Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Here already?” she remarked. “Not sick or anything, are you?”

“What brings you so early?” Faith asked.

“That’s what Simon Legree just asked me at the door. He cracked his whip and handed me this: ‘I’m thinking of firing you for being on time.’ ‘Oh, yeah?’ I said.”

Faith laughed. “I know; I heard you. So did the traffic cop up at Columbus Circle probably.”

Trixie planted her hand dramatically upon her chest.

“Me?” she said in surprise. “I never speak above a whisper!” Others came in until all of them were there. A preliminary tuning-up sounded outside. It had very little chance of topping the amount of conversation going on in the dressing room, however. They were all talking at once. Half of them were lined up before the mirror powdering their noses, while the rest clustered just in back of them, waiting to get at it. Someone lighted a cigarette and it was promptly snatched away from her and stepped on. “As though it isn’t stuffy enough already!”

“Now, now, don’t shove! Mamma’s nearly through.” This from Trixie, who was in the front line and intended staying there until she was satisfied with her appearance, no matter what the cost. Faith insinuated herself at her shoulder and Trixie promptly made room for her at the expense of the girl on the other side. One’s friend always came first in a crisis of this sort.

“New?” remarked Faith, looking straight into the glass. She could see it there.

“Yeah, green,” replied Trixie. This latter fact was self-evident. Startlingly so, in fact. Beside the gleaming emeraldine hue of Trixie’s, the mild green of Faith’s own frock paled into nothingness.

At any other time Faith would most likely have retorted: “No kidding? I thought it was red.” Tonight, however, she appeared vaguely troubled by the fact that Trixie’s dress was the color of her own. “I hope he doesn’t get mixed up,” she said, as though communing with herself.

“Who?” Trixie asked sharply.

Faith, absorbed in some weighty problem of her own, allowed the question to pass unheeded. “If I had known, I would have picked another color.” She tapped her lower lip reflectively. “But I only have green and blue, and Adelaide is always in blue.”

Trixie’s curiosity, never very weak, had been aroused by this soliloquy. She tapped her friend commandingly on the shoulder.

“Would y’ mind telling me what you’re talking about? Or is it too sacred for words?”

Faith seemed willing enough to comply. “Come on over in the corner,” she said, and added provocatively: “This is just between the two of us. I’m not broadcasting it.”

Smoke and flame could not have kept Trixie from following her after hearing that. She extricated herself with some difficulty from her place before the mirror, not without arousing considerable sarcastic comment.

“Well, well, well! So the Statue of Liberty has moved at last!”

“Are you quitting for good? Or is it just a little vacation you’re taking?”

“Look, there’s moss growing where she was standing!”

“Ladies, ladies,” remonstrated Trixie with an injured air, elbowing her way through them, “you forget who I am.” She joined Faith and faced her expectantly.

“Well, you see,” Faith explained in a guarded undertone, “I have a date with someone on the floor outside, and I’ve never seen him before.”

“What’d you do, advertise in the papers?”

“Do you remember what I told you one night about someone calling me up by mistake and asking if it was a Chinese hand-laundry?”

“Sure I do!” giggled Trixie delightedly. “And you were feeling clownish that night and said it was, only the management had changed hands and it was now being run by Americans, and begged him to send his wash around and give you a trial!”

“Well, I never told you the rest of it, what happened after that,” Faith went on breathlessly. Once started she decided to tell all.

“Oh, was there more to it?” Trixie arched her brows. “I kind of thought so.”

“Well, the next day he sent all his wash around, even his socks, and you never saw such holes! The landlady found it in the vestibule and she was going to throw it out, so I told her it was for me and I took it upstairs—”

“Oh, this is swell!” Trixie squealed zestfully.

“Well, when I saw all those shirts with the buttons off, I hated to send the things back to him the way they were, and I thought about it and thought about it until finally—”

“Don’t tell me you went ahead and did it yourself!” the horrified Trixie forestalled her, palms lifted. “You did!” she went on, scrutinizing her friend’s flushed face more closely. “I can tell by your expression.” Then she added dolefully, as one who laments an evil tendency in somebody else, “You always were sort of domestic.”

The repentant Faith gazed at the floor in embarrassment, confessing her fault.

“I mended the socks and things in my spare time,” she admitted in a small voice. “It was an awful lot of trouble, but it was awfully soothing. I felt just like I was married.”

“Only you don’t get paid for it then,” Trixie reminded her callously.

“Then I pressed the whole batch with a flatiron the lady downstairs lent me.”

Trixie covered her eyes in great grief. “Say it isn’t true, pal; say it isn’t true!”

“But I had an accident. The iron got too hot or something and I smelt smoke and when I looked, his best shirt had a big piece eaten out of it—”

“Served him right, the big chiseler,” observed Trixie.

“How was he to know?” protested the victim. “He thought I was really a laundry. He called up and was very angry, of course. I didn’t blame him. So I told him I would pay for the shirt, but after a while he said that it didn’t matter. He never sent me any more wash, but from then on he used to ring up about once a week and say ‘How’s the Faith and Charity Hand Laundry getting along?’ That was the name I had made up for it in the beginning. He was never fresh or anything over the phone — know what I mean? — and he had such a nice voice that it got so I liked it when he rang up. And tonight he’s going to be out there—” she nodded toward the dance floor, already crawling with couples “—wearing a white flower in his coat so that I’ll know him when I see him. And I told him I’d have on a green dress.” She sighed and clasped her hands.

The white flower had arrested Trixie’s attention, it seemed.

“Maybe he’s a floorwalker,” she remarked apprehensively.

At this juncture a large and none too aromatic cigar thrust its way between the curtains of the alcove and a voice just in back of it inquired truculently:

“What do you two think you’re doing in there, holding a wake?”

“We’re making mud pies; love to have you join us,” Trixie replied instantly, without even turning her head. At this rebuff the cigar was withdrawn. Trixie had a way with her that even kept managers in their place. “Come on, babe,” she said, “let’s go outside and jump through our paper hoops.” Unexpectedly chucking her friend under the chin, she remarked, “I’m wearing a green dress too but don’t worry. If he picks me out by mistake, I’ll bring him over to you. Lots of luck and bigger and better laundries.” Then she sallied forth, shimmying slightly in time to the music.

When Faith came out after her, the glass prisms were spinning around in the ceiling, sending down a shower of sparks, and under them in the dim light couples glided silently over the floor like shadows. She stood still and shut her eyes for a second. She was making a wish, half audibly:

“Make him so that I can like him, will you? Not fresh or wise or anything—”