She made fists of her hands and pounded against the green spread, choking with anger. When it was over would he say, as Tom had said, “It was fun. It was a million laughs. Sorry if you thought it was meant to be more.”
After she’d fallen in love with him? She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. “I am not in love with Jeff Morrow,” she enunciated carefully. “I will not allow myself to fall in love with him. Or with any man. I’m not fool enough to let myself be hurt like that twice in one lifetime!”
She slowly realized that this hurt would be much worse, go much deeper, last much longer than the one Tom had given her.
She pulled out a scarf from a drawer in the dresser and began to tie it around her hair when someone knocked.
Still holding the scarf, she opened the door: the sight of the slim girl in scarlet, mink slung carelessly around her shoulders, dark hair glistening with rain, stunned her into immobility.
Natalie Pries carried an air of haughty self-confidence which was wrapped around her like the mink. She stared at Merry, and the dark, wing-like brows lifted ever so slightly. “I don’t wonder you’re shocked,” she said. “I’d be shocked too, if I were in your place and I was standing on the other side of the door. It isn’t often the little people get to see me close up. And for free.”
While Merry stood there, Natalie shook her hair impatiently, and wet drops flicked against Merry’s face. “Well,” she said, “aren’t you even going to ask me to come in?”
Merry recovered herself sufficiently to open the door wide. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Come in.”
Natalie brushed past her, stopped to stare at the cleaner. “What in the world is that?” she asked.
Merry pushed it back against the wall. “It picks up dirt,” she replied. “Rugs, upholstery. You know.” She did not bother to conceal the mockery in her voice. This girl, she decided, was a phony, complete and unadulterated.
Natalie stared around the room before she sat down on the sofa. “I didn’t know they made places like this anymore.”
“This is the working girl’s version of an apartment,” Merry told her, managing with an effort to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
Natalie shrugged and let the mink slip down around her waist. “It’s very small, isn’t it?” she said.
“Miss Hinge said the same thing. But my roommates and I do very well in spite of its size. We’re quite content.”
Natalie’s eyebrows raised a shade higher. “Oh,” she said, “Mai’s been here? Are you a friend of hers?”
Merry laughed. “Not so you’d notice,” she thought. Aloud she said, “She came here for a story about Mr. Webb.”
Natalie said, “And of course you wouldn’t tell her anything. I mean, I did a story once where I played a nurse. I had to memorize that pledge nurses have to take. The whole thing. Imagine!”
She slanted a gaze at Merry. “Do nurses really have to be like that? All full of sacrifices and dedicated and everything?”
Merry said, “We try.”
“Really!—I mean it must be terrible.”
Merry said nothing. She began to wonder if Mai Hinge had sent Natalie. She felt the other girl’s gaze on her. “Pierson isn’t a very nice person,” Natalie said reflectively. “He discovered me, you know, and I expect I owe him a lot when you come right down to it, but he isn’t at all nice. I don’t think anyone really likes him.”
Merry said, “I know him only as a patient, Miss Pries.” The conviction that Mai Hinge had sent Natalie deepened.
There was silence for a moment, and Merry thought tensely, “When are you going to tell me why you’re here?”
The silence became heavier. Merry began to feel acutely uncomfortable under the other girl’s searching stare.
She said, “Would you like some coffee?”
Natalie stared at her. “Coffee?” she said. “Who drinks coffee?”
Merry had to laugh. “You’d be surprised at how many people drink it,” she said.
Natalie ran a hand across the smooth waves of her hair. “I drink champagne for breakfast,” she said, “and for lunch and dinner and in between times.”
Merry stared at her levelly. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
Suddenly Natalie dimpled and leaned towards Merry. She said, “I don’t really drink champagne all of the time, only don’t tell Mai Hinge that. She’d explode the myth and then my press agent would be very angry with me. He made that up. It goes with my image…the sex queen, you know?”
Merry found herself warming towards Natalie. She smiled back at her. “Mum’s the word,” she promised.
“Do you know what I really like to drink?” Natalie asked her. “Milk. I mean, really, isn’t it ghastly? Can you imagine something like that getting out? ‘Sex queen admits she drinks milk’? I mean, really!”
Merry laughed and stood up. “Let’s both have a glass,” she said.
When Merry came back into the room, Natalie was sitting with her legs doubled under her like a small girl. She took the glass held out to her. “Milk’s bad for my figure,” she said, sipping. “I have to be very careful, you know.”
She stared at Merry over the rim of the glass. There was a narrow white line just above her upper lip.
She sighed and wiped her mouth with one slender hand. “I can’t see it,” she said, “I really can’t. You’re pretty enough, but then I’m beautiful.” She said it entirely without conceit. “And I’ve got glamor and money.” She shook her head, bewildered. “Men are sometimes awfully stupid, aren’t they? I mean, what can Jeff Morrow see in you that I don’t have more of?” She shrugged, and stood up, draping the mink around her shoulders. “You can’t have him, you know,” she said. “I think you ought to know that. I mean, when I want something, I always get it.”
Merry asked slowly, “Always?”
Natalie nodded. “Always.” She sighed. “You ought to know that I’m not a very nice person, either; in this business you can’t be very nice. I mean, if you are, people go around taking advantage of you.”
Merry said nothing and Natalie turned to look at her earnestly, “I wish you weren’t so nice. I mean, really. Because I can’t afford to like you. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Merry walked around her to open the door. “Goodbye, Natalie,” she said, smiling. “I think you’re really very nice; one has to look past the image, that’s all.”
Natalie shook her head, her dark eyes suddenly bleak. “You don’t understand,” she said. “The image is me. I mean I’ve been it so long that I don’t even think any other way.”
* * * *
After Natalie had gone, Merry put away the vacuum cleaner. She had no further desire to clean the apartment. In the kitchen she put water on to boil for coffee.
Natalie’s visit had left her more depressed than before. She didn’t want to feel sorry for the movie star, but found herself unable to shake off the pity.
As she sat on the sofa drinking her coffee and leafing through a magazine, she thought wryly that Tammy would be shocked that anyone could possibly be sorry for Natalie Pries.
She could hear Tammy: “Boy, don’t I wish I was such a pitiful figure! If I ever get to be the star Natalie Pries is, I give you full permission to feel as sorry for me as you want.”
Finding a story that interested her, she lay back on the sofa to read.
She had just finished the story and decided on chili and rice for dinner when Tammy burst in the door.
Tammy’s eyes were wide with excitement. She danced once around the room, fervent with joy. “You’ll never guess what,” she said, “never, never, never.”
Merry laughed. “Well, then, tell me.”
“Pierson Webb’s giving a cocktail party next Wednesday and Arch is going to take me! And he said he’d speak to him about me, if the chance came up at all. Can you imagine!
”
Merry wondered that Pierson Webb would consider himself well enough to give a cocktail party less than a week after he’d left the hospital.
She shrugged. He was no longer her patient. No reporters were waiting for her when she left the hospital now. Pierson Webb at home, and presumably well, was no longer headline news.
She said warmly, “I hope it works out for you. If that’s what you want.”
Tammy chortled, “Of course it’s what I want. You don’t think I want to be a nurse the rest of my life, do you? I want the world. All of it!”
She swung around and asked, “Merry, do you think he’ll ask you to the party?”
Merry shrugged. “Why would he?”
Tammy persisted. “He seemed to like you, so maybe.…” Her eyes searched Merry’s face. “If he did ask you, would you go?”
Merry shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not in the habit of deciding something until I know it has to be decided.”
She turned to look at Agnes, who had just come in the door. “Hi,” she said hesitantly. There had been a slight coldness between the two girls since the appearance of Harvey Miles. “It’s stopped raining,” Agnes said.
Merry nodded. “It was about time.”
Tammy flew to the window to look out. She spread her arms wide and breathed deeply like an excited child. “That’s a beautiful California sun shining out there,” she said. “This is a wonderful town. It really is.”
Merry laughed. “You should get a job with the Chamber of Commerce,” she said. “They can use someone like you.”
Tammy grinned. “I really do think it’s a wonderful town.” She brushed a hand through her hair. “What did you do with your afternoon in the rain?”
“I entertained Natalie Pries,” Merry said softly.
It was as if she’d dropped a bomb. Tammy screamed, “You what?”
Merry grinned. “I entertained Natalie Pries. She came to see what I looked like.”
Tammy shook her head. “Now I’ve heard everything,” she said. “Why would she want to know what you looked like?”
It was Agnes who said dryly, “That’s very easy. Merry’s been seeing Jeff Morrow.”
“Oh.” Tammy looked at Merry with sudden envy. “Why couldn’t this have been my afternoon off?” she said.
As Agnes walked towards the bedroom Merry called after her, “Chili and rice for dinner.”
“Sounds good,” she replied, without turning. She went into the bedroom and let the door close behind her. She’d wanted to say, “Stop looking like that; I’m not angry with you.” And she wasn’t; it was just that she was afraid Merry might want to talk about it if she let herself relax at all.
She got out of her uniform. It had been a terrible day. She’d felt jittery all afternoon, and then, just before she left the hospital an aging movie queen who’d been on the skids for the last few years had been brought in with her wrists cut. She’d screamed at Agnes to let her die. “What do I have to live for?” she’d yelled, struggling to get free. “I’ll do it again when I’m out of here and the next time I’ll succeed!”
Agnes had been torn with pity, and then, to climax everything, Harvey Miles was waiting for her outside the hospital in a borrowed car. “Let me drive you home,” he’d pleaded. “All I want to do is to talk to you, Agnes.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she’d said coldly. “We talked it all out a long time ago.”
“We’ve never talked anything out. Please, Agnes, let’s talk.”
When she’d started to walk away, he’d gotten out and tried to force her into the car.
She’d struggled at first and then she’d said, “Let go of me, or I’ll call for a policeman.”
He seemed only then to realize what he’d been doing. His hands had dropped to his sides, and he turned away without another word.
Agnes had started to run. She ran past the bus stop and had to turn around and go back. The bus was crowded and she’d had to stand up all the way, her knees trembling and her legs so shaky she wondered that they were able to hold her upright.
She hung her uniform in the closet. A sudden horrible thought stopped her: what if Harvey had found out about Ellen? She should have listened to what he had to say. She’d acted very, very foolishly.
Chapter Eleven
Jeff Morrow was waiting outside the apartment when Merry came home the next night. He gave her a cheerful grin. “I thought I’d drop by and surprise you.”
He reached over and took the key from her. “Allow me,” he said, and inserted it in the lock. He pushed the door open and Merry walked in ahead of him. “It’s stuffy in here,” he said, and went around flinging up the windows.
Merry stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you,” he grinned at her. “I came to surprise you, and, incidentally, to take you to dinner.”
Merry shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s my week to cook.”
“Well, in that case,” he twinkled, “aren’t you going to ask me to stay?”
Merry opened the cupboard doors and rummaged through the cans and packages. “It’s going to be creamed dried beef,” she said, “with mushrooms.” She pulled some more cans forward, “And yams and…and a tossed salad, I guess.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Merry turned to look at him. “I’m not sure there’s enough for an extra person.”
He laughed at her. “You can always open another can of something or other and toss it in.” Cocking his dark head at her he said softly, “I hear you had a visitor yesterday afternoon.”
Merry turned to stare at him. “She told you?” she asked incredulously.
He laughed, his eyes crinkling. “Why not?” he asked. “Natalie tells me everything.” He leaned over to touch her on the tip of her nose. “Close your mouth, you’re staring.”
Merry closed her mouth. “What,” he asked her, “is so unbelievable about Natalie Pries telling me she was here to see what you looked like?”
She said slowly, “I wouldn’t have told you if I’d done a thing like that.”
“Why not?” Jeff asked her. “Women are supposed to flatter a man, aren’t they?” His eyes searched her face with amusement. “How about you?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to do something, say something, to flatter me?”
Merry said quickly, “I’d better change and start things cooking if there’s going to be anything at all to eat tonight.”
“I’ll do the salad for you,” he grinned. “As I mentioned once before, I’m a whiz with a salad. And by the way, you’re a coward, you know.”
Merry flung him a cold glance. “Am I?” she asked, and disappeared behind the bedroom door.
Jeff continued to talk from the kitchen. “We’re going to a cocktail party next Wednesday,” he said. “I forgot to tell you. No one cares what time anyone gets there, so you can’t use the excuse that you won’t be able to leave the hospital in time.”
“Pierson Webb’s cocktail party?” she asked, her voice muffled in the pale pink blouse she was pulling over her head.
“Who else?” he asked. “It will be a very, very grand party. Poor Pierson always overdoes everything. And everybody of importance who’s still in Pierson’s good graces will be there.” There was laughter in his voice. “Including Natalie Pries, of course. And before the evening is over, at least one person will fall into the pool.”
Merry slipped on dark brown slacks and slid her feet into straw sandals. “I’m not going.”
She walked out to the kitchen to Jeff’s indignant, “What do you mean you are not going? No one refuses to go to Pierson’s parties.”
Merry said calmly, tying an apron over the slacks, “Mr. Webb didn’t invite me. You did.”
“It’s the same thing.” He frowned over the bowl of lettuce he was shredding. “
You’re a very difficult person. I’m beginning to feel slightly sorry for your patients.”
“If you’re going to be fooling around with salad dressing and stuff, you’d better put on an apron.” She got one from a drawer and handed it to him.
“Pierson always sends invitations,” he continued. “Gold engraved ones.”
Merry shook her head. “Not to me, he didn’t.”
* * * *
“Hey!” Tammy’s voice sang out as the door slammed behind her. “Look what I’ve got!” She raced into the kitchen, holding the day’s mail, which Merry had forgotten to pick up.
She was waving three gold-bordered envelopes in front of her. “From Pierson Webb,” she shouted enthusiastically. “One for you and one for me and one for Agnes. He’s invited us all to his party!”
She looked at Jeff. “What are you doing here?”
He frowned at her. “You’re the second person to ask me that,” he said. “I’m making a salad, as you should be able to see.”
He swung his gaze to Merry. “I told you,” he said. “Pierson always sends gold-bordered invitations. Now you’ve no excuse.”
She frowned. Tammy had torn open her invitation and was reading it, entranced. Merry sighed: life might be a little easier if she were just a shade more like Tammy.
Suddenly she remembered Pierson Webb on the day he left the hospital. “If I invite you to a party, will you come?” he’d asked. And she’d answered, “Ask me.”
“I guess I’d better go.”
Tammy glanced up from her invitation. “Of course you’ll go,” she said. “You couldn’t not go. No one could.”
Merry laughed. “I suppose not.” She reached into the drawer for a can opener and said to Jeff, “You needn’t think you have to take me, you know.”
“Why should I think that?” he retorted, a sudden sharpness to his voice. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t be too modest. It has a phony sound.”
Merry flushed. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said.
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