And to cap it all, Darling got sick. She was a very fat and lively puppy when she was struck down, but five days of fever reduced her to a little skin-covered skeleton. Her liver-colored nose was pink and her gums were white. Her eyes glazed with illness and her whole body was hot although she trembled sometimes with cold. She wouldn’t eat and she wouldn’t drink and her fat little belly shriveled up against her spine, and even her tail showed the articulations through the skin. It was obviously distemper.
Now a genuine panic came over the Palace Flophouse. Darling had come to be vastly important to them. Hughie and Jones instantly quit their jobs so they could be near to help. They sat up in shifts. They kept a cool damp cloth on her forehead and she got weaker and sicker. Finally, although they didn’t want to, Hazel and Jones were chosen to call on Doc. They found him working over a tide chart while he ate a chicken stew of which the principal ingredient was not thicken but sea cucumber. They thought he looked at them a little coldly.
“It’s Darling,” they said. “She’s sick.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Mack says it’s distemper.”
“I’m no veterinarian,” said Doc. “I don’t know how to treat these things.”
Hazel said, “Well, couldn’t you just take a look at her? She’s sick as hell.”
They stood in a circle while Doc examined Darling. He looked at her eyeballs and her gums and felt in her ear for fever. He ran his finger over the ribs that stuck out like spokes and at the poor spine. “She won’t eat?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” said Mack.
“You’ll have to force feed her — strong soup and eggs and cod liver oil.”
They thought he was cold and professional. He went back to his tide charts and his stew.
But Mack and the boys had something to do now. They boiled meat until it was as strong as whiskey. They put cod liver oil far back on her tongue so that some of it got down her. They held up her head and made a little funnel of her chops and poured the cool soup in. She had to swallow or drown. Every two hours they fed her and gave her water. Before they had slept in shifts — now no one slept. They sat silently and waited for Darling’s crisis.
It came early in the morning. The boys sat in their chairs half asleep but Mack was awake and his eyes were on the puppy. He saw her ears flip twice, and her chest heave. With infinite weakness she climbed slowly to her spindly legs, dragged herself to the door, took four laps of water and collapsed on the floor.
Mack shouted the others awake. He danced heavily. All the boys shouted at one another. Lee Chong heard them and snorted to himself as he carried out the garbage cans. Alfred the bouncer heard them and thought they were having a party.
By nine o’clock Darling had eaten a raw egg and half a pint of whipped cream by herself. By noon she was visibly putting on weight. In a day she romped a little and by the end of the week she was a well dog.
At last a crack had developed in the wall of evil. There were evidences of it everywhere. The purse-seiner was hauled back into the water and floated. Word came down to Dora that it was all right to open up the Bear Flag. Earl Wakefield caught a sculpin with two heads and sold it to the museum for eight dollars. The wall of evil and of waiting was broken. It broke away in chunks. The curtains were drawn at the laboratory that night and Gregorian music played until two o’clock and then the music stopped and no one came out. Some force wrought with Lee Chong’s heart and all in an Oriental mometit he forgave Mack and the boys and wrote off the frog debt which had been a monetary headache from the beginning. And to prove to the boys that he had forgiven them he took a pint of Old Tennis Shoes up and presented it to them. Their trading at the Thrift Market had hurt his feelings but it was all over now. Lee’s visit coincided with the first destructive healthy impulse Darling had since her illness. She was completely spoiled now and no one thought of house-breaking her. When Lee Chong came in with his gift, Darling was deliberately and happily destroying Hazel’s only pair of rubber boots while her happy masters applauded her.
Mack never visited the Bear Flag professionally. It would have seemed a little like incest to him. There was a house out by the baseball park he patronized. Thus, when he went into the front bar, everyone thought he wanted a beer. He stepped up to Alfred. “Dora around?” he asked.
“What do you want with her?” Alfred asked.
“I got something I want to ask her.”
“What about?”
“That’s none of your God damn business,” said Mack.
“Okay. Have it your way. I’ll see if she wants to talk to you.”
A moment later he led Mack into the sanctum. Dora sat at a rolltop desk. Her orange hair was piled in ringlets on her head and she wore a green eyeshade. With a stub pen she was bringing her books up to date, a fine old double entry ledger. She was dressed in a magnificent pink silk wrapper with lace at the wrists and throat. When Mack came in she whirled her pivot chair about and faced him. Alfred stood in the door and waited. Mack stood until Alfred closed the door and left.
Dora scrutinized him suspiciously. “Well — what can I do for you?” she demanded at last.
“You see, ma’am,” said Mack— “Well I guess you heard what we done over at Doc’s some time back.”
Dora pushed the eyeshade back up on her head and she put the pen in an old-fashioned coil-spring holder. “Yeah!” she said. “I heard.”
“Well, ma’am, we did it for Doc. You may not believe it but we wanted to give him a party. Only he didn’t get home in time and — well she got out of hand.”
“So I heard,” said Dora. “Well, what you want me to do?”
“Well,” said Mack, “I and the boys thought we’d ask you. You know what we think of Doc. We wanted to ask you what you thought we could do for him that would kind of show him.”
Dora said, “Hum,” and she flopped back in her pivot chair and crossed her legs and smoothed her wrapper over her knees. She shook out a cigarette, lighted it and studied. “You gave him a party he didn’t get to. Why don’t you give him a party he does get to?” she said.
“Jesus,” said Mack afterwards talking to the boys. “It was just as simple as that. Now there is one hell of a woman. No wonder she got to be a madam. There is one hell of a woman.”
Chapter XXIV
Mary Talbot, Mrs. Tom Talbot, that is, was lovely. She had red hair with green lights in it. Her skin was golden with a green undercast and her eyes were green with little golden spots. Her face was triangular, with wide cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and her chin was pointed. She had long dancer’s legs and dancer’s feet and she seemed never to touch the ground when she walked. When she was excited, and she was excited a good deal of the time, her face flushed with gold. Her greatgreat-great-great-great grandmother had been burned as a witch.
More than anything in the world Mary Talbot loved parties. She loved to give parties and she loved to go to parties. Since Tom Talbot didn’t make much money Mazy couldn’t give parties all the time so she tricked people into giving them. Sometimes she telephoned a friend and said bluntly, “Isn’t it about time you gave a party?”
Regularly Mary had six birthdays a year, and she organized costume parties, surprise parties, holiday parties. Christmas Eve at her house was a very exciting thing. For Mary glowed with parties. She carried her husband Tom along on the wave of her excitement.