Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

“Yes. But I won’t get off for two hours.”

Lenore pressed the bill in her hand. “I’ll speak to Aubrey. He’ll let you bling it out—early, perhaps. And then go on home.”

Francine showed delight. “I could help do our tree!”

Lenore was head-deep in her skirt. “Sure,” she said. She thought that Francine could do what Francines did, now. Now and forever. Kit could have her if he wanted, the Kits of the world.

Francine could revel in the little bought pleasures of life, the pleasures she longed for so intently that all wisdom was excluded by desire. It was the only thing you could accomplish for some people: condemn them to their bliss and its going price, big or little.

She presented Aubrey with a twenty-dollar bill: “ Merry Christmas !” Lenore’s dark, dark hair rode her neck like a mane; her dark blue eyes were excited; her long fingers shook: “Look!

Let Francine off now and let her take my dress to my house, please!”

He rolled his eyes at his customers. “I’m short a manicurist as it is.”

“A special favor! I have to have it! I’m dining tomorrow with Minerva—”

“ I couldn’t, Miss Bailey. I…! But….”

But he was adding the bill to others in his pocket.

The street wind and the bell-jingle hit Lenore. She raised the mink collar around her cheeks. The shock of the weather changed the pitch of her thoughts. Concerning the impulse which had caused her to bribe Francine’s early way home, she said to herself wryly, First reaction: pure melodrama! Calm yourself, moron!

She calmed herself.

Twenty-five dollars, you idiot! she said to herself.

She said, winding through the crowd on Central Avenue. It would be a small price for a life, though. And she said, Who on earth would have believed Aubrey would accept the money!

She said, What on earth has gotten into me that makes me feel positively elated?

She said, Chuck.

At the parking garage, where the Baileys always kept their cars downtown, at least fifty women and half that many men were stamping on the frigid concrete waiting for the boys to bring their coups, convertibles, and sedans down the ramp. Lenore was appalled. It would take twenty or thirty minutes for her Ford to appear. And they’d been trying to reach her for a “long time.”

How long? They hadn’t said. Condition Yellow was how old? Of what significance?

They hadn’t said. She wondered if she should find the manager, ask him for special service. If she mentioned Civil Defense, it would be a violation of rules. And nothing else would faze him, probably, for doubtless half the people standing and stamping there had tried other ruses and bribes.

She glanced out at the street. Cabs were hard to get also. Just about impossible.

Suddenly, she worried.

Looking down the side street, looking toward Central and across it, looking at the ocean of December-muffled humanity, she was scared. For the first time, she wondered where Chuck was, her father; her mother was at home cleaning. As if in further answer, she saw, or thought she saw, in the distance, Nora Conner walking along beside a colored woman. It was only the briefest glimpse. Lenore had an urge to race after the child, take her home. The urge died: Lenore’s primary concern was different. She turned back to the ticket booth, a square of pasteboard in her hand. Then she saw Mr. and Mrs. Ellinsen getting into their car. If they were on their way home, at Ash and Arkansas, it would do. She ran up to them.

Merry Christmas, Lenore, and sure, we’re going home. Crowds tuckered us out! Mr. Ellinsen was definitely not an expert driver and Lenore began to sense, as they first tried Court and then River to make their way south in the heavy traffic, that there was something vaguely wrong in the traffic itself. Every once in a while, a private car would take a wild chance to make a small, extra gain in the procession. Every once in a while, a lone driver would clamp down on his horn and shoot past everybody, like a cop. That in turn (evidence, she knew, of Civil Defense people on the way toward their sectors) irritated all other drivers.

“People have gone absolutely crazy today,” Mrs. Ellinsen observed. “I’ve personally seen three collisions—minor, though. If it gets much worse, it simply won’t be possible to live in cities any more!”

Lenore didn’t reply to that.

She saw another thing. An entire fire company, sirens roaring, bells jangling, ground and tore, braked and ricocheted—south, through the jam-packed streets.

“Wonder where the fire is?” Mr. Ellinsen asked. And he tried, without much success, to gain a block or two in the swathe opened by the red-painted trucks.

Lenore did not reply to that either. She thought there was probably no more. She thought that, following regular Condition Yellow procedure, the Green Prairie fire-fighting equipment would all be heading out of town—all save a few stand-by pieces. When the emergency was over, they’d come back. Or else, of course, when the need turned cataclysmic. Doctors, she thought, would, or should, be heading out of town for the same reason. Nurses, also. Certain engineers and technicians. Various Red Cross people and their equipment.

At Arkansas and Walnut Street they let her out. She thanked them and hurried. A car or two went by, fast, on Walnut; otherwise the residential area seemed deserted. She began to run.

There didn’t seem to be anyone at home in the Conner house, she thought; then she saw, bright against the dulling afternoon, a light in the front attic window. She smiled. Ted Conner would be there, at his radio. Her steps slowed and she almost went in, went up, talked to Ted for a moment. She felt Ted would be able to tell her a lot about this alarm. And Ted might know where Chuck was at this point.

Reluctantly, she went on. She’d been summoned and that meant a beeline, not stops made out of curiosity, certainly not stops for inquiry about people, even people you loved.

She swung open her own front door. “Mom!”

“I’m in here!” Nella was reclining on the divan. She had a magazine, a highhall, a box of candy, a fire going in the grate, a radio on, and she talked in a barrage as Lenore stripped off her coat, gloves, galoshes. “What a day! What a hellish day! The new maid’s impossible! I’m not through with cleaning. You’ll have to do your own room, yourself, tomorrow. Why didn’t you go straight to the Ritz? That Conner brat ran away on me!”

“I thought I saw her downtown.”

Mrs. Bailey sat up a little. “ Well! On her way to see Santa, I bet! Beth said she had a cold. I didn’t see any signs. Saddled me with the child, and the child skipped. I even went racing down to River Avenue looking for her. Somebody said that she saw me coming and popped into a manhole. Imagine!”

“Manhole!”

“The kids do. School kids. There are ladders. That’s what they said in the fruit store.

Young hellion! You can go blocks underground in the new sewer. Down to the cemetery—and beyond. If you’re that much of a fool. Me, I wouldn’t walk in one for a fortune. Where’s your new dress?”

Lenore decided not to tell her mother anything about her major decision. There wasn’t time. And it no longer mattered to Lenore what her mother thought. She knew what her mother would say and try to do. That didn’t matter either. She answered, “Mother, I got yanked away from Aubrey’s by Civil Defense.”

“What?” Mrs. Bailey didn’t understand; she was so completely baffled she could not even react.

“Now, Mother, take this calmly. I got an alert. It means nothing probably. Perhaps just a special drill—to see how we respond when we don’t in the least expect it. But it meant going through the routine. Coming home. Getting into my clothes. Going over to the school—all such. I’m in a hurry .”