Gloria nodded. “I’ve some errands to do. If you wouldn’t mind waiting while I change, Mr. Dalvin—”
“Not at all. Doctor, can I phone and find out how—”
“Phone me about your hand if you want to, but if you want any dope on Marty, Lew will give it to you. I’ve got to go catch up with my guests, Mr. Dalvin. You can wait right here. Gloria won’t be long.”
Steve thanked him. The small doctor gave him a mock salute and left. Standing at the window, Steve saw him walk quickly down across the green lawns toward the group at the pool. A grill affair had been rolled into view, and a man in a chef’s hat was busy at the grill, preparing a charcoal fire.
In five minutes he heard the nurse in the corridor again, walking without any rustling of starch. She was hatless, wearing a sand-colored linen dress. She carried a white purse. “Ready?” she asked.
He walked beside her. “Nice of you to take me back.”
“Not at all, Mr. Dalvin.”
The car, an inexpensive lemon-colored convertible with a black top, was parked near an adjoining building. The nurse slid in and worked the top mechanism. The top folded into the well with a whirring sound. Steve looked up at the windows of the sanitarium and saw that they were barred. A young man wearing glasses looked down at them from one of the windows. His face was completely empty, shockingly empty.
“You have mental patients here, I understand.”
She backed the car deftly, her hand on top of the wheel, turned in the seat to look back over her shoulder. He saw that her hair was not jet. as he had supposed. The sun brought out reddish-brown glints. She said. “There’s a separate staff for the mental patients. I have nothing to do with them.”
She turned down the gravel drive. “It’s bigger than I thought.” he said.
“Yes, it is large,” she said. He felt faintly irritated at not being able to break through the nurse-patient relationship.
“Do you know Mr. Prade?”
“I know of him.”
“Good friend of Dr. Dressner’s?”
“I imagine so.”
She drove swiftly through traffic, jockeying for position, cutting across from lane to lane, judging the lights well. One light fooled her, changing just too soon. She had to wait.
“I guess it must be more interesting to work in a place like that than it would be in a public hospital.”
She looked at him calmly. “Mr. Dalvin, you keep giving me the impression that you’re trying to pump me. When Dr. Dressner asked me to take you home, it wasn’t a suggestion; it was an order.”
He felt himself flushing again. “I was making conversation.”
“It really isn’t necessary.”
“You keep giving the impression that you disapprove of me, Gloria.”
“My name is Miss Hess. If that was a question you just asked the answer is neither yes nor no. It just hadn’t occurred to me to approve or disapprove.”
He sighed. “Okay, okay.” He gave her the address. She turned at his direction several times and at last pulled up in front of his house. Diana came running out across the lawn, yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, Paulie says you hit a man and killed him and broke your hand. Did you, did you?”
He opened the door, and she stared wide-eyed at the sling and cast. “Miss Hess, this is my daughter, Diana. Honey, Miss Hess is a nurse. She helped fix my hand. And I didn’t kill anybody. Paulie shouldn’t say such stupid things.”
He took Diana’s hand and turned to thank Gloria Hess. Gloria wore a faintly puzzled expression. She looked at Diana and then at Steve.
He said, “Thanks for the ride, Miss Hess.” He closed the car door. She raced the motor and then let it idle. She looked obliquely at Steve. “You don’t work for Mr. Prade, I guess.”
He grinned. “If that is a question, Miss Hess, no. My son chased a ball into Mr. Prade’s yard. That man called Marty grabbed my son and started to slap him around pretty rough. Well, it — got me a little sore.”
She half smiled. “I should think it did. I... I’m sorry, Mr. Dalvin.”
“For what?”
She wrinkled her nose a little. Steve found the little grimace oddly entrancing. “Oh... just sorry.” The bright car shot away from the curb. He saw her hair blowing in the wind as she took the corner at the end of the street.
“That is a nice nurse!” Diana said judiciously and went into the house.
Steve stood by the porch and looked up at the corner where the car had disappeared. It had been a very long time since he had felt such a strong speculative interest in a girl. He had enjoyed watching her at Valley Vale, the way she moved, her pretty air of dedicated efficiency. Odd place to find her. And her manner had been strange with him. Almost brutally cool until she had found out that he did not work for Lew Prade. And then an apology.
He liked that sort of face. Cool and still and contained, and yet with more than a hint of all the warmth that was not permitted to break through. A woman who would keep herself to herself in normal human relationships, saving all the deep and spontaneous warmth for...
Steve, he told himself, your wheels are dragging. All that is for some young doctor with whom she is no doubt deeply and sincerely in love, and if she has the time of day for a beat old boy like you, that is just about all you can expect out of that particular department.
But, a truly wonderful wrinkle of the nose, to go with the oblique look.
The kids had had their lunch and were electioneering about the neighborhood movie. He sent them off with funds and suitable instructions about Paulie holding Diana’s hand while crossing the two streets. He watched them take off, Paulie running, Diana churning after him, making irate calliope sounds.
In the kitchen Mrs. Chandler glanced at his hand. “I fixed you nothing you can’t eat with one hand. Hurt, does it?”
“Not too bad.”
“Those people! Ought to be chased out of any decent neighborhood. Bunch of gangsters. Bunch of hoodlums with their cheap women. Hah!”
“I lost my temper.”
“Guess you did.” She set his lunch in front of him. “That Mrs. Quinn, she called up. all excited. Right after you left. Said her kid came home with a crazy story, and what was it all about.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Tell her? Told her what happened. What do you think I’d tell her? She said she won’t have her boy playing anywhere near to those kind of people. She says Paulie and her boy want to play together, Paulie can go down there where they’ve got good neighbors and a boy’s life isn’t in danger.”
Steve had lunch and then realized he had nothing to do for the rest of the day. He had brought work from the office. He was in charge of the purchase, allocation, repair, and maintenance of the heavy road machinery owned by Jennings and Ryan. With a minimum of five large road jobs going on at any one time, and with profit on the jobs depending on having the big shovels and trucks and bulldozers and Euclids at the right place at the right time, his was a key job, and a demanding job.
But he couldn’t make up estimate sheets with a broken hand.
He read for a time, then roamed restlessly around the house. This was the sort of situation in which he missed Ellen the most. The aimless discontent became something tangible, a hard knot in his chest. It was odd. not having anyone to tell things to. No one to talk to and explain all the feelings involved in the quick anger and outraged assault on the man called Marty.
He saw the small truck when it came into his driveway. Mrs. Chandler had gone down the street to her own house. He walked through the kitchen as the back-door buzzer sounded. “Mr. Dalvin?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“Package delivery.”