Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

Francine came obediently, sat down docilely.

The new cocktail frock had come up from the Grand Salon de Couture on the second floor. Lenore’s mink coat would conceal it while she finished shopping and until, at five thirty or thereabouts, she drove under the canopy of the Ritz-Hadley for Thelma Emerson’s party.

Everybody would be there. Kit would be there. Nobody would be there.

She fidgeted in the chair. She had a headache. It would grow worse, she knew, in the floors below and the stores beyond, while she jousted with people-onslaught around the counters, in the aisles. Then, worse still, over at the Hadley, under the lush dim lights, where the women would look at the women to see what they’d done to themselves this time and the men would look at the women just to see. They’d dance in too-crowded places, there and elsewhere. One martini, two martinis, three martinis away from now the headache would not be a pain but merely a sense of stiff places in the brain, waiting for tomorrow morning. She’d have lost a glove and a handkerchief, borrowed Kit’s after using up her Kleenexes, had her lipstick mistletoe-smeared by anybody, and got her shoes wet somewhere between car and curb: a glamour girl in a Christmas-scented night eroded by the exigencies of her good time.

She almost wanted to cry and she wouldn’t have wept in Aubrey’s for the million dollars she would soon doubtless have, many times over. She wouldn’t have wept anywhere. Wasn’t she, right here, making the bed, herself, that she would lie in?

The feelings of confusion, the sense of trapped helplessness, that came over her every day were girlish feelings, maidenly sensations, no doubt. She almost regretted that she did not have her mother’s acceptance of the flesh, her mother’s near-welcome of love’s lesser uses. Then Kit, and all Kit meant—to Lenore, to Lenore’s family—would never seem a Galahad, of course; but Galahad would seem instead just another man, no different from the Beast that woke up Beauty, or a clown. To Netta, males were like that: commodities; humanity-in-pants. But to Lenore, one male remained stubbornly other.

Chuck, she thought, oh, Chuck!

The words were warm within her, stirred within her. The buzzing drier sang them for a little while. Chuck, oh, Chuck. Her eyes, on the disappearing blueness, grew bright; her breasts lifted up and her lips came apart; she breathed faster as if the machine’s rhythm had set tingling inside her some other beat, some amorous cadence of the blood.

She was startled when Francine stopped painting lacquer on her nails, framed words, called thinly, “Lucky, lucky you!” The girl squeezed her arm passionately and reflected in her own eyes Lenore’s expression. Looking at the common prettiness of the manicurist, Lenore could not keep herself from thinking: this is Kit’s kind of girl; they talk the same language. But Lenore had a decency of her own. She smiled gently. She said, exhaling, “Aren’t I lucky, Francine?” If she bit her tongue afterward, the girl couldn’t see that.

The drier went off suddenly, unexpectedly. For a split second, Lenore could hear the other machines and the overriding noise of woman-talk. Then the effeminate voice of “Aubrey”

came from behind her chair: “A call for you, Miss Bailey. I’m very sorry. I tried, personally, to explain you couldn’t answer right now. I said you’d call back. I offered to take the name and number. They were extremely rude, whoever they were. They insisted you be told it was your sector calling about some yellow goods, an emergency matter.”

Lenore said, “ Wha-a-a-at? It doesn’t even make sense! W ait !” For it did make sense. She ducked out from beneath the drier, feeling her hair, and ran toward the phones.

“Yes? Lenore Bailey speaking.”

“My God.” The voice was Rat, secretarial. “Have we been playing tag to reach you! This is Beatrice Jaffrey, Lenore. There’s a”—her voice fell to a whisper—“Condition Yellow out. Has been, quite a while.”

Lenore’s answer was faltering. “Today? Good heavens, they can’t expect us—unless it’s—serious ?”

“It’s so serious,” Beatrice replied, “I can’t wait for your double-take. Make tracks, honey!” There was a click.

Lenore hung up. For half a minute, she merely stood beside the high shelf of the half-enclosed booth, her hand resting lightly on the mauve telephone. She was going to miss Thelma Emerson’s party. The fact gave her such a sense of elation that all other facts and all other assumptions were crowded out of her mind. She was possessed by a kind of happiness, a surge of joy, something she had not felt for a long time.

I hate him that much, she thought with astonishment.

Certainly it’s too much hatred for a bride. If I didn’t know before, she thought, I know now. Dad and Mom will hate me.

In the ensuing seconds, other parts of her brain meshed. Her good mind and the good education which had disciplined it took charge of her thoughts. Thoughts that plunged, climbed, curved in the dizzying pattern of cars sluicing over the track-maze of a roller coaster. Cars as seen against the summer skies on Swan Island. Her belly felt that way, besides: roller coaster.

All these people, she thought, staring at the people in the perfume, the peignoirs, the soft-sexy drape of music.

They haven’t been told. They aren’t supposed to know. It’s the latest, newest change in the orders.

It must be genuine, she thought.

Somewhere planes must have come over the borders, had a dog fight maybe. Maybe the air exercises started it. Maybe our bombers ran into something foreign scouting us.

Only then did she think, maybe it’s it. Blitz.

Condition Yellow.

Confidential to CD personnel. Assemble with equipment. Was there a Phase Two, any more? Or not? Would the people in the store get a warning, during Yellow, if things grew more serious than however things were? Or would they have to wait for the Red, the sirens? She couldn’t recall. The codes and schemes and plans had changed and changed again; her struggling mind could bring to consciousness only a succession of Federal directives, state directives, local directives. Among them, she couldn’t isolate the last set. Orders in effect.

Should she tell anybody? Absolutely not! That essence of the directives remained unchanged. Might panic the store. For nothing.

Be hard, she thought, to make a fast trip home, now.

She walked back, half a minute after hanging up.

Aubrey was nervous. He would have said “distrait.” He was passing the fingers of his left hand, delicately, back and forth over the palm of his right.

“Darling,” he said, “you’re pale! It was important, after all! A shock?”

“I’m not sure, “ she answered. I “But I’ve got to go at once.”

“You’re not dry yet,” he said. “Not combed out.”

“Your left hand,” Francine added anxiously. “Not finished.”

Lenore began taking off the kimono. She picked up a comb. She raked and tugged; pins fell around her. Aubrey protested, tried to seize the comb. Women began to lean out to watch, their eyes alert and fascinated, the driers like big, cockeyed, silver crowns suspended over them.

Francine was trying to help. But Aubrey curtly rejected, had stamped away to pout.

“I’ll put my suit hack on,” Lenore said. “You can send my dress to the house.”

Francine replied anxiously, “But I’m not sure we can get a messenger this late! And it’s Saturday. And Monday’s Christmas. You’ll want it before Tuesday!”

Lenore had a thought, at once weird and charitable, shattering and kind. She ran to the dressing room, pursued by the manicurist. She picked up her handbag, fumbled, produced a five-dollar bill. “You live out toward Edgeplains, isn’t that what you said?”