Ricky stood there--bright omen and good harbinger! Prayer answered
and that best conduct I am capable of, rewarded. She wore a violet
suit to match the strangest tint of her bejeweled gaze. She wore a hat
with a violet feather to joust adversity and make the place for joy.
Raindust glittered in her dark curls and the silver in her curls. She
was smiling as she signed the register. How much she smiles!
She saw me.
"Darling!"
We kissed casually. We always do. Perhaps we are a little
self-conscious in public and this may be because we are not, when we
are alone with each other.
I thought she was there in response to the mute messages of the
weekend. To go back with me if I wanted to go back--to stay if I wanted
to stay. Possibly to shop for a day. But suddenly I could sense the
wrongness of that.
"I decided I better fly down to see the doctor," Ricky said. "You won't
mind waiting over another day?"
"What's the matter?"
You would have to know Ricky to know all that made up her expression,
then. In her eyes was the way she felt about herself, about me; her
mouth spoke of courage. "I'm afraid the undulant fever's back."
"No. Please God, no!"
"I think I ought to be checked. The past few days, I've been running a
temperature. And the old megrims have begun."
She smiled again.
It was one of her masterpieces.
We were together.
We had our lives....
I patted her. The wings of my spirit began to beat against her pitiable
prospect--the racking weeks ahead, the shots and blood tests, clinical
examinations, probings and slides and stains, reports, hospitalizations
while the doctors observed, sweats, chills, toxic horrors, frets,
pains, and bravery summoned every morning from the deep well of her to
last another day.
The elevator rose.
"Hell," I said, the best I could say, "we'll get you on the vaccine
today. You phone Dr. Frank immediately. And then lie down. I'll unpack
you. In a few weeks, you'll be right as rain."
I fumbled my key into the lock and automatically took from the doorclip
my accumulation of morning mail and messages. She asked about Paul and
I told her the tale.
Afterwards, she went to the phone, dialed, and watched me with loving,
apologetic eyes--as if it were her fault she was infected.
While she described to the specialist the symptoms of this new
malevolence I went through the mail, stopped at a letter from my
lawyer, ripped it open.
Enclosed in it was a note from my accountant. The Bureau of Internal
Revenue, he wrote, wanted, on the following Thursday, to go over with
me the records pertaining to my income tax declarations for 1945 and
1946. Records in filing cabinets in storage in Miami Beach. Records on
high closet shelves in Rushford. Records stored here in the cellar of
the Astolat. In suitcases, boxes, portfolios and old trunks. Records
they would not be able to check over next Thursday--because it would
take a week and cost hundreds of dollars to get them together. They'd
be willing to wait the week and they did not care about the cost to me;
their interest would be to see if perhaps, after interminable scrutiny
of the dollars and cents of forgotten years, they could find any reason
to add a few more hundreds, or a thousand, to the taxes already paid.
Were I a businessman, enamored of columns of figures, such a prospect
might scarcely have scarred the surface of my attention. I am not.
The order was another garnishee of tranquillity--from then until I
had assembled the records, held the conferences, and paid up, if any
misjudgment were claimed or any disagreement ensued. I felt chained
to a tormented system I could forever deplore but never alter. The
wasteful exigency closed around me like a jail.
Ricky hung up. I put the letter into my pocket. She would be harassed
by it--because I was. Let it wait till some happier time.
"Dr. Frank wants me to come right down," she said.
"Before lunch?"
"I'm not hungry, anyway, dear."
"I'll go with you."
"You stay here and eat!"
"You need somebody along--"
"Nonsense! I'm used to it. I won't hear of your going!"
And so we argued a little and she had her way. She went out alone in
the rain with her misery.
There was a message saying that Harold had called.