Tomorrow! (29 page)

Lenore said, “
Wha-a-a-at?
It doesn’t even make
sense!
W
ait
!”
For it did make sense. She ducked out from beneath the drier, feeling her hair, and ran toward the phones.

“Yes? Lenore Bailey speaking.”

“My God.” The voice was Rat, secretarial. “Have
we
been playing tag to reach
you!
This is Beatrice Jaffrey, Lenore. There’s a”—her voice fell to a whisper—“Condition Yellow out. Has been, quite a while.”

Lenore’s answer was faltering. “Today? Good heavens, they can’t
expect
us—unless
it’s—serious
?”

“It’s so serious,” Beatrice replied, “I can’t wait for your double-take. Make tracks, honey!” There was a click.

Lenore hung up. For half a minute, she merely stood beside the high shelf of the half-enclosed booth, her hand resting lightly on the mauve telephone.
She was going to miss Thelma
Emerson’s party.
The fact gave her such a sense of elation that all other facts and all other assumptions were crowded out of her mind. She was possessed by a kind of happiness, a surge of joy, something she had not felt for a long time.

I hate him that much, she thought with astonishment.

Certainly it’s too much hatred for a bride. If I didn’t know before, she thought, I know now. Dad and Mom will hate
me.

In the ensuing seconds, other parts of her brain meshed. Her good mind and the good education which had disciplined it took charge of her thoughts. Thoughts that plunged, climbed, curved in the dizzying pattern of cars sluicing over the track-maze of a roller coaster. Cars as seen against the summer skies on Swan Island. Her belly felt that way, besides: roller coaster.

All these people, she thought, staring at the people in the perfume, the peignoirs, the soft-sexy drape of music.

They haven’t been told. They aren’t supposed to know. It’s the latest, newest change in the orders.

It must be
genuine,
she thought.

Somewhere planes must have come over the borders, had a dog fight maybe. Maybe the air exercises started it. Maybe our bombers ran into something foreign scouting us.

Only then did she think, maybe it’s
it. Blitz.

Condition Yellow.

Confidential to CD personnel. Assemble with equipment. Was there a Phase Two, any more? Or not? Would the people in the store get a warning, during Yellow, if things grew more serious than however things were? Or would they have to wait for the Red, the sirens? She couldn’t recall. The codes and schemes and plans had changed and changed again; her struggling mind could bring to consciousness only a succession of Federal directives, state directives, local directives. Among them, she couldn’t isolate the last set. Orders in effect.

Should she
tell
anybody? Absolutely not! That essence of the directives remained unchanged. Might panic the store. For nothing.

Be hard, she thought, to make a fast trip home, now.

She walked back, half a minute after hanging up.

Aubrey was nervous. He would have said “distrait.” He was passing the fingers of his left hand, delicately, back and forth over the palm of his right.

“Darling,” he said, “you’re pale! It
was
important, after all! A shock?”

“I’m not sure, “ she answered. I “But I’ve got to go at once.”

“You’re not dry yet,” he said. “Not combed out.”

“Your left hand,” Francine added anxiously. “Not finished.”

Lenore began taking off the kimono. She picked up a comb. She raked and tugged; pins fell around her. Aubrey protested, tried to seize the comb. Women began to lean out to watch, their eyes alert and fascinated, the driers like big, cockeyed, silver crowns suspended over them.

Francine was trying to help. But Aubrey curtly rejected, had stamped away to pout.

“I’ll put my suit hack on,” Lenore said. “You can send my dress to the house.”

Francine replied anxiously, “But I’m not sure we can get a messenger this late! And it’s
Saturday.
And Monday’s Christmas. You’ll want it before Tuesday!”

Lenore had a thought, at once weird and charitable, shattering and kind. She ran to the dressing room, pursued by the manicurist. She picked up her handbag, fumbled, produced a five-dollar bill. “You live out toward Edgeplains, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes. But I won’t get off for two hours.”

Lenore pressed the bill in her hand. “I’ll speak to Aubrey. He’ll let you bling it out—

early, perhaps. And then go on home.”

Francine showed delight. “I could help do our tree!”

Lenore was head-deep in her skirt. “Sure,” she said. She thought that Francine could do what Francines did, now. Now and forever. Kit could have her if he wanted, the Kits of the world.

Francine could revel in the little bought pleasures of life, the pleasures she longed for so intently that all wisdom was excluded by desire. It was the only thing you could accomplish for some people: condemn them to their bliss and its going price, big or little.

She presented Aubrey with a twenty-dollar bill: “
Merry Christmas
!”
Lenore’s dark, dark hair rode her neck like a mane; her dark blue eyes were excited; her long fingers shook: “Look!

Let Francine off now and let her take my dress to my house, please!”

He rolled his eyes at his customers. “I’m short a manicurist as it is.”

“A special favor! I have to have it! I’m dining tomorrow with Minerva—”

“
I couldn’t,
Miss Bailey. I . . . ! But. . . .”

But he was adding the bill to others in his pocket.

The street wind and the bell-jingle hit Lenore. She raised the mink collar around her cheeks. The shock of the weather changed the pitch of her thoughts. Concerning the impulse which had caused her to bribe Francine’s early way home, she said to herself wryly, First reaction: pure melodrama! Calm yourself, moron!

She calmed herself.

Twenty-five dollars, you idiot! she said to herself.

She said, winding through the crowd on Central Avenue. It would be a small price for a life, though. And she said, Who on earth would have believed Aubrey would accept the money!

She said, What on earth has gotten into me that makes me feel positively elated?

She said, Chuck.

At the parking garage, where the Baileys always kept their cars downtown, at least fifty women and half that many men were stamping on the frigid concrete waiting for the boys to bring their coups, convertibles, and sedans down the ramp. Lenore was appalled. It would take twenty or thirty minutes for her Ford to appear. And they’d been trying to reach her for a “long time.”

How long? They hadn’t said. Condition Yellow was how old? Of what significance?

They hadn’t said. She wondered if she should find the manager, ask him for special service. If she mentioned Civil Defense, it would be a violation of rules. And nothing else would faze him, probably, for doubtless half the people standing and stamping there had tried other ruses and bribes.

She glanced out at the street. Cabs were hard to get also. Just about impossible.

Suddenly, she worried.

Looking down the side street, looking toward Central and across it, looking at the ocean of December-muffled humanity, she was scared. For the first time, she wondered where Chuck was, her father; her mother was at home cleaning. As if in further answer, she saw, or thought she saw, in the distance, Nora Conner walking along beside a colored woman. It was only the briefest glimpse. Lenore had an urge to race after the child, take her home. The urge died: Lenore’s primary concern was different. She turned back to the ticket booth, a square of pasteboard in her hand. Then she saw Mr. and Mrs. Ellinsen getting into their car. If they were on their way home, at Ash and Arkansas, it would do. She ran up to them.

Merry Christmas, Lenore, and sure, we’re going home. Crowds tuckered us out! Mr.

Ellinsen was definitely not an expert driver and Lenore began to sense, as they first tried Court and then River to make their way south in the heavy traffic, that there was something vaguely wrong in the traffic itself. Every once in a while, a private car would take a wild chance to make a small, extra gain in the procession. Every once in a while, a lone driver would clamp down on his horn and shoot past everybody, like a cop. That in turn (evidence, she knew, of Civil Defense people on the way toward their sectors) irritated all other drivers.

“People have gone absolutely crazy today,” Mrs. Ellinsen observed. “I’ve personally seen three collisions—minor, though. If it gets much worse, it simply won’t be possible to
live
in cities any more!”

Lenore didn’t reply to that.

She saw another thing. An entire fire company, sirens roaring, bells jangling, ground and tore, braked and ricocheted—south, through the jam-packed streets.

“Wonder where the fire is?” Mr. Ellinsen asked. And he tried, without much success, to gain a block or two in the swathe opened by the red-painted trucks.

Lenore did not reply to that either. She thought there was probably no more. She thought that, following regular Condition Yellow procedure, the Green Prairie fire-fighting equipment would all be heading out of town—all save a few stand-by pieces. When the emergency was over, they’d come back. Or else, of course, when the need turned cataclysmic. Doctors, she thought, would, or should, be heading out of town for the same reason. Nurses, also. Certain engineers and technicians. Various Red Cross people and their equipment.

At Arkansas and Walnut Street they let her out. She thanked them and hurried. A car or two went by, fast, on Walnut; otherwise the residential area seemed deserted. She began to run.

There didn’t seem to be anyone at home in the Conner house, she thought; then she saw, bright against the dulling afternoon, a light in the front attic window. She smiled. Ted Conner would be there, at his radio. Her steps slowed and she almost went in, went up, talked to Ted for a moment. She felt Ted would be able to tell her a lot about this alarm. And Ted might know where Chuck was at this point.

Reluctantly, she went on. She’d been summoned and that meant a beeline, not stops made out of curiosity, certainly not stops for inquiry about people, even people you loved.

She swung open her own front door. “Mom!”

“I’m in here!” Nella was reclining on the divan. She had a magazine, a highhall, a box of candy, a fire going in the grate, a radio on, and she talked in a barrage as Lenore stripped off her coat, gloves, galoshes. “What a day! What a
hellish
day! The new maid’s
impossible!
I’m not through with cleaning. You’ll have to do your own room, yourself, tomorrow. Why didn’t you go straight to the Ritz? That Conner brat ran away on me!”

“I thought I saw her downtown.”

Mrs. Bailey sat up a little. “
Well!
On her way to see Santa, I bet! Beth said she had a cold.

I didn’t see any signs. Saddled me with the child, and the child skipped. I even went racing down to River Avenue looking for her. Somebody said that she saw me coming and popped into a manhole.
Imagine!”

“Manhole!”

“The kids do. School kids. There are ladders. That’s what they said in the fruit store.

Young
hellion!
You can go blocks underground in the new sewer. Down to the cemetery—and beyond. If you’re that much of a fool. Me, I wouldn’t walk in one for a fortune. Where’s your new dress?”

Lenore decided not to tell her mother anything about her major decision. There wasn’t time. And it no longer mattered to Lenore what her mother thought. She knew what her mother would say and try to do. That didn’t matter either. She answered, “Mother, I got yanked away from Aubrey’s by Civil Defense.”

“What?” Mrs. Bailey didn’t understand; she was so completely baffled she could not even react.

“Now, Mother, take this calmly. I got an alert. It means nothing probably. Perhaps just a special drill—to see how we respond when we don’t in the least expect it. But it meant going through the routine. Coming home. Getting into my clothes. Going over to the school—all such.

I’m in a
hurry
.”

By then, Netta understood. She understood and was calm. “You simply haven’t time for it,” she said. “I didn’t think you could be so flighty! If your new frock wasn’t ready, you’ll have to wear your indigo. It looks well on you. Your hair needs more fixing. You’ll have plenty of time to get to the Ritz-Hadley—
plenty!
You can even lie down for an hour, if you’re tired. You
look
a bit fagged!”

“Mother. I’m going to the school!”

“My dear, Kit would be furious.”

“Call a cab for me,” Lenore said. “If you can’t get one here in twenty minutes, see if a neighbor would drive me over. Anybody.”

“See here, Lenore. I’ve been patient about this Civil Defense business for long enough. I know you did it just to annoy me, anyhow. But you are
not
going to cut an important party and break a date with Kit, just because some fool rehearsal has been ordered. Get that perfectly straight.”

“Get this perfectly straight,” Lenore answered. “It’s an alert. Official. I was summoned.

As soon as I can change, I’m going. If you try to stop me, I’ll—I’d even call the police!” She went.

Netta Bailey thought that over; her hands shook as she raised her highball, swallowed deeply. She knew that when Lenore was in that mood, nobody could do anything with her. She went to the phone. She called the Sloane house. Neither Minerva nor Kit was there. She told the butler that Lenore had come home with a sick headache and gone to bed quite ill, but nothing serious. The butler said he would “inform” Minerva and Kit. Netta then phoned Thelma Emerson and told her the same thing. It would never do to let Kit, or people like the Emersons, think that a mere girl-scout duty like Civil Defense had caused Lenore to break a date, to miss a social event.

As an afterthought, Netta called a cab company. She was told there would be a long wait.

So she tried the Davises. Jimmie said he’d knock off shoveling the yard under the clothes line, gladly, to drive Lenore anywhere she wanted to go.