Therese slid off the stool, left some money on the counter and ran out.
She ran all the way to the Warrior Hotel, put the call in and waited
with the receiver against her ear until she heard the telephone ringing
in Carol’s house. No one answered. It rang twenty times and no one
answered. She thought of calling Carol’s lawyer, Fred Haymes. She
decided she shouldn’t. Neither did she want to call Abby.
That day it rained, and Therese lay on her bed in her room, staring up
at the ceiling, waiting for three o’clock, when she intended to
telephone again. Mrs. Cooper brought her a tray of lunch around midday.
Mrs. Cooper thought she was sick. Therese could not eat the food,
however, and she did not know what to do with it.
She was still trying to reach Carol at five o’clock. Finally the ringing
stopped and there was confusion on the wire, a couple of operators
questioning each other about the call, and the first words Therese heard
from Carol were “Yes, damn it!” Therese smiled and the ache went out of
her arms.
“Hello?” Carol said brusquely.
“Hello?” The connection was bad. “I got the letter—the one with the
check. What happened, Carol?... What?”
Carol’s harassed sounding voice repeated through the crackling
interference, “_This wire I think is tapped, Therese...._ Are you all
right? Are you coming home? I can’t talk very long now.”
Therese frowned, wordless. “Yes, I suppose I can leave today.” Then she
blurted, “What is it, Carol? I really can’t stand this, not knowing
anything!”
“_Therese!_” Carol drew the word all across Therese’s words, like a
deletion. “Will you come home so I can talk to you?”
Therese thought she heard Carol sigh impatiently. “But I’ve got to know
now. Can you see me at all when I come back?”
“Hang onto yourself, Therese.”
Was this the way they talked together? Were these the words they used?
“But can you?”
“I don’t know,” Carol said.
A chill ran up her arm, into the fingers that held the telephone. She
felt Carol hated her. Because it was her fault, her stupid blunder about
the letter Florence had found. Something had happened and perhaps Carol
couldn’t and wouldn’t even want to see her again. “Has the court thing
started yet?”
“It’s finished. I wrote you about that. I can’t talk any longer.
Good-by, Therese.” Carol waited for her to reply. “I’ve got to say
good-by.”
Therese put the receiver slowly back on the hook.
She stood in the hotel lobby, staring at the blurred figures around the
front desk. She pulled Carol’s letter out of her pocket and read it
again, but Carol’s voice was closer, saying impatiently, “Will you come
home so I can talk to you?” She pulled the check out and looked at it
again, upside down, and slowly tore it up. She dropped the pieces into a
brass spittoon.
But the tears did not come until she got back to the house and saw her
room again, the double bed that sagged in the middle, the stack of
letters from Carol on the desk. She couldn’t stay here another night.
She would go to a hotel for the night, and if the letter Carol had
mentioned wasn’t here tomorrow morning, she would leave anyway.
Therese dragged her suitcase down from the closet and opened it on the
bed. The folded corner of a white handkerchief stuck out of one of the
pockets. Therese took it out and lifted it to her nose, remembering the
morning in Des Moines when Carol had put it there, with the dash of
perfume on it, and the derisive remark Carol had made about putting it
there, that she had laughed at. Therese stood with her hand on the back
of a chair and the other hand clenched in a fist that rose and fell
aimlessly, and what she felt was as blurred as the desk and the letters
that she frowned at in front of her. Then her hand reached out suddenly
for the letter propped against the books at the back of the desk. She
hadn’t seen the letter before, though it was in plain view. Therese tore
it open. This was the letter Carol had meant. It was a long letter, and
the ink was pale blue on some pages and dark on others, and there were
words crossed out. She read the first page, then went back and read it
again.