The doctor said nothing. He played with his lips for a few moments and stared at the far wall. When Miss Ball thought he was going to laugh once again she started to unfold her hanky. The doctor swiveled his chair back at her and said in a low voice, “I think I understand.”
“What about it?”
“I’ll do anything you say.”
“I want you to warranty the operation.”
“I’ll do it,” said the doctor. He took out a piece of paper and wrote on it.
“Make it a five-year warranty, like my juicer. Five years is good enough. I’ll be satisfied.”
“No, I won’t hear of it, Miss Ball. I’ll give you a lifetime warranty for that operation of yours.”
“A lifetime warranty! Good God,” said Miss Ball. Her mouth hung open. She could not find the words to express her thanks. Just when he seemed about the biggest quack she had ever seen he reached into his skinny heart and came up with a lifetime warranty. It was almost too much to ask. “Golly,” she finally said, “that’s the nicest thing anyone ever did for me.”
The doctor handed Miss Ball the piece of paper. He said he had done nothing. Miss Ball protested, and felt like throwing herself at his feet.
On the way out of the office Miss Ball’s heart was full of love and life. It pulsed. She felt it thumping there under her brooch and lace like a giant Snooz-Alarm. She was a new woman. Mother Nature could do her worst, could twist nice little tissues into ugly old organs. What did it matter? The wonderful warranty was right there in her handbag.
“When God closes a door he opens a window,” Miss Ball murmured over and over again as she walked home to find out what success Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss had had with their looking around the Mount Holly Trust Company. Personally, Miss Ball felt she could rob a thousand banks single-handed.
13
“It’s all set,” Mr. Gibbon said. He and Mrs. Gneiss had found out many valuable things. They knew exactly where the vault was (it was, as a matter of fact, in full view of all the bank customers, as most vaults are) and they had plotted what movements they would make. It would be an elaborate “quarterback sneak:” the women would be standing by, Mr. Gibbon would sneak in with his gun drawn, wearing a disguise. The women would be dressed in very ordinary clothes (“Oh, gee!” Miss Ball said, and slapped the table), and would arrive early at the bank. Everyone agreed that it was a nifty little plan.
The suitcases were next on the agenda. The bodies — or the parts of the bodies — had started making a terrific reek. It was an ungodly odor, Mr. Gibbon said, and then he began telling the two ladies about how trenches smelled exactly like that — and you had to sleep, eat, load your gun and shine your brass right in the thick of it. You could cut it with a knife, in case anyone was interested.
Miss Ball said that, for goodness sake, it must have been just like what Herbie was putting up with at that very moment! The thought of the decaying limbs and trunks of the two communists in the suitcases upstairs made them all feel quite close to Herbie.
“It kind of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?” said Mrs. Gneiss.
They all stopped, sniffed at the smell that had now penetrated right down into the dining room, and agreed. It was as if Herbie was in the next room.
But what to do with those suitcases? Miss Ball suggested burying them. Mr. Gibbon suggested that they should put them, for practical reasons, into lockers at the bus terminal. Why? Because after the robbery, as they were carried on the shoulders of a screaming mob of grateful patriots, they would ask to be taken to the bus terminal. In full view of the mob and nationwide television they would produce the key and throw the locker open, expose its un-American contents to the mayor; they would exchange the locker key for the key to the city of Mount Holly.
Miss Ball called a taxi. The taxi driver was a bit under the weather.
“Nice to see some people get a chance to go away,” he muttered.
“Oh, we’re not going anywhere!” Miss Ball chirped.
Mrs. Gneiss was given the task of depositing the suitcases into the lockers. Mr. Gibbon had carefully estimated how much it would cost. He gave Mrs. Gneiss two warm dimes when they arrived at the bus terminal, and called a porter to help. “Give the little woman a hand,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He winked at Miss Ball.
They should not be seen together in public, it was decided. There was no telling who might be spying on them. Mr. Gibbon said that it was a favorite trick of spies to let you go on with your activities and then nab you at the least likely moment, red-handed, with the goods.
“Well, you just leave the goods to me,” Mrs. Gneiss said. Mr. Gibbon and Miss Ball went their separate ways after whispering that they would meet back at the “hideout,” as Miss Ball’s white-frame house, ringed by nasturtiums, came to be called.
Mrs. Gneiss carried one suitcase, the porter carried the other, heavier one. The porter remarked that it felt as if it were filled with burglar tools.
The moment Mrs. Gneiss lifted the suitcase she knew she had Juan. She felt her nice porous skin turn to gooseflesh as she hurried toward the steel lockers.
“They’ll fit right fine in this one,” the porter said as he groaned and heaved his big suitcase before a row of big lockers.
Mrs. Gneiss looked at the sign and sighed. deposit one quarter only, read a sign over a chromium tongue with a quarter-sized circle punched into it. The tongue seemed to be sticking right at Mrs. Gneiss. She examined the two dimes in her palm and said to the porter, “You got anything more reasonable?”
The porter said that at the other end of the terminal there were some cheaper ones, a little cheesier than these.
“Let’s have a look,” Mrs. Gneiss said.
They hefted the suitcases once again. Halfway across the floor, near the benches for the waiting passengers, Mrs. Gneiss heard someone say, “What’s a lady like you lugging a big suitcase like that all by your lonesome?”
The porter ignored the voice and went on ahead.
Mrs. Gneiss turned. A sailor stood before her. He was wearing a seaman’s uniform: the white inverted sand-pail hat, wide trousers, and a tight shirt. He had tattoos on his hairy forearms. He should have been young. It was the sort of uniform young sailors wear. But he wasn’t young. He was about fifty, and his potbelly pressed against his sailor shirt. He looked jolly. He lifted Mrs. Gneiss’s meaty hand off the handle and hoisted the suitcase. He asked Mrs. Gneiss if she had burglar tools in it.
He alone laughed at his joke. He asked Mrs. Gneiss where she was going. He said that he was going to Minneapolis. Mrs. Gneiss said that she was going to the lockers at the other end of the terminal. This sent the old salt into gales of laughter.
“I hope you don’t mind doing this,” Mrs. Gneiss said, trying to get an impish smile on her fat face. “My Herbie’s in the army.”
“Don’t say?” the sailor said, interested. “Is he stateside?”
“I don’t think so. He’s in the front lines as far as I know.”
The sailor whistled. “What’s he wanna do a thing like that fer? Get hissel’ hurt that way if he doesn’ watch it.”
“Not my Herbie,” said Mrs. Gneiss. It hadn’t dawned on her that Herbie would get hurt. Now, as she said Not my Herbie, it occurred to her that Herbie might get his little brain blown off. She blotted out the thought and grinned at the sailor.
The porter had walked all the way to the end of the terminal and now was walking back to where Mrs. Gneiss stood with the sailor. He looked peeved. “I been waiting for you for about an hour,” he said.