Then, without saying anything more, she flung the door open and ran out.
He leaped from the bed and started after her. His foot stepped squarely on the face of the woman in the discarded paper as he flew through the open door after her.
The room was high up in the building. He leaned over the stair-rail and looked down. Her feet were pattering below him, around and around.
“Hey, Ginny, come on back!” he shouted down the stairwell. “Come on back, will ya!”
But the way she ran, the terrified way she ran, he knew she wouldn’t return. And he knew something else too. She wasn’t running like that because she was afraid of being pursued — she was running like that because she was afraid of the future.
The delivery truck drove up alongside the stand at exactly 9:29 P.M.
“Twanny-four returns,” Mom said.
The headline said, BLONDE BEAUTY SLAIN.
Mom sat back, propped her elbows, and waited.
The expensive black limousine had had to wait there for a traffic light. The man in the back leaned forward and said something to his chauffeur. The young colored driver, spruce in his uniform, immediately got out, crossed over on foot, and came up to the stand.
“Times?” he said.
“Not up yet,” said Mom.
“How about the Herald-Trib, then?”
“Not up yet either,” Mom said. “They don’t come up until eleven thirty.”
He looked a little disconcerted. He even glanced over to where he’d left the car, as if weighing the possibility of going back for further instructions.
But the light had changed meanwhile and the impeding limousine was being honked at by several blocked cars in back of it. “All right, I’ll take a tab,” he said quickly.
He snatched one up, turned away, and hustled back to his driver’s seat. He closed the door after him, started the car off then handed the paper over the seat to the man in the back.
The latter put the light on. When he saw the name of the paper he looked up questioningly. “What’s this, Bruce?”
“That’s the best I could do, Mr. Elliott,” the young chauffeur explained. “The Times isn’t out yet.”
His employer tucked it away in his coat-pocket sight unseen. “Oh, well,” he drawled good-naturedly. “I’ll just have to do without reading tonight.”
Bruce chuckled a little.
Mr. Elliott lit a cigar and watched the sights go by.
In the morning he found his wife June at the table ahead of him, as he always did. He liked to. Not that she had anything to do with preparing breakfast — that was the cook’s job; but, he always said to himself, she brightened up the table just by being there. With her yellow-jersey jumper and her little-girl hair hanging loose all about her head, she could have passed for a teenager.
He kissed her good morning, then once more for good measure.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, indicating what was outside the picture window.
“Each morning gets better than the one before. People who live in the city are such fools.”
His Times was there now, waiting for him. It came in every morning, of course. It was just that he had wanted to kill time by having something to read on the drive home last night. He furled it over, all the way back at the financial section. Those pages were the only ones he ever read carefully. However, before he’d quite finished, they had a problem on their hands. Oh, not a very large one, but one concerning Dickie, and any problem concerning Dickie always received full consideration. They were that kind of parents.
Amy brought him in with her. Amy was his governess (Bryn Mawr, post-graduate course in child care and training), and Bruce’s wife.
“This is one I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on to you,” she said, when good mornings had been said, “considering its source. I’m no expert.”
Dickie didn’t wait for any further preamble. “Daddy, do canaries really go ffft? Tommy Holden has one at his house and I never heard it do anything but chirp.”
“Where’d you get that from?” Elliott looked completely blank for a moment. June stifled a burst of laughter.
“The paper says a canary went ffft at someone.”
“This,” said Amy sternly, pro-during the newspaper. “I always encourage him to read for himself as much as possible, and help him with the hard words. I saw he was having trouble, and it was only after I’d read the line to him that I realized what I was reading it from.”
Elliott smote himself on the forehead in dismay, then held a hand to one cheek. “Oh, Lord, a gossip column, no less,” he said in an undertone, giving his wife a plaintive look. “What do I do with that?”
“It’s your job, dear,” said June pertly.
“Buck passer,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Let’s hear how he gets out of this one,” June whispered to Amy. “This is going to be good.”
He glanced upward for a moment, for inspiration.
“Cats really are the only ones that go ffft,” he began.
“You didn’t get the ffft quite right, dear,” said June. She was in one of her mischievous moods. She had her elbows on the table and her chin propped in her cupped hands, trying to throw him off by staring at him earnestly.
“Please,” he said ruefully. “This is tough enough without being heckled.”
He went back to the task in hand. “Now, real canaries don’t go ffft—”
“You got that ffft better,” said June.
He ignored her. “Ladies who sing are sometimes called canaries, because they sing so pretty,” he went on laboredly. “And if they get mad at somebody, sometimes they do go ffft.”
Dickie turned aggrievedly to his mother. “I didn’t understand a word Daddy told me,” he complained.
June turned her head sharply one way, Amy the other. In fact, the only two people in the room who weren’t convulsed with laughter were the two males, king-size and pint-size.
June patted the little boy’s head. “And you weren’t the only one, dear,” she whispered consolingly — a whisper she somehow managed to direct so that it reached Elliott’s ears.
“Let’s see you try it if you’re so good at it,” he whispered her way.
“I know someone who’s going to hear from me about bringing that rag into the house in the first place,” vowed Amy darkly. “That’s one thing I can’t compete with, a tabloid. I don’t know the right slang.”
“Bruce?” said Elliott. “Now don’t blame poor Bruce. He had nothing to do with it. I asked him to hop out a minute and get me the Times, and it hadn’t arrived at the stand yet, so he brought this back with him instead.”
“I notice he didn’t bring back Reader’s Digest or Atlantic Monthly,” was Amy’s tart comment as she led Dickie out of the room.
June went to the door to see her husband off, as she did every day. Dickie joined the leave-taking, rushing at his father head-first and whiplashing his little arms about him at mid-thigh, which was as high as he could reach.
“See you tonight, Daddy, hunh?” he chirped. “See you tonight!”
June winked at Elliott over the little boy’s head.
She gave him one of her rare compliments when Dickie had been led away a second time, and he was kissing her goodbye — rare, but from the heart. “You’re a good father, Doug,” she said softly. “The best. Sense of humor and everything.”
“Don’t I get any rating as a husband also?” he wanted to know.
She closed her eyes dreamily, to show him that he did.
He became oddly serious for a moment, almost pensive. “That’s all I have,” he told her thoughtfully. “You and him. My family. That’s all I care about — really care about. I wouldn’t let anything — or anyone — stand in their way. I wouldn’t let anything — or anyone — threaten their happiness.” His eyes had a faraway look just then, as if he remembered he’d said that once before — some place, sometime, to someone.