“This place is crazy,” said Jenny with conviction from her bed. “Doesn’t anybody ever knock?”
“Apparently not. Well, let’s hope that’s the last of it.” Mary went back to the door and hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the outer knob; it was a small deterrent but it might help. She returned to her bed, half-expecting it to buckle to the floor, exchanged a last farewell with Jenny, who turned off her lamp, and tried to recapture her earlier drowsiness without, however, resorting to Spence.
She kept an eye on the doorknob for a while, in case the staff should suddenly remember more errands here, but it began to swim away as fatigue took over. There was a dim and reassuring wash of gold in that corner of the room; evidently the rambling circuit of the Casa de Flores stayed lit through the night. In the other bed, Jenny gave a few settling flounces and retreated almost at once into a sleep-bound silence.
Mary fell asleep herself, her consciousness grazed now and then by the sounds of people calling to each other in the corridor outside, and once, although that might have been part of a dream, a muted cry.
In another motel room, less than a mile away, a girl who looked extraordinarily pretty even with her hair in rollers was saying to a man’s shadow projected on the wall opposite the open door of the bathroom, “I declare, if I’d known you were going to keep me locked up like this I wouldn’t have come.”
“You weren’t locked up, and I told you tonight was business.”
Someone warier might have taken alarm from his tone; the girl did not. “Well, what about tomorrow? Is that business too?” Because she was creaming her face as she spoke, and then turning her head a little to examine one perfect eyebrow, she missed the lifting and down-chopping motion of the shadow arm, a soundless expression of rage.
But the voice that came out of the bathroom a second later was calm. “Tomorrow we’ll do whatever you like. After—” he had had time to take her measure, and he was almost playful, like a man holding candy just out of a child’s reach”—you do something for me.”
7
MARY, waking to the unfamiliar walls and furniture and window, thought at first that the day was overcast. It took her moments to remember that a certain hour of the morning here the sunlight was so white that the very air seemed to fume with it, turning the bluest of skies smoky by contrast.
Jenny’s bed was empty, and the familiar worry sprang up, to be coped with by the familiar arguments. She had gone for an early swim—but the watch on the night table said that it wasn’t early, a little after nine-thirty, and when Mary went into the bathroom Jenny’s bathing-suit was hanging from the shower rail.
She’s a big girl now, thought Mary, and had scarcely completed this far-from-comforting reflection when there was a tap and then the sound of the key and Jenny came in, triumphantly bearing a newspaper. “I got the last one. You were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to wake you.”
She wanted the Jumble, of course, because events in El Paso could scarcely be of interest. Although— Mary finished dressing—Jenny also entertained herself with the unlikely conjunction of names in wedding announcements, for which she had an eagle eye. (“Miss Ethel Racey and Frederick Scoot . . . maid of honor, Miss Glenda Walker.”)
At this hour of the morning, the dining room was being readied for lunch. The coffee shop, sparsely populated, appeared to be in the grip of one of the internecine wars which occasionally occur in public places, the hostess in rivetted conversation with the cashier, waitresses in dissolving and regrouping knots, busboys, of insufficient rank for these councils, staring enviously. Factions in the kitchen, thought Mary, or a key employee threatening to quit and sides being taken.
She was eventually able to order orange juice, cantaloupe, and coffee, recommending the fruit to Jenny, who shook her head and wanted only a small glass of tomato juice and coffee into which she would unobtrusively drop a saccharine tablet. “Suit yourself,” said Mary, careless, “but I thought you might like to have a look at the shops this morning, with an eye to birthday presents or even Christmas, and it’s apt to be a lengthy process.”
This wasn’t true—to the disappointment of neophytes who looked forward to some keen haggling, shopping in this part of the city was a straightforward, one-price affair—but to Mary’s gratification Jenny succumbed to the melon. A waitress presently tore herself away from the far wall to refill their coffee cups, but was still so fascinated by the murmurs and gesticulations going on at the cashier’s stand that she kept the urn tilted and Mary, instinctively following her gaze, was caught unaware by a hot flow out of the saucer, over the table edge, and into her lap.
The ensuing fluster with a hastily produced damp napkin seemed to communicate itself around the room. Mary reassured the girl, who looked panicky under the menacing regard of the hostess, and let a negligent interval go by before she said to Jenny, “There is nothing quite like cold coffee, inside or outside,” and left the table.
In the upstairs corridor, icy in her wet dress and pastily clinging slip, she took automatic note of the room service cart outside the room which was beginning to assume a Poelike character, and the cleaning cart, midway along the other side. A maid—her back was to the light from the window at the end of the corridor, but from her height and the outline
