“That’s right.”
“I’m Mrs. Emerson.”
“Come on in.” The other woman stood up. Mrs. Morris was a large woman, perhaps forty-five, with silver-blonde hair that was arranged carefully all around her head like soft wax. She was wearing black slacks and a bright red silk blouse. Silver bracelets dangled heavily from both her wrists and she was smoking a crimson-tipped cigarette. “Sit down, honey,” Mrs. Morris said.
Lydia sat down gingerly on the chair in front of the desk.
“What can I do for you?” the other woman asked.
Lydia cleared her throat politely. “Well,” she began, “I’m sort of at loose ends here—getting my divorce and all. And I thought—well, I thought I really have nothing to do with myself all day—and I thought just possibly there might be something I could do here at the hotel.”
The other woman stared at her. “In other words,” she said, “you’re looking for a job.”
“Well—yes,” Lydia said.
“What can you do?”
“Well—” Lydia began.
“Never mind,” the other woman said, interrupting her with a wave of her hand. “I know. You can type. You can be a receptionist. Look,” she said, “I don’t need typists, I don’t need receptionists.”
“Well—” Lydia tried to speak again.
“Listen, honey,” the other woman said, “level with me. What’s happened? Are you broke? Can’t you pay your bill?”
Lydia sat up straight. “It’s not that—”
“What’s the matter with junior? Your husband? Won’t he send you any dough?”
“Now just a minute,” Lydia said. “You don’t seem to understand—”
“Just a minute yourself!” the other woman said. “Listen to me, honey. There’s a million like you. They come in here every day. So don’t give me that sweet and innocent ‘I-thought-I-could-help-out’ stuff!”
Lydia stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
“Sit down!” the woman bellowed.
Lydia felt the tears coming. “No!” she said. “I won’t be spoken to that way! I’m a guest here and—”
“Sit down.” And suddenly the other woman’s voice became sugary and cajoling. “Look, honey,” she said, “I didn’t say we couldn’t talk, did I?”
“Obviously you have nothing for me,” Lydia said.
“I said,” the other woman said slowly, “that I didn’t need typists and I didn’t need receptionists. That’s all I said, honey, so don’t go flying off the handle.”
“Well, what do you need?”
Mrs. Morris turned in her swivel chair and looked at the opposite wall. “I saw you with Sid Thurman last night.”
“Yes, I was with him—” Lydia said.
“Look,” the other woman said, “you’re better-looking than most. You’ve got a little class. Thurman seemed to think you were okay. I could use you—” and she punctuated the sentence with a long pull on her cigarette—“I could use you in the casino. As a hostess. Six nights a week. A hundred dollars a week.”
“That’s not what I had in mind,” Lydia said.
The woman turned sharply on her. “Sure it’s not!” she said savagely. “But it’s all you’re going to get from me! So think it over. Let me know.”
“I—” Lydia began. But she couldn’t finish. She turned and ran out of the office and down the corridor to her room. She let herself in, then locked the door from the inside. She turned, striking her thigh hard on the protruding metal arm of a chair, and threw herself across the bed, sobbing—sobbing both from the pain of the bruise and from humiliation.
At twelve-thirty she was still lying on the bed, still softly sobbing. Then she stopped sobbing and didn’t move.
There followed a series of images, some sharp, some blurred and fantastic, on her mind that seemed to resemble a television screen. She saw Tom once, clearly, in the living room of their house outside Chicago. His face, in this vision, was twisted with rage. He was calling her unkind, unforgivable things, things she couldn’t hear and couldn’t answer. He had never understood her. He was angry, this time about Barry, Barry Whosis, that man at the country club, and it was so ridiculous of him to be angry about a man whose name she couldn’t even remember, who had made no more impression upon her than that. He didn’t understand that it was just a harmless flirtation; he didn’t understand that harmless flirtations were one of the few pleasures of her life. She remembered the flirtations, the faceless, forgotten men, all with names that sounded like Barry. Barry, Larry, Harry.
Tom could be sweet, but he could be cruel, too, and that night his bitter words made her run out of the house and into the car. She saw herself driving to Sally Campbell’s apartment. Sally was her best, her only, and her dearest woman friend. Sally was divorced. “You poor kid,” she heard Sally say comfortingly. “Tom is a rat. I always thought so.” And Sally mixed her a good, stiff drink and for hours, it seemed, the two of them had sat numbly and joyfully counting off the weaknesses and shortcomings of all men. “Get the car. Get the house. Get a third of his salary at least,” she heard Sally’s flat voice saying. “Get the war bonds … get the cash … get the furniture.” Then that whole vision was interrupted with a young man’s pleasant voice—how young was he?—saying, “Can I spread out here?” And the joy of looking up and saying to yourself: My, he’s good-looking. And the joy of smiling, arranging the face in the smile that was not too inviting, not too unfriendly either, the upward look of the eyes, the arch reply, “All right.” And the blissful, dumb, numb feeling of knowing about yourself: You look good to him; he likes you. And then across this pleasant picture, like an obtrusive commercial, came the figure: $480 in traveler’s checks. Seventeen dollars in my purse. And the dismal wondering, Can I get any more from him at this point? Before I get the decree? Just two weeks before, Tom had written out the check—grimly—for a thousand dollars. It would have to be enough, he had said. He was paying the attorney’s fees as well. Where had all that money gone? How had she run through more than half of it in two weeks? The room wasn’t expensive! She knew the answer, of course. It had gone, evaporated in the casino and in the bar. She had been a fool to try the gambling tables. How much had she lost last night? Probably fifty or sixty dollars; she couldn’t think.
Then that picture, too, dissolved. And clearheadedly she thought, Things aren’t so bad! Mrs. Morris offered me a job, didn’t she? Maybe it wasn’t exactly—precisely—what she’d had in mind. At first thought, it didn’t seem dignified. It seemed sort of degrading—being a hostess in the casino. But, after all, what was wrong with it? Really nothing. A hundred dollars a week—that would tide her over. But then she thought, No. It was degrading. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. What if there should be someone from home, who should come in, see her there? She could never live it down. Tom had made good money as a regional sales manager. She had always had nice things. He had called her dumb, he had said she had no education, which wasn’t true because she had gone to secretarial school. And he had called her cheap because she came from the South Side. But she had come from a respectable home, as good as Tom’s, and she had been brought up to be a lady. He had made good money, she had always had nice things; she had always held her head up and Tom had been proud of the way she looked and dressed. So she wouldn’t stoop to that. Not, anyway, except as a last resort. And then, in this dream of money, ease and lovely things, nice clothes and the way she liked best of all to live, she thought of Mr. Sid Thurman. She, Lydia Emerson, had actually been found attractive by one of the richest men in Las Vegas! How interesting! How green with envy Sally Campbell would be! She saw herself—was it so impossible?—as Mrs. Sid Thurman of Fort Worth, Texas! And with this thought—though perhaps these thoughts were sleeping-dreams already and not waking ones—she fell asleep.
She didn’t wake up till four. And, waking, she felt new life and determination seeping into her. She sat up and reached for the telephone. “I wo
uld like,” she said, “to place a long-distance call—collect—to Evanston, Illinois.” And she gave the operator the number and her name.
A minute or two later she heard Tom’s voice say, “Hello?”
“Tom?” she asked hesitantly.
“Yes.”
“It’s me, Lydia, Tom,” she said.
“Yes. So the operator said,” he replied.
Again, it was the disconcerting remark. The remark she hadn’t expected, coming abruptly, throwing her off guard. But she began talking rapidly anyway. “Tom,” she said shrilly, “this is Lydia, Tom. Tom, I’m terribly afraid I need more money—don’t interrupt, Tom! Tom, you just didn’t give me enough. A thousand dollars isn’t going to be enough; I’m sorry but I’ll need a thousand dollars more, Tom, right away. No, no!” she cried, although he had said nothing. “No! I won’t listen to any more of your remarks! Listen here. I can get it this way or have your salary attached, my lawyer says so, Tom, he said that I could ask you decently to do the proper thing or else—” She was lying wildly now. “Or else, you listen to me, Tom, or else I’ll attach your salary and that would be pretty embarrassing for you with Mr. Wilson at the office, wouldn’t it?” She said several more words before she realized—how could he!—that the connection was dead; he had hung up on her.
At six o’clock—the desert sky was darkening and she had turned on her bedside lamp—she called Sid Thurman. Another man, a butler probably, answered the phone. There was some delay before she heard Mr. Thurman’s slow Texas drawl.
“Hi, there!” she said brightly. “It’s me—Lydia Emerson.”
“Lydia?”
“Yes—from last night. And this morning by the pool. Remember?”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Sure, I remember. How are you, Lydia?”
“Fine,” she said. “Just fine.”
“Swell,” he said.
“Say,” she said, “I’m wondering if you’d like to buy a girl a drink tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Yes,” she laughed, “I’m rested, showered, all dressed up and no place to go!”
“Gosh, Lydia,” he said, “I can’t do it tonight. My—well, my wife is sick.”
She paused, but only for the barest second. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
“I’m really sorry, Lydia.”
“That’s all right,” she said dully.
“If my wife weren’t sick—”
“Of course,” she said. “I understand.”
She replaced the receiver on its cradle.
Then it was not until seven o’clock, when the sky was full of sunset and shadows, that she was ready to leave her room. She had spent a long time in front of the mirror, repairing the ravages of the day. The eyes, especially, needed work. By outlining the lids with pencil, deepening them with blue eye-shadow, and adding mascara, she had managed to erase most of the effects of crying. Then she experimented with her hair in a new way, pulling it back, away from her face, little-girl fashion. She wondered, briefly, how it would look dyed golden red. Not bad, she decided. She had put on the pale-blue backless cocktail dress with the sequined top and fastened pearl earrings to her ears. She assembled things for her purser—lipstick, cigarettes, the lighter; she tore two twenty-dollar traveler’s checks from the packet in her suitcase and placed them, loose, in with the other things. That would be her limit. She would try the tables one more time.
She walked out of the room, locking the door behind her, went past the reception desk, out onto the terrace by the pool. The underwater lights had been lighted in the pool, and from the dining room and cocktail lounge on one side dance music floated. On the other side was the casino, already beginning to sound gay. At the far end of the pool, tables were set up for cocktails.
Lydia looked at it all for a moment or two, and then she saw the tall, blond young man approaching. He was no longer in bathing trunks, but in a plaid Madras jacket, and he looked even straighter and more handsome.
“Hello,” he said, and smiled at her.
“Hello,” Lydia said.
“Got a date tonight?”
“No, as a matter of fact I haven’t.”
They started walking around the lighted pool.
“You know something?” she said. “I don’t know your name.”
“Don,” he said.
“Just Don?”
“Just Don. You’re just Lydia, aren’t you?”
She laughed softly. “Yes, I’m just Lydia.”
They walked in silence. Then he said, “I figured you might be out with Sid Thurman tonight.”
“Sid Thurman,” she said firmly, “had just better take care of his wife.”
“His wife?”
“Yes, his wife is sick.”
The young man stopped. “Is that what he told you?” he asked.
“Yes. Why?”
“Ah, you poor kid,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Sid Thurman doesn’t have a wife.”
“What!” Without her wanting it to, the word came out as a cry.
He was silent. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
They stood side by side and presently the young man took Lydia’s hand and pulled her around facing him. “Look,” he said gently, “let’s admit it, you and I.”
“Admit what?”
“We’re two of a kind. We know that, don’t we? I’m scouting for rich women. You’re scouting for rich men. Tonight we’ve both lost out. Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow. But tonight we’re free. We have nothing to offer each other except each other—but we’re both free tonight. So—why not?”
Lydia shuddered. “Oh!” she said. “No, no!”
She pulled away from him and turned in the other direction, away from the bar, toward the casino. She walked rapidly, clutching her purse. At the glass doors that led into the casino she stopped. The tables were beginning to fill up; she could hear the sound of the wheels, the mechanical clatter of the machines along the wall, the rattle of the chemin de fer cage, the chink of poker chips, and the tinkle of ice cubes in glasses. She hesitated. She could see the faces, faces of men intent upon the action of the tables, faces of the croupiers, faces of the girls, and suddenly, even from the distance at which she stood, every face seemed cruel. The faces did not seem clouded with greed or desperation but with evil and brutality. And in the whole brightly lighted room full of sounds and occasional bursts of laughter, there was not a single face that looked kind. She turned and leaned her back heavily against the glass door.
The young man was walking away from her toward the cocktail lounge. She watched him.
Then she called, “Don.”
He stopped and turned.
“Wait!” she called. She arranged her face in her best smile. “Wait for Lydia!”
THE SNOWS OF YOUTH
When Ellen Brier opened her eyes that morning the air was so clear and so pure that she had the sensation of having somehow awakened in the center of a crystal paperweight. Trapped in this prism with her were all the things from the night before: her yellow robe tossed over the chair, her sandals on the woven rug, her three suitcases packed and ready to go. The curtains hung absolutely still and in the window the green wing of an ipomoea vine cast a gray shadow of stems and marbly veins on the white sheets. There were no sounds. Then she began to hear the muffled morning noises of the hotel—the maids murmuring soft Cruzan words, soft bare footsteps padding across the stone terrace, the rush-rush sound of their brooms, and the gentle chink of china as the terrace tables were set for breakfast—the last breakfast before the hotel closed for the season. Yesterday, Ellen thought, I would not have felt this wonderful excitement about going home; I would have dreaded it. But today she felt almost absurdly happy. She stepped out of bed and went to the window.
Below, the little terrace was in a puddle of sunlight, gleaming whitely like a pale linen handkerchief thrown down. Around it, tubs and pots of geraniums and lobelia spilled pink and blue. A shower of p
urple-red hibiscus shot upward against the white clay wall of the kitchen house. She saw Mrs. Carmichael’s tall, straight-backed chair, empty now, where Mrs. Carmichael sat every day, stiff and erect in her black lace-bosomed dress, her hands busy with her knitting, her white head nodding in rhythm with her needles, her tiny old-lady’s feet in black hose and black buttoned shoes planted squarely in front of her. Nothing stirred in the light but the plantain leaves in the warm breeze. Ellen turned away from the window and walked back to the bed. She lay down again and pulled the sheet over her toes. She glanced at her travel clock; it was quarter past seven. In three more hours she would be on the plane. Six hours after that she would be home. And best of all, she thought, she had a goal. It was as though Mrs. Carmichael had handed her a goal with her small, wrinkled hand.
Ellen’s friendship with Mrs. Carmichael began strangely, with the old lady’s brandishing her black walking stick over Ellen’s head.
“Young lady, do you realize where you are sitting?” Mrs. Carmichael had said. And then, commandingly, “Get up!”
Ellen had jumped to her feet. “I’m terribly sorry,” she stammered.
Without a word Mrs. Carmichael had seated herself in the chair, carefully tucking her black skirts around her knees and placing her walking stick on the arm of the chair. Finally, when she was completely settled, she looked up at Ellen. “How do you do?” she said. “I am Mrs. Edward Carmichael.”
“I’m—I’m Ellen Brier.”
“You must be new here at the hotel,” the old lady said. “This is my chair. I say my chair because it is actually my own chair. It is not the hotel’s property. I purchased this chair myself and had it shipped down here from New York. It was especially designed to support my back.”
“Really, I’m awfully sorry.”
“Don’t mention it,” Mrs. Carmichael said crisply. “You had no way of knowing. But now you know.” She picked up her knitting bag and placed it on her lap. “From three to four every afternoon I walk. During that hour this chair is available for any guest of the hotel who wishes to sit in it. But I expect it relinquished by four sharp. I assume you found it comfortable.”
Heart Troubles Page 13
