Mrs. Pond uttered a simple longshoreman’s expletive. Celia recoiled somewhat, because she admired the other woman immensely, but said, “Oh, what a shame. I have a needle and thread in my room, if you like. It wouldn’t take a minute.”
“But I couldn’t possibly ask you—”
“No, I mean it, really.”
Mrs. Pond allowed herself to be conducted back to Celia’s room and stood still while Celia ministered expertly to the strap. She said as they emerged into the corridor again, “Thank you so much, I couldn’t have changed so fast and I’m on the brink of being late. If there’s anything I can do to make you more comfortable here, please let me know.”
From there it was only a step to an occasional evening chat in one room or the other. Celia could not place the social director—in her limited experience married working women were drudges, and attractive, sleek women were inclined to be haughty—but she sensed that there would be no danger to her even if Mrs. Pond knew her life history; that her reaction, in fact, might be amused admiration.
But she did not take the chance; she was never to do that. She said that she wondered—perhaps Mrs. Pond knew?—what opportunities there might be for a girl in New York apart from secretarial work. She had no specific training, and although she had a little money saved, her resources were slipping away.
“How well I know,” murmured Mrs. Pond. She gazed appraisingly at Celia. “Are you English, by the way?”
“No . . .” It must have been lodged in Celia’s brain somewhere for perhaps just this moment, because it came out without effort: “I had an English nurse once.”
“Hmm,” said Mrs. Pond; there was no way of knowing how she had received that. “Have you ever thought of modeling? Clothes? It’s not quite the breeze it’s cracked up to be, I’m told—still, you’re tall and you have a very good figure . . . but I don’t know a soul on Seventh Avenue.”
She lapsed into brooding thought, from which she roused herself to say, “I’ll tell you what I would do, right away. Please give me a Christian burial if I’m struck by lightning for saying this, but I’d move out of the hotel and take an apartment with another girl while you’re looking around—you’d cut your expenses way down. Of course, you have to watch out for the weird ones, but it’s considered quite a smart thing to do.”
They were in Celia’s room, and Mrs. Pond stood up in her slender black and gave a gingerly stretch. “Time to go and soak what Mr. Hochstedt has left of my toes,” she remarked in a parenthetical way, and then, reflectively, “I know the Culhanes’ daughter didn’t go back to Bennington this year—she’s working in the research department of a news magazine and sharing an apartment. Having been over the ground so recently she might be able to suggest something. I can ask, if you like.”
But where Celia was going she did not want anyone, however likable, to be able to follow later. She said hastily, “It’s certainly something to think about,” and did, while the rush of her bath water matched that of the neighboring bath a few minutes later.
Hotels, or at any rate this one, had nothing more to teach her: what had seemed an adventure on her monthly weekend away from Stedman Circle had become a bore. There was undoubtedly money here, but it was the kind of money that prudently decided that the mink would do for another season, and in any case it was not only wealth that Celia admired, it was lustre as well. From conversation garnered in the lobby and dining room, expensive orthodontists for their grandchildren was as lustrous as the guests at the Alexandra were apt to become.
Just as she had once tried to model herself on Mrs. Stevenson in that far-distant time, Celia now took a second mentor in Mrs. Pond. Immediately after breakfast the next morning she carried her newspaper to a nearby park—even in repose she had such an air of purpose that she was quite safe in parks—and began studying the apartments-for-rent section. Her eye quickly learned to single out the words “Will share” from the close-massed type, and when she rose from the bench she had marked five possibilities, all of which said to call after five-thirty P.M.
Celia was well aware that her success so far had sprung largely from her air of calm certainty and her ability to adapt to new requirements. She could not familiarize herself with modeling ahead of time, but she could at least take a preliminary look at Seventh Avenue. She had covered one crosstown and two downtown blocks when a man in an Alpine hat, waiting for a light on the opposite comer, flung up an arm in urgent greeting; his voice was lost in traffic but his lips seemed to be shaping “Wait”
Willis Lambert? Celia was torn between protective freezing and panic flight, and was spared either because she was pushed impatiently aside by a woman who began to wave in return at the Alpine-hatted stranger. But she was badly shaken at her own carelessness in assuming that once she had removed herself from New Jersey she had left that particular area of the past behind her for good. Now, in a number of rapidly superimposed scenes, she saw Willis returning ardently from Milwaukee, finding the “For Sale” sign at 4 Stedman Circle, and learning without much difficulty that the owner, a Mr. Tomlinson, had died in June and left the place to his housekeeper.
Where, Willis would want to know, could he locate the niece who had lived with Mr. Tomlinson?
He must be mistaken. For the last several
