“There’re probably people there,” Kidd said uncomfortably. “Probably a skeleton staff. Madame Brown and I were talking about that. It’s probably like at…the Management office.”
“Ah.” Her hands met in her lap. “Yes.” She sat back. “But I’m only telling you how it feels. To me. When the smoke thins, I can look across at the other buildings. So many of the windows are broken. Maybe the maintenance men in Arthur’s office have already started putting in new panes. The maintenance is always better in a place of business. Well, there’s more money involved. I just wonder when we can expect some sort of reasonable return to normal here. There’s a certain minimum standard that must be kept up. They should send somebody around, if only to let us know what the situation is. Not knowing, that’s the worst. If I did know something, something for sure about plans for repairing the damages, for restoring service, lights, and things, when we could expect them to start…” She looked oddly annoyed.
“Maybe they will,” he suggested, “send somebody around.”
“You’d think they would. We have had trouble with them before; there was a huge crack, it opened up in June’s ceiling. It wasn’t our fault. Something upstairs leaked. It took them three months to send somebody. But they answered my letter right away. Meanwhile, I just have to muddle, muddle on. And every morning I send Arthur out of here, out into that.” She nodded. “That’s the crime. Of course I couldn’t keep him back; he wouldn’t stay. I’d tell him how dangerous I thought it was out there, all the awful things I’m afraid might happen, and he’d—Oh, I wish he’d laugh. But he wouldn’t. He’d scowl. And go. He goes away, every morning, just disappears, down Forty-Fourth. The only thing I can do for him is try and keep a good home, where nothing can hurt him, at least here, a happy, safe, and—”
He thought she’d seen something behind him, and was about to turn around. But her expression went on to something more violent than recognition.
She bent her head. “I guess I haven’t done that very well. I haven’t done that at all.”
He wished she would let him leave.
“Mrs. Richards, I’m going to see about that stuff in the back.” He thought there was some stuff in the back still to be put in place. “You just try and take it easy now.” He got up, thinking: When I come back I can put down the living-room rug.
There’s nothing I can do, he justified, to sponge up her grief. And I can’t do nothing.
He opened the door to Bobby’s room where the furniture had still not been put against the walls.
And June’s fists crashed the edges of the poster together.
“Hey, I’m sorry…I didn’t realize this was your—” But it was Bobby’s room. Kidd’s apologetic smile dropped before her astounded despair. “Look, I’ll leave you alone…”
“He was going to tell!” she whispered, wide-eyed, shaking her head. “He said so! But I swear,” and she crushed the poster altogether now. “I swear I didn’t do it on purpose…!”
After a few moments, he said, “I suppose that’s the first thing that would have occurred to anybody else in his right mind. But I didn’t even think of it till just now.” Then—and was afraid—he backed out of the room and closed the door, unable to determine what had formed in her face. I’m just an observer, he thought, and, thinking it, felt the thought crumple like George’s poster between June’s fists.
Walking toward the living room, he envisioned her leaping from the door, to bite and rake his back. The doors stayed closed. There was no sound. And he didn’t want to go back to the living room.
Just as he came in, the lock ratcheted, and the hall door pushed open. “Hello, guess who I found on the way up here?”
“Hi, Mary.” Madame Brown followed Mr. Richards in.
“Honey, what in the world is that mess down in the lobby? It looks as though somebody—”
Mrs. Richards turned around on the couch.
Mr. Richards frowned.
Madame Brown, behind him, suddenly touched her hand to her bright, jeweled chains.
Mrs. Richards squeezed the fabric of her skirt. “Arthur, this afternoon Bobby…June—Bobby—”
His eyelids snapped wide enough to pain the sockets. He rolled, scrabbling on snarled blankets and crushed leaves, flung his hands at her naked back. Had he nails, he would have torn.
“Unnnh,” Lanya said and turned to him. Then, “Hey—” because he dragged her against him. “I know,” she mumbled beside his ear, moving her arms inside his to get them free, “you want to be a great and famous—”
His arms shook.
“Oh, hey—!” Her hands came up across his back, tightened. “You were having bad dreams! About that boy!”
He shook his head beside hers.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. She got one hand high enough to rub the back of his shoulder. “It’s all right now. You’re awake.” He took three rough breaths, with stomach-clenched silences between, then let go and rolled to his back. The red veil, between him and the darkness, here, then there, fell away.
She touched his arm; she kneaded his shoulder. “It was a really bad dream, wasn’t it?”
He said, “I don’t…know,” and stopped gasping. Foliage hung over them. Near the horizon, blurred in fog, he saw a tiny moon; and further away, another! His head came up from the blanket—went slowly back:
They were two parklights which, through smoke, looked like diffuse pearls. “I can’t remember if I was dreaming or not.”
“You were dreaming about Bobby,” she said. “That’s all. And you scared yourself awake.”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have given her that damned poster—”
Her head fell against his shoulder. “You didn’t have any way to know…” Her hand dropped over his chest; her thigh crossed his thigh.
“But—” he took her hand in his—“the funny lack of expression Mr. Richards got when she was trying to tell him how it happened. And in the middle of it, June came in, and sort of edged into the wall, and kept on brushing at her chin with her fist and blinking. And Mrs. Richards kept on saying, ‘It was an accident! It was a terrible accident!’ and Madame Brown just said ‘Oh, Lord!’ a couple of times, and Mr. Richards didn’t say anything. He just kept looking back and forth between Mrs. Richards and June as though he couldn’t quite figure out what they were saying, what they’d done, what had happened, until June started to cry and ran out of the room—”