“Maybe so,” I said, “but you wouldn’t want to send a man to the store
That she gave some serious thought.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’ll get my hat and go with you, m’self.”
“I’ll take Louise,” I insisted. “You can’t leave here. If Alvin or Doc, uh, Arthur should call, they won’t want to talk to one of these silly girls. They’ll want to talk you, Ma.”
She nodded sagely.
Then she smiled her oddly nice smile and made two limp wrists and brushed the air with them, saying, “Shoo, then, you two, shoo!”
We walked through the living room on our way out. Paula was lounging on the green mohair sofa in Ma’s generous living room, ever-present drink in hand. She smiled and winked and lifted her glass in a one-sided toast, saying, “Ya make a damn cute couple, you two,” smug in her matchmaking abilities. Nearby, Helen Nelson seemed melancholy, sitting by a window, obviously worrying about her husband. Dolores was in her room, unpacking her things. Ma, with nothing to do in the kitchen, sat back down to her unfinished puzzle of the country church.
That was where I came in.
And soon Louise and I were in the Auburn, heading for the Loop.
“Just what store are you going to, anyway?” Louise asked, after a while.
We were tooling up Lake Shore Drive, the Gold Coast whizzing by on our right, the lake shimmering at our left. Up ahead the Drake stared me down, like a stern scolding face; sorry, Helen.
“No store,” I said.
“No store?”
“I’m just getting you away from that place.”
“You are?”
“I am.”
“But I—I left all my things back there! My clothes…my brush…my scrapbook…”
I looked at her. “You’re leaving everything behind, Louise. Understand? Everything.”
She didn’t understand, but she didn’t say anything.
It was almost six when I pulled the Auburn in the alley behind my building and squeezed it in the recessed space next to my Chevy coupe where Barney’s Hupmobile sometimes was but right now wasn’t. I took her by the hand like a child and moved right along and she had to work to keep up. Past the deli on the corner, the El a looming reminder we were back in the city, to the door between Barney’s Cocktail Lounge and the pawnshop, and up the stairs, four flights, her feet echoing mine as she followed me up.
I unlocked the office door.
“But this is a detective’s office,” she said, looking at the lettering on the door’s frosted glass.
“That’s right.”
I shut the door behind her. She stood clutching her purse to her, looking around.
“Isn’t that a Murphy bed?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. Back behind the desk, pulling the phone book out of a drawer.
“Gee. I saw furniture like this at the world’s fair.”
“Everybody did,” I said, looking for the number.
“Whose place is this?”
“A friend,” I said, dialing.
“Wonder if he needs a secretary.”
“Who knows,” I said, getting a busy signal.
I sat behind the desk. Yanked the window-glass wire-frames off and flung ’em in a drawer. So, the line was busy over at the Banker’s Building. It was just five after six. The pickup wasn’t to be made till six-fifty. Plenty of time.
She sat across from me in the chair her father had sat in not long ago.
“Why are we here?” she asked. Her eyes wide and brown and confused.
“It’s a safe place,” I said. Drumming my fingers on my desk.
“What about Ma, and Paula and everybody?”
“They’re in the past, sugar.”
“The past.”
“That’s right. And you’re leaving the past behind you, understand?”
“No. Not really…”
“Do you know what’s happening today? What’s set to happen in about forty-five minutes?”
