Fortunately, no one stumbled over her body in the crowded aisle. A crowd formed instantly, staring down at her almost reverently; one lady bent to pull Anita’s skirt down into a more respectable position and then straightened up again quickly, as if fearful someone might suspect her of angling for the fallen purse. And then a tall, thin man pushed through the crowd and knelt quickly and professionally beside the woman on the floor. He felt her pulse and looked up at the faces gaping down at him.
“I’m a doctor,” he said with simple dignity in an accented French. “This woman is seriously ill—” His gaze swung from face to face. “Will someone be kind enough to call a cab? There’s a rank, I believe, just around the corner.”
The store manager had finally arrived. He looked worried, as if somehow the establishment might be charged with the responsibility. “There’s a cot in the washroom...”
“Hospital!” the doctor said firmly.
“Of course. Much better. Much better,” someone said, the tone putting the manager in his place. It was a good-looking woman with perhaps just a trifle too much makeup and with a terrible accent.
There was a multiple sigh of relief from the assemblage, including the manager. While not callous, they were still sufficiently human to be relieved when decision-making was taken out of their hands. A teen-age student ran to hail a taxi from the rank while Sanchez bent down and, with a strength remarkable for one of his apparent fragility, lifted Anita and bore her from the store. He deposited her inside the cab, gave an address to the driver, followed her inside, and closed the door firmly. Those of the crowd who had followed him to the curb stared after him and then, when the cab had turned a corner and disappeared, stared at the spot where the cab had stood, glorying in having witnessed an event, a happening. Like Anita, many also felt that shopping per se these days was dull.
Behind, Rosa made sure her hypodermic needle was firmly imbedded in the small potato in which she carried it and then made her way to the street and to the cab awaiting her with her many packages. For Rosa had also been shopping.
To his cabdriver Sanchez was no longer a doctor but rather a distrait husband.
“She works too hard,” he said in a worried tone. He saw the cabdriver’s eyes go to the rearview mirror and then saw the bushy eyebrows rise. Even unconscious, Anita did not look as if she labored in the mines or handled a wrench on an automotive assembly line. “On stage half the night,” Sanchez added hurriedly, “and then insisting on getting up to cook my breakfast and clean the house and then the shopping, not to mention rehearsals...”
His voice dwindled away, proud of the scene he had just played. The cabdriver glanced in his mirror again at the still, pale face of the girl and mentally shook his head. Anyone who looked that gorgeous getting up to make breakfast for this skeleton-head? Ah, well, it took all types. The skinny guy had to have money coming out of his nose, and money never did any harm with girls. Women! He leaned back, steering with one hand, speaking over his shoulder. “Sure you don’t want a hospital?”
“No, no!” Sanchez said quickly. “She has these spells all the time. She works too hard. She—” He realized he was repeating himself. “Her own doctor... much better... familiar with her case... I’ll call him as soon as we’re home...”
“Right!” said the driver, in perfect agreement. He could understand a distrust of hospitals. On one occasion he had brought a passenger to the emergency room of a hospital with nosebleed; the nurses there had him, the driver, in a wheelchair with a thermometer in his mouth before he could get a word in edgewise, while his passenger, handkerchief to nose, stood to one side and watched him with lugubrious and resentful eyes. It had cost him, he recalled, a good tip.
He glanced in his sideview mirror to make sure another automobile was nearly upon him in the process of passing and then cut in front of it with a chuckle, tramping on the accelerator. If you couldn’t pull stunts like that when you had a sick woman in your cab, and a perfect excuse for any flic that stopped you, when could you, for heaven’s sake? Eh, answer him that!
The driver swung about the Gare Montparnasse, cut down the Rue Odessa, shot past the old cemetery, turned down a side street, and pulled up before a shabby building, disappointed for once that no police had attempted to stop him for speeding. The thought was replaced by another almost instantly as he raised his eyes to the cheap sign advertising furnished flats to be rented by the day, week, or month. So if the skinny guy wasn’t rich, what did he have? The driver sighed, accepted the money for his fare, offered halfheartedly to assist with the lady — an offer that was firmly rejected — and drove off muttering to himself at the size of the tip. Sanchez took a deep breath and staggered through the doorway with Anita in his arms.
The female dragon who acted as concierge for the broken-down building hurried forward suspiciously on his entrance, her mustache bristling. To her Sanchez pretended to be neither doctor nor distrait husband. He was, rather, a concerned cousin.
“My wife’s cousin, actually,” he explained, almost apologetically. “We were strolling in the park, going to meet my wife for lunch, as a matter of fact, when suddenly—”
He broke off, profoundly relieved to see Rosa herself enter the seedy foyer, her arms weighted down with packages. He broke into a torrent of Catalonian on the offhand chance that the concierge might understand a little Spanish — she looked just underhanded enough to do so — explaining the story he had concocted for the old lady, and then turned to smile in apology at the concierge for his unforgivable lack of courtesy in not speaking her language.
Rosa could see no reason whatever to explain anything to this harridan; they paid their rent and that was all there was to it. She had worked under madames who looked a lot more forbidding than this hag and had never let one of them browbeat her in her life. Nor did she intend to start at her experienced years.
“Open the elevator door,” she commanded the old lady in terrible French.
Sanchez was amazed to see the old woman hastily pull open the door to the decrepit self-service lift and quickly stand back, either in fear of Rosa or that the whole thing might collapse under the burden of occupancy. Sanchez staggered in with Anita; Rosa followed with her packages. She frowned unvoiced instructions through the peeling paint of the open grillwork; the concierge instantly pulled the door closed and stepped back again. Rosa managed the button with her elbow; they rose amid creaks and clanks occasioned by age and an economy of lubricants on the part of the management.
Rosa tipped her head downward; Sanchez was amazed to find he actually understood she was referring to the concierge. “You don’t explain anything to those types,” Rosa said categorically in Spanish. “You simply tell them. Once you begin to explain, they get all sorts of ideas.”
Sanchez looked at her with new respect and then brought his mind back to business.
“You rented the equipment?”
Rosa stared at him. “What do you think this stuff is I’m dragging? Twins?” She saw the look on his face and realized there was a limit one could push either flippancy or feminine superiority with a caballero type such as Sanchez. She modified her tone. “Camera, plenty of film, tripod, flash equipment...”