, who had also regained her power of speech. I have a cousin in the Fifth.

You know, I can't remember, said Kristen, I never can remember numbers.

Not remember the number of your fiancé’s division? There was incredulous disapproval in her voice.

No, I don’t. I'm awfully sorry, replied Kristen. I suppose it's awful of me, but I'll run upstairs and look it up if you like.

Oh no, please don't trouble yourself, said Elizabeth icily. I remember the dear bishop once saying …

And I suppose after dinner then you'll go to a theater, interrupted Alicia Mosscrop, indifferent to the bishop and anything he had ever said, thought, or done for the first time in anyone’s memory.

Oh, no, I don't think so, said Kristen. We will just dine quietly at the Quadrant Grill.

A meaningful glance passed between Alicia and Elizabeth. Why she had chosen the Quadrant Grill, Kristen could not have said.

And now, said Kristen, I must run upstairs and see that my best outfit is in proper condition to be worn for my fiancé. I'll tell him your comments about the ring. Good night, everybody, if I don’t see you later.

Kristen Brennan, admonished Kristen to her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her thick auburn hair that night, you are a most unmitigated little liar. You have told all those people the wickedest of wicked lies. You have engaged yourself to an unknown major in the Army. You told them you're going to dine with him tomorrow night, and heaven knows what will come of it all. A single lie leads to so many more. Oh, Kristen, Kristen, she shook