“No,” said Maria Lopez.
It was possible to sound tight-lipped over a single syllable. Amanda saw, as on a television screen, the packed suitcases waiting beside her neighbors’ front door; the two older children beginning to hop with impatience to the accompaniment of, “Will the airplane wait for us? Will it?”; the Lopezes glancing at their watches and going distractedly to a window to see if Amanda, who had volunteered to take their infant daughter over Christmas while they flew East for a family reunion, was home yet.
It had seemed so simple then. Rosie Lopez was a waiflike two-year-old just beginning to walk about on little bow legs, with big mournful dark eyes and, very occasionally, an abashed smile as worth watching for as the aurora borealis or the blooming of a rare orchid. She suffered from a disease which prevented her from gaining any nourishment except by way of massive vitamin doses, and the Lopez doctor had advised against a long plane trip for her. On the other hand, it was going to be the last Christmas for Maria’s mother.
Amanda cleared her throat. She knew where her duty lay; it was just that, at the moment, it had a last-straw aspect. “Why don’t you bundle Rosie up and bring her over? I have to wait for a dog, and if it gets very late we’ll spend the night here.”
In order to correct any impression of lunacy, she gave clear directions, and Maria said, “Oh, Amanda, I’ll leave you all my money. We’re on our way.”
And what, wondered Amanda as she hung up, was she going to do with Rosie when she went to the hospital in the morning? Leave her in the sixth-floor waiting room with a toy of some kind under the eye of a friendly nurse. White uniforms were as familiar to her as her own diminutive clothes, and few people could withstand her.
Meanwhile, this interval had better be used for feeding the palomino mare. Somehow it had sounded easier in the warm and lighted hospital room. Amanda put on her coat, filled a pail with hot water in the hope of thawing the existing water in the barrel instead of uncoiling hoses, found a flashlight in a kitchen drawer, switched on the patio light, and went outside.
The corral was on the east side of the house, perhaps a hundred feet away. When she had gone half the distance Amanda turned the flashlight on, and at once caught a flash of iridescence as Drougette, standing patiently near the gate, swung her head around. There looked to be enough water in the barrel to last until morning with the addition of the pail’s contents. Amanda found a stick, broke the ice, and poured, remarking, “I’d sip this if I were you, it has to do you all night,” to keep herself company in her little ring of brightness surrounded by dark. Fortunately, as she had no idea where her aunt would keep wire cutters, there was a bale of alfalfa already open, and after a dubious appraisal of it—how much did Drougette eat at one meal?—she threw the whole thing into the corral. The mare addressed herself to it at once. Amanda put away a thought of having given her far too much, with resulting heaves or staggers or some other equine ailment, and stood for a moment in the friendly presence, listening to the night.
Had the dog pack, if the Afghan was actually with it, moved out of hearing range, or was it just that the wind had shifted? Neither; there was the full range of barks again, but certainly fainter. Amanda tried to strain Apple’s baritone out of the rest, but it was useless at that distance. She called anyway, and by the time she got back to the house the telephone which had been allowed to ring twelve times had fallen silent.
Justin Howard replaced the receiver. Amanda had won their standoff, hands down, and he was both disappointed and annoyed that he couldn’t tell her so. He supposed that she and Jane Balsam were doing some late Christmas shopping in concert, although Mrs. Lopez had mentioned other pressing arrangements and it wasn’t like Amanda to forget a promise.
He was at a cocktail party, the kind where he wasn’t sure what he was drinking except that it contained ice which kept bumping into his teeth. Could it be artificial ice? The hosts, whom he had never met before, were professional magicians, and the room into which he had excused himself to telephone was full of blow-ups of their act. A pair of unperturbed doves cooed and chortled in a cage, on the surface of which stood an upended black top hat with a lifelike white rabbit peering out of it. Around its neck was hung a hand-lettered card with enticingly tiny print: “For heaven’s sake, where did you come from?”
Justin sieved another gloomy swallow out of his glass. (This was wine, or some illegitimate relative.) He tried Amanda’s house again: nothing. He looked up and then dialed her neighbors; this time he would leave his name and a message, something he had been prevented from doing before by the frantic feminine spate bewildering his ear.
But the Lopez phone rang emptily too, as if it had joined the conspiracy. Justin took another swig of the innocuous liquid, and the door opened and the very pretty girl who had brought him here, the girl with whom he had thought he could forget all about Amanda Morley, came in and cried, “Justin, hurry up, that funny little man in the jeans and sneakers is going to stand on his head and do ‘Casey at the Bat.’ ”
In plays, there always seemed to be French windows for such emergencies. There were none here, and
