Tomorrow! (9 page)

The way from Public School 44 led out Dumond A venue and over Walnut-a matter of some twelve blocks, or about a mile. Nora preferred, however, to come by less direct routes. She had several favorites, depending on the season. One, involving a long detour, took her past Restland Cemetery and a good third of the distance into town. Another followed Hickory—the school being on the corner of that street and Dumond Avenue—diagonally across Hobart Park, which placid preserve had been a bequest to Green Prairie by the long-deceased founder of Hobart Metal Products. The park, once the Hobart estate, contained a pond; Nora enjoyed ponds-ducks came to them, fish lived in them, rowboats tipped over in them, and you could wade, if the cop was trifling with some nursemaid. She also liked, when in the humor, to go clear over to Cold Spring Street, which was beyond her home, and watch trains go by on the Kansas and Southern Railroad.

This day, however, she went along Hickory merely to River Avenue and turned south.

River Avenue crossed Plum Street, Oak, Spruce, Pine and Maple, before reaching Walnut. It was a broad thoroughfare, much used by buses and trucks and, in this district, a minor shopping street besides. Now, however, River Avenue was dug up and new sewers were being laid. This enterprise involved noise, fire and big machinery, men, moraines of Green Prairie’s underlying clay, dynamite explosions and other interesting features.

Nora’s tour, however, was unlucky. She met two boys she’d never seen before who said they lived over Schneider’s Delicatessen, challenged her to penny-pitching and won eight cents, all she had on her at the time. Furthermore, a bus hit a puddle at the Spruce Street intersection and spattered her dress.

Her inner condition was mediocre when she reached home. She was about to open the front door and enter, which was her right, when her father drove into the yard with a sound of brakes that meant either he was mad or he had to go to the bathroom in haste. She looked and saw that he was mad. Very mad.

“Nora,” he said, “I want you to stay outdoors this afternoon! I’m having a meeting.”

“It’s impossible,” Nora responded.

Thus challenged, he took closer cognizance. “You
sick?
It’s a perfectly swell, hot day!”

“My dress is filthy—through the fault of the Green Prairie Street Transportation Company.”

“Well, go round the back way then. I expect a lot of people here shortly.”

“Where’s Mom?”

He went in. “How do I know? I just got here, too! Making sandwiches, I hope.”

“What’s the meeting for?”

“Civil Defense indignation meeting. My section. We may decide to cancel all our subscriptions to the
Transcript
.”

“
That
old stuff!” Nora murmured. She brightened. “Anyhow—if it ever
did
happen—it would probably be a hydrogen bomb and there wouldn’t even be a stone standing in the uttermost corners of the County.”

He stared at her. “Sometimes,” he said gently, “I feel that would be best.”

He slammed the door. His daughter shrugged several times and tittered. Inasmuch as her mother was putatively making sandwiches, Nora went dutifully around back. She was given a cheese-and-jelly and a cold meat.

These she took into the yard, eating one and then the other, like Alice with the mushroom edges. She thought of climbing on the trunk and scrutinizing the objects her father kept in a locked garage closet. From the trunk, a dusty window gave a good view. But that had lost its shock. She saw Queenie, the cat, move furtively through the hedge into the Bailey yard. Queenie then bounded forward a number of times and flattened out again. Sneaking.

Nora went through the hedge also, skirted the summer-house and came to rest, kneeling, behind the chimney of the Bailey barbecue pit. What Queenie was after was a bird, Nora told herself interestedly—a small one with red on it. The cat looked at the girl with hate in his eyes until he saw Nora was positively rather than negatively engrossed in his stalking. Then, showing off a little perhaps, he made a pitch for the bird. He moved inchmeal, all but invisibly; when the bird moved he froze. The bird didn’t notice Nora, who ate thoughtfully, taking care to make no sudden movement. It was a fairly fascinating thing to see, and she hoped old Queenie would get the bird because she had never seen a cat eat up a bird and never even really got a good look at a bird’s insides.

Thus Nora was
where
she was with reason. She was not engaged in eavesdropping, hiding in bushes, or any other such furtive occupation. She was merely watching her own cat hunt, while she ate her own sandwiches. The fact that she was concealed had to do with the cat’s quarry, and nothing whatever to do with the descent upon the summer-house of Lenore and Kittridge Sloan.

Lenore came jouncing and hurrying and laughing in a sweater and a skirt but no bra, Nora observed. The man—Nora at that time did not know who he was—had a mustache, black, small, twisty. She failed to observe that he was more than six feet tall, about thirty years old, built like a first baseman and dressed in sports clothes. She did notice that he wore three gold rings, looked like a “Mexican movie actor,” and got out a little leather thing that had a file in it and dug his nails, when angry.

“I haven t got long,” Lenore said, “so let’s sit here—”

“The Jaguar would take us some place a lot better in about five minutes.”

“I told you, Kit, I have to go to a meeting . . .”

He looked across the lawn at the Conner house and said, “You really mean you intend to
go?”

Certainly. I’m in Henry Conner’s sector.”

He laughed a long time. “And I’ve invited you to the club!”

“I know. But this is important. The
Transcript
was perfectly
beastly,
this morning and . .

.” she broke off. There was a pause and she said, “I’m sorry.”

That made him laugh even more, and Nora could see the dark young woman was relieved. The man said, “That’s Mother’s doing. She was trapped downtown last night.
Brother!

Did she ever boil, simmer, curdle and take fire!”

“She has a right to her opinion, but I don’t agree—”

The man took Lenore by the shoulder and shook her gently, so that her dark hair swung and her worried expression faded. “I certainly am glad I went shopping today. Ye gods! Imagine you being around town—and me not. knowing it! How long . . . ?”

“I graduated over a year ago, Kit,” she said.

From behind the barbecue pit and sundry rose bushes Nora reflected that his name, anyhow, was Kit, like First Aid Kit.

“And I didn’t know!” He peered at her with what the adventitious but fascinated onlooker regarded as an
oozy
look. “You realize, don’t you, that you’ve turned into the most beautiful piece of stuff in two states?”

Lenore moved away from him and sat down. She said, “Nonsense!” She paused and went on, “Besides, you
have
seen me, or
could
have, when you were in town last winter—at the Semophore Hill Club Christmas party.
Several
places. Only—you were busy.”

That made him laugh, too. “Blondes?”

“Various shades,” Lenore answered.

Nora began to wonder what would
not
make him laugh or, at least, titter. He sat down very close to Lenore, offered her a cigarette, and put one, for himself, in some kind of holder. A gold one, extremely sissified. “I gave you up,” he said, “three years back because—”

“Because wouldn’t—give.”

“Still the same old Lenore.”

She nodded. “You bet. Untarnished. But with a gradually souring disposition perhaps.”

He shook his head in mock sorrow.
“Naturellement,”
he said, which Nora knew was French for “naturally.” Otherwise she didn’t know what he meant when he went on, “The end product of spinsterdom.”

“Are you going to be in River City long?”

“Living with Muzz,” he nodded. “For how long? Search me! You know, Lenore,
you
could have something to do with that!”

“I doubt it. Maybe a day or two’s difference.”

“I was pretty crazy about you.

“You were pretty crazy, period.”

“That’s really not up to your usual acid rejoinder, dear.”

“No.” She gazed at him, not happily. “Look, Kit. I was one more of the college girls back then who thought you were a young female’s dream, answered prayer—all that.”

“But I am!” His bright smile gleamed, his amused laugh sounded.

“Oh, sure. E
very
young girl’s—”

“Just a sign of broad taste.” He chortled.
“And
the curse of wealth. Let me ask you something.”

“All right.”

“Is your health good?”

“Why? Of course it is.”

“Grandparents long-lived? Have many children?”

“Just what?”

He grinned. “Tell me.”

“One had five and Dad’s family has four and they’re
all
living. Why?”

He leaned back, blew smoke. “Mother is getting
very
insistent these days.
You
know. The family line must be continued. I must find somebody steady, intelligent,
healthy,
good family, sound stock—you’d really fit the whole catalogue.”

“Did she say anything about the girl being willing?”

“Nope. Mother rarely does. Just that she be found by me. The presumption is that the rest can be managed. By her, I suppose, if not by me.” He sighed ever so slightly and Nora thought it was not an especially interesting change of mood from his mirth. “Seeing you this P.M. at the handkerchief counter did more than bring back memories, Lenore. It brought to mind Mother’s bill of particulars.”

“You didn’t have to pick up a display umbrella and open it over me and kiss me, in front of all those shoppers and clerks!”

Upon hearing that news, Nora peered at Kit with the first sign of any reaction save disdain.

“Ah, but I did!” he said. “Only kiss I ever got with no fear of reprisal. You didn’t dare—

in the store.”

“Not true.” He took her hand. “That’s what I mean, Lenore. Remember?”

“I remember our last date. I wished I had a Colt automatic.”

“I’ll send you one, and then phone you for a new date.”

Lenore nodded. “I really have to go.” She looked across toward the Conner house where cars were parked.

“What do you do in Civil Defense?”

“Radiation safety.”

“And what would that be?”

“You know. Monitoring. Seeing if it’s safe to go in places.”

“That’s my girl!” Kit Sloan was amused again. “Checking with instruments, for
safety!

All right. I’ll take a chance. Phone you tomorrow.”

She thought about it and nodded. They got up.

Kit grabbed her and gave her a long and large kiss. Nora edged up a little higher on her knees to evaluate it. You could tell, she felt, that Lenore wasn’t particularly keen about the kiss.

But it went on for so long that Lenore seemed to weaken a little. People do, Nora had observed.

Anyhow, Lenore sagged and when he let her go she just looked at him with a very odd expression and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. He said, “See you!” and ran away. . .

. Then his car started. Lenore just sat down.

By and large, Nora had nothing against the beautiful girl next door. In fact, Nora thought, she was one of the best types of grown-up people. She paid some attention to others. She could tell when a person was discouraged or being put upon and, if she wasn’t busy (the curse of maturity), she would do something about it. Buy you a sundae, maybe, or even take you to the movies. Right now, for instance, Lenore was on Nora’s side against Nora’s mother on the matter of braids. Lenore argued, sensibly, that braids were a bother to kids and hair would grow back when you wanted it. On the other hand, this business in the summerhouse, Nora felt, was definitely on the two-timing side. Lenore was Charles Conner’s girl and always had been and they would be married someday and, in Nora’s opinion, Lenore was about as good as her brother could be expected to do—though she had occasionally wondered why neither Charles nor Ted ever expressed any interest in exotic types. Nora thought if she were a man she would probably marry either a Polynesian or a gypsy, and there was some idea in her mind of adding Latin-American women, in general, to the list.

Letting herself be kissed limp by this Kit-Whoever was not Fair in Love. But Nora thought it might be Exotic. The man had a handsome-stranger look, though she had apparently known him for umpteen years. Nora felt she herself would like, someday, the type who put open umbrellas over you in stores and began osculation without caring about onlookers. She didn’t believe Charles would do a thing like that.

All in all, she decided to reserve judgment. A woman, she thought, who was soon going to settle down and marry her brother certainly had a right to a few harmless flirtations. Without them, according to Nora’s information from books, taken with her observation of her older brother, a handsome woman like Lenore would probably soon tum into a desiccated shrew with dishpan hands. But such things, Nora realized, shouldn’t go too far.

She wondered what would happen if they did, and it was quite an exciting thing to wonder about.

She was sitting in the grass, merely wondering, when Lenore lighted another cigarette and drifted away into the house. Nora kept trying to visualize the extremities involved in going

“too far”—trying to associate the imaginary behavior of Lenore with the rather nebulously described activities of the ladies in
Sin on Seven Streets,
until Queenie made his pounce at the bird, and missed.

The bird merely gave a little squeak and flew away.

Queenie sat down and groomed his tail, glancing once at Nora with the look of a cat who was fooling anyhow and merely enjoyed scaring hell out of birds. Nora went home. She stopped at the dining-room doors, but they were drawn together. She listened to voices. “Henry, you’re the leader here! I say we need help from Washington and you ought to phone.”

“I say, let’s start a campaign to boycott all advertisers in the
Transcript.
We’ve given years, here, to this organization. It’s intended to save Green Prairie in case of an emergency. We cannot allow a newspaper to ridicule us, censure, blame. . . !”