“The gas stove worked, after a fashion. The flame was very low.”
“Pressure giving out. It'll be gone in a day or so.”
“What will we do then?”
“We won't be here,” he assured her. “We're getting out of this town tomorrow.”
“There's no place to go.”
When they reached the fourth floor he paused to examine the keys he carried in his hand, and then flicked the light along the door numbers. The keys directed them away from the stairway toward the rear of the building. The first room he unlocked and kicked open proved to be a narrow one, holding but a single bed; the following two were replicas of the first. On the next try a large room having a double bed stood revealed in the gleam, and adjoining that a similarly large room with twin beds. He pulled her inside, locked the hall door, unlocked the connecting door between the rooms and locked the remaining outside doorway of the other bedroom.
“This is where we bunk,” he told her.
She watched him, saying nothing.
He waggled his thumb at the connecting door. “Which room do you want?”
Irma shook her head, not answering.
“Come on, kid, pick your room. I'm not robbing the cradle!” He put the flash down on the bureau top, still lit, and emptied his pockets of the stolen jewels. They made dim fires in the weak light. Belatedly he remembered to pull down the shades to prevent the light from betraying them. When he turned away from the windows she was still standing in the center of the room, watching him. “Which room?” he asked sharply.
“I'm frightened.”
“Not that frightened.”
“I'm afraid to sleep in another room.”
“To hell with that. I locked the doors.”
“I will not sleep in a separate room,” Irma declared. Her voice climbed with an hysterical note. “This place is… is… dead!”
Russell Gary studied her youthful face briefly in the light of the torch, wondering what he was to do with her. He'd like to leave her, walk off and pretend he'd never found her, be rid of her… but he couldn't just abandon a child. In sudden decision he snapped off the light. “Suit yourself. I'm taking the bed by the window.” And he sat down on it.
He undressed, taking off everything but the twin dog tags hanging around his neck. It was the way he usually slept; he hadn't even considered adding pajamas to his wardrobe when he had helped himself in that clothing store during the afternoon. After long minutes spent in relaxing on the hotel sheets, he reached out to raise the shade and pry open the window a few inches.
There was the quiet sound of the girl moving on the opposite bed.
His mouth was dry with a consuming thirst and he got up in the darkness for water, only to remember there was none. Swearing, he climbed back into bed.
Irma laughed at him with unconcealed satisfaction.
“Now,” she said boastfully, “am I nineteen?”
3
HE AWOKE with the sun shining on his face, spilling through the open window he had raised the night before. The room was quiet and unmoving, a large and clean room in sharp contrast to that other squalid cell in which he had awakened the previous day. After a few moments the quiet and unmoving street below the window came to his attention, and he remembered where he was and what had happened to him. Nothing had happened to him — that was the surprising thing. He lived. He didn't move, didn't get up and rush to the window to see if the city had changed itself overnight, to see if the dead had returned to life and were moving about the streets in normal fashion. There would be no magical change, no overnight erasing of the nightmare that had killed a city. Yesterday and last night were too real, too much like those towns in Italy and France. This city was gone. His immediate concern was to find out how many others had died with it, how many others had fallen under enemy bombs.
That, and get back to the army.
Meanwhile, what would he do with the girl? Take her along and turn her over to the Red Cross — or walk out on her, leave her here in the city where she lived? He turned his inquiring eyes toward the other bed and found it empty.
Gary sat up, startled. Had she left him?
He stepped out of bed and padded across the rug in his bare feet, to pause before the bureau. The flashlight was still there but the stolen jewelry was gone. Turning, he quickly crossed the room to the outer door, tugged at the knob and found it locked. The key was not there. The girl had left him and locked the door from the outside, taking her loot with her. He stood at the door, thinking of her.
Nineteen… and she could prove it. Had proved it. He looked back at her rumpled bed and said aloud, “Hell of a note!” And then he went into the bathroom.
The mirrored cabinet set in the wall was empty but for a few tiny bars of hotel soap and he slammed the lid shut in disgust. A dirty, bearded face stared back at him. The water taps above the sink still refused to run and he was on the point of turning to leave the room when his eyes found the water closet. Lifting off the porcelain lid and twisting the floating ball back out of the way, he scooped his hands into the box and washed his face. The water felt good on his skin and he poured handfuls over his head, letting it run down his body. A half dozen untouched towels hung near-by. As he was drying himself he caught sight of his beard in the mirror again, and stopped.
Gary quit the bathroom and walked to the door, forgetting it was locked until the knob resisted his hand. He muttered an impatient threat to the absent girl under his breath and crossed through the connecting doorway to the adjoining room, to let himself out into the hotel corridor. Going downstairs, he noted the room numbers nearest the lobby and on reaching the ground floor, scooped from the clerk's rack several keys to those rooms. Searching about the lobby he found a drugstore opening off it, and picked up a heavy chair to hurl through its locked door. The drugstore shelves offered him his choice of shaving equipment and he picked up a handful, taking the things up to the second floor and the nearer rooms.
The first room he unlocked was a sample room and he backed out of it, impatient at the minor delay. The next two rooms he opened contained bodies in the beds and he vacated them just as quickly. Finally locating an empty one, he closed the door and locked it with the bolt, to dump his supplies in the bathroom. Lifting off the lid of the water box, he used his hands to scoop out water and fill the sink. Then he shaved.
Afterwards he lay down on the bed and ripped open a package of cigarettes taken from the drugstore, smoking two in succession before the taste in his mouth satisfied him. It was then that he discovered he had forgotten to dress. Cursing his own forgetfulness, Gary swung off the bed and unlocked the door, to climb two flights of stairs to the fourth floor and his own room.
Both doors hung open — the one he had left open and the other that the girl had locked. He checked his stride and listened. Irma Sloane was inside, crying hysterically.
Gary paused in the doorway, saw her lying across his bed.
“Stop that bawling, dammit!” he said with a sharp and husky voice.
She swung around quickly, raised her head to stare at him, and then with a happy cry sped across the floor to throw herself at his chest. He caught her in selfdefense, braced himself to prevent her lunge from pushing him backward. Irma clung to him fiercely, still crying.
“Stop it, I said! Stop it.” He shook her.
“I thought you'd gone.” Her words were muffled, her mouth pressed against his chest. “I thought you'd left me!” Her arms encircled his waist possessively.