A for Able, H for Happy. I got the directory open somehow and fumbled through it with nerveless fingers. Patton . . .
Patton, Alvis W. . . .
Patton, A. H. . . . I repeated the number, prodded the dime into the slot, and dialed.
She answered almost immediately. “Yes?” she said eagerly.
“I’m—” I said. “I’m—uh—”
She sighed. “God, I’ve been waiting all night. He said he gave you the message hours ago. Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wait.” I dropped the receiver and stepped out of the booth to look up at the sign on the edge of the cantilever roof above the driveway BARRETT’S SHELL SERVICE, it said.
I repeated it.
“All right,” she said quickly. “I’ll have to look it up, so I don’t know how far away it is. It may take five minutes or thirty. Stay right there, or as near as you can and still be out of sight. I’ll come by on that side of the street with my right-hand turn signal blinking. If everything is clear, come out and get in. If not, I’ll go around six or eight blocks and try again. All right?”
“Y-yes,” I said. I hung up. I went around behind the station in the deep shadows and leaned against the wall. My skin hurt all over the way I imagined it did in spots when you had gout. I couldn’t really be freezing, I thought; you never hurt then. Time went by. I began to dream I was on the bridge of the Dancy off Hatteras in a snowstorm. No, that couldn’t be right. I was never wet on the bridge. We had oilskins. I heard a car coming. I went to the corner and peered up the street. The car’s turn signal was blinking. I ran out. She stopped abruptly, and I got in. I doubled over, holding my arms, shaking violently and trying to keep from touching the wet clothes anywhere with my skin.
She drove fast. “Only a few minutes, Irish,” she said. I thought numbly she must have got that from Red. He always called me Irish.
I didn’t know how much later it was we were going down a ramp into a garage. It was shadowy, like a big cavern. Then she was helping me out. I went up the ramp after her, trying to walk without touching my clothes. We went past some grass where the sleet was bouncing, and then she was fitting a key into a large glass door. There was a small foyer inside with a potted palm and two elevators. It was very quiet. One of the elevators was standing open. We got in and she pressed a button. When we got out, she took off the dark coat she was wearing, and mopped the water off the bare floor of the car. It didn’t show very much on the carpet in the corridors. We met no one. Then she was unlocking another door.
I had a confused impression of a large room with thousands of books and a gray rug and colored draperies, and then she was leading me into another room. There were more curtains, and a double bed, a king-sized double bed, and beyond it was the door to the bathroom. Even the bathroom was large. She led me into it. There was a glass-doored stall shower. She reached in and turned on the taps. I went on shaking. I tried to say something. She shook her head at me and pushed me into the shower. “Sit down,” she said.
I sat down with the hot water pouring over my head and shoulders. She took off my shoes. “Now can you stand?” she asked. I got to my feet. The water felt as if it were boiling, but I went right on shaking. She pealed off the topcoat and dropped it to the floor. Then the coat. I tried to unbutton the shirt, but she caught both sides of it and tore at it, spraying the buttons off. In a moment I was naked, standing on the wet clothes while steamy water sluiced down over me. “I’ll be back,” she said, and closed the sliding door.
My skin was dead white and drawn up in a thousand whorls and wrinkles like the pictures of fingerprints, and my teeth went right on chattering. The door slid back and she was holding a glass half full of whisky. I drank it.
“All right,” she said. “Out you come. If you collapse before you get in bed I’ll never be able to lift you.”
She handed me a towel and took one herself. It felt as if we were tearing my skin off. She led me into the bedroom. The bed was turned down. She pushed me into it and covered me. She went out and came back almost immediately with another drink. She held it to my lips. My teeth beat like castanets against the glass, but I managed to swallow the whisky.
“Poor Irish,” she said. She clicked off the light, leaving only the faint illumination from the doorway to the living room. Then I saw she was undressing. She tossed the sweater, skirt, and slip across a chair, and sat down to remove her stockings. The room began to swim in big circles. She tossed the last garment onto the chair and slid in beside me.
“This may help,” she said. She gathered my head against her breasts, and a long smooth thigh slid up and over my leg and entwined with it as she held me pressed to her in every place we could touch. “It’s just a chill. It’ll go away.”
I struggled against the blackness that was trying to engulf me.
“Easy, Irish,” she said soothingly. “Just go to sleep.”
The walls of the room swam by again. I tried to get my arms round her, but I went on shaking.
“You can’t,” she said gently. “You know you can’t.”
She was right. I couldn’t. I made one more futile grab at the edge of the precipice and then fell, and went on falling through darkness.
Six
It was like waking up in another world. I sat up and looked around, almost as stupidly as if I had a hangover. In spite of the oversized bed, it was a very feminine room. Some light sifted in through the pale rose curtains that covered the wall at my left. The rug was a soft ivory in color, and the sliding doors of the clothes closet were full-length mirrors. The bed itself had a satin-covered headboard, a gold spread folded down at the foot of it, and a Dacron comforter. At either side were small night tables that held matching rose-shaded lamps with ebony bases. On the one at my left there was a white telephone, and tossed carelessly across it a black eyeshade of nylon or silk with an elastic band. It was warm and very quiet except for the faint and occasional sounds of traffic somewhere below. Across from me, by the dressing table with its wing mirrors and clutter of jars and bottles, was the door to the next room. It was closed..
It opened in a few minutes, and she peered in. When she saw I was awake, she smiled, and came on in. She was wearing black Capri pants and a white shirt, and she was barefoot. The light hair was carelessly tousled, and she looked as big and vital as a Viking’s dream.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Rum-dum,” I said. “As if I had a hangover.”
“You probably have. I think I poured a pint of whisky into you.”
“I really went out, didn’t I?”
“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” she said. “No food for four days except two cans of corned beef, and then nine hours soaked to the skin in freezing weather.” She sat on the side of the bed and put her hand on my forehead. “Any fever?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Where am I?”
“Seventh floor of the Lancaster Apartments, 2110 Beechwood Drive. Apartment 703. It’s four-thirty p.m. Friday, and you’ve been asleep for eleven hours. You’re safe here. Nobody saw you come in, and we can’t be heard through the walls.”
“Is there any chance they saw you last night?” I asked.
She shook her head. “They were too intent on you. And even if they did, they couldn’t have got my license number. I didn’t turn my lights on until I was a block away. According to the morning papers, they don’t believe now you ever left town at all.”