HOLLYWOOD NURSE, by Alice Brennan

Chapter One

It was cold and rainy, unusual weather for southern California. Merry Neil, blonde and blue-eyed, raced down the steps of Hollywood General, hoping to make the next bus before it pulled out.

The soles of her white oxfords had hardly set down on the sidewalk when the crowd of six waiting reporters encircled her. “Give us the low-down on Pierson Webb, baby,” a voice stabbed at her from the crowd. “Exactly what’s wrong with him? Is it cancer?”

“Come on, sweetheart, be a doll,” another voice wheedled. “We’ve got deadlines to meet. And Webb’s a very important personage in this town. People want to read about him.”

Merry shook her head to all of their queries. “Please,” she begged, “I haven’t anything to say. I’m only a nurse. Now, if you’ll just let me by… I don’t want to miss my bus.”

In answer, a woman’s voice said, in a tired monotone, “Look, doll, give, whydoncha? What’s he to you?”

“What’s he to me?” Merry thought. “A human being. A tired, scared old man who has the right to be ill in private; to die in private, if it comes to that.”

But she didn’t say it out loud. “They’re only doing their jobs,” she told herself, “the same as I’m doing mine. I’ve got to remember that.”

They were only giving the reading public what it demanded. And what it demanded was every crumb of news about the great ones. Their pains, their hurts…what they ate for breakfast…how they slept…and if they were going to die. “Come on, doll,” the voice coaxed again.

Merry bit at her underlip. She thought fiercely, “I’m tired of being called ‘doll’ and ‘sweetie’ and ‘darling’ and ‘baby.’”

She felt slightly hysterical as she pushed through the circle, forcing it to open for her. She was tired, and her feet ached. She’d been on them since seven that morning.

One of the reporters leaned too close and smoke from his cigar blew into her face, causing her to cough. She strangled a hysterical giggle. He was fat and short and balding.

Whoever heard of a middle-aged, balding reporter who smoked cigars? They were supposed to be young, the trench coat type.

She heard her bus pull out, and she could have cried. It would be a good fifteen or twenty minutes until another bus came along. They always managed to be late.

She knew with a sinking heart that the reporters would follow her to the bus stop. They’d nag and ride her until the bus came along and she could escape by getting on it.

It had been like this since two o’clock yesterday when Pierson Webb had entered the hospital and someone had discovered she’d been assigned to take care of him.

She wanted to turn on them. Wasn’t anything private in this town? Not even death?

And Pierson Webb could die. She’d seen it in Dr. Horne’s eyes when he’d come into Pierson’s room tonight.

He’d drawn up a chair beside Pierson’s bed and announced cheerfully, “We’re going to haul you down to surgery in the morning, Pierson, and see if we can find what’s causing those bellyaches of yours.”

Pierson had been smoking a thin, black cigar. He’d jabbed it viciously at an ash tray. “Oh, come off that jazz, doc,” he’d said. “You know I got cancer. Why the hell don’t you just come out and admit it. I’m going to die. Why not admit that too?”

“I don’t know anything of the sort,” Dr. Horne had told him calmly. “If I did, this wouldn’t be an exploratory I’m going to do on you.”

Pierson’s eyes, hollow and almost lost in the folds of fat around them, had darted around the room. “I’m on to you guys, doc. You can’t fool me with that kind of talk. I’ve made a few medic pictures myself. Remember Dr. Lance? That one was mentioned for an Oscar.”

His eyes had gone musing. “I’ve made some great pictures. Know that, doc? And I discovered Natalie Pries. Where’d she be if it hadn’t been for me? A sheer nobody. And look at her now. The biggest piece of box office in the business.”

Dr. Horne had risen slowly to his feet. “I know that, Pierson,” he’d told the older man. “But right now I don’t want you doing any more talking. I want you to get some rest. And don’t worry about anything.”

“Rest?” the other man had laughed harshly. “You mean, sleep? I ain’t slept in years. You think I’m going to start it tonight just because you tell me to?”

“You’ll sleep tonight,” Dr. Horne had told him. “I’m going to prescribe a sedative for you.”

The reporter with the cigar blew smoke once more into Merry’s face. Merry automatically put up a hand and brushed at the smoke as she brushed at the smog that sometimes enveloped the Los Angeles countryside. Unlike the smog, heavy and odorous and lung-penetrating, the smoke brushed away.

The lights were beginning to come on, the lights on the cars and in the buildings, relieving the drab grayness of the cloud-heavy skies.

She walked briskly towards the bus stop, and the reporters tagged at her heels. “Like ghouls,” she thought fiercely.

“Listen, doll…”

The word grated on her nerves, like a fingernail being raked down a blackboard. Pierson Webb had called her doll too, as she’d stood over him, the hypodermic needle poised.

“Listen, doll, if you think you’re fooling me, forget it. I’ve been around for fifty-six years, and I’ve seen them all. They’ve got just one thing on their minds, and you ain’t no exception, sweetheart. Everyone in this town is out to get everything they can get, without having to pay for it. So you might just as well throw that Florence-Nightingale jazz of yours out of the window as far as I’m concerned. It don’t penetrate.”

Merry had seen his eyes. They were afraid. The bluster and bravado were only pretense…to show how unafraid he was.

Car horns sounded, with the steady sound of wheels on the concrete, and the constant noise over and above and around everything—the pulse of a big city.

“I should have stayed back in Michigan,” Merry thought. “Three months I’ve been here and I still can’t get used to it.” The noise and the phony glitter and the phony endearments…and the loneliness that pushed against one like the smog.

For a moment she thought of Emmett and the small community hospital she’d worked at before coming to Hollywood. There was a pain of remembering tangling in her throat.

“I should have stayed there.” And then, “All right, why didn’t I stay?” The familiar pain made itself felt, and it startled Merry that it could still be so sharp after all these months.

She’d left not only Emmett, but Michigan as well, to escape Tom. How had he gotten into her thoughts? Hadn’t she determined she’d never think of Tom again after she left Michigan? Tom had certainly made it clear enough that he wanted no place in her thoughts.

“When the moon is on the clover

Oh, my lover,

I’ll remember

How your arms so tender…”

“Stop it,” she told herself. “What you trying to do? Bring it back? You were the one who tried to make it more than it ever was. Tom wasn’t the one who said the words…you put them into his mouth…and then tried to fool yourself into believing he lied to you.”

“Listen, doll, do you have to walk so fast?” the reporter with the cigar complained. “My feet are killing me. I’ve got corns.”

Merry let out a sigh of exasperation. “If you’d only…” She became aware of the white Jaguar pulling to the curb and turned her head to look; the rest of her sentence remained unsaid.

A tanned arm in a white sportshirt reached across and opened the car door. “Hop in,” a masculine voice said, the sound seeming to drift slowly forward from behind the sunglasses and the tan.

He winked at her. “You want to escape the pack, don’t you? With luck, I think we could outrun them.”

Oh, no I don’t, Merry thought. Whoever heard of anyone getting into a car—even a Jaguar—with someone she didn’t know? Not on your life, she wouldn’t…

“Doll,” the reporter who’d said his feet hurt him had changed his voice to a whine.

Merry felt the pressure growing at the back of her head. “My feet hurt too,” she thought. The prospect of waiting ten or fifteen more minutes for the bus, being called “doll” repeatedly, and having cigar smoke blown into her face wasn’t very appealing.

Before she had time to reconsider, Merry climbed into the car, settled herself in the bucket seat, and pulled the door closed. “Off we go.”

Merry’s head jerked back as the powerful car took off. “Hold on to your seat belts, folks.” A tanned hand reached over and clamped down on her shoulder, holding her for a second, against the seat.

“Hey, do you know who that was?” The words rang out from one of the reporters Merry had left behind.

The hand left Merry’s shoulder. “I guess you’re okay now. I thought for a minute there you were going to take off.”

She turned in her seat to look at him. His laughter had a natural sound, low and pleasant, and there were glimpses of freckles beneath the huge sunglasses.

She cocked her head to one side and frowned at him. “Why would that man say, ‘Do you know who that was?’ Are you someone important?” Her eyes widened. She said tightly, “Are you one of them? Is this a trick to…to…”

“Now, dear,” he told her, “slow down. You aren’t making sense.” His mouth was serious, but Merry was sure that his eyes were grinning behind the covering glasses.

But she was not going to let herself be hoodwinked.

“Are you a reporter?” she asked fiercely. “Because if you are, and if you think you’re going to pry any information out of me about Mr. Webb—”

“Well, well, well,” he said. “So that’s who you are. I should have known. You’re Pierson’s nurse. So that’s why they were after you.”

Merry said, “If you’re trying to fool me—”

“’Pon my honor I’m not a reporter,” he told her. “Scout’s honor. And I promise not to pump you for even one word about Pierson.” He pulled the Jaguar off the highway and whirled into the parking lot of an orange juice stand, “How about an orange juice?”

“Oh, come now,” he coaxed when she started to refuse. “Everyone who comes to California has to drink orange juice. It’s part of the protocol.”

Merry laughed. “How do you know I’m not a native of Hollywood?”

He shook his head. “You haven’t got the look. There’s a certain look.” He parked the car and hopped lightly over the side without bothering to open the door.

He came back carrying two giant glasses of orange juice. Merry sipped at hers. It was cold and sweet. “It’s good,” she said.

He grinned at her. “Have you ever been to Florida?”

Merry shook her head. “I thought the Chamber of Commerce outlawed that word in California.” She was feeling gay, like the sun suddenly deciding to make its appearance in the west just in time to set.

He laughed. “Oh, every once in a while I feel brave and defiant.” He swung the car close to one of the trash receptacles, and Merry dropped in the paper cups.

“You can drop me off at the nearest bus stop,” she told him.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he told her. “Why don’t I just drive you home?” When Merry started to protest, he said lightly, “You’ve been safe so far, haven’t you? Honest, I don’t bite. My teeth are my own, and I promise not to ask questions.”

Merry laughed. “I live on Fourth,” she told him, and gave him the number of the apartment house.

He shook his head. “That’s not a good address.”

“They don’t pay a nurse the money to afford a ‘good’ address,” she said.

A cross-town bus lumbered across in front of the car. A truck camper, with the words “Hitchhikers and dogs welcomed. Pay in advance” blazoned in red paint on the back, cruised leisurely behind the bus.

Across the street, a young woman in tight white shorts, extravagantly high heels, and a pale pony tail of hair that swung to the small of her back walked a miniature poodle.

The man beside her began to hum under his breath. Merry, frowning in concentration, twisted around on the seat to stare at him. “There’s something about your voice,” she told him. “It sounds so familiar…”

“Do you ride the elevators at the May Company?” he asked her. “I’m an elevator operator.”

Merry laughed at him. “An elevator operator driving a Jaguar? Besides, they don’t have elevators anymore; they have escalators.”

“You’re taking all of the fun out of it,” he told her. “I really was an elevator operator once. And I got the Jaguar by saving trading stamps. Really.”

Merry touched his arm. “Turn there at the corner,” she directed him. “It’s the second house, that aging stucco.”

He pulled to the curb in front of a bedraggled sedan. He reached across Merry and opened the door for her. “Call me Arch,” he told her. “In case you get to thinking about me in your dreams tonight.”

Merry shot him an appraising glance. “You don’t look like an Arch,” she said.

He said wryly, “Does anyone look like an Arch?” His hands played on the wheel as he let the car idle. “No one really seems to have a name in this town,” he said. “They’re all ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie’ or ‘doll.’”

Merry shuddered. “Please. If I have to hear myself addressed just once more as ‘doll’… My name’s Merry.” She got out of the car and slammed the door gently.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” he quipped, grinning up at her.

“No. It’s spelled like the Merry in Merry Christmas.”

“Now I’ve heard everything,” he said. “Merry Christmas.” He suddenly exploded into helpless laughter.

She said lightly, “My mother read a Christmas story. She was very impressed by it.” She backed away from the car. “Thanks for everything. The ride, the orange juice…”

“And for being a perfect gentleman,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

“An especial thanks for that,” Merry said. She stood watching as he pulled away from the curb, and frowned as she walked towards the apartment house entrance. That voice…she shrugged. “Forget it.”

She turned the knob and stepped inside the small lobby. There were two flights of stairs to climb. The apartment she shared with two other nurses from the hospital was on the second floor.

She smiled to herself. Arch. Arch for Archibald? She grinned at the thought. He’d been nice. He hadn’t once tried to paw her, or hinted that she owed it to herself to visit his apartment. He’d been just plain nice.

When she opened the door to her apartment, there was an unexpected visitor waiting for her.

She was sitting on the slip-covered day bed, looking brittle and scornful and expensive and out of place in the shabby room. “They said you’d be home a half hour ago,” she said in a cold voice implying that Merry had done this deliberately to upset her. “I’ve been waiting nearly thirty-five minutes for you to get home.”

Merry closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it. She knew Mai Hinge, and she didn’t have to ask why she’d come. She knew.

Chapter Two

When Merry was in the last year of high school, a New York columnist had come to speak to the graduating class. She’d been sleek and chic and sophisticated.

Merry, like the rest of the girls in the class, had been overwhelmed by her. The boys had been scornful…“Who wants a girl who don’t look like a girl, huh?”

Mai Hinge reminded Merry of that other columnist, except that Mai was more of everything. More glamorous, more chic, more expensive. More caustic. “Well, don’t stand there like an ass,” she told Merry. “Come on over here and sit down. I want some information from you.” She tapped the black bag that rested in her lap. “I have a reputation for paying well for information I want.”

Mai was wearing a bright red dress and an outlandish hat that sat high on her dark hair. Her eyes were dark, and just a little slanted. They seemed to move constantly, as did her hands.

She crushed out the cigarette she’d been smoking when Merry came in and immediately lit another one. Merry watched her, thinking there was something repellently fascinating about her thin, ugly, and yet attractive face. “Well, are you just going to stand there?”

Merry walked over and sat down in the armchair across from her.

Mai said, not bothering to take the cigarette from her lips, “You know who I am, don’t you?” She said it in the tone of voice that said anyone who didn’t know her was a complete ass.

Merry nodded. “You’re Mai Hinge, the columnist.”

“Nationally syndicated,” Mai said. The dark eyes flashed over Merry’s face. “I’ve made and broken quite a few people in the ten years I’ve been in Hollywood, Miss Neil,” she said in her loud, brittle voice.

Merry stared at her. Surely she wasn’t threatening her. “I’m a nurse,” she thought. “Nobody to make or to break.” Or was she? She frowned at the thought.

She half rose to her feet. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked Mai politely.

The other woman shook her head. “This isn’t a social visit,” she snapped.

“Someone mention coffee?” Agnes McLeod, small and slender, her brown hair mussed, a smudge on her nose, appeared in the doorway of the tiny kitchenette.

“Hi,” Merry said. She shook her head in answer to Agnes’ query. “I guess not,” she said.

She looked at Mai. “This is my roommate, Miss…”

“I’ve already met Miss McLeod,” Mai told her crossly.

Merry glanced back at Agnes and shrugged. “Where’s Tammy?”

“I forgot onions,” Agnes told her. “Tammy went to the store for them. We’re having chicken sandwiches and coleslaw.”

Merry laughed. “Sounds good.” It was Agnes’ week to cook. She wasn’t the best, but she was better than Tammy, whose culinary ability ran to opening cans or popping TV dinners in the oven.

“Don’t tell me three of you live here!” Mai’s voice hinged on the incredible. Her dark eyes swept the two-room, kitchenette apartment.

“Oh, we manage,” Merry said. She glanced around the room in which they sat. She thought it bright and colorful and attractive. It was home. It had been home for three months now. She loved it. She didn’t like Mai Hinge coming here and…

Mai leaned forward on the couch, and her words jabbed at Merry like tiny cutting knives. “There’s been talk of cancer,” she said bluntly. “Is that what Pierson has? Is he going to die?”

Merry stared at her and slowly began shaking her head. Agnes had disappeared into the kitchenette. “I’m sorry, Miss Hinge, I don’t know anything about Mr. Webb. If you want any information, I’m sure his doctor…”

Mai puffed viciously at the cigarette she’d lit. “Horne wouldn’t give me the time of day. And you damn well know it.” She stabbed out the cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, although she’d taken no more than a half dozen puffs on it. “You nurses make me sick to my stomach,” she snorted. “Letting on that you’re so much better than other people. Money doesn’t matter to you. You’re only interested in being noble and dedicated.” Her voice mocked. “Everyone has his price, sweetie. What’s yours?”

And then, not waiting for Merry to answer, she sat back on the couch suddenly, and her eyes narrowed on Merry’s face. “I’m going to tell you something most people in this town don’t know. Pierson and I used to know each other years ago, before he was anyone. We both lived in this awful small town, and Pierson worked in a factory…an automobile factory, can you imagine? And he got this little theatre group together. I was very young, and on my first newspaper job. I was told to write something about the theatre group. That’s how Pierson and I met. Only he didn’t call himself Pierson in those days. He was Pete. He was loud and crude even then, but he had something. I knew he was going to make it.”

Merry saw some of the hard lines go out of Mai’s face, as if remembering made her young again.

Then Mai shrugged. “Pierson didn’t want any serious attachments…he was too concerned with trying to make it. And while I concentrated on not letting him know I wanted it to be serious, he up and married another woman.”

She took the cigarette from her mouth and stared at it thoughtfully. “I forgave him,” she said. “He was a genius and geniuses have more rights than ordinary people. I’ve remained his friend. I’m probably the only one he’s got in this town.”

She leaned forward on the couch again. “So you see,” she said, “this desire in me to know about Pierson…it’s purely personal.”

Merry asked slowly, “And if you did get information about Mr. Webb’s condition, you wouldn’t use it in your column?”

“Well now,” Mai began. A smile smoothed itself across her face. “If it could hurt him, I wouldn’t print it,” she said. “Naturally.”

Merry said slowly, “Mr. Webb entered the hospital yesterday for a rest and a checkup. That’s all I know. You could check with the doctor at the hospital…”

“You told me that before,” Mai snapped. “And I told you what you could do with it!” She gathered up her purse and gloves and got to her feet. She pushed her cigarette at the ash tray, making no attempt to pick it up when it missed and fell to the floor.

Merry walked over, picked up the cigarette and put it in the ash tray. Mai watched her coldly. “Why didn’t you leave it for the maid? Isn’t that what they’re paid for?”

“We don’t have a maid.”

Mai walked to the door, and then turned around and looked at Merry. Her eyes were vicious. “I always pay my debts,” she said. “I can wait, sweetie. I can wait as long as I have to.”

The door opened and closed behind her. Merry stared at it, stunned. “Why would she think I could tell her anything about Mr. Webb?” she asked Agnes who had come out of the kitchen and was preparing to set the table. “It wouldn’t be ethical, even I wanted to. Which I didn’t.”

Agnes said softly, “She probably never heard of the Florence Nightingale oath, Merry. And if she had, she’d dismiss it as a joke.”

She frowned. “I wonder what in the world’s keeping Tammy.”

As if on cue, Tammy Moore, slender, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, burst in the door. She flung the bag she carried at Agnes. “Catch.”

Her dark eyes flashed towards the door. “Was that Mai Hinge I just passed on the stairs? She looked ready to boil somebody in oil.”

Agnes, on her way to the kitchen with the onions, said over her shoulder, “Merry.”

“It seems to me,” Tammy said, giving Merry an envious glance, “that for someone who doesn’t want the breaks, you get them all.”

Merry, kicking off her shoes, said, frowning, “I wonder if she’s always like that when she doesn’t get something she wants.”

“She didn’t get Pierson Webb,” Agnes reminded her.

Tammy said, “Maybe she’s never forgiven him for it.”

Merry shot her a quick glance. “It could be like that,” she thought. “It didn’t have to be the way Mai said it was.”

Agnes said, “Dinner’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

Merry said, “I want to get out of my uniform first,” and disappeared into the bedroom.

“Need a hand in the kitchen?” Tammy asked Agnes.

“Nope,” the other girl said. “I’ve got everything under control.”

“Fine.” Tammy flopped on the couch on her stomach, propping the newspaper she’d brought in front of her. “Hey,” she called out. “Natalie Pries has just ditched her third husband, Mai’s column says, and she’s hunting around for a fourth. It could be an attorney, it says here.”

Nobody answered her. Merry was busy slipping into a pair of stretch pants in the bedroom, and Agnes was rattling dishes around in the kitchenette.

Tammy folded back the newspaper and let it drop to the floor. She scrounged up farther on the couch so that she could rest her head on the arm.

She closed her eyes, and her lashes, thick and dark, curved against her cheek bones.

Why did the right things always have to happen to other people? she thought crossly, while here she sat on the bottom of the barrel, being what she was never meant to be. She wasn’t like Merry or Agnes…dedicated.

She was a nurse only because her mother had thought she should be one. Because nursing had such a sane, respectable sound to it.

Tammy’s lips twisted wryly. Her mother had been very distressed by Tammy’s interest in the theatre. “Why on earth would you want to be an actress?” she’d asked Tammy. “Nobody in our family was ever in the theatre.”

“Drama school?” Her father hadn’t even raised his voice. “No sireee, young woman. No daughter of mine’s going to be one of them actresses if I can help it. You take nurse training, like your ma wants, so you can earn yourself a living if you have to. Or you don’t take anything.”

Tammy slid to her feet and padded bare-footed across to the gas fireplace. A mirror hung above it.

She surveyed herself critically. The wide, dark eyes, the winged brows, the slender oval of her face, the slightly petulant mouth. “I’m every bit as pretty as Natalie Pries,” she said to her reflection. “What has she got that I don’t have?”

She swallowed convulsively. A break. That’s what Natalie Pries had that she lacked. A lucky break. She’d been working as an extra and clerking in a drug store when Pierson Webb had walked into the drug store one day and decided to make her a star. “It should happen to me,” Tammy thought bitterly.

She’d thought it had when she’d learned Pierson Webb had been admitted to Hollywood General as a patient. He’d be right there where she could visit him as often as she liked, on one pretext or another. She’d be in a position to do things for him, push herself into his gaze, make him aware of her.

But it hadn’t turned out that way at all. The best she’d gotten from him had been, “Listen, sister, go peddle your wares someplace else. I’m a sick man. I ain’t interested. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen in this town. I got more pretty girls than I know what to do with.”

Tammy flung herself away from the mirror. “I hate him,” she thought. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!”

Agnes came in, carrying a plate of sandwiches and a bowl of salad. “It’s ready,” she said. “There’re éclairs for dessert.”

Merry came in, wearing black stretch pants and a yellow blouse.

Tammy looked at her with reluctant admiration. “You’ve managed to look almost sexy,” she said.

Merry laughed. “I think that’s meant as a compliment.” She slipped a piece of cheese from the salad and popped it into her mouth. “What was that you were saying about Natalie Pries?”

“She just got rid of her third husband,” Tammy said. She fluffed her hair, pulling it forward on her face.

“I wonder why she keeps getting married,” Agnes said, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

Tammy said, pretending shock, “Anything else would be immoral and illegal, wouldn’t it? Hey,” she said to Merry who was not yet sitting down, “switch on the radio, huh? If we can’t eat by candlelight, let’s at least have music to dine by.”

Merry obediently turned on the radio dial, and canned music blared out. She frowned as she sat down. “I hate rock and roll.”

Agnes said, “I like Bach.”

“I’m right in my groove,” Tammy said, biting into a chicken sandwich. “Rock and roll, I dig it.”

The disc jockey’s voice came out, sounding tired and forced in his joviality. “This is the sunshine state, folks. The Chamber of Commerce provides colored glasses free, for those tourists who insist that ain’t the sun up there today.”

There was a scratching sound, and then, “And here’s himself, the great new sensation, Arch Heller. Let her swing, boy.”

The voice came out, slow and easy at first, and then rose wilder and wilder. Merry paused, her bite of salad halfway to her mouth. “That’s his voice,” she said. “I knew I’d heard it somewhere.”

Tammy said, “Shhhh,” and then swiveled in her chair to look at Merry, her eyes wide. “Whose voice?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

“He said his name was Arch,” Merry replied, “and he rescued me from those awful reporters and he bought me orange juice and he…”

Tammy said, “My God, you don’t mean Arch Heller brought you home? Arch Heller?”

“Their voices sounded the same,” Merry said. She was frowning. “I’m almost sure…”

“What kind of car was he driving?” Tammy demanded.

“Jaguar,” Merry told her. “White.”

“With red upholstery?” Tammy asked, her voice excited.

Merry nodded. “That’s his car,” Tammy said. “It was described in the last Screen Gems magazine. Wait a minute.” She disappeared into the bedroom. When she came back, she was carrying a magazine folded back to a picture of a young man lounging in the seat of a white Jaguar sports car. He was wearing giant dark glasses, and he was grinning.

Tammy thrust the magazine in front of Merry. “Is that him?”

Merry carefully studied the picture. “Yes,” she said, “I’m sure it is.”

Tammy flung down the magazine and frowned at Merry. “For a girl who doesn’t want any breaks, and who wouldn’t know what to do with a break, you’re getting them all. It’s a shame you’re so nice, because I’d like to hate you.”

She went over and turned off the radio. “I’ve lost my taste for music,” she said dispiritedly.

* * * *

The two girls helped Agnes clear the table and do the dishes. “He’s nice,” Merry said. “I mean really nice. He didn’t try a pass or anything like that.”

Tammy said crisply, “I’d feel insulted if I were you.”

Agnes emptied the dishwater and scoured the sink. Only a part of her mind listened to the talk between the other two girls. She was wondering, as she’d wondered for the past week, if this would be the night the phone would ring for her.

The kitchenette had one window. Outside it, the town was a fairyland of lights. Unreal, Agnes thought. As unreal as Disney’s Fantasyland.

She wrung out the dishcloth and put it away. It wasn’t the unreal that hurt. It was the reality.

Chapter Three

An operating room is a world apart, composed of four enclosing walls. Outside sounds don’t penetrate; it is an alien world, and the green-gowned and capped men and women who move in it are alien creatures. Every sound has a meaning—the transfer of surgical instruments from the nurse’s hand to the surgeon’s; the flutter of the breathing bag, in…out…in…out; the faint rustle the scrub nurse makes as she wipes the surgeon’s brow.

The clock on the wall is electric and soundless, yet every person in the room is vibrantly aware of its soundless ticking.

Merry, her blonde hair hidden under the green surgical cap, looked at the man on the operating table. He no longer looked big or Important, but small and pathetic and defenseless, lying flat and draped, his head and face screened from the operating team. There was the faint click of steel as installments moved from the table to the nurse’s hand to the surgeon.

There was no talk, only movement. Merry watched Dr. Horne’s hands as the final incision was made. When he raised his head, she saw the verdict in his eyes.

Everyone in the operating room knew. Pierson Webb was going to die. Not today or tomorrow or next week, but he was going to die.

The nurse at Dr. Horne’s side reached up and wiped his forehead with a piece of cotton. The clamps and sutures were passed from the nurse’s hands to his. “They always wait too long,” he said, as he finished suturing and clamping the incision. “It’s spread to the lymph glands and the liver. Why do people have to bury their heads in the sand like an ostrich when they have symptoms that should be looked into?”

“I could tell him the answer to that,” Merry thought. “Because we’re all afraid. Sometimes we think that if we don’t admit something is there, it’ll go away.”

We all have to die. The words were said or thought by everyone in the room. They were meant as a comfort for the man on the table. “You’re not the only one; maybe next time it’ll be one of us.”

“He’s not to know.” The surgeon peeled off his gloves, and flung the words over his shoulder as he walked out.

The nurses and the doctors left in the room looked at each other and then turned away, almost as if they were embarrassed. Merry stepped aside as an orderly wheeled the stretcher on which Pierson Webb lay out the door and down to Recovery.

She took off the green wrap-around and cap she’d worn in Surgery. Miracles happened every day, she told herself. You were always reading about them. Miracles that had nothing whatever to do with medical science. Hope wasn’t to be discarded yet.

She walked down the corridor to the elevator. When it stopped two nurses got off. Tammy Moore broke off her chattering to the other nurse, to shoot Merry a glance. “Successful?”

Merry said carefully, “He was just taken down to Recovery.”

Tammy gave a sigh. “I’m glad,” she said. Her gaze swept the nurse with her and she grinned. “Over and above the usual human feeling,” she told her, “I have ulterior motives in wanting Pierson Webb to recover.”

Merry stepped into the elevator and the doors slid shut behind her.

When you’re rich and important, she thought, people always seemed to have ulterior motives in their feelings toward you.

She sighed. Maybe, she thought, that was why men like Pierson Webb were rude and fierce and scornful in their dealings with other people, because they could never be sure what the other really wanted; because they were afraid to expose themselves.

On impulse she went down to Recovery. The Recovery room was a well-lit, long emptiness. Only the sounds of breathing and of gathering progressive consciousness were heard.

In the ten-bed room there were three patients in various stages of recovery. Merry moved down the aisle to stand beside the bed on which Pierson Webb lay.

As she looked down on him, he moaned, a whimpering little cry from a wakening consciousness. The nurse sitting beside him, mindful of every sound or movement from her patient, glanced up at Merry. No word passed between them.

Merry turned on her heel and went back into the corridor and towards the elevator. An intern wheeling a stretcher passed by her. And by the window that looked out over the green, well-kept lawns, a man and a woman waited.

As Merry approached them, they turned, as if they were one, and looked towards her. Disappointment washed over their faces as they saw she wasn’t the one they’d hoped, or dreaded, to see.

And under the disappointment, there was anxiety, heartbreak. Merry thought, with a tug at her heart, that she’d never seen either of those expressions on the faces of the bejeweled women and the men in their expensive custom-made suits who passed in and out of Pierson Webb’s room.

Boredom, curiosity, impatience, but none of the softer, warmer emotions.

She pushed the buzzer for the elevator. It was her job to prepare Pierson Webb’s room for his return, to do all that could be done for the comfort of her patient.

She wondered if anyone would be waiting for him, and she was only mildly surprised to see Mai Hinge lounging just inside the door of Pierson’s room.

She turned her dark, heavy-lidded eyes on Merry. “Well?” Her voice was cold and impatient.

“He’s been taken down to Recovery, Miss Hinge.”

“Was it cancer, or wasn’t it?” Mai ground out a cigarette in the tray beside her.

Merry shook her head. “I’m not at liberty to discuss a patient.”

“Oh, to hell with that,” Mai said. “I’m not interested in discussing your scruples.” Her eyes narrowed. “Pierson Webb is in the midst of directing the greatest picture of his career, with himself as lead…” she quoted. She gave her shoulders a jerk. “If only you’d play ball and give me a bite on his condition…” She sighed. “Where can one get a drink in this overgrown apartment house?”

“There’s a cafeteria in the lobby,” Merry said.

Mai gave her a fierce glance. “I said a drink.” And then, “How long before they bring Pierson up here?”

Merry shook her head. “Some come out of it quickly. With others it takes longer.”

“I guess I’ve got time to find that drink,” Mai said. “My God, with what I’ve been through, I need one.”

Merry watched her go. Was Mai really as heartless as her talk would indicate? She walked over to the window and stared out. It was barely noon, and the cloudy, heavy skies of the day before were gone as completely as if they’d never been. A lazy sun beat down, fierce and hot.

Merry thought longingly of the beach. But it would take a bus ride out, and another bus ride back. And it wouldn’t be worth it, because by the time she got back to the apartment, she’d be hotter than when she’d started.

She was turning away from the window when the man moving leisurely up the walk to the front entrance of the hospital caught her eye. “He walks like Tom,” she thought, and the pain was there, not as vivid as it had once been, but still too vivid for comfort.

She brushed a hand across her forehead, between her eyes. Wasn’t it about time she realized Tom Harton was in the past? That he belonged there? That he’d never loved her? Wasn’t it about time she grew up and understood the score?

Tom hadn’t wanted to marry her. “You’re a sweet kid, Merry, but I’m too old for you. Besides I’m already married. I thought you knew. That’s the truth. I’m sorry you understood differently.”

Merry blinded at the tears. “I’m sorry too,” she thought. She’d met Tom at a party. They’d had some laughs together. That’s all he’d wanted from her…some laughs. Well, she thought thinly, he’d gotten them.

The sound of movement in the corridor just outside the door caused her to turn her head.

Pierson Webb was being brought back from Recovery.

* * * *

Tammy frowned at Merry over their lunch trays. “It seems to me,” she remarked coldly, “that it’s little enough, what I’m asking. If it were the other way around, I’d do it for you.”

Merry looked at her unhappily. “It wouldn’t do any good, even if I did ask him,” she said. “He’d only laugh at me.”

Tammy leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table. “How do you know what he’d do?” she asked. “He likes you. He must. Or why would he specifically ask that you be in surgery for his operation?”

Merry said, “I was part of the familiar.” She put down her half-eaten sandwich. “Tammy…”

Tammy said fiercely, “The worst he can say is ‘no,’ isn’t it?”

Merry sighed. “I guess so,” she said. “Look, Tammy, what if a miracle happens and he says ‘yes’ to a screen test for you. What happens then?”

Tammy stared at her as if she were an idiot. “What happens then?” she asked. “Why I get a break, that’s what happens. That’s all you need in this town—the right break.”

Merry said gently, “A lot of girls have had screen tests, Tammy; they’ve won beauty contests; they come here all keyed up and excited. They have their screen tests and that’s the end of them. Some of them go back home, and the others who stay…what happens to them?”

Tammy said defiantly, “A screen test requested by Pierson Webb, that’s different. He won’t even give the time of day to a girl unless he’s sure she’s star material. And if Pierson Webb takes hold of a girl, she’s made. That’s all there is to it.”

Merry thought, “He isn’t going to live long enough to make a star out of anyone.” She finished her sandwich and stood up.

“Will you ask him?” Tammy asked, her face tense as she watched Merry.

It won’t do any good, Merry thought. But if it meant so much to Tammy…“All right,” she said, “I’ll ask him. But not tonight. He’s hardly out of the anesthetic.”

“Tomorrow?” Tammy persisted.

“Tomorrow.”

She escaped the waiting reporters at the end of the day by going out the back entrance and walking two blocks to a bus line.

“Well, here she is now,” Tammy said. “What took you so long? I’ve been dying of curiosity. A letter just came for you by special messenger. Who do you think it’s from?”

Merry laughed and shook her head. “There’s only one way to find out.” She walked over and tore open the letter. Who in the world would be sending her a letter by special messenger? Maybe it was a joke.

She gave Tammy a thin glance. “Joke?”

Tammy shook her dark head. “Not me,” she said. She shot Agnes a look. “And Agnes is not the joking kind.”

“Correct,” Agnes said. She stood in the doorway stirring the mixings of a salad.

Inside the envelope were two tickets and a note scribbled on what looked like a scratch pad. “I’ve given up elevator operating for a more lucrative profession. Use these two passes to hear me tomorrow night at the Alibi Club. If you’re not treated okay, I’ll punch the head waiter in the nose. P.S. I’m still the perfect gentleman. Unfortunately.” And it was signed Arch Heller.

Tammy let out a squeal. “It was him, then,” she said. “Arch Heller. Of all the luck!”

Merry stared at the two passes. “I don’t know,” she said. “About going to the Alibi Club, I mean…”

“What do you mean you don’t know!” Tammy screamed. “Nobody in their right mind would pass up a chance to go to the Alibi Club. And when the asker is Arch Heller…!”

Her eyes narrowed on Merry’s face. “The only question is…who’s going to go with you?”

“Go with me?” Merry stared at Tammy as if the question had only just occurred to her. “You have only two tickets,” Tammy pointed out. “And there’re three of us.”

Agnes shook her head. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Take Tammy. She’s the one who really goes for that stuff, bright lights and…”

“And maybe producers who’ll turn around and look at me and wonder who I am…” Tammy interposed. She made a wry face. “One of these days I’m going to wake up and find out I’ve been dreaming my life instead of living it.”

She shook her head at Agnes. “It would do you good to go with Merry,” she told her. “Besides, I couldn’t stand myself if I accepted your offer. Why don’t we draw straws on it? The one with the short one loses her chance to go.”

“It’s too hot to worry about it tonight,” Merry said. “And besides, I’m too tired. We’ll think of something before tomorrow night.”

She slipped out of her uniform and into a shift, then went into the kitchen to give Agnes a hand. There was a small spot of warmth glowing inside her. It had been nice of him to send the passes. Here she’d gone around thinking that everyone who’d made it in Hollywood considered everyone who hadn’t beneath his notice. And Arch Heller had shown her differently.

She set the minute steaks on three plates and carried them into the living room.

For a week when she first came to Hollywood General, she had lived by herself in one room and eaten at cafeterias and lunch counters. It had been a lonely, miserable existence, and she was fiercely glad she’d been introduced to Tammy who had just lost her roommate and Agnes who wanted to share an apartment. Living alone had nothing to offer anyone.

She set the plates down and went back into the kitchen to carry in the coffee cups. “You look thoughtful,” Agnes said.

Merry said lightly, “I was just thinking how very much I appreciate you and Tammy. When I think of that week when I had to live all by myself…” she shuddered.

There was unusual gravity in Agnes’s voice. She said slowly, “We all live by ourselves. I mean, when you come right down to it.”

Merry nodded soberly. “Yes, I guess you’re right.” She was thinking of Pierson Webb. He had so much…he need never be alone unless he chose to be. He could pay for the best of company, and yet, in reality, he was very much alone.

Tammy said, “Why the serious faces?”

“We were thinking,” Merry told her.

“Let’s eat first and think afterwards,” Tammy suggested.

“All right,” Merry said. She indicated a chair with an exaggerated wave of her hand. “Dinner awaits you.”

For a few moments there was only the clatter of silverware and plates.

Tammy said slowly, “I can just shut my eyes and know how it’ll be…all soft lights and that wonderful orchestra and then Arch Heller up there singing under the spot and maybe looking at us, and people wondering who we are to rate that. And the jewels and the minks and the…” She let out a gasp and turned an anguished face towards Merry. “If I’m the one who gets to go with you, what in the world will I wear?”

“Not mink, at least,” Merry said.

After dinner the three girls cleared the table and did the dishes, and then Tammy disappeared into the bedroom. “I’m going to look through my clothes,” she informed the other two, “and see if I have anything…anything…that could be worn to the Alibi Club.”

Merry curled up on the couch with a new magazine, and Agnes sat in the chair by the window, staring outside.

She said slowly, “It doesn’t begin to live until after dark, does it? The city, I mean. It’s as if all day it waits for night to come, so it can bloom…like a night-blooming jasmine.”

Merry nodded. “I feel it too,” she said. “During the day time, it’s like any other city, squalid in spots, and ugly and cramped, but at night, after the lights come on, everything suddenly changes…”

She turned her head suddenly as the telephone rang. But before she could reach it, Agnes was there. It was almost as if Agnes had been waiting for the call.

Chapter Four

Agnes’ small, tanned hands gripped the telephone with fierce intensity. Behind her she could hear Tammy humming in the bedroom as she sorted through the dresses.

What would it be like to have no more on your mind than the right dress to wear to a certain place, Agnes wondered. It had been such a long time since she’d been young and carefree that she’d forgotten what it was like. “Agnes?” Her mother always sounded too loud and shrill over the phone, as if she thought she had to scream in order to be heard.

Agnes said, “Did you take her? What did he say?”

Her mother started to cry. “He said… Agnes…he said Ellen’s heart is getting worse. He said if she didn’t have an operation she was going to die.”

“That isn’t true,” Agnes thought defiantly. “The doctor made a mistake. Doctors are always making mistakes. I’ll have Ellen taken to another doctor, one who’ll really examine her this time.”

“Agnes?” her mother said.

“I’m still here. I’m thinking. What was his name…the one you took Ellen to?”

“A Dr. Bronley. He’s a fine doctor, Agnes. He’s supposed to be really good on heart cases. He made all the tests you said you wanted.”

“That doesn’t make any difference,” Agnes said. “No one has to take one doctor’s diagnosis, Mother. There’s nothing seriously wrong with Ellen. I’m sure of it. We’ll get another doctor’s advice.”

“But Agnes, he said the tests showed…” her mother protested.

“I’ll fly up tomorrow after I’m through at the hospital,” Agnes said. “And don’t worry about Ellen. She’s going to be all right.”

She replaced the phone slowly, and sat for a moment, her head bowed. She had to admit Ellen had been very listless and pale the last time she’d visited her. That was the reason she’d told her mother to take her in for an examination.

But there was nothing wrong with Ellen’s heart. She’d always been pale and thin, and easily tired, and susceptible to so many things. She was only five years old; she had plenty of time to grow big and husky. And who wanted a big, husky girl anyway? Not men, surely.

Merry asked hesitantly, “Agnes, is something wrong? Could I help?”

Agnes shook her head. “A…good friend of mine is ill,” she said. “My mother’s worried about her, so I’m going to fly up to San Francisco tomorrow. Mother’s the worrying kind.” She flashed a smile that was supposed to suggest that people who worried were jokes.

But it didn’t quite come off. And Merry kept staring at her, and repeated anxiously, “Agnes, are you sure there isn’t anything?”

“I’m sure,” Agnes said. She isn’t my best friend, she wanted to tell Merry. She’s my heart. She’s my little girl She’s five years old and the doctor says she’s going to die.

She remembered the prayer of her childhood. There was one part of it she’d never wanted to say. The part that said “and if I die before I wake.”

Her mother had always made her say the complete prayer, and some nights Agnes could remember lying in bed afraid to close her eyes for fear she’d die while she was asleep.

Pain tangled in her throat. She’d always been afraid of death. She was afraid of it now. It wasn’t going to happen to Ellen.

Tammy came waltzing out of the bedroom, a bright red sheath hugged up against her. Her eyes were excited. “Well?” she asked. “Do you think it will do?”

Merry nodded. “Mai Hinge said in her column that red is a real ‘in’ color this year,” she assured Tammy.

Agnes said slowly, “Tomorrow night’s all yours, Tammy. I have to go to San Francisco right after work.”

Tammy turned to look at her. Her eyes were shining. “Really?”

Merry said, explaining, “Agnes has a close friend who’s ill”

“Gee, I’m sorry,” Tammy told Agnes. “About your friend being sick.” Her mouth twisted in a grin. “But I’d be a damn liar if I said I wasn’t glad for the chance to go to the Alibi Club.”

Her lightness changed to a frown. “Agnes, if there’s anything…”

Agnes shook her head. “It’s not as serious as my mother tried to make it out,” she told Tammy. “She’s one of these worry-warts.” She forced a smile. “It’s going to be okay,” she told them. “Nothing for anyone to get all steamed up about, but…well… I thought I should be there, because besides being a good friend of mine, she’s also a relative.”

“Well…” Tammy said. There was lightness in her step as she went back into the bedroom to put away the dress.

She held the dress against her face and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Her dark eyes flashed with excitement. “I have a feeling,” she told herself. “Tomorrow night’s going to be my night. I have a feeling!”

Her eyes snaked over her reflection. “I told Agnes I was sorry; but I’m not sorry.”

She frowned. “What kind of person am I?” she thought. “The kind who doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as I get what I want? Is that the kind I really am?”

She turned abruptly from the mirror and hung the red dress in the closet.

* * * *

Merry stared over the top of her magazine at Agnes. “She’s not telling it all,” she thought. “She’s holding something back.”

She sighed. One thing about being a friend, she thought, was that you didn’t pry. She went back to her magazine, but she’d lost her taste for reading.

Out of the corner of one eye she watched Agnes pace the small room, and then curl up on the chair by the window and stare outside.

Without turning her head, Agnes said, “You’re worrying about me. There’s no reason. Please don’t.”

“Sorry,” Merry said, and forced herself to read.

Agnes sat for a long time in the dark by the window, staring out at the brightness and listening to the sounds; cars and buses lumbering by, laughter and the sudden screech of brakes, a dog’s mournful whining.

Her breath caught suddenly in her throat. “How long did you keep on remembering?” she thought violently. “How long did you keep on hating?”

She drew in her underlip and caught it between her teeth. For a long time it had been every blonde young doctor. She wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. But she couldn’t.

Harvey had been blonde and young and sweet and he’d said that he loved her. She’d loved him too, so they’d been married.

But the happy ending hadn’t come. He hadn’t been strong and sure, but weak and childish, and he’d walked out on her in the sixth month of their marriage, shouting that a man couldn’t be both doctor and husband and he preferred being the doctor. He was going on with his training, the devil with marriage. She’d been left alone, broke and pregnant in a strange town.

Her teeth bit down hard on her lip. How long did hate last? As long as one lived.

* * * *

Pierson Webb moved restlessly in the bed. He glowered at Merry as she moved about his hospital room. “I’m leaving here in another day. Do you know that?”

Merry nodded. “Are you happy to be going home?”

“Home?” he asked harshly. “You mean that big barracks I live in? Sure, I’m glad to be going home. Why not? I’m alive, ain’t I? I never thought I would leave here alive. That’s the real jazz.”

He closed his eyes. He was thinner than when he’d entered the hospital, and the lines stood out more plainly on his face.

“I’ve got a swimming pool,” he said. “I don’t use it. No one uses his pool in Hollywood. It’s purely a status thing, you know? Well, the crumbs hang out around the pool, and they drink my liquor and they pat me on the back. And I’m a great guy.”

Merry looked at him, a lonely man slated to die and not knowing it; and she’d never felt so sorry for anyone in her life.

He glared at her. “What the hell are you staring at me like that for?”

Merry said slowly, “I was thinking that it must be very lonely not having any…anybody of your own to be with you when you’re ill.”

“Listen, sister,” he growled. “If you’re feeling sorry for me, don’t. I’ve got more friends in my hip pocket than you’ve probably made in your entire life. I’ve got the world in my hip pocket, baby. I’ve got everything I want. You understand that!”

It was time for medication and Merry went out to get the tray. Tammy caught her as she was returning to the room. “Well?” she asked. “Have you asked him yet?”

Merry shook her head. “Not yet.”

Tammy’s eyes narrowed. “You promised.”

“I will,” Merry said, suddenly feeling pushed. “Just as soon as I find an opening. You can’t just blurt out something like that to a man like Pierson Webb.”

After she’d given Pierson his injection he looked at her, his eyes cold and knowing. “You’ve got something on your mind, sister. A favor from me? I know the look. I’ve seen it enough times in my life, God knows. No use lying about it. What do you want from me?”

Merry was embarrassed, and stammered as she tried to explain about Tammy, about how she’d always wanted to be an actress and how she was convinced that if she only had a screen test, she’d be on her way up.

Pierson didn’t even let her finish. “You’re talking about that dark-haired doll, aren’t you? The one who thinks she’s another Natalie Pries. God help me, they all think they’re another Natalie Pries! You tell her for me that if she’s got anything to give that she’s got to work for it, and she’ll get her screen test. Tell her that nobody gets anything from me by sending someone else to do their whining. Now get out of my room and let me alone.”

He looked at her scornfully. “I thought you didn’t want anything from me. I made myself into a liar.”

“Mr. Webb,” Merry said unhappily, “Tammy’s my friend. When a friend asks you to do a favor, you do it.”

“Hear, hear,” Mai Hinge’s sardonic voice said from the doorway. “Such philosophy. But then Miss Neil is quite a philosopher, aren’t you, dear? Unselfish, devoted, and intensely dedicated.”

“Oh, God,” Pierson Webb said crossly, “do I have to put up with you, too?”

“Now, darling,” Mai laughed, “you know you adore me. You know you do.”

She walked over and perched on the edge of Pierson’s bed and grinned down at him.

Merry picked up the tray and walked out into the corridor. Tammy cornered her near the nurse’s station. “Well?”

“I asked him,” Merry told her. “You aren’t going to like the answer I got, Tammy. He said no in very unflattering language.”

Tammy’s lovely face flushed. “Damn him,” she said viciously. “One of these days he’s going to get paid back for the way he treats other people.”

“I could tell her that he’s going to die,” Merry thought, “and that’s pretty harsh payment for anyone.”

* * * *

There was one lone reporter waiting when Merry ran down the hospital steps on her way to the bus stop: he was short and balding and was smoking a cigar. Merry thought, “If he blows cigar smoke in my face just once…”

“Anything new on Webb?” he asked, puffing at the cigar, and his eyes darted avidly over Merry’s face.

“He’s leaving the hospital day after tomorrow,” Merry told him pleasantly.

“Then he’s okay, huh?” He looked disappointed.

“There’s my bus.” Merry ran past him before he could ask her anything more.

The bus was hot and crowded. “One of these days,” she promised herself, “I’m going to buy myself a car, and ride in comfort.”

Tammy had gone shopping for a new pair of shoes. “Whoever heard of wearing nurses’ oxfords to the Alibi Club?” she’d asked Merry.

“Especially with a sexy red dress,” Merry had laughed. She was glad Tammy wasn’t brooding over Pierson Webb’s rejection.

“She’ll probably discover she’s cut out to be a nurse after all,” Merry thought, teetering precariously as the bus made a sharp turn.

Agnes was just leaving when Merry reached the apartment house.

Merry said, “Have a good trip.”

Agnes nodded. “And have a good time tonight.”

“Yes,” Merry said. She’d almost replied, “You, too,” and then remembered. “I hope you find your friend better.”

Agnes, settling herself into a taxi, replied with a careful smile, “Oh, I’m sure she will be.”

The palms of her hands felt moist as she played with the handles of her purse. There was nothing to worry about, she told herself. If Ellen’s condition was as serious as her mother and that doctor were trying to make it, wouldn’t she have seen the symptoms before this? Five years. She was a nurse. Surely in five years she’d have seen something in her child to worry about, if there was anything to worry about. Wouldn’t she?

Merry stared after her as the taxi moved down the street.

She’d roomed with Agnes for three months now. She’d worked with her every day at the hospital. But when you came right down to it, what did she know about Agnes? Nothing, really.

She sighed and went inside the house and up the two flights of stairs. As soon as she entered the apartment, she turned on the fan. Another thing she was going to have if she ever got rich was air conditioning. And a swimming pool.

There was a tightening in the pit of her stomach. Pierson Webb had the air conditioning and the swimming pool. And she wouldn’t be Pierson Webb for all of it. She bent her face close to the fan and let the cooling breeze blow her blonde hair into wildness.

She wondered if Pierson Webb had a wife someplace…children maybe. The phone rang suddenly, shrilly.

Merry pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Tammy,” she thought wryly, “wanting to know if I think she should buy a new pair of gloves to go with the shoes she just bought. Or do I think it would be worth it to rent a mink stole for the night.”

She was grinning as she picked up the phone, and evidently the grin came through in her voice, because the man on the other end of the line said, “My, my, but you sound pleasant. That can be accounted for by only one thing…you were thinking of me.”

Merry said, “I wasn’t.” And then, “Who is this?”

The voice laughed. “If you don’t know who I am, how do you know you weren’t thinking of me? Did you get the passes for tonight?”

“Arch Heller,” Merry said. “Yes, and thank you.”

“Are you coming?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she fairly sang. “I’m bringing my roommate. You won’t find anyone prettier, not even in the movies.”

“Gad,” he said. “Prettier than you?”

Merry laughed. “It was nice of you to send the passes,” she said. “It will be the first time either Tammy or I have ever been any place as elaborate as the Alibi Club.”

“Of course it was nice of me,” Arch said. “I’m just a nice guy. You can’t beat me for being nice.”

Merry giggled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were conceited.”

“Do you know better?” Arch asked.

“I think so. Remember. I was out with you once.”

“So you were,” he said lightly, then more seriously, “I was out with you once, too, and I’m not about to forget it.”

There was a silence before Arch said, “We mustn’t let this get serious. One thing that always ruins a conversation is somebody getting serious.”

“Always,” Merry agreed.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Since I’ll be busy the early part of the evening, I’ve arranged for a friend of mine to take care of you. He’s tall, and dark and handsome enough to be in the movies. But he’s an attorney.”

“Sounds interesting,” Merry said lightly.

“Just don’t forget, I saw you first.”

Merry sat staring at phone for a few moments after she hung up. Arch Heller didn’t make her pulse throb or her heart beat faster. If he had, she’d have found some graceful way not to see him again.

Chapter Five

There are times when the anticipation of something is much more thrilling than the actuality, but this wasn’t true of the Alibi Club.

Merry and Tammy were escorted by an attentive head waiter to one of the best tables in the house. Out of the corner of her eye Tammy saw the heads of some of the women turn as they passed, and she nudged Merry and whispered, “They’re wondering what top brass we are to be rating this kind of treatment.”

Merry found herself every bit as excited as Tammy. The lights were soft and the music was low enough for them to hear the hum of people’s voices.

The chairs were velvet covered and much softer than the couch at the apartment with its one broken spring that kept popping up at uncomfortable intervals.

Merry felt slightly out of place in the black lace she had picked from a bargain rack. But her hair was professionally done.

Tammy had nodded approvingly when Merry returned from the beauty salon. “That’s it,” she said. “Honey, you should wear that style always.”

Merry hadn’t agreed. “I like to recognize myself when I look in a mirror. Besides, I couldn’t afford the upkeep.”

She looked admiringly at Tammy, who was breathtakingly lovely in her red dress, her dark hair piled high on her head.

Seated, the two girls looked at each other shining-eyed, and then each allowed herself to stare covertly around the big, crowded room.

“There’s Marlon Brando,” Tammy said in a hushed voice. “Who’s that with him? That’s sable she’s wearing, I’m sure of it.”

Her eyes darted around the room, seeing one big star after another. “Gad,” she breathed, “after tonight, I’ll never be the same again.”

Merry laughed at her. “Anyone seeing us would think we were nouveau Hollywoodites, and I’ve been in Hollywood for three months.”

“Six for me,” Tammy said. “But this is different. This is the real Hollywood.”

The real Hollywood? Merry thought. She gazed around the room. Maybe Tammy was right.

As her eyes moved past the door there was a flurry of movement, and a tall, dark, lanky young man came striding down between the tables.

He didn’t stop anywhere, but called out greetings as he passed or signaled across the room.

Tammy said, “Wonder who he is?”

Merry shook her head. She watched him reach out and clasp a girl’s hand that was extended to him as he passed, and then with a grin and a squeeze let go of it and head straight for their table.

He put both palms flat on the table in front of them and said, “I’m Jeff Morrow.”

Merry thought coldly, “As if he expects his name to mean something to us.”

He was cocky and very sure of himself. “I don’t like him, whoever he is,” she thought. Looking up into his thin, handsome face she said coldly, “I’m afraid, Mr. Morrow, that your fame hasn’t yet reached us.”

He grinned at her, as if delighted by her answer. “You’re Merry,” he said. “Arch said you were cute as Christmas… Merry Christmas, that is.”

His grin widened, and Merry felt herself beginning to thaw.

“Arch said you were to be entertained royally.” He moved his gaze to Tammy. “You should be in the movies,” he said.

Tammy flushed with pleasure. She leaned towards him. “Do tell me more,” she invited.

He shook his head at her. “You’re too greedy.” He looked back and forth, from one to the other. “It isn’t fair for nurses to be as pretty as you two,” he chided. “It makes people want to be ill, and that isn’t right thinking at all.”

He turned his head as a waiter hovered near them. “Drink?”

“Martini,” Tammy ordered immediately.

When he looked at her, Merry nodded. “The same.”

When the drinks came, Jeff looked at Merry over the top of his glass. “Evidently Arch didn’t mention my name to you,” he said.

“Evidently,” she replied.

He didn’t try to hide his amusement. “You thought I was trying to throw my weight around,” he accused.

Merry flushed. “Not really. I…”

Tammy’s voice pushed between them. “I’m Tammy,” she said, “since no one seems about to introduce us.”

He nodded. “Tammy Moore. You work at Hollywood General. You’re a nurse. You live at 34678 Fourth Street, apartment two, second floor. There are three of you living in the apartment. Merry Neil, also a nurse, Agnes McLeod, ditto.” He grinned at them both. “Any more information you’d like?”

Merry said, with sudden heat, “You’d think we were being investigated for some classified job! I don’t like it at all!”

Jeff’s face sobered. “I’m Arch’s attorney,” he said. “I’m also his friend. You’d be surprised at how many people are out to get a guy like Arch who’s made it.”

Merry was still angry. She said coldly, “Did we pass?”

“You did.”

“I suppose we should be flattered,” Merry said thinly.

He nodded. “Of course you should.”

Tammy said, “I’m intrigued.” She finished her drink, and the hovering waiter was there again.

“Would you like another drink?” Jeff asked. “Or shall we order?”

“Let’s order,” Merry said, and Tammy nodded in agreement.

When Merry looked at the menu she was startled by the prices, and lifted her head to make a sign to Tammy. Jeff caught her glance.

He gave a low chuckle of amusement. “Everything’s paid for,” he told her. “So go ahead and order the works. That’s what you were worrying about, wasn’t it?”

Merry nodded wryly, and ordered the cheapest thing she could find on the menu.

Jeff Morrow shook his head. “This is no time to be economical. Do you like steak?” And when Merry nodded, he ordered three filet mignons. “They have wonderful steaks here,” he said.

He was right, the food was delicious. Her anger began to cool. A person in Arch Heller’s position, she thought, would have to be careful about the people he saw. Wasn’t there something in the paper not too long ago about a young girl who had hidden in a star’s bedroom and then sued him?

Being famous or rich, or both, had complications. Well, she thought, as she sipped at her coffee, she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about that kind of complication.

After they finished dinner, the spotlight came on, and Arch walked leisurely to the center of the stage, splendid in a sequined jacket that shone and glittered under the lights. Casually he adjusted the oversized guitar that hung from his neck and moved the microphone so that he was facing the table at which Merry and Tammy sat.

“Good evening, folks,” he said in a low, easy drawl. “I’m going to do my best to entertain you tonight. My first number of the evening I’m going to dedicate to some friends of mine, sitting at that table there.” And grinning widely, he pointed a finger directly at Merry.

Merry blushed and glanced down at her hands in her lap. Tammy, she thought, was enjoying it hugely.

“Don’t you know blushing is passé?” Jeff Morrow whispered.

Merry blushed even more furiously, and he gave a low, delighted laugh.

Merry fixed her attention firmly on the stage and Arch Heller. His voice throbbed and wailed and wept. He seemed to transfix people, so that all conversation stopped and no glass was lifted. His voice dipped and soared, and the room was filled with the loneliness of melancholia and remembering. It wasn’t a great voice, but there was a quality in it that got through to a person’s innermost, hidden feelings.

Tammy’s eyes were sparkling. “Isn’t he great?” she said. “Isn’t he wonderful? Doesn’t he have the greatest voice ever?”

“I don’t know,” Merry said.

Jeff smiled at her across the table. “Me, either,” he said. One hand reached for hers, and she felt her hand engulfed in a warm, firm grip.

The lights came on, and Merry quickly snatched her hand away. Jeff said amusedly, “A girl who doesn’t like being touched?”

“It isn’t that,” Merry protested, suddenly feeling gauche.

He raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. “It’s the person doing the touching?”

Arch Heller jumped lightly down from the stage and came over to the table. He caught a passing waiter with his voice. “Bring me a long, cold one, Johnny.”

The waiter nodded. “Your usual, Mr. Heller?”

“My usual,” Arch said. He swung around in his chair and his gaze rested on Merry. “My usual,” he said, “a long, cold ginger ale, with limes and lemons floating around in it. For effect, you know. A singer can’t drink.” He put up a slightly pudgy hand and touched the front of his throat. “Clog up the pipes.”

His glance swiveled from Merry to Tammy. “Hey,” he said, “now where did you come from? You’re beautiful. Did you know that?”

Jeff said intimately to Merry, “That’s one of Arch’s failings—he’s fickle. He can’t help himself. But take me now, I’m the faithful kind.”

Arch said, “That’s the honest truth he’s telling you, too.” He swung his gaze back to Merry. “How’d you like my song?”

Merry said, carefully honest, “I wanted to cry.”

“Do tell,” he said. His voice was soft, and his eyes on her face held no mockery. “Them are West Virginia hill songs, honey. And them kind of songs can be sung only one way, and that’s from the heart.”

Tammy said, a sudden throb in her voice, “Isn’t that Natalie Pries coming over here?”

Jeff had been talking idly with Merry. He turned his head now, and looked up at the girl who paused at their table, one hand resting lightly on a slender, curved hip.

“Visiting cousins, sweetie?” she asked, in her famous sultry voice, her lips pouting at him.

“These two cuties are kinfolk of mine from West Virginny, sweetie,” Arch drawled. “They come here to get themselves in the movies.”

Natalie pointedly ignored him. Her large dark eyes with their sweeping tangle of lashes swept Merry’s face and then Tammy’s.

She said pouting, her glance warm and intimate on Jeff Morrow’s face, “Sweetie, I thought you said you had to help a friend out tonight.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Jeff said lightly.

She smiled at him. All the critics agreed that Natalie Pries had the sexiest smile in the business. “I know a friend who needs helping out, sweetie,” she said. “Cocktails tomorrow at eight? Okay, Jeffie?”

There was a tightening in Jeff’s voice. “Don’t call me ‘Jeffie’, Natalie,” he said.

“All right, sweetie,” Natalie said, not at all upset. “Don’t go snarling at me. I’ll expect you tomorrow. Now you be there. Hear?”

She swept off, in a tangle of mink and silk and perfume.

Jeff stared after her for a minute, and then he brought his gaze back to Merry’s. “There’s a terribly mixed up kid,” he said. “What she needs is the kind of guy who’d sock her any time she got out of line. She’d respect a guy like that. But she was born with a beautiful face and that louses everything up. Now, what was it we were talking about?”

“I can’t remember,” Merry said stiffly. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to freshen up a bit.”

“First door at the end of the hall,” he told her.

Merry looked at Tammy, who shook her head. “I’m going to dance with Arch,” she said. “He’s only got a few minutes before he has to get ready for his next set.”

Merry applied more lipstick and smoothed her hair. She hadn’t really wanted to freshen up. She’d only wanted to get away from the table for a few minutes.

She stared miserably at her reflection. “I don’t belong here,” she whispered. “Arch Heller and Jeff Morrow aren’t my kind. They know too much; they have too much.”

“Well, and how is the hospital holding up without you?” Mai Hinge’s cold, sarcastic voice stabbed at her back.

Merry snapped her purse shut and got to her feet. She said, keeping her voice level, “I don’t work day and night at the hospital.”

“My, my,” Mai said. “I thought the dedicated ones did just that.”

She pulled out a cigarette and pushed it into a jeweled holder. “How’s our special friend, Pierson?”

“He’s going home day after tomorrow,” Merry said, heading for the door. She had no desire to get into a discussion with Mai about Pierson Webb.

As if she knew what was on Merry’s mind, Mai laughed. She said coldly, “I’m not interested in Pierson at this particular moment.” She pointed the cigarette holder at Merry. “Do you know who Jeff Morrow is?” she demanded.

“He’s an attorney,” Merry answered. “A friend of Arch Heller’s.”

Mai’s eyebrows rose and she said, with deliberate amazement, “My, my, but you do roll names around on your pretty pink tongue, don’t you?”

She put the holder in her mouth and puffed. “Jeff Morrow,” she said, speaking past the holder, “is Natalie Pries’ current heart throb. Natalie wants Jeff. And if you think a little nobody nurse is going to change that, then you aren’t even as smart as you look.”

“Mr. Morrow’s romantic attachments are no concern of mine,” Merry said. She swept towards the door, intending to make a regal and dignified exit, but picked the wrong door. Mai’s amused laughter sounded behind her. “The other door, sweetie. That one leads nowhere.”

Jeff glanced up as she came back to the table. “Now that you’re all prettied up,” he said, “let’s dance.”

He swung her out onto the floor. He held Merry just a bit too close, so that she was vibrantly, unhappily, aware of his nearness.

“I don’t like this man,” she said to herself. “He’s cocky and sure and he thinks all he has to do is to turn on the charm and the women fall at his feet.”

“You’re thinking the wrong kind of thoughts about me,” he teased her. “I can always tell. You can’t ever fool a lawyer.”

“Don’t be silly,” Merry said, her voice strangely sharp.

He laughed down at her and his arm tightened almost imperceptibly. “You aren’t like your friend,” he said. “You’re soft and feminine. She looks soft and feminine, but she isn’t. She’s wanting. She could become grabby and greedy; you never could, because the only thing you’d ask from a man would be love.”

Merry said, “You’re only making noises, and I’ve heard those noises before.”

He said softly, “Heard and listened and got your heart broken? I’d never break your heart, Merry. I’d treasure it too much.”

Merry was glad that the music ended just then. When they got back to the table, Tammy was there. “Arch showed me backstage,” she said, her eyes shining. “Did you know,” she asked Merry, “that Pierson Webb was the one who gave Arch his big chance? He was telling me.”

Chapter Six

Agnes lay stiffly on the bed, unable to relax. She didn’t cry. There were no more tears left in her. She’d cried them all on the flight back from San Francisco.

She had not given in to her mother’s request that she talk to the doctor about Ellen. She had assured her mother vehemently that there was nothing radically wrong with the child. She was a nurse, wasn’t she? She knew a little about symptoms, didn’t she? Well, she had never seen any symptom, not the tiniest, to warrant a diagnosis of heart damage. The doctor had been mistaken. It was as simple as that, and she was not going to discuss it, she told her mother calmly.

What she was going to do was to use her time visiting with Ellen. She’d hugged her small daughter to her, and the two of them made all sorts of elaborate plans for her two-week vacation from the hospital.

She stared up at the blackness of the ceiling. She wouldn’t wait until her vacation came up; she’d ask for a leave, and borrow enough money to rent one of those terribly expensive cottages that hugged the ocean. And with two weeks of sand and water Ellen would be rosy-cheeked and tanned and healthy and then…then…she’d go with her mother to see that doctor.

Her breath caught in her throat, and tears came from under the tightly closed lids. “God,” she said, “Ellen’s all I’ve got. You know that.”

She drew an unsteady breath. “Didn’t I pick myself up and start punching again after Harvey walked out on me? Did I whine and cry about it? So all right… You’ve got to quit messing up my life. Please!”

She let out a choking cry which she quickly smothered.

But Merry, lying halfway between sleep and wakefulness in the other bed, heard the stifled sound and turned over on her elbow facing Agnes.

“Agnes,” she said softly, “is something wrong?”

Agnes lay very still, pretending sleep. “Let her think I had a dream and cried out in my sleep,” she thought.

Merry listened for a few moments, and then relaxed and rolled over on her back again.

It had been a wonderful evening. She was glad she’d gone. She liked Arch Heller. He was natural and fun-loving. Nothing at all phony about him in spite of his success. And he had seemed quite taken with Tammy.

She frowned. It made her feel guilty to be lying here thinking of the lovely evening she’d had, while Agnes… She bit at her lip. Was she really asleep?

When she and Tammy had come home from the Alibi Club Agnes was already in bed and asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep. Tammy, yawning, had said, “Her friend must not have been nearly so bad as Agnes’ mother let on, or Agnes certainly wouldn’t have come home and gone right off to sleep like that. Even I would have sat up for a while worrying about it. Or I’d have stayed over in San Francisco, or something.”

Merry turned towards Agnes’ bed again, listening. There was no sound. Tammy had a lot more sense than she did. She took things philosophically. She didn’t run around trying to find things to worry about.

Agnes had had a bad dream. If she’d been awake, wouldn’t she have said something?

She closed her eyes and tried to drift off to sleep, but she couldn’t. Because a thin, handsome face and a pair of amused blue eyes kept getting between her and sleep.

“Jeff’s very attractive,” she told herself firmly. “I found him attractive. I might even enjoy having him kiss me.” She decided that it was best to be absolutely honest with herself. But finding a man attractive did not mean you automatically fell in love with him. Besides, she didn’t believe in love. She’d never be that naive again.

She decided to count sheep. The last sheep she put over the fence just before she fell asleep had a face remarkably like Jeff Morrow’s.

Agnes lay not daring to move for fear she’d wake Merry. Tammy slept like a log. She wouldn’t wake up if she turned on the record player and did the Bossa Nova.

She was right about Tammy. She was having wildly wonderful dreams of Arch Heller’s dancing her into Pierson Webb’s office and saying, “Here’s a gal who’ll make Natalie Pries look like cold mashed potatoes. Just give her a try. On my say so, huh? You won’t be sorry. I guarantee it.” She smiled in her sleep, stretched her arms high above her head in a childish gesture, rolled over on her other side, and sighed.

Agnes waited a few minutes and then got up, damning the bed for the creak it made at the least movement. She carefully eased her feet to the floor and walked soundlessly across to the window that looked out at the darkness of the street.

Lights still blazed farther uptown. Horns still sounded; lights still pierced the smog. An occasional giggle, high and shrill, drifted up from a passing car.

When Agnes first came to Hollywood she’d wondered scornfully if people here ever went to bed.

Now, sitting alone in the darkness, she was not so scornful. Going to bed did not necessarily mean going to sleep. Sometimes it meant thinking. And thoughts could be hurting things, leaving you naked and lonely and afraid.

She sat for a while longer and then went back to bed. The sounds in the room were peaceful, normal sounds. The breathing of the other two girls; the movements they made in turning; an occasional muttering in their sleep.

“Oh, Lord,” Agnes thought, “I’ve got to get some sleep.” A nurse could not afford the luxury of lying awake being afraid. She had to be on her feet in the morning, alert, mindful of everything.

Besides, there was nothing to be afraid of, Agnes assured herself. Her mother had merely misconstrued what the doctor had said. She’d always been a worrier, hadn’t she? She’d probably put her own worry into what the doctor had actually said, and then relayed the garbled version to Agnes.

She punched at the pillow under her head, trying to firm it. “Go to sleep,” she told herself grimly.

By morning the smog had begun to disappear, and, as Merry remarked, it looked almost as if the sun might be visible by afternoon.

“Oh,” Tammy shrilled as they ran for the bus stop, “what you said!”

Merry shot her a glance, “What do you mean, ‘what I said?’ What did I say?”

Tammy threw her a mock scowl. “The sun always and forever shines in Southern California. You must never forget that. To say what you did is a positive sacrilege.” She pushed forward. “Hey, that’s our bus.”

The bus lumbered to a stop and the girls found seats in the back.

Tammy said, “But I wouldn’t want to live anyplace else. I love it here. Why, where else can you walk along a street and spot some celebrity, or bump into one while you’re shopping, or…”

Merry gave her a humorous glance. “Or be walking along a hospital corridor and be tapped on the shoulder and have someone say, ‘I beg your pardon, but how would you like to be another Natalie Pries?’”

Tammy tossed her head. “It could happen just like that,” she said. “Don’t knock dreams. They’re good therapy. Ask any doctor.” She narrowed her dark eyes. “What’s to laugh about?” she asked. “Where else would you get a lift, in a white Jaguar yet, and find the driver was Arch Heller? I ask you.”

Merry laughed and shook her head. “I admit defeat,” she said.

Agnes turned away from them, gazing out at the moving traffic. In spite of her resolve, she had slept little.

The girls were silent for about a block, then Tammy, never able to bear silence, leaned across Merry and asked, “How was your friend? I figured that since you were asleep when Merry and I came in last night, you must have found her lots better than your mother said.”

Agnes nodded and forced a wry smile. “Everything is a catastrophe to my mother. My…friend…is going to be fine. Nothing wrong with her that a little rest and sunshine won’t cure.”

Tammy smiled warmly at her. “I’m glad for your sake,” she said generously. She pulled back into her own seat and glanced around at the bus that was by now crowded, hot and stuffy.

“One of these days,” she said, “I’m going to be rich, and have myself a white Jaguar. With air conditioning.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Merry jibed. “I thought of that hours ago.”

Tammy grinned. “Okay,” she said, “I won’t quibble. We can both have white Jaguars.” She turned her bright gaze to Agnes. “How about you, Agnes? Do we make it three?”

Agnes shook her dark head and, trying to enter into the spirit of the game, said lightly, “Not me. I abhor small cars. I like mine big, long, and attention-demanding.”

“Well, wow!” Tammy said. She gave Agnes a teasing look. “No one would think, to look at you, that you were that kind of girl!”

A woman, middle-aged, heavy and perspiring, got on the bus. She swayed for a few moments, desperately trying to hang onto a strap. Merry, after a glance at her, got up and offered her a seat. The woman didn’t hesitate. With a grateful smile at Merry, she lunged for the seat. “Oh, thanks.”

When the three girls alighted near the hospital, Tammy shot Merry a withering glance. “What was that for, there on the bus?” she asked her. “That woman wasn’t ill or old or crippled or pregnant. She’ll probably spend most of the day lying on a nice, soft sofa nibbling at candy and drinking a cold drink. While you are going to be on your feet for a good eight hours.”

Merry shrugged. “She looked tired. I felt sorry for her. How do you know that she isn’t on her way to a job too, where she’ll have to stand up for eight hours? And even if she isn’t, she’s probably got her own particular problems.”

Tammy shook her head and observed scornfully, “Don’t we all? And anyhow, she looked like a parasite to me, a fat, do-nothing parasite. Fat people simply turn my stomach.”

Merry said, “You probably had a trauma when you were a child, involving a fat person.”

“Oh, ho,” Tammy said, “if we’re going to get into psychology, just remember I had a year of it, too.”

Agnes said quietly, “Let her alone.” Bitterly, “Someone has to believe in the worth of people.”

Tammy turned her head to look at Agnes. “Of course you do,” she said.

Agnes said carefully, “I loathe most people.”

“Well!” Tammy said. “Seems everybody’s in a mood. I think I’ll just keep my little old mouth shut.”

* * * *

The fifth floor was a whirl of bustling, routine activity as Merry stepped off the elevator. There was a lift in her spirits. She loved the hospital. She’d entered nurse’s training because it had offered a sort of safety…a refuge. But now being a nurse was part of her.

There was a slight frown between her eyes as she walked towards the nursing station. Maybe fate had willed that she would meet a Tom so that heartbreak and disillusion would force her to find the way to what she was really meant to be all along.

She turned her head to smile at a little candy striper hurrying by. “Gosh,” the younger girl said, “one thing I’ve found out, nurses don’t need to diet. They run it off!”

Merry laughed out loud, and the nurse at the desk lifted her head to look. She said dryly, “You must have had a very good night’s sleep to sound like that first thing in the morning.”

Merry said, “I always sleep well.”

A tall, red-headed nurse standing at the other side of the desk quipped, “That’s because she has such a clear conscience.”

“Of course,” Merry retorted, and picking up the chart, she walked down the corridor to Pierson Webb’s room.

When she opened the door he was sitting up in bed looking glum and depressed. She opened the heavy drapes that crowded the windows, and he roared, “What the hell are you doing?”

She said calmly, “Letting some sunlight in here.”

He gave a snort. “Sunlight!”

She turned to look at him. “The sun really is going to shine today,” she told him.

“Sure, sure,” he said. “The sun’s going to shine, the clouds are going to disappear, the end of the rainbow’s going to be found.” He picked up a cigar that was on the stand by his bed and stuck it in his mouth, glaring at Merry.

“Who do you think you’re kidding?” he asked.

She shook her head at him. “What are you talking about?”

“And don’t pull that Little Miss Innocent on me,” he flung at her. “Being so solicitous for my comfort and not asking anything from me. Don’t think you’re kidding me with that Florence Nightingale jazz. You want something and one of these days I’ll figure out what.”

Merry said carefully, “I asked you about a screen test for a friend of mine. I didn’t want to ask you, but I did, because she’s my friend. Other than that, I’m a nurse. I’m only doing my job.”

He snorted. “That was a cover up to try and fool me into thinking you were different from these other bastards. But you’re not fooling me, Miss Sweetness and Light. I’m pretty good at finding out the answer to things, and I’ll find out the answer to you one of these days.”

Merry thought, “And death, Mr. Webb? Will you find out the answer to that, too?”

She gave him her cool, professional smile and said, “You’re going home tomorrow.”

His eyes narrowed at her over the unlit cigar. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She said, “Most patients are happy to be going home.”

He shrugged. “Who’s happy about anything?” There was a wistful note in his voice that trembled there for just a breath before he blew it out in a roar. “I suppose you believe in happiness and love and all that jazz thought up by some publicity agent.”

Merry said lightly, “Most times I do.”

Pity for him was full in her throat as she left the room. It was one thing to die. It was another thing to die with the knowledge there would be no one to grieve for you, that your life had been only a successful emptiness.

She wondered if Pierson Webb knew he was going to die. Sometimes a patient knew, even though he wasn’t told.

* * * *

There was only one reporter waiting for her when she left the hospital by the back entrance: the short, balding one, who caught up with her and jabbed his cigar towards her face. “Now listen, doll…”

“No!” Merry said fiercely. “You listen! I’m sick and tired of being hounded by you reporters. Mr. Webb is going home tomorrow. I won’t be taking care of him when he leaves the hospital, so you can leave me alone!”

“How’s his condition?” the reporter, persisted. “Is he going to be okay to direct again?”

Merry’s voice was angrier. “If he weren’t all right,” she said, “he wouldn’t be leaving the hospital.”

She saw the bus coming and ran for it, thinking wildly, “I have to make this one. I have to make it.”

She climbed up the step and sank into one of the two remaining seats, feeling tired and dispirited.

She walked into the apartment to the sound of the ringing telephone.

Tammy, who was already home, called from the kitchen, “That’s probably Jeff Morrow. He’s called twice in the last half hour.” She sounded as if she was grinning. “It must be urgent.”

Merry’s first thought was to refuse to answer the phone, and then she told herself coldly that by doing that, she’d admit her heart was starting to show.

She walked over, picked up the receiver and managed a cool “Hello.”

Chapter Seven

Morning was always a hectic time for the three girls. They ate breakfast literally on the run, and it wasn’t until they were safely on the bus that they allowed themselves to relax.

“Well, give,” Tammy demanded of Merry, in her crispest, shiniest voice. “Where did Jeff take you last night?”

“Olvera Street,” Merry said.

“You’re crazy,” Tammy sputtered. “Nobody goes to Olvera Street. Nobody except tourists.”

Merry laughed. “It’s only been three months since I was a tourist. I’ve never been there before. It was fun.”

It was she who had suggested Olvera Street, which was an all-Mexican street in the oldest part of Los Angeles. Jeff had laughed and shaken his head at her. “All right. Why not? You’re certainly not going to be the most expensive girl I’ve ever taken out.”

They had parked the car and walked in through the garlanded arch that was the entrance, and later, as they’d strolled through some of the little shops, Merry had discovered that they were holding hands like two school kids. Like two…lovers.

She flushed now remembering how quickly she’d drawn her hand from his, as if his touch burned her. He had asked carefully, “Still the girl who doesn’t like being touched?”

Merry had protested quickly, “No, it isn’t that…”

“The one doing the touching?” He’d frowned at her, but there had been a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

“Now you’re being ridiculous,” she’d said, hating herself for blushing.

He had laughed, but he hadn’t tried to hold her hand again.

Later when they were sitting at a sidewalk table eating enchiladas and drinking beer, the bent old Mexican serving them smiled broadly and muttered something in Spanish which she didn’t understand.

Jeff’s eyes had twinkled at her across the table. “He thinks we’re honeymooners,” he said. “He asks God to bless us with many children.”

Merry had stumbled to her feet immediately. “I think we’d better be leaving,” she said. “It’s getting late.”

He had raised a dark brow. “Late? It’s exactly twelve and one-half minutes after nine o’clock. Sit down. I thought you told me you were going to try a taco when you finished the enchilada.”

She had shaken her head at him. “I’m really not at all hungry. I…”

He’d pushed her gently but firmly back into her chair. “Waste not, want not. My mother always preached that. So finish your enchilada.”

Because she had not wished to make a scene, she had carefully finished every bite of it. She had wiped her hands on the napkin and looked coldly at Jeff.

“I’ve finished. May we leave now?”

“If you’re quite sure you’ve finished.” He had reached over and brushed some imaginary crumbs from her mouth. “You don’t want everyone knowing what you had for dinner, do you?”

Merry had flushed and gotten up abruptly, walking quickly ahead of him.

He had caught up with her, catching her lightly by one arm, and pulling her to a stop. “Did you ever try the hundred-yard dash? Nobody walks as fast as you’re walking unless they’re trying for a record.”

“That horrible, horrible old man,” Merry exclaimed.

He’d grinned down at her. “How can you say that?” he chided. “I thought it was very nice of him to wish us so well.”

Tammy’s light, easy voice broke into her mood. “What are you blushing about, Merry?” she teased. “Did he take you up to Mulholland Drive?”

Merry said coldly, “Don’t be ridiculous!”

They had driven first along the ocean, and then had climbed the hills. The stars had seemed very close and very bright, and in the smogless air they had been able to see as far away as San Fernando.

Tammy asked slyly, “Did he kiss you, Merry?”

Merry gave her a cold glance and turned away, ignoring the question.

Jeff had kissed her. Outside the door of the apartment he’d pulled her suddenly to him, and his lips had closed down gently and firmly on hers, turning her blood to fire and ice.

She had closed her eyes for a minute against the impact of his kiss, and a name had escaped her lips. “Tom.”

Jeff had let her go abruptly. “I’m not Tom. Evidently you’re out with the wrong guy.”

She had opened her eyes and looked up at him embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she’d said. “I’m sorry.”

“Well,” he said wryly, “at least I’ve never been called by another guy’s name while kissing a girl. It’s a new sensation.”

Even now, Merry could feel the prickles of embarrassment. She’d said unhappily, “I don’t know why I did that.”

He said gently, “Because you were thinking of him.” He’d shaken her lightly. “Stop looking like that. It’s no crime to carry the torch for one man while you’re out with another.”

Merry had denied the accusation vehemently. “I’m not carrying the torch for anyone!”

“Fine,” he’d said. “So I’ll count myself still in the running. And maybe next time when I kiss you, you’ll remember that it’s me, and not some other guy.”

Tammy said philosophically, “Well, since no one seems inclined to talk to me, I’ll just sit here and brood like you two.”

Agnes gave her a vague look. Her mind was miles away. Merry didn’t turn from her intense blind concentration on objects outside the bus window.

She was still distressed over the night before. She’d thought herself finished with Tom. But was she?

“Of course I am,” she told herself. The kiss had brought it back—the first time a kiss had stirred her like that since Tom.

She told herself that if she was wise she’d turn thumbs down on any further invitations from Jeff Morrow. And then she thought wryly that perhaps, after last night, there would be no occasion to refuse Jeff, because he might never ask her again.

* * * *

The bus stopped and the three girls piled out, stumbling down the steps and walking rapidly up the street towards the hospital.

“My father always used to say mornings were the best time of the day,” Tammy said, her voice rushing ahead as fast as her feet. “He used to get up every morning at six o’clock. Even when he wasn’t working, he’d still get up at six o’clock. Can you imagine?”

She shook her head and grinned. “I’m an alien one,” she said. “I think I confuse both of my parents, poor dears. They don’t understand how they could have conceived a person so entirely different from them.”

She caught her breath. “Hey, I talk too much. Why doesn’t someone tell me that? I never stop talking, do I?”

Agnes laughed. “Well, sometimes,” she said.

“Well,” Tammy said, “you two need me around. You’re much too silent. Listening to you two, you’d think silence really was golden.”

“Agreed that we need you around, Tammy,” Merry said, with a quick, warm smile. “And I’m not just saying that for effect. I really mean it.”

She dashed ahead of the other two girls and up the broad stone steps. Tossing off a compliment always embarrassed her. She never seemed able to say it lightly and easily; she was always too fervent.

She put her things in her locker and took the service elevator to the fifth floor. A little candy striper said as she flew past, “It’s bedlam up here this morning. Mr. Webb is getting ready to leave the hospital. He’s ordering everyone around as if this were a hotel and we were his servants.” She sounded upset and angry at the implication.

Merry shook her head and shrugged. Evidently Pierson Webb had decided to throw his importance around on the day he was to leave the hospital. She felt sorry for him.

She picked up his chart at the nursing station and proceeded down the corridor to his room.

He scowled at her from the bed. “So,” he said, “I had just about decided you weren’t coming in this morning. Don’t nurses have to report at certain hours when they’re working in a hospital?”

Merry kept her voice low and even, “They do, Mr. Webb. And I’m right on time.” She glanced down at her watch. “In fact, I’m three minutes early.”

He tightened his lips. “Did you know they were sending me home in an ambulance?”

Merry laughed at him. “It’s a nice, easy way to ride,” she told him.

“I want you to come with me as my private nurse,” he said. “I’m going to need a nurse. I’ll pay you more than this lousy hospital pays you.”

Merry stared at him in surprise. “I’m not a private nurse,” she said. “I’m a hospital nurse. If you think you need a private nurse, there are agencies…”

“To hell with agencies,” he said. “I told you that I wanted you. Name your price.”

Merry shook her head, “I’m sorry, Mr. Webb, but my work is here at the hospital.”

He said petulantly, “You aren’t at all sorry.” His eyes narrowed. “How about that friend of yours,” he said, “the one who wanted a screen test. Maybe I’d think about that if you were to come with me as my nurse.”

Merry laughed. “Now, Mr. Webb, that’s bribery, isn’t it?” She shook the thermometer down and held it out towards him. “Open your mouth,” she said.

He scowled at her. “I’m no longer a patient here. I’m leaving this morning. You can’t give me any more orders.”

Merry said calmly, “You’re still a patient until you’re released. Now open your mouth, please. Unless you want to be here all morning.”

He continued to scowl, but he opened his mouth and allowed her to insert the thermometer.

“Well, well,” a harsh voice said dryly from the doorway, “don’t tell me our Little Miss Nightingale is giving you a hard time, Pierson. And on the morning you’re leaving, too.”

Merry looked around into Mai Hinge’s cold eyes. She flashed her a brief smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’ll have to wait out in the hall while Mr. Webb is made ready to leave.”

Mai grinned at her and said derisively, “Do tell. And you’re going to stay?” She clucked her teeth in mock horror. “Nurses are really very privileged, aren’t they?”

Merry ignored her, turning back to look at her patient. She saw Pierson had taken the thermometer out of his mouth and was glaring at Mai Hinge.

“My God!” he said. “Don’t I have enough to put up with? Do you have to come here and stand around like a ghoul?” His lips drew downward and he said fiercely, “You’d have liked it if I’d died, wouldn’t you? It would have been a nice bit for that lousy column of yours. You always were a bitch, Mai.” He drew in his breath. “Well, I fooled you. I’m going to keep right on fooling you. I’ll still be alive when you’re dead, so don’t go counting me out yet.”

Mai didn’t appear to be at all concerned by his venom. She shrugged and laughed, “Now sweetie, you’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. I’ve really been concerned about you. Of them all, I’ve been the only one really concerned.” Her dark eyes flashed to Merry’s face. “Ask Miss Sweetness and Light here if that isn’t true.”

Merry was not going to get herself involved. She took the thermometer from Pierson’s hand and put it back in his mouth, saying firmly, “And don’t take it out again, Mr. Webb, because I’ll just have to put it back in again, and it will take that much longer.”

While Merry waited, she held two fingers lightly on his pulse, and her eyes checked his respiration while she appeared to be looking vaguely at the two buttons on the top of his pajamas.

When she drew out the thermometer and held it up to the light, Pierson asked thickly, “Okay, okay, what does it read?”

Merry decided to laugh at him. “One hundred and fifty-five, Mr. Webb,” she said.

He lunged forward and jerked the thermometer from her hand before she knew what he was doing. In the fierceness of his thrust and Merry’s instinctive pull backwards, the thermometer fell from both their grasps and splintered on the tile floor.

Mai gave her harsh, derisive laugh, “Now sweetie,” she said to Pierson, “look what you’ve done. And even if you hadn’t broken it, what good would looking at it have done you? Who can read a thermometer?”

Miss Carey, the private nurse assigned to Pierson’s room, came in and stood to one side, watching silently.

Merry stood holding the broom and the dustpan of glass. She looked at the other nurse. “Do you want help in getting him dressed?” She carefully avoided looking at Pierson who had not said a word.

The older nurse shook her head and Pierson growled loudly, “I can do my own dressing. I’ve done it now for a good many years. I don’t need any female to help me put on my pants!”

Mai laughed. “He’s showing his masculinity now,” she said.

Merry didn’t even look towards the sound of Mai’s voice. She hadn’t allowed herself to become angry with Pierson Webb. He was a patient, he was ill, and he was accustomed to having his own way.

She emptied the dustpan and put it back into the supply closet. When she saw Pierson Webb again, he was sitting in a wheel chair in front of the elevator, waiting to be taken down to the main floor.

She stopped beside his chair. “Good-by, Mr. Webb.”

He looked up at her, a frown drawing his thick brows closer together. “About that private nurse thing,” he asked, “you thought it over?”

Merry said gently, “In a few days, Mr. Webb, I don’t think you’re going to need a private nurse.” She allowed a ghost of a smile to touch her lips. “From what I’ve observed, you’re going to be plenty able to take care of yourself.”

She saw that what she’d said pleased him. He nodded. “And as soon as I get my strength back I’m going to give a party, a big whale of a party. I’m going to show everybody Pierson Webb isn’t the dying kind.” His eyes narrowed on her face. He said, with sudden resolve, “If I ask you, will you come?”

Pity again choked Merry’s throat. She said lightly, “Ask me.”

Mai, who had come up behind Pierson’s chair said harshly, “And do wear your uniform, darling. You’ll be a sensation among all of those over-dressed women.”

Merry flushed and said icily, “I do have other clothes besides uniforms, you know.”

Mai’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Do tell?” she said. And then in a lower tone, “Don’t plan on being escorted by a certain young attorney. He’s very private property, in case you didn’t take the first warning.”

Merry flushed and turned away. She was shaking with anger as she made her way down the corridor. “That awful, awful woman!”

* * * *

When she left the hospital that night there were no reporters to avoid. But a white Jaguar was parked by the curb.

Arch Heller, in the perennial dark glasses, reached across and swung the car door open for her. “Pick-up service,” he said. “Also delivery wagon. I’ve got the back ledge full of steaks. Tammy said it was your night to cook, so let’s be on our way. And I like my steaks well done…very well done.”

Merry slid into the seat and pulled the door closed behind her. “This is nice,” she said, settling back against the upholstery with a sigh.

But Arch’s next words spoiled everything. “What’s with you and Jeff?” he asked.

Merry sat up straight. “What do you mean ‘what’s with me and Jeff?’”

“Just that,” he said, grinning. “Natalie Pries called him to ask about the same thing. I just wondered.”

Chapter Eight

Merry said fiercely, “Well, you can just stop wondering. Jeff’s very attractive. We’ve had a few dates. That’s all there is, there isn’t anymore. And if anyone thinks I’m falling in love with the guy…”

Arch pulled the car to a stop in front of the apartment building. “No need to get so vehement about it,” he said gently. “So okay, you aren’t about to fall for the guy.” He handed her a brown paper bag with the neck of a bottle sticking out of it. “Champagne,” he grinned. “Imported. I’m doing this up big. Hollywood style, you know. And afterwards…” he leered at her.

Merry laughed, and walked ahead of him into the building.

When they had climbed the last step, he said, “You really need an elevator in this building. This is practically a disaster area.”

Merry was entirely unsympathetic. “It’s good exercise,” she said. “You don’t want to let yourself get flabby, do you?”

Arch ignored the thrust. “Give me the name of your landlord. I’ll have to speak to him about this.”

Merry, turning the key in the lock of the door, said, “He’s got a grim secretary. Very grim. You wouldn’t get past her desk. She’d think you were crazy and call the police on you. You really are crazy, you know.”

Arch said lightly, “Of course. Isn’t everyone?” He followed her into the apartment and set the steaks on the first convenient counter. “Now remember,” he said, “very well done. Jeff likes his medium rare. He said to be sure to tell you.”

Merry turned to stare at him. “Who cares how he likes his steaks?” And then, stumbling slightly over the words, “He’s coming here tonight?”

Arch nodded. “He’s coming.”

Merry said, “Where I come from, it’s customary to ask a girl first, instead of barging in on her.”

Arch said gently, “It’s Tammy’s party. She invited him.”

Merry flushed. She felt quite silly. Now why had she made such a fuss over Jeff’s coming to dinner? She had probably led Arch to believe there really was something between them.

She shook back her hair, and blew upwards, in an attempt to cool her face. She said carefully, “You can wipe that silly grin off your face, because there is nothing between me and Jeff Morrow. And there never will be.”

She took a deep breath to steady her voice. “I had it once, Arch,” she said, her eyes serious, “and I’m not about to go through that again. Not with Jeff…not with any man.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t going to let one bad break floor you,” he said. “You chalk the bad ones up to experience and let it go at that. I know. I’ve had experience myself in that area.”

He took the sack she was holding and set it down next to the steaks. He laid his hands gently on her shoulders and grinned at the look she gave him. “Hey,” he said, “don’t go looking like that. I’m not about to make a pass at you.” He sighed and took his hands away. “I wish Tammy were more like you,” he said. “Couldn’t you rub some of yourself off on her? Then I could really go for her.” He sighed again, “She thinks I’m a sure fire ticket to Pierson Webb. I’ve told her Pierson doesn’t let anyone tell him his business, and if I tried to, he’d simply have me kicked out of his office.” He shrugged and spread his hands wide. “She won’t listen to the truth. What do you do with a gal like that?”

Merry shook her head. She thought, “You just go along liking her, I guess, and hope she doesn’t get kicked too hard.”

Arch said, “What she really needs is to get married to a guy who’s the boss and who makes her know it and like it.”

Merry giggled, “Tammy should just hear you say that.” She shooed him out of the kitchen. “Busy yourself doing something. Set the table for me; ice the champagne. Find something to do while I change.”

“Hey,” Agnes’ voice called from the other room, “who owns the flashy car downstairs?”

Merry stood beside Arch and looked at Agnes. “Are you kidding? she asked. “Arch Heller. Who else?” She frowned suddenly. “Oh,” she said, “you haven’t met Arch, have you?”

After the introductions were made, Arch shook his head. “You don’t have the proper look of awe,” he chided. “Don’t you know I’m a very important guy? And this is Hollywood?” He leaned towards her, leering. “Don’t you want me to help you get into the movies or something?”

Agnes stared at him for a moment, then laughed. Merry flashed her a grin. “He’s a kook,” she told her. “And entirely harmless.”

Arch fell backwards, clutching both hands to his heart. “That cut me to the quick,” he said. “That was a Brutus stab.”

He gave up clowning for the moment and frowned at Agnes. He said, “Haven’t I seen your picture someplace? Were you a pin-up girl or something?”

Agnes laughed and started for the bedroom to change out of her uniform. “Who’d want to pin me up?” she said.

He continued shaking his head after her. “I wasn’t kidding,” he told Merry. “I really have seen her picture someplace.” Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Hey,” he said, “I’ve got it. There’s this friend of mine who’s a resident at Mt. Mercy hospital. He’s got her picture on his dresser. I swear it’s her, younger maybe, but it’s her.”

Merry shook her head and said firmly, “It can’t be Agnes. She came from Ohio and she’s only been in California for six months.”

Arch shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Most brunettes look alike anyway, just like blondes.” He glanced around the living room. “Where’s this table you want me to set?”

Merry showed him how to pull it out from the wall. “It’s going to be a little cramped,” she said. “It’s not meant to seat five people.”

He grinned at her. “Who cares when the person you’re cramped against happens to be a beautiful gal?” He looked at her. “Hey,” he said, “I’ve just got a whale of an idea. Do you know how much residents make? Peanuts. I’ll bet old Harvey hasn’t taken a girl out in years. I mean really out, and I’ll bet he hasn’t put his teeth into a steak since the last time I treated him to one, and that was six weeks ago. Let’s invite him tonight. It’s not right for you and Tammy to have a guy to admire you, when Agnes has no one. How about it?”

Merry’s first inclination was to shake her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we should ask Agnes first.”

Arch shook his head. “And have her say no? Women always say no. It’s protocol or something. And listen, this guy can use a good meal. You know how they work residents in those city hospitals.”

“Well…” Merry said, still hesitant.

“Fine,” he said, “I knew you’d agree. It’ll raise the poor guy’s morale to see three beautiful girls walking around on their own two feet, healthy and everything. You know how it probably is with him, some gal’ll come in swooning and say ‘Oh, doctor, I’ve got this pain here and here and here.’ I mean how can you get romantic about a girl who has to stick her tongue out first thing so you can get a look at her throat or intestines or something?”

Merry laughed helplessly. He dropped a kiss lightly on top of her head. “I’ll pick up another steak and then drop by for Harvey. Residents don’t own cars, you know. They can’t afford the upkeep on either cars or girls. I guess that’s why they charge those giant-sized prices when they finally get to be doctors. It’s revenge for all of the years when they couldn’t afford anything.”

Merry made a face at him. “It’s not really as bad as you’re making it sound.” She shooed him towards the door. “Well, scoot if you’re going,” she said, “and let me get ready.”

* * * *

Merry changed into a tan sheath and slid her feet into matching high heels. She kept casting surreptitious glances at Agnes, who had decided to wear her most unbecoming dress.

The dress was a dark print with matronly lines and did absolutely nothing for her.

She bit her lower lip and said, “Why don’t you wear that green dress tonight, Agnes? It’s sleeveless and it’s going to be awfully warm eating, even with the fan going…”

Agnes shook her head. She said, “I’m going to have my dinner on a tray here in the bedroom and read and enjoy myself. I’m not even going to put on stockings or a girdle.”

Merry said quickly, “Oh, you can’t do that.”

Agnes looked at her, surprised. “Can’t do what? Can’t go without stockings and a girdle? My dear Merry, I hurry to inform you that I…” Suddenly her eyes narrowed on Merry’s flushed face. “What’s this?” she said. “Exactly what’s going on, and where do I fit in?”

Merry said, suddenly miserable, “Arch said he had this friend who’s a resident at Mt. Mercy, and he never gets steaks to eat, and since you didn’t have a date…”

Agnes cut in icily, “So he thought he’d be real nice to old Agnes, and find her a date.” Her voice tightened, “Well, he needn’t have bothered.” She looked straight at Merry. “Why didn’t you at least ask me first? If I were interested in having dates, don’t you think I’d have had some before this? Or don’t you think I’m capable of getting dates on my own? Or of managing my own life?”

Merry didn’t answer. “I deserve this,” she told herself. “I had no right to interfere.”

“Agnes,” she said, but before she could complete the sentence, Tammy came dancing into the room.

“Hey,” she said, “Where’s everybody? Where’s Arch? I thought I’d smell steaks burning the minute I got in the hall.” She turned from Merry’s burning face to Agnes’s cold one. “What goes?” she asked.

Agnes said, her voice icy, “Your boyfriend, with Merry’s cooperation, went to round me up a date for the evening. I’m quite sure he feels very sorry for me and considers this his civic duty.”

Merry said, “Agnes, it wasn’t that way at all. You don’t even have to consider him a date. Just a guest Arch invited to eat a steak he bought.”

Agnes said, “Now you’re trying to make me feel ashamed of myself, and I’m not ashamed.” To herself, “Why am I making such a fuss about this? Merry meant well, and I suppose I don’t have to consider him a date.” She pressed her lips together, afraid that if she let them relax, they’d tremble. “I’m afraid of men,” she thought. “Will I ever get over being afraid? Do I want to get over it? No,” she answered herself. “No, to both questions.”

Tammy unbuttoned her uniform. She said to Merry, “Jeff is coming, but I suppose you already know.”

Merry said wryly, “I didn’t know until Arch told me.”

Tammy grinned at her. “We’re traveling in the very best of company. Who knows? Maybe Mai Hinge will mention us in her column one of these days.”

Merry said, “If she does, it will be with her typewriter dipped in poison.”

Tammy said gaily, “From the way you talk, one would gather you don’t think the lady likes us very much.”

Merry laughed. “She isn’t too fond of me. I declined to give her any information about Mr. Webb, and today I chased her out of his room so that he could get dressed. And on top of everything else I’ve refused to take her warning about Jeff Morrow.”

Even Agnes’ head swiveled around to look at her. Tammy asked, her voice eager, “What kind of warning did she give you about him?”

Merry said carefully, “She warned me he was Natalie Pries’ private property.”

Tammy eyed her with awe. “You’re competing with Natalie Pries and coming out on the winning side?” There was reluctant admiration and envy in her voice. “Honey,” she said, “you must have lived right all of your life. You don’t ask, and still it comes to you in big bucketfuls.”

Merry was sorry she’d told Tammy. She said quickly, “I shouldn’t have said that. Don’t bring it up at dinner tonight, Tammy.”

When Tammy didn’t answer her, she said, her voice sharp, “I’m serious, Tammy. I don’t want you to repeat this to anyone.”

Tammy looked crestfallen. “Not to anyone?”

“Not to anyone,” Merry said firmly.

Tammy sighed and began rummaging through her closet. “Okay,” she said, “if you’re going to be difficult about it. But boy, I wish I had your luck, that’s all I wish.”

She pulled out a two-piece black and white linen. “What do you think?” she asked, holding it up. “It’s just going to be dinner at home.” She heaved a sigh. “And of course dishes afterwards. Who ever heard of doing dishes in a really glamorous dress?”

She flung it on the bed and saw Agnes’ dark, somber print. “Hey,” she said, “you aren’t going to wear that one, are you? It looks awful on you, Agnes. Only a friend will tell you the plain, unvarnished truth.”

Agnes, unperturbed, shrugged. “I didn’t invite this man Arch is picking up for me. He didn’t ask me if he could come. I don’t even have to be polite to him unless I want to be. If he doesn’t like the way I look, that’s his problem, not mine. I couldn’t care less.”

Tammy said slowly, “Has it occurred to you that you just might enjoy yourself?”

Agnes shrugged again. “I always enjoy steak, especially when the price doesn’t come out of our budget.”

Tammy, rolling a nylon carefully along one slender leg, muttered, “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand you at all.”

She fastened the stocking, pulled on the other one and scowled at Merry. “I don’t understand you either, in case you’d like to know.”

She stood up, sliding the black skirt over narrow hips and pulling the top carefully over her head, trying to protect her hair.

Stepping over to the mirror she smoothed her hair, and then, pleased with her reflection, turned to look at Agnes. “Who knows, this guy could step through the door and something might click between you two that you never expected at all.”

Agnes let out a very unladylike snort and Merry shook her head. “Who’d ever guess you were the romantic sort?”

Merry had tied on an apron, and Tammy and Agnes were finishing setting the table when Jeff arrived.

He gave Merry a long look. “You look very sweet and domestic in that apron,” he said.

She said carefully, “I could take it off.”

He shook his head. “No. I like the way you look.” He crooked an eyebrow at her. “I hope you don’t mind my coming?”

Merry denied to herself, and very firmly, that her pulse had leaped at sight of him. She said, carefully polite, “It’s Tammy’s party; Arch supplied the steaks, and I’m only a guest the same as you are.”

“Ouch,” he said and grinned warmly. “We’ll have to take in Olvera Street some time again…when you’re really hungry.”

Merry shook her head. “Once you’ve been to Olvera Street, there’s no reason to return. You’ve seen it all.”

“You’re wrong about that. Once you go, there’s an urge in you to return. And you can’t ever see it all.”

Merry flushed. “I’d better go start the steaks, or we’ll never get around to eating.”

“Medium rare,” Jeff told her, and then, “on second thought, I’d better come in and give you a hand. I’m a whiz on steaks and salads. Maybe one of these days I’ll open my own steak and salad house.”

They had not yet reached the kitchen when Arch and his guest arrived.

Harvey Miles was short and stocky, with serious eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a dark suit, but Merry expected him to pull a stethoscope out of his pocket, he looked as if he belonged in a hospital and would be vaguely out of place anywhere else.

She felt a prickling at the back of her neck and turned around to look at Agnes, whose thin face was ashen as she stared at the door.

She had never expected to see him again. At first she’d have daydreams in which she would go up to him and fling her hate at him in front of everyone, wanting them all to know the kind of man he was. But such childish vengefulness had passed, leaving only cold hatred.

She turned her white face to Merry and in a choked voice said, “How could you have done this to me?”

Stunned, Merry stared at her. “Done what, Agnes?”

But Agnes, choking back a cry, fled the room, leaving the others looking at one other in embarrassed bewilderment.

In a dead voice, Harvey Miles said, “Agnes and I were married once. A long time ago.”

Chapter Nine

Tammy broke the silence. “You?” she said. “You and Agnes? Married?”

He stared at the door through which Agnes had disappeared. “It was a real love affair,” he said, “I mean the kind you’re certain is slated to last forever. We were only kids, full of all that baloney about marriages being made in heaven, and forever binding, and all that stuff the love books toss around so easily. Agnes was just out of high school and I was in my last year of pre-med.”

He straightened his tie with a shaking hand. “And we were married, and according to all of the love stories should have lived happily ever after. Unfortunately the love stories don’t tell all. We didn’t live happily or forever after… Because I suddenly realized the enormity of what I’d done. I’d saddled myself with a wife when all I’d ever wanted in my entire life was to become a doctor—no matter how much hard work or how many sacrifices I had to make.”

He passed a hand over the side of his face. “I was young, and in my confusion, I blamed Agnes for everything. I accused her of deliberately wrecking my life; plotting it. I guess what I was really trying to do was to get her to walk out on me, but she held on.”

He sucked in his breath. “I was a weakling. I couldn’t face the responsibility of a wife and a possible family, and the terrible possibility of losing out on my dreams of becoming a doctor. So I…walked out on her.”

He drew in his breath harshly. “If I’d been mature, we could have worked something out. As it was, I panicked and ran. I don’t think any woman can ever forgive something like that.”

He stared down at his feet. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“How could you have known?” Arch said.

Harvey continued, as if he hadn’t heard, “After I came to my senses, I tried to locate her. But it took me six months to realize what I’d done and by that time Agnes had disappeared as completely as if she’d taken off to another planet.” He shook his head, and his voice tightened with self-hatred. “Six years ago, a lifetime ago. If I was in her place I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me either.”

It was Tammy who said, “Oh, come off it, Harvey. Nothing lasts forever. People get married and divorced every day. Look around you. What lasts these days?”

He moaned, “It’s my fault it didn’t last.”

Tammy shrugged. “How do you know? Maybe in time it would have been Agnes who wanted out.”

Merry rose, and her voice faltered. “I guess I’d better get going on those steaks… Maybe after we all have something to eat…”

Jeff’s voice cut in quickly, “I think I promised I’d help you.” He put his hands on her shoulders and headed her towards the kitchen, turning to the others to say, in a falsely light voice, “I’ll do my best to see she doesn’t burn them.”

Harvey said quietly, “I think I’d better go.” He turned to look at Arch Heller. “You don’t need to drive me,” he said. “I can walk. I really want to walk.”

They all shook their heads at him…nonsense, of course he wasn’t going, not until after he’d eaten…

Tammy chided him, “Do you want us to have to waste a perfectly good porterhouse steak?”

The dinner was a miserable failure in spite of everyone’s attempts; even the champagne did nothing to raise anyone’s spirits.

Merry had knocked on the bedroom door, urging Agnes to come out, but the answer had been only a cold, uncompromising, “Let me alone.”

She’d fixed a tray then and taken it to the room. “Please, Agnes,” she said, “unlock the door. You don’t want me to have to throw this steak out, do you? It’s paid for you know, so you might as well enjoy it.” In the end she had finally persuaded Agnes to open the door. She had taken the tray from Merry in silence.

Merry looked at her unhappily. “I didn’t know,” she said. “Neither Tammy nor I knew about your marriage.” She pulled in her underlip and held it for a second. “You have no right to blame any of us for what happened tonight. And besides…”

Agnes took the word as if she’d been waiting for it to be said, “And…besides…” she said, her voice as fierce as Merry’s, “besides, no one should go around hating someone for what happened so many years ago. Isn’t that what you were going to say, Merry?” She set the tray down abruptly.

Merry faced her squarely. “Well,” she said, “isn’t that true?”

Agnes said coldly, “Don’t try to interfere in what’s none of your business. Stay out of my life, Merry, if you value our friendship at all.”

Her eyes held Merry’s and Merry was the first to turn away. She said carefully, “You’d better eat your steak while it’s hot, and I’d…better get out to mine.”

* * * *

Agnes sat on the edge of the bed, balancing the tray on her knees. The tears streamed down her cheeks as she cut the steak, and the meat stuck in her throat, tasteless and unappetizing.

Why did he have to show up now, after all these years? Now, when she was sick with worry over Ellen?

She cut a piece of meat and forced it into her mouth. “There’s nothing for me to worry about,” she whispered hoarsely, “not where Ellen is concerned. Haven’t I convinced even Mother of that?”

She had difficulty in swallowing the steak. She washed it down with some of the champagne. The hospital had promised her time off next month. She’d written Ellen about it in her last letter. “We’ll swim and lie in the warm sand and picnic and visit Disneyland,” she’d written. “We’ll have the most wonderful two weeks any little girl ever had. You’ll see.”

She brushed at the tears that blurred her eyes and set the tray away from her. “If I force myself to eat any more I’m going to throw up.”

Her thrifty nature was appalled at the meat she’d left on the plate, but she turned abruptly away from it and walked to the window to stare out at the darkness and the lights on the crawling cars all heading for someplace, a haven, excitement, release. She turned away and flung herself face down across the bed. “Please, God,” she moaned. “Please, God,” not knowing exactly what it was she was asking. She could hear the clatter of silverware against china in the other room, a false laugh, someone coughing, an occasional attempt at humor at which the others laughed politely and without amusement.

She thought, “I did this. I spoiled it for all of them.” And then, fiercely, “That isn’t true. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t the one who thought I should have a date for tonight; I didn’t bring Harvey here.”

The sound of chairs being pushed back from the table, the clatter of dishes being gathered up and carried to the kitchen, the rushing sound of water running, came through the wall.

She rolled over onto her back and lay staring up at the ceiling. It wasn’t their fault either. Fate just liked to kick people in the teeth when they were least expecting it. She’d left Harvey in Ohio, and who would ever think that six years later she’d meet him in California?

She gave a weary, choking sigh, trying to put things in the proper perspective. So, she’d seen Harvey again. It wasn’t going to change her life. She had no further desire for revenge. All she asked was that he stay out of her life.

A thought hit her, shocking in its enormity: she’d never bothered to divorce Harvey. She’d been so sure she’d never want to marry again that she’d let it go. He was Ellen’s father. According to the law he’d have certain rights. Her stomach cramped so tightly that the pain was almost unendurable.

He had no rights with Ellen, she told herself. “He walked out on me, leaving me stranded and alone and pregnant in a town where I knew no one. I had to make it on my own without him. Any judge would agree he’d never been either a father or a husband.”

She smoothed her hair, and then warmth ran through her as she suddenly realized that Harvey didn’t even know about Ellen: he’d walked out before she’d told him she was pregnant.

* * * *

Jeff looked around the small kitchen and said, with the false brightness everyone was trying to maintain, “I think we’ve washed every pot and pan and dish in this apartment.”

Tammy flashed him a grin. “It’s good for a man to work once in a while.”

Merry, wiping off the sink and hanging up the dish-towels, said nothing. She was worried about Agnes.

When the telephone rang shrilly from the other room, she expected Agnes to come dashing from the bedroom to answer it, but the door remained closed.

Tammy answered it then handed it to Merry. “For you.”

Surprised, she took the phone, and Mai Hinge’s voice grated in her ears. “I hear you turned down an offer to be Pierson Webb’s private nurse,” she said. “If he’s as well as everyone says why does he need a nurse?” She gave an impatient sigh. “Not that I really expect you to tell me anything but there’s always the chance you’ll change.”

Merry said curtly, “I don’t think Mr. Webb does need a private nurse, Miss Hinge, which is why I refused.”

It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it would do.

Mai’s cold laughter rang across the wires. “You sound as if I’d interrupted something, sweetie,” she said. “Did I now?”

“Yes, in a way, you did.”

“My, my,” Mai oozed, “I do hope it wasn’t Jeff Morrow.”

Merry hung up abruptly. Jeff said slowly, “Mai doesn’t give up, does she?”

Merry looked at him and shook her head. “No…she doesn’t.” Somehow the knowledge frightened her.

Harvey glanced quickly at the door behind which Agnes had barricaded herself. “I have to be leaving. I go on duty at midnight.” His voice was apologetic. “Thanks for the dinner. I’m sorry… I…spoiled things for everyone.”

They protested vigorously that he hadn’t spoiled anything. Arch said if Tammy promised to behave herself, he’d let her go with him when he took Harvey back to the hospital, and afterwards he might even drive her to Mulholland Drive to see the view.

Tammy clapped her hands in mock ecstasy. “Oh, goody,” she said, “I can’t think of anything I’d like better. I’ve never been to Mulholland Drive.”

Arch laughed at her. “Methinks the little girl is stretching the truth a bit.”

“No, really!” Tammy insisted, making a face at him.

Jeff turned to look at Merry after the door had closed behind the others. “How about a relaxing drive?” he asked her. “It was…rather tense here tonight.”

Merry hesitated; she wasn’t happy about going off and leaving Agnes alone in the apartment. “I’m not going to want to talk about it,” Jeff said slowly.

She flushed. “It wasn’t that; it’s Agnes, she’s unhappy and upset. I’m not sure I want to leave her here all alone.”

He said gently, “She’s alone, even if you stay.”

She sighed and nodded. “Of course you’re right.”

* * * *

Jeff drove leisurely, not talking. Merry leaned her head against the upholstery and closed her eyes.

The night air blew in, cooled by the rush of wind from the ocean. She felt the car stop, and a sensation running up and down her arms told her that Jeff was looking at her. Opening her eyes slowly, she tried to look away from him, but he put his hand on her chin and held her so that she couldn’t. “You’re sweet,” he told her huskily, and kissed her with such fierce passion that Merry found herself responding.

She was trembling when he released her and frightened.

He shook her gently. “Stop looking like that. I’m not going to proposition you. I don’t think you’re the kind of girl who is open to a proposition…so I’m just going to kiss you again,” which he did, very adequately, “take you home, and say good-night at your door.”

He dropped a kiss on top of her head when he left her. He said lightly, “You didn’t think of this Tom person when I kissed you tonight, did you?”

She didn’t answer.

He said urgently, “Was he very important to you?”

“Important?” Merry found her voice. “Yes, at the time. I…thought I loved him very much. I was very young.”

Jeff caught at one word in her sentence, and thrust it at her. “‘Thought’ you loved him?” he asked. “Only ‘thought’?”

Merry turned abruptly and went inside the apartment. She closed the door and leaned against it, the tears running silently down her cheeks. “Never, never, never again,” she told herself fiercely. “I promised myself!”

She sat for a while in the darkness and then finally went to bed. Tammy hadn’t come in yet.

She lay awake, hearing Agnes toss in the next bed. She didn’t try to talk to her.

Chapter Ten

It was her afternoon away from the hospital. Merry stretched out on the sofa, kicked off her shoes and gazed disconsolately out the window. Rain, flinging itself furiously against the pane, obscured the view.

It would have to rain today, she thought. The room looked as gloomy as she felt.

She resolutely forced herself to her feet. Her mother had always preached that complaining changed nothing; only action accomplished. “Well, if action is what is needed…” She slipped into her shoes and decided that the room could well use a good cleaning.

She dragged out the vacuum cleaner and left it standing in the middle of the room while she walked over to the window to stare out at the wet street and the glistening buildings. The leaves on the trees lining the street had the limp, bedraggled look of a washing battered about on the line.

She ran a hand vaguely through her hair. The first thing to do was to change her dress and tie something about her head. She’d washed her hair only yesterday and had no desire to wash and set it again today.

She let out her breath slowly. There was a rushing inside her, an intense impatience to work and work and work, and tire herself so completely that she wouldn’t want to think, that she’d crave only to sink into bed when night came, and sleep and sleep and sleep.

She turned abruptly from the window and went into the bedroom to change her dress, but stopped in front of the dresser to stare at herself in the mirror. She leaned forward. There were purple smudges under her blue eyes and a tired droop to her mouth. “Well, girl,” she muttered crossly, “in spite of your going to bed at eleven-thirty last night, you look as if you haven’t slept in a week. You’ll have to do something about that.”

There was a slight tremor at the corners of her mouth. The very first thing to do was to get Jeff Morrow out of her thoughts!

She’d let him talk her into going to a movie last night. When she’d protested that she needed eight hours of sleep and wasn’t getting it, he’d promised that he’d have her home by eleven; and he’d kept his promise.

She turned impatiently from her reflection. He’d pulled her out of the theatre the minute the picture was over, making his way through the crowd with polite apologies. On the way home he’d bought her an orange juice at a drive-in. “The very best nightcap in the world,” he’d assured her. His voice had been tinged with amusement. He’d walked her up the three flights of stairs, kissed her lightly on the forehead and said, “Orange juice and a kiss to dream on. Sleep well.”

Merry flung herself across the bed. He was playing a game with her. She was sure of it. The innocent dates they had, the kisses, the long, easy drives, even Olvera Street: he was much too sophisticated for such pleasures. He was laughing at her.

She made fists of her hands and pounded against the green spread, choking with anger. When it was over would he say, as Tom had said, “It was fun. It was a million laughs. Sorry if you thought it was meant to be more.”

After she’d fallen in love with him? She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. “I am not in love with Jeff Morrow,” she enunciated carefully. “I will not allow myself to fall in love with him. Or with any man. I’m not fool enough to let myself be hurt like that twice in one lifetime!”

She slowly realized that this hurt would be much worse, go much deeper, last much longer than the one Tom had given her.

She pulled out a scarf from a drawer in the dresser and began to tie it around her hair when someone knocked.

Still holding the scarf, she opened the door: the sight of the slim girl in scarlet, mink slung carelessly around her shoulders, dark hair glistening with rain, stunned her into immobility.

Natalie Pries carried an air of haughty self-confidence which was wrapped around her like the mink. She stared at Merry, and the dark, wing-like brows lifted ever so slightly. “I don’t wonder you’re shocked,” she said. “I’d be shocked too, if I were in your place and I was standing on the other side of the door. It isn’t often the little people get to see me close up. And for free.”

While Merry stood there, Natalie shook her hair impatiently, and wet drops flicked against Merry’s face. “Well,” she said, “aren’t you even going to ask me to come in?”

Merry recovered herself sufficiently to open the door wide. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Come in.”

Natalie brushed past her, stopped to stare at the cleaner. “What in the world is that?” she asked.

Merry pushed it back against the wall. “It picks up dirt,” she replied. “Rugs, upholstery. You know.” She did not bother to conceal the mockery in her voice. This girl, she decided, was a phony, complete and unadulterated.

Natalie stared around the room before she sat down on the sofa. “I didn’t know they made places like this anymore.”

“This is the working girl’s version of an apartment,” Merry told her, managing with an effort to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

Natalie shrugged and let the mink slip down around her waist. “It’s very small, isn’t it?” she said.

“Miss Hinge said the same thing. But my roommates and I do very well in spite of its size. We’re quite content.”

Natalie’s eyebrows raised a shade higher. “Oh,” she said, “Mai’s been here? Are you a friend of hers?”

Merry laughed. “Not so you’d notice,” she thought. Aloud she said, “She came here for a story about Mr. Webb.”

Natalie said, “And of course you wouldn’t tell her anything. I mean, I did a story once where I played a nurse. I had to memorize that pledge nurses have to take. The whole thing. Imagine!”

She slanted a gaze at Merry. “Do nurses really have to be like that? All full of sacrifices and dedicated and everything?”

Merry said, “We try.”

“Really!—I mean it must be terrible.”

Merry said nothing. She began to wonder if Mai Hinge had sent Natalie. She felt the other girl’s gaze on her. “Pierson isn’t a very nice person,” Natalie said reflectively. “He discovered me, you know, and I expect I owe him a lot when you come right down to it, but he isn’t at all nice. I don’t think anyone really likes him.”

Merry said, “I know him only as a patient, Miss Pries.” The conviction that Mai Hinge had sent Natalie deepened.

There was silence for a moment, and Merry thought tensely, “When are you going to tell me why you’re here?”

The silence became heavier. Merry began to feel acutely uncomfortable under the other girl’s searching stare.

She said, “Would you like some coffee?”

Natalie stared at her. “Coffee?” she said. “Who drinks coffee?”

Merry had to laugh. “You’d be surprised at how many people drink it,” she said.

Natalie ran a hand across the smooth waves of her hair. “I drink champagne for breakfast,” she said, “and for lunch and dinner and in between times.”

Merry stared at her levelly. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

Suddenly Natalie dimpled and leaned towards Merry. She said, “I don’t really drink champagne all of the time, only don’t tell Mai Hinge that. She’d explode the myth and then my press agent would be very angry with me. He made that up. It goes with my image…the sex queen, you know?”

Merry found herself warming towards Natalie. She smiled back at her. “Mum’s the word,” she promised.

“Do you know what I really like to drink?” Natalie asked her. “Milk. I mean, really, isn’t it ghastly? Can you imagine something like that getting out? ‘Sex queen admits she drinks milk’? I mean, really!”

Merry laughed and stood up. “Let’s both have a glass,” she said.

When Merry came back into the room, Natalie was sitting with her legs doubled under her like a small girl. She took the glass held out to her. “Milk’s bad for my figure,” she said, sipping. “I have to be very careful, you know.”

She stared at Merry over the rim of the glass. There was a narrow white line just above her upper lip.

She sighed and wiped her mouth with one slender hand. “I can’t see it,” she said, “I really can’t. You’re pretty enough, but then I’m beautiful.” She said it entirely without conceit. “And I’ve got glamor and money.” She shook her head, bewildered. “Men are sometimes awfully stupid, aren’t they? I mean, what can Jeff Morrow see in you that I don’t have more of?” She shrugged, and stood up, draping the mink around her shoulders. “You can’t have him, you know,” she said. “I think you ought to know that. I mean, when I want something, I always get it.”

Merry asked slowly, “Always?”

Natalie nodded. “Always.” She sighed. “You ought to know that I’m not a very nice person, either; in this business you can’t be very nice. I mean, if you are, people go around taking advantage of you.”

Merry said nothing and Natalie turned to look at her earnestly, “I wish you weren’t so nice. I mean, really. Because I can’t afford to like you. You can understand that, can’t you?”

Merry walked around her to open the door. “Goodbye, Natalie,” she said, smiling. “I think you’re really very nice; one has to look past the image, that’s all.”

Natalie shook her head, her dark eyes suddenly bleak. “You don’t understand,” she said. “The image is me. I mean I’ve been it so long that I don’t even think any other way.”

* * * *

After Natalie had gone, Merry put away the vacuum cleaner. She had no further desire to clean the apartment. In the kitchen she put water on to boil for coffee.

Natalie’s visit had left her more depressed than before. She didn’t want to feel sorry for the movie star, but found herself unable to shake off the pity.

As she sat on the sofa drinking her coffee and leafing through a magazine, she thought wryly that Tammy would be shocked that anyone could possibly be sorry for Natalie Pries.

She could hear Tammy: “Boy, don’t I wish I was such a pitiful figure! If I ever get to be the star Natalie Pries is, I give you full permission to feel as sorry for me as you want.”

Finding a story that interested her, she lay back on the sofa to read.

She had just finished the story and decided on chili and rice for dinner when Tammy burst in the door.

Tammy’s eyes were wide with excitement. She danced once around the room, fervent with joy. “You’ll never guess what,” she said, “never, never, never.”

Merry laughed. “Well, then, tell me.”

“Pierson Webb’s giving a cocktail party next Wednesday and Arch is going to take me! And he said he’d speak to him about me, if the chance came up at all. Can you imagine!”

Merry wondered that Pierson Webb would consider himself well enough to give a cocktail party less than a week after he’d left the hospital.

She shrugged. He was no longer her patient. No reporters were waiting for her when she left the hospital now. Pierson Webb at home, and presumably well, was no longer headline news.

She said warmly, “I hope it works out for you. If that’s what you want.”

Tammy chortled, “Of course it’s what I want. You don’t think I want to be a nurse the rest of my life, do you? I want the world. All of it!”

She swung around and asked, “Merry, do you think he’ll ask you to the party?”

Merry shrugged. “Why would he?”

Tammy persisted. “He seemed to like you, so maybe.…” Her eyes searched Merry’s face. “If he did ask you, would you go?”

Merry shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not in the habit of deciding something until I know it has to be decided.”

She turned to look at Agnes, who had just come in the door. “Hi,” she said hesitantly. There had been a slight coldness between the two girls since the appearance of Harvey Miles. “It’s stopped raining,” Agnes said.

Merry nodded. “It was about time.”

Tammy flew to the window to look out. She spread her arms wide and breathed deeply like an excited child. “That’s a beautiful California sun shining out there,” she said. “This is a wonderful town. It really is.”

Merry laughed. “You should get a job with the Chamber of Commerce,” she said. “They can use someone like you.”

Tammy grinned. “I really do think it’s a wonderful town.” She brushed a hand through her hair. “What did you do with your afternoon in the rain?”

“I entertained Natalie Pries,” Merry said softly.

It was as if she’d dropped a bomb. Tammy screamed, “You what?”

Merry grinned. “I entertained Natalie Pries. She came to see what I looked like.”

Tammy shook her head. “Now I’ve heard everything,” she said. “Why would she want to know what you looked like?”

It was Agnes who said dryly, “That’s very easy. Merry’s been seeing Jeff Morrow.”

“Oh.” Tammy looked at Merry with sudden envy. “Why couldn’t this have been my afternoon off?” she said.

As Agnes walked towards the bedroom Merry called after her, “Chili and rice for dinner.”

“Sounds good,” she replied, without turning. She went into the bedroom and let the door close behind her. She’d wanted to say, “Stop looking like that; I’m not angry with you.” And she wasn’t; it was just that she was afraid Merry might want to talk about it if she let herself relax at all.

She got out of her uniform. It had been a terrible day. She’d felt jittery all afternoon, and then, just before she left the hospital an aging movie queen who’d been on the skids for the last few years had been brought in with her wrists cut. She’d screamed at Agnes to let her die. “What do I have to live for?” she’d yelled, struggling to get free. “I’ll do it again when I’m out of here and the next time I’ll succeed!”

Agnes had been torn with pity, and then, to climax everything, Harvey Miles was waiting for her outside the hospital in a borrowed car. “Let me drive you home,” he’d pleaded. “All I want to do is to talk to you, Agnes.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she’d said coldly. “We talked it all out a long time ago.”

“We’ve never talked anything out. Please, Agnes, let’s talk.”

When she’d started to walk away, he’d gotten out and tried to force her into the car.

She’d struggled at first and then she’d said, “Let go of me, or I’ll call for a policeman.”

He seemed only then to realize what he’d been doing. His hands had dropped to his sides, and he turned away without another word.

Agnes had started to run. She ran past the bus stop and had to turn around and go back. The bus was crowded and she’d had to stand up all the way, her knees trembling and her legs so shaky she wondered that they were able to hold her upright.

She hung her uniform in the closet. A sudden horrible thought stopped her: what if Harvey had found out about Ellen? She should have listened to what he had to say. She’d acted very, very foolishly.

Chapter Eleven

Jeff Morrow was waiting outside the apartment when Merry came home the next night. He gave her a cheerful grin. “I thought I’d drop by and surprise you.”

He reached over and took the key from her. “Allow me,” he said, and inserted it in the lock. He pushed the door open and Merry walked in ahead of him. “It’s stuffy in here,” he said, and went around flinging up the windows.

Merry stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you,” he grinned at her. “I came to surprise you, and, incidentally, to take you to dinner.”

Merry shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s my week to cook.”

“Well, in that case,” he twinkled, “aren’t you going to ask me to stay?”

Merry opened the cupboard doors and rummaged through the cans and packages. “It’s going to be creamed dried beef,” she said, “with mushrooms.” She pulled some more cans forward, “And yams and…and a tossed salad, I guess.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Merry turned to look at him. “I’m not sure there’s enough for an extra person.”

He laughed at her. “You can always open another can of something or other and toss it in.” Cocking his dark head at her he said softly, “I hear you had a visitor yesterday afternoon.”

Merry turned to stare at him. “She told you?” she asked incredulously.

He laughed, his eyes crinkling. “Why not?” he asked. “Natalie tells me everything.” He leaned over to touch her on the tip of her nose. “Close your mouth, you’re staring.”

Merry closed her mouth. “What,” he asked her, “is so unbelievable about Natalie Pries telling me she was here to see what you looked like?”

She said slowly, “I wouldn’t have told you if I’d done a thing like that.”

“Why not?” Jeff asked her. “Women are supposed to flatter a man, aren’t they?” His eyes searched her face with amusement. “How about you?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to do something, say something, to flatter me?”

Merry said quickly, “I’d better change and start things cooking if there’s going to be anything at all to eat tonight.”

“I’ll do the salad for you,” he grinned. “As I mentioned once before, I’m a whiz with a salad. And by the way, you’re a coward, you know.”

Merry flung him a cold glance. “Am I?” she asked, and disappeared behind the bedroom door.

Jeff continued to talk from the kitchen. “We’re going to a cocktail party next Wednesday,” he said. “I forgot to tell you. No one cares what time anyone gets there, so you can’t use the excuse that you won’t be able to leave the hospital in time.”

“Pierson Webb’s cocktail party?” she asked, her voice muffled in the pale pink blouse she was pulling over her head.

“Who else?” he asked. “It will be a very, very grand party. Poor Pierson always overdoes everything. And everybody of importance who’s still in Pierson’s good graces will be there.” There was laughter in his voice. “Including Natalie Pries, of course. And before the evening is over, at least one person will fall into the pool.”

Merry slipped on dark brown slacks and slid her feet into straw sandals. “I’m not going.”

She walked out to the kitchen to Jeff’s indignant, “What do you mean you are not going? No one refuses to go to Pierson’s parties.”

Merry said calmly, tying an apron over the slacks, “Mr. Webb didn’t invite me. You did.”

“It’s the same thing.” He frowned over the bowl of lettuce he was shredding. “You’re a very difficult person. I’m beginning to feel slightly sorry for your patients.”

“If you’re going to be fooling around with salad dressing and stuff, you’d better put on an apron.” She got one from a drawer and handed it to him.

“Pierson always sends invitations,” he continued. “Gold engraved ones.”

Merry shook her head. “Not to me, he didn’t.”

* * * *

“Hey!” Tammy’s voice sang out as the door slammed behind her. “Look what I’ve got!” She raced into the kitchen, holding the day’s mail, which Merry had forgotten to pick up.

She was waving three gold-bordered envelopes in front of her. “From Pierson Webb,” she shouted enthusiastically. “One for you and one for me and one for Agnes. He’s invited us all to his party!”

She looked at Jeff. “What are you doing here?”

He frowned at her. “You’re the second person to ask me that,” he said. “I’m making a salad, as you should be able to see.”

He swung his gaze to Merry. “I told you,” he said. “Pierson always sends gold-bordered invitations. Now you’ve no excuse.”

She frowned. Tammy had torn open her invitation and was reading it, entranced. Merry sighed: life might be a little easier if she were just a shade more like Tammy.

Suddenly she remembered Pierson Webb on the day he left the hospital. “If I invite you to a party, will you come?” he’d asked. And she’d answered, “Ask me.”

“I guess I’d better go.”

Tammy glanced up from her invitation. “Of course you’ll go,” she said. “You couldn’t not go. No one could.”

Merry laughed. “I suppose not.” She reached into the drawer for a can opener and said to Jeff, “You needn’t think you have to take me, you know.”

“Why should I think that?” he retorted, a sudden sharpness to his voice. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t be too modest. It has a phony sound.”

Merry flushed. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said.

“No? How did you mean it, then?”

Merry flashed out in sudden, helpless anger, “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Stop nagging, will you?”

He nodded. “That sounds much better.”

* * * *

“Here, catch,” Tammy said, flinging two letters at Agnes. “You’re late—We’ve been waiting almost an hour.”

“I had something to do before I came home,” Agnes shrugged.

She glanced at the two letters. One bore a San Francisco post mark and was addressed in her mother’s small, cramped handwriting.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Tammy asked impatiently. “That gold-bordered envelope holds an invitation to Pierson Webb’s cocktail party next Wednesday!”

Agnes glanced at Tammy over the top of the envelope. She opened it slowly and looked at the invitation before she disinterestedly put it aside. She knew she wouldn’t be going.

Tammy said, “You don’t look at all excited.”

“Why should I be?” Agnes asked. “I have no intention of going. And don’t tell me that nobody refuses to go to one of Pierson Webb’s parties: I’m refusing.”

Tammy shook her head and said slowly, “I hate to tell you, Agnes, but you’re crazy.”

Agnes shrugged. “I’m going to stay that way.”

Merry cut in quickly, “Hurry and change, will you, Agnes? We really have been waiting dinner,” she forced laughter into her voice, “and creamed dried beef can wait only so long. Besides, we have a guest.”

Agnes glanced at Jeff coolly. “You shouldn’t have waited for me.”

Merry said lightly, “And have you miss out on the specialty of the house, Jeff’s salad?”

“Don’t make any remarks ’til you’ve tasted it,” Jeff said.

Agnes didn’t smile. “I won’t be long.”

Merry nodded. She stood for a moment gazing after her, wishing she knew some way to make her go to Pierson Webb’s party. All that froth and phoniness and glitter and brightness might be good for Agnes. She was much too serious about everything.

Her frown deepened. Since the San Francisco trip, Agnes’ moodiness had seemed to be deeper and longer lasting. She sighed and turned towards the kitchen. She had no desire to pry into Agnes’ private life. Until Agnes wanted to talk, she was keeping strictly out of it: she still remembered the night Arch Heller had brought Harvey Miles to dinner too vividly.

* * * *

Agnes closed the bedroom door and leaned against it for a moment, staring at the letter from her mother. Holding it, she walked across to the window and looked out at the lights coming on, and struggled against a feeling of bitterness and envy.

Merry and Tammy could be concerned with silly cocktail parties and dinner being spoiled. While she… Her hands trembled against her sides.

She had phoned Harvey just before she’d left the hospital to tell him she had reconsidered, that perhaps he was right, that they should have that talk.

They had met at a little place near Mt. Mercy and had sat in a booth across from one other, drinking coffee; she had watched him being awkwardly apologetic and earnest and sincere in turn, trying to bridge the years, trying to undo what never could be undone.

And she’d listened, feeling nothing stir in her, not even the cold hatred that had plagued her for so long. There had been an emptiness in her, as if Harvey had never been, as if those few, brief months they had spent together had never occurred.

But they had, and Ellen was the proof that they had. She had waited and listened for him to say something that would let her know he knew about Ellen.

But when she had left him, it was with the certainty that he did not know about Ellen, and relief had surged in her. It was why she had come, to find out for herself, and she had found out that all Harvey had wanted was to ease his conscience.

Her lips twisted in scorn. From the other room came Tammy’s mournful voice, “For Pete’s sake, Agnes, hurry up. We’re all starving.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” she called back. “The rest of you go on and sit down.”

Moving hurriedly, she grabbed a dress off a hanger in the closet, unbuttoned her uniform and slipped it off. She propped both elbows on the dresser top and leaned forward to look at herself.

Turning away, she smoothed her hair with one hand, and then, unable to help herself, picked up her mother’s letter from the bed.

She knew it would be impossible to go out there, to sit down and eat, until she knew what was in the letter.

She opened it slowly. It was brief, like all her mother’s letters.

Ellen was no better, she had written. And when she’d talked to the doctor about her, he’d repeated what he’d said the other time…that without an operation, Ellen was going to die, maybe within months.

The letter ended on a note of recrimination. If Agnes continued to deny the truth about Ellen’s condition, she was going to be the cause of her daughter’s death.

Agnes crumpled the letter in her fist, then tore it into minute pieces and dropped it in the wastebasket.

There was a dryness in her throat and a knot of pain in her chest. That her mother could think that she would deliberately…deliberately…

She managed to stop the trembling of her chin before she went into the other room. Everyone was sitting at the table except Merry, who came from the kitchen with a steaming bowl.

“I kept everything hot for you, Agnes.”

“Thanks,” Agnes said. She looked at the food on her plate and nausea ripped through her. “I can’t eat,” she thought. “I can’t possibly.”

But she tried frantically, forcing the food past the lump that tightened her throat making it so hard to swallow.

Her mother was wrong. She was wrong. She wasn’t deliberately refusing to face the truth. She wasn’t!

When she glanced up suddenly she saw Merry watching her. Merry turned her head quickly away.

Agnes continued to stir the bits of toast around on her plate. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I guess I’m not very hungry. I had two cups of coffee after I left the hospital: I guess they took away my appetite. I wish you hadn’t waited dinner for me.”

Tammy, having finished, said cheerfully, “There was one big advantage in waiting, Agnes. I was hungry enough so that even creamed dried beef…ugh…tasted delicious.”

Her eyes narrowed suddenly on Agnes’ face. Maybe she’d never really noticed her before, but Agnes had something, lines, expression, shape, something. She didn’t look like everyone else. She was different.

A numbing coldness gripped Tammy’s stomach. Was she different? Or was she merely another beautiful girl in a city where beautiful girls, all looking like one another, were a glut on the market?

What if she got her chance and then discovered she had nothing to give?

She denied the thought vigorously. She had as much to give as Natalie Pries. She had more!

Agnes pushed her plate away and got to her feet. She looked at Merry unhappily. “I’m sorry, Merry, but I can’t eat anymore. I’m really sorry.”

Merry shrugged and said kindly, “If you aren’t hungry, you aren’t hungry. Don’t feel badly about it.”

Jeff said smugly, “You ate your salad, and that was the main part of the meal.”

Agnes ignored the attempt at lightness. She went into the bedroom and came out wearing a sweater. “Think I’ll take a short walk,” she said, “I feel a bit sluggish.”

When Agnes had gone, Tammy said, “I wonder what goes with her? She’s getting harder and harder to live with.”

Jeff said cheerfully, “I’d say a man.”

Tammy looked interested. “Maybe she and Harvey Miles have started seeing each other; maybe they’ll go back to being married.”

Merry shook her head. Harvey Miles? She shrugged. Possible, but hardly probable.

Jeff gave her a look. He said, “The trouble with you, my dear Miss Neil, is that you don’t think in romantic terms.”

Merry, beginning to clear the table, thought with sudden venom that thinking in a romantic way was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place. Tom had wanted none of it.

Chapter Twelve

Pierson had strung a canopy above the patio. The blue-black canvas top, dotted with small, glittering lights was, Merry decided, supposed to resemble a night sky. There was even an orange colored globe meant to be the moon.

Beyond the patio was the oval pool, with a statue of a naked reclining woman catching sprays of water in her mouth.

People stood in small groups or milled around near the pool. The women all wore elaborate hairdos, and waved half-empty glasses as they talked. The men in too-carefully tailored suits usually stood talking to one woman while their eyes followed another one.

Jeff threaded the way for them through the crowd. The men turned to nod vaguely; the women, most of them, reached out their hands as if they had to touch him: “Jeff, sweetie.”

“Baby, where are you going in such a hurry?” Glistening, painted lips; eyes beginning to sparkle a bit too brightly.

Jeff stood Merry near the pool. “This is the most advantageous spot from which to view the statue,” he quipped. His eyes said he admired her, that she looked absolutely lovely.

“Don’t move from here,” he whispered, his hands pressing gently, for just a moment, against her shoulders. “And don’t let anyone steal you. Someone’s apt to, you know.”

Merry laughed up at him. She felt light-headed, and airy and gay—whether from the evening or the glitter of the crowd, or the excitement, she didn’t know.

“I promise.”

After Jeff left, Merry’s eyes searched the crowd unsuccessfully for Tammy. She and Arch had left early, since Arch had to stop at the Alibi Club on his way to Pierson’s party.

Tammy had been resplendent in shimmering green that hugged her lovely figure. Arch’s eyes had lit up at sight of her.

“Hey, man,” he said, “you’re gonna make them all take a second look, you sweet, sexy-looking child, you.”

Tammy had laughed at him, complimented and loving it. She had sailed out of the room looking elegant and self-assured and feeling almost as self-assured as she looked.

Agnes, in a loose, unbelted shift, had stared after Tammy. She’d said slowly, “Anyone with Tammy’s self-confidence should have no trouble whatever getting what she wants out of life.”

Merry wasn’t so sure. “Maybe,” she’d said, “most of her self-confidence is on the outside.”

Agnes had shrugged. “Maybe. But knowing Tammy, I don’t believe it.”

Now Jeff came towards her, a drink in each hand. She saw Mai Hinge, flamboyant in orange, put out a hand to stop him, laugh and shake her head, and then swivel around to stare, still laughing, in Merry’s direction.

Merry gave her a level look, smiled, and then turned her head slowly, not wanting Mai to know how tensely aware she was of her mocking appraisal.

She saw Tammy moving towards her, looking like a young queen. She could have hugged her for putting in an appearance at so appropriate a moment.

When Tammy reached Merry, she said with childlike delight. “Everyone’s noticing me. They really are.”

Arch, behind her, squeezed her arm. “Yeah,” he said, “and is she ever loving it.”

“Of course I am,” she cooed. “If you want to get any place in this town you have to be looked at.”

Merry laughed. “Well, you’re getting what you came for, aren’t you, Tammy?”

Tammy shook her head. “Not quite yet,” she said, turning to look at Arch. “Arch promised we’d see Pierson Webb and so far he hasn’t kept that promise. We’ve seen just everybody except Pierson.”

“Now sweet love,” Arch told her, “something like that takes time. For instance, I need a drink before I tackle Pierson.” He glanced wryly at Merry. “I rarely drink,” he said. “And never just before I have to give a performance. So Tammy ought to appreciate what I’m doing for her, oughtn’t she?”

Merry grinned at him. “She ought to.” She gave Tammy an affectionate look. “But knowing Tammy, I don’t think she feels at all appreciative.”

She had meant it jestingly, but Arch suddenly grew serious. “I know,” he said. “Tammy thinks everyone was created for her special use. Take me, for example: I’m merely an opener of doors.”

Tammy said tightly, “Arch Heller, that isn’t true at all! How can you say a thing like that?”

Merry saw that Arch was once again his usual easy-going self. “Of course it’s true,” he said. “But don’t count on Pierson’s listening to me. He never listens to anyone.”

“Why, you’re afraid of him, aren’t you?” Tammy said accusingly.

He didn’t deny it. “Most people are a bit afraid of Pierson. He’s a very powerful man in this town, baby. And most of us in the business aren’t about to forget it.”

Tammy said, “Well, anyway, let’s go find him and see how bad an ogre he is.”

As she walked away with Arch, she mused, “He’s right about me. I am just using him. The way I tried to use Merry to get to Pierson for me. The way I’d use anyone I thought could help me get where I want to go.”

She shivered and Arch asked solicitously, “Cold, baby?” And when she shook her head, he said, his voice full of mocking amusement, “That’s nervousness, baby. We all get to sweating when we contemplate approaching the big man face to face.”

Tammy thought, “Why don’t I tell him he doesn’t have to do this for me?”

She mulled it over. She knew she wasn’t going to say it. There was a feeling of mild panic in her. She thought, “Was I always like this? Selfish and greedy and grasping, and not caring?”

* * * *

Merry stared down at the drink Jeff brought her. “What is it?”

He laughed at her. “Vodka,” he told her. “No like?”

Merry shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve never tasted it before.”

“Well, it’ll be a new experience.” There was a subtle undertone to his voice suddenly. “And I’m a fervent believer in new experiences for people. Aren’t you?”

Merry suddenly felt cold. “Like what?” she shouted inwardly. “Like falling in love with you, for instance? Or isn’t that what you’re after. Maybe it’s the other…maybe you’re like Tom, in reality, and what’s on your mind is an affair: all laughter and a barrel of fun, and no tears when it’s over.”

Aloud she said, “I’m not so sure.” She glanced down at her drink and sipped it slowly.

She felt Jeff’s eyes on her, and he said, “Mai’s been admiring you.”

Merry burst out laughing. “I’m sure of it. She probably asked you why I didn’t come wearing my uniform.”

He laughed back at her. “Practically her exact words.” His face became tender. “When you laugh like that,” he said, “you look like a little girl, all shy and sweet and bubbling.”

As she clutched her drink she vowed, “I’m not going to let him get through to me.” She smiled up at him and said carefully, “And now who’s sounding phony?”

He shrugged lightly. “Do you always take offense at compliments?” He touched her elbow. “Let’s move; I’m afraid if we stay here Mai will be over.”

Merry nodded, and holding their drinks, they threaded their way through the crowd once again.

Jeff nodded vaguely, and sometimes ignored, those who called and waved to him as they passed. “The thing is,” he told her, “the men, for the most part, are wondering do you or don’t you. And the women are hating you like hell because you look the way they’d like to look, fresh and young.”

Before Merry could think up the proper reply, he said, “I thought I saw you talking to Tammy and Arch before I came up.”

Merry nodded, glad she didn’t have to reply to the other. “Arch was on his way to get a drink, and then they were going to see the lion in his den.”

“Meaning Pierson,” Jeff said. He shook his head. “He isn’t going to be in his most receptive mood. He’s been drinking, and when he’s drinking, he gets insulting.”

“He shouldn’t be drinking.” And then realizing what she’d said, looked helplessly at Jeff.

“Don’t look like that,” he said. “No confidences have been broken. I’ve already forgotten you’ve said it. You’d be surprised at how many things a lawyer hears that he has to forget.”

Merry was stunned that she’d come so close to admitting what she shouldn’t admit…that Pierson Webb was not nearly the well man he was alleged to be. She faltered, “It was just that I thought he shouldn’t…”

“We aren’t going to talk about it,” he said firmly.

They moved leisurely, stopping occasionally to chat with those who were too insistent to be ignored, and circulating so that Merry could see the assembled VIP’s.

“It reminds me of a mob scene in a big spectacular,” she remarked.

Jeff nodded. “Pierson loves spectaculars. In his movies and in his private life.”

Merry said, “He’s a very lonely man. I feel sorry for him.”

Jeff shuddered. “Don’t ever let Pierson hear you say a thing like that.”

“I said it one day at the hospital, and he ordered me out of his room.”

Jeff laughed. “You’re lucky he went no farther than that. One thing Pierson Webb can’t abide is anyone’s thinking he needs pity. He’d be the first one to tell you that he has everything, everything any man needs in life.”

Merry said softly, “He told me.”

Jeff stared at her. “And you don’t believe him.”

“No.”

Jeff took their empty glasses and put them on the tray of a passing waiter. Looking down at her with somber eyes, he said, “What if Pierson offered you what Tammy aches to have. Would you accept it?”

“No.”

“Why not?” his eyes challenged her.

Merry felt uncomfortable. She said sharply, “You’re trying to embarrass me.” She lifted her chin higher and said carefully, “I have my own reasons, and I’m sorry, but they’re not for publication.”

He said softly, “They wouldn’t concern the proverbial vine-covered cottage and the patter of little feet, would they?”

Blushing, she retorted angrily, “You have no right to laugh at me!”

“I’m not laughing,” he said gently, and looked down at her until she turned her face away. He sighed, “I wish there had never been this Tom person.”

“Me too,” she thought.

He left her a few minutes later. A woman was frantically signaling from the other side of the room. She was a fairly well-known actress and swayed when she moved as if her stilt-like heels were too slender to support her weight. Her bright scarlet mouth was twisted into lines of impatience and anger.

Jeff said hastily, “She’s a client of mine, and I’d better get over there before she comes over here. I assure you she isn’t the type of woman you’d want to listen to.” He hesitated. “Shall I bring you a drink first?”

Merry shook her head. “Nothing.”

“You’re sure you don’t mind? I won’t be any longer than it takes to pacify her.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

“That’s a sea of wolves out there,” he said, waving his hand to include the garden and the patio.

“I’m not Little Red Riding Hood, you know.”

She stayed where she was for a few minutes, but when she saw Mai Hinge turning in her direction, moved hastily to merge with the crowd milling close to the pool, escaping through them to a spot out of the garish brilliance of the lights.

Standing with her back to the darkness she wondered where Tammy was, and if she’d succeeded in talking to Pierson Webb, and if she had succeeded…what? Cigar smoke blew into her face, and a voice, thick and sleepy, said, “You don’t look too bad from the back. Turn around so I can see what you look like from the front.”

When she turned around, she was startled to see the balding, cigar-smoking reporter whom she’d tried to avoid so many times while Pierson Webb was in the hospital.

He puffed on the cigar, his eyes trying to focus on her face. “S’funny,” he said, “I think I’ve seen you someplace before. How about it, sister, I seen you before?”

Merry shook her head and said quickly, “No, no, I don’t believe we’ve met.” She was indeed telling the truth…they had never met. And she was anxious to keep it that way.

She couldn’t help wondering what a reporter was doing at Pierson Webb’s cocktail party. And then she thought that of course Pierson would want to keep good relations with the press. He’d want to quash any idea they’d had that he was on the way out.

Pity for him again overcame her, and she made a sound low in her throat which she quickly tried to cover by pretending to cough.

He blew smoke at her again. “You a reporter, sister?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Well, I am, and I’m here to tell you that one thing they don’t provide at these shindigs is a place to rest your feet. I got corns.”

Merry watched him limp away. And then another voice needled at her out of the darkness, a voice as thick as the reporter’s, lined with weariness, and laced with pain. It said, “So you came.”

Merry turned to face Pierson Webb. She saw that the lines in his face were deeper and the pouches under his eyes more pronounced. She said, “I remembered that I’d made you a half-promise before you left the hospital that if you asked me to a party, I’d come.”

The old man said coldly, “You didn’t have to do me any favors, doll.”

“I came because I wanted to, Mr. Webb.”

He glared at her. “Don’t feed me that line of jazz,” he said. “I suppose you didn’t know anything at all about that friend of yours coming here with Arch Heller to try and persuade me to make her into another Natalie Pries.” He laughed harshly. “Don’t these babes understand there’s only one Natalie Pries developed in a generation?”

“I know Tammy came here to try and talk to you.” Her eyes searched his face. “Tammy’s ambitious, not greedy. She’s fighting for what she wants out of life.”

He snorted. “She’s willing to pay any price that’s asked,” he said. “Any price, Miss High-and-Mighty.”

“That is not true!”

His scorn deepened. “Don’t think you’re fooling me by that jazz, you or that friend of yours. I know women. I know them all.”

“If you do,” Merry said, “then I’m sorry for you, because you’ve been meeting the wrong ones all of your life.”

She started to walk away, and he called after her, “Just where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going home,” Merry said. “I don’t like your party, Mr. Webb. And I don’t like you.”

“Hell with you,” he shouted after her. “Hell with you. Hear?”

Chapter Thirteen

The night of the party Agnes went to bed early, but did not sleep. She rolled and turned, waking herself up from a bad dream in which Ellen was tossed back and forth between her and Harvey, like a ball.

She’d drift back to sleep only to be awakened again by an equally horrible dream.

When Merry came in she was lying tense and wide awake. She yawned luxuriously as if she’d only just come awake and asked about the party.

Merry shrugged. “I guess it was all right, if you like that sort of thing.”

She undressed and climbed into bed. “It was exciting at first,” she said, “and then people began to get nasty.” Her tone was reflective. “I wonder why people drink too much,” she mused. “They usually end up saying or doing things they wouldn’t do or say if they hadn’t been drinking.”

Agnes said, “I suppose they do it for the kicks liquor is supposed to give them.” She thought, “I wonder who it is Merry’s talking about… Jeff? It doesn’t seem possible, but still…”

Merry turned over on her side. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Agnes said.

Merry was no more sleepy than Agnes was. She lay wide awake staring out into the darkness of the bedroom, the anger against Pierson Webb still glowing inside her.

She wondered if Jeff was still annoyed with her for insisting they leave so soon.

“So Pierson said something you didn’t like,” he said, “and you’re going to get revenge on him by walking out on his party. That’s rather childish, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” Merry shrugged. “But I still want to go home.” She’d faced him squarely. “And I’m not going to say you don’t have to take me home, because you do. I don’t intend to go home alone. You can come back later but first…”

He’d laughed, delighted by her anger, “But first I have to take you home,” he finished for her. “It is a horrible party,” he said. “I don’t like it either. And I’m sorry if Pierson hurt your feelings. You mustn’t mind; he makes a practice of that sort of thing.”

Merry didn’t answer. She sat in the car and gulped in breaths of the night air. It wasn’t what Pierson had said to her; it was what he had implied about Tammy. Loyalty to her friend engulfed her.

Jeff’s arm slid along the seat and gripped her shoulder gently. “You look as if you needed to be cuddled a bit.”

He kissed her when he let her out of the car, a gentle, warm kiss that brought tears to her eyes. She pushed at him, frightened by her sudden desire to stay in his arms. “Please,” she begged, half tearfully, “don’t…don’t…”

He’d let go of her and warned her cheerfully, “One of these days you’ll want to stay.”

“No,” she moaned now, peering into the darkness. “No. No. No.”

She turned her head when she heard Tammy come in. By the sound of Tammy’s steps, she was happy—she’d had a fine time at the party.

She hummed to herself as she began getting undressed. “Hey, everybody asleep?”

Agnes asked, “How was the party?”

“It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful party,” Tammy told her joyously, sitting on the edge of her bed. “I met Natalie Pries and she told me that she hated me because I was much too beautiful and she always made it a practice to hate every beautiful girl except herself. And guess what? Pierson Webb promised me he’d talk to me next week, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll give me a screen test.” She flung herself wildly around the room. “It’s been the most wonderful evening of my whole life!”

She flopped down on Merry’s bed. “I owe it all to you,” she fairly sang. “If you hadn’t let Arch bring you home that night you’d probably never have met him, and we’d never have gone to the Alibi Club and tonight wouldn’t have happened and…”

Merry said, “It was to escape reporters that I let a strange man pick me up. So maybe you should thank them instead. Or maybe Pierson Webb, for getting ill and coming to the hospital in the first place.”

Tammy giggled. “Stop trying to get out of it. I’m pinning the medal on you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Merry thought, “I ought to tell her, warn her about Pierson Webb.” But she couldn’t get the words out, so she mumbled, helplessly, “All that glitters is not gold, Tammy. Remember the old saying?”

Tammy laughed. “This is,” she said. “This is pure gold!”

* * * *

Agnes awakened very early in the morning after an almost sleepless night. She lay for a moment trying to will herself out of bed. The second she had come awake, she’d begun thinking of Ellen. She couldn’t push the thoughts away. Ellen, little and fat and laughing, because she had been fat and laughing when she was a baby. She’d been a perfectly healthy, normal baby.

Her teeth gripped her underlip. Why did she say it so vehemently, because she was beginning to think like her mother? Was she trying to convince herself that Ellen was really going to die?

She hopped quickly out of bed, unable to lie there with the words torturing her.

She phoned the hospital, pleading illness, then the airport.

After a cold shower she dressed quickly. She’d go to San Francisco…to see Ellen, to talk to the doctor this time…to find out for herself. It was something she had to do.

She was ready to leave when the other two girls rolled sleepily from the beds. Merry’s eyes widened with shock. “Hey,” she said, “we overslept?” She flashed a startled glance at the clock.

Agnes shook her head. “You didn’t oversleep.” She ran her tongue around her suddenly dry lips. “I’m going to San Francisco. I phoned the hospital I was ill.”

Tammy said, “Oh, Agnes, is your friend ill again?”

Agnes gave a little forced laugh. “Well, I can’t believe most of what my mother writes…she exaggerates things. So I want to see for myself.”

“I’d want that too,” Merry said.

Tammy said nothing, but when the door closed behind Agnes, she turned to Merry frowning. “All this for just a friend?” she asked, her voice tinged with skepticism. “If you ask me, there’s something Agnes isn’t telling.”

Merry was heading for the shower. “Maybe there is; but if there is, that’s Agnes’ business, and we don’t have the right to pry.”

“Well spoken.” Tammy shrugged. “There’s no law against curiosity, is there?”

* * * *

The street on which Agnes’ mother lived was one of those San Francisco streets that seemed to march straight upwards, and her mother’s house was at the top. It was an old-fashioned house with high ceilings and fireplaces in all of the bedrooms and in the big, ugly parlor downstairs.

It was also a gloomy house, Agnes decided as she stood in the dark-papered hall to greet her mother.

She said abruptly, “This house is much too big for just you and Ellen. You should sell it and move into one of those light, airy apartments.”

Her mother shook her head. “I like old-fashioned things, Agnes.” And then she hugged her daughter. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”

Agnes hugged her back. “I just decided this morning,” she said. “Where’s Ellen?”

She watched the subtle change come over her mother’s plump, rosy face. “She’s in bed,” she said. “I’ve turned that little room just off the bathroom into a bedroom for her. She can’t go up and down stairs any longer. It tires her too much.”

Agnes shook her head. “What are you trying to do to Ellen?” she asked sharply. “Make an invalid out of her?”

“Oh, Agnes, Agnes, when are you going to open your eyes and see that Ellen is a very sick little girl?”

Agnes put her hands over her ears. “I refuse to listen to that kind of talk,” she said. “I came to see Ellen. Now where is she?”

* * * *

She walked into the bedroom and looked at the little girl lying listlessly propped up on the pillow. “Hi, darling,” she said. “Surprise.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the child to her. “Hey,” she said, “we’ll have to do something about this. You’re getting lazy and you don’t eat enough, Grandmother tells me. And lying in bed until this hour of the morning. Come on now and get up for your mother.”

Ellen smiled at her and seemed to make an effort to hug her mother tightly, but Agnes’ heart froze as she felt the listless thinness of the small arms that did not have the strength to grip even in love.

“Up you go,” she said, lifting her gently and carrying her from the room.

She sat down on the sofa and straightened up, grinning down at her small daughter. She shook her head. “You don’t get near enough sun, sweetheart. Especially not in this dark old house. I’ve been telling Grandmother that she needs to move to a nice, sunny apartment. But do you know what?”

The little girl, whose blue eyes looked much too large for the small face, smiled up at Agnes weakly. “No. What?”

Agnes sat down beside her. “Well,” she said, busily cheerful, “after you and I have our two-week vacation I’m going to look around for a house for you and Grandmother and me in Hollywood. How would you like that?”

Ellen nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

Agnes hugged her. “Well, that’s just what we’ll do,” she said. “We’ll all live together, and when I come home from the hospital at night you and I will do things together…lovely things. Anything you want to do. Go to the zoo or the library, or the beach. Or just walk. And walk and walk.”

Ellen began to cry suddenly, weakly, frettishly.

Agnes gathered her quickly in her arms. “Honey; Ellen, sweetheart, what is it? What did I say to make you cry?”

The little girl said still sobbing, “I can’t walk and walk and…walk. I get tired!”

Agnes laughed softly. She said, “Oh, but you’ll get over being tired, Ellen. You’ll get so you’ll walk so far you’ll tire me out. I’ll be the one who’ll get tired. You just wait and see.”

Ellen stopped crying. Her big eyes searched Agnes’ face. She asked, “After I go to the hospital and the doctor makes my heart well again?”

Agnes threw her mother a furious glance. She said, under her breath, “What have you been saying to her?”

Her mother shook her head warningly, with a little nod at Ellen. She said slowly, “Oh, mother doesn’t know about the operation yet, sweetheart. Grandmother hasn’t told her so we won’t talk about it yet, will we?”

Drawing her breath in a slow, rasping movement, Ellen asked, “Will it hurt? I don’t want it to hurt.” Her mouth quivered and she looked ready to cry again.

Agnes said with a hard glare at her mother, “It isn’t going to hurt, sweetheart. You aren’t going to have any operation. You don’t need one. Now stop worrying about it.”

Ellen sighed suddenly and her eyes began to close, her small, thin face drawn and old with weariness. “I’m tired,” she said. “I want to go back to bed.” She lifted her arms for Agnes to pick her up.

Agnes stooped and lifted her. “You’re a real lazy, lazy puss,” she chided gently.

There was terror in her heart. Ellen felt like nothing in her arms. She laid her down on the bed, pulled the blanket up over her, tucking it in around her shoulders.

Sitting beside her on the bed, she watched the unsteady, labored rise and fall of her daughter’s breathing, noticing, without wanting to, the bluish cast of her skin and lips.

When Ellen was asleep at last, she left the room, and turned furiously on her mother. “You’ve been frightening her with talk of an operation. Why have you been doing that? I thought I told you…”

Her mother, usually soft-spoken, spat the words at her. “Your stubborn refusal to face facts is killing that child! And I’ll have no part of it. I love Ellen.”

Agnes asked bitterly, “And you think I don’t?”

Instead of answering, her mother walked over to the telephone and began to dial. Agnes stared at her. “Whom are you calling?”

Her mother said calmly, “Dr. Bronley. This time you’re going to talk to him, Agnes. He’s going to tell you about Ellen.”

“I won’t talk to him. I’m not a little girl any more, Mother. You can’t order me around.”

Her mother ignored her. She was talking softly into the telephone. She turned suddenly, handing the phone to Agnes. “You talk to him,” she told her daughter coldly. “And don’t tell me ‘no’ again.”

Agnes found herself automatically responding to her mother’s command as she’d done as a little girl. The doctor sounded brusque and busy. He wasted no time on the amenities. “Your daughter,” he said, “has a congenital heart condition. It would be useless to go into it over the phone. The explanation would be hurried and you wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m a nurse,” she said coldly. “Did my mother tell you?”

He ignored her. “What I’ve told your mother and what I’m telling you is that your daughter needs that operation in order to live. I suggest you make an appointment with my nurse and come in and have a talk with me. Your daughter deserves this much.”

Agnes hung up on him.

“He’s a quack,” she said trembling. “I can tell from the way he talked to me. He has no thought about his patients. He doesn’t care. He offers suggestions on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. I wouldn’t have a doctor like that touch Ellen.”

Her mother said, her voice still cold, “Dr. Bronley is a specialist in his field, Agnes. And it was you who told me to take Ellen to him in the first place.”

“All right,” Agnes said, close to the breaking point, “I was wrong. We’ll find another doctor for Ellen.”

“It won’t do any good,” her mother said. “Look at Ellen. Listen to her. Stop closing your eyes and your ears and your mind. Ellen’s very sick and I refuse to sit here beside her and watch her die.”

They parted with harsh words and bitter accusations. “Don’t wait those two weeks,” her mother said. “Find a place and someone to take care of Ellen. I no longer want the job. I’m bowing out. I refuse to be around to see my granddaughter die needlessly.”

“I don’t need you,” Agnes screamed at her. “You weren’t there when Harvey walked out on me. I managed to get through that on my own, and to have Ellen on my own. I can manage this without your help, too!”

Her mother’s face was soft with pity, “I’m sorry for you, Agnes.”

Chapter Fourteen

Smog clouded the air that morning, stung the eyes and made each breath agony. The elms and the few palms along the street were ghostly sentinels.

Merry felt dispirited. On days like this she was frequently overcome with a desire to go back to Michigan where there wasn’t any smog, where the air was pure and clean.

She sighed and turned toward the bus window to see the air that was thick and yellow and hung like a curtain shutting off most of the view.

Under her breath she said, “Southern California in the smog would make a great background for one of those old English horror movies. Strange that it hasn’t been done.”

Tammy glanced up vaguely and shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. She felt miserable. The wonder of the last two nights was gone. Her head ached and her stomach rumbled. She’d eaten far too much rich, spicy food she wasn’t used to. She’d drunk vodka and champagne and the two hadn’t mixed. And poisoning her thoughts was the fear that Pierson Webb had only been putting her on, that he had no intention either of talking to her or of thinking of her for a screen test.

She focused dully on the feet of the woman hanging onto a strap directly in front of her. The heels of the woman’s shoes were worn on one side, and the leather on the toes was ripped. Above the shoes the woman’s ankles bulged heavily.

Tammy closed her eyes quickly. Ugliness depressed her. The ache in her head got worse. “I don’t feel sorry for people,” she thought. “Not even for my patients. I take care of them and do all of the things that have to be done, but it’s automatic. I don’t have any compassion. Not even when they die.” The knowledge frightened her a little. “How did I get to be like this? Maybe I was born with something missing.” She felt more depressed and wished the bus ride would end. Maybe she could lose herself in work for the next eight hours.

* * * *

Merry turned from her intense concentration on the window to examine the passengers who crowded the bus to capacity. Everyone seemed engrossed in his own private miseries. A child coughed and then whined, and the mother held him tighter against her, as if her very nearness could protect him.

She switched her attention covertly to Agnes, who was staring straight ahead, her face blank. There were dark circles under her eyes and her mouth drooped as if she had slept little or not at all.

She had come in very late from her San Francisco trip, but both Merry and Tammy had been awake. Agnes had declined Merry’s offer to fix her something to eat, and had made herself a cup of coffee and gone into the bedroom with it, closing the door firmly and emphatically behind her.

“Well,” Tammy had shrugged. “I think she’s trying to tell us something.”

Merry said, “Let her alone, Tammy.”

“Sure, sure,” Tammy said. “If you were to ask me, I’d say that was exactly what she was telling us—‘let me alone.’ So…” She shook her head at Merry. “I’m telling you,” she told her. “I shouldn’t have gone to that second party with Arch. Two parties in two nights is one party too much for little old me.”

She groaned and Merry laughed. “Not that I don’t feel sorry for you,” she told Tammy, “but you do look funny.”

“Sure, sure,” Tammy said bitterly. “I feel far funnier.”

* * * *

The bus lumbered to a stop and the three girls got off. Agnes, usually slower than the other two girls, brushed ahead of them.

“I’d say,” Tammy said wryly, “she doesn’t want any conversation with us.”

Merry nodded but said nothing. She ducked her head and held the collar of her light coat up around her mouth and nose to help erase the effects of the smog. She half ran, half walked the remaining block to the hospital, Tammy close at her heels.

“Hey,” Tammy said, when they reached the haven of the hospital corridor, “you run a neat mile, my friend. I’d hate to be in a race against you.”

Merry laughed, although she wasn’t in the mood for laughter. “Didn’t you know?” she said. “I was on the track team in high school. The only girl.”

“I’m ready to believe it.”

* * * *

When they reached the lockers, Agnes had already put away her things and stood adjusting her white cap on her dark, wind-blown hair.

She barely glanced at them on her way to the elevator that would carry her up to the fifth floor. “Lousy day,” was her only comment.

Merry nodded, and Tammy said cheerfully, “I think we agreed on that before breakfast.”

Agnes pressed the up button. “I shouldn’t behave like this,” she told herself, “but I can’t help it. I don’t want to talk…or think.” She bit at her underlip as she boarded the elevator. “I don’t even want to be!”

Merry, watching Agnes walk away, thought, “It’s just like Pierson Webb’s party. I think Agnes should have gone, because it would have taken her out of herself. She should talk to someone now, if not me or Tammy, then someone. She really needs to talk.”

She sighed and smoothed her blonde hair. There was nothing anyone could do for Agnes, unless she herself asked.

As they stepped onto the elevator, Tammy said, “You look thoughtful. Agnes?”

Merry merely nodded.

“Well,” Tammy said, philosophically, “she wants to keep it a private misery. And wouldn’t you be the first one to tell me that it’s her right?”

Merry grinned wryly. “Touché.”

She was still thoughtful as she approached the nursing station. Mrs. Keyes, on duty at the desk, glanced up coldly. “There’s a number for you to call, Miss Neil. It says urgent.”

Merry frowned. Panic grew in her. Her mother? Had something happened to her mother? No one she knew would phone her at the hospital unless it were really necessary. She drew her breath in sharply.

Her voice trembled as she picked up the phone and asked for an outside line.

When she got the number Mrs. Keyes had given her, she heard a voice say coolly, “Oh, yes, Miss Niel, Miss Pries wishes to speak to you.”

Merry breathed into the phone, “Miss Pries? You mean Natalie Pries?”

The voice at the other end of the line laughed. “There’s another Miss Pries, dear?”

While she waited for Natalie to come on. Merry looked at the nurse bent over a chart book at the desk. She thought in dismay, “Does she think I arranged this?”

And then Natalie’s sultry sweetness came over the wire. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re very busy working at this horrid hour of the morning,” she said.

Merry said carefully, “I’m on duty, Miss Pries, and we aren’t allowed to have personal calls at the hospital.”

Natalie remarked impatiently, “Who pays any attention to rules, sweetie?”

“What is so urgent that you had to phone me here, Miss Pries?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s exactly urgent,” Natalie laughed, “but I want to have lunch with you, Merry. There’s something I want to tell you. And I think you should know this. I mean I really do.”

Merry tried hard not to be angry, but she was embarrassed that Natalie had phoned her at the hospital and that Mrs. Keyes could think that she had given her permission. She said, her voice as steady as she could make it, “I couldn’t; I’m on duty until five tonight.”

“All right, then we’ll make it dinner,” Natalie proposed.

Merry was desperate to get her off the phone. “Not tonight; I can’t make it. Tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ll be waiting for you outside the hospital.”

Merry hung up quickly. She was curious about what Natalie had to tell her. About Jeff, she thought, and dismissed the coldness that thumped against her. “I should have told her I wasn’t interested.” She drew in her breath, “But that would have been a lie.”

It angered her that she had to admit to the interest. She picked up her records for the day, and Mrs. Keyes said, the coldness clearer in her voice, “Please tell your friends, Miss Neil, that the hospital is not the place to conduct personal telephone conversations.”

Merry flushed and said, in quick defense, “Miss Pries isn’t a friend of mine. I’ve met her, that’s all. And I had no idea she was going to phone me here today.” She added, under her breath, “Or any day.”

The older nurse’s heavy eyebrows rose slightly. “Well, well,” she said, “what have we here? I’m sure most girls would be more than willing to admit to friendship with Natalie Pries.”

Merry shrugged, “Perhaps.”

She turned away from the desk, and the nurse said, “Oh, yes, Dr. Horne wants to see you before you leave the hospital.” Merry nodded and moved away, puzzled. She had had no contact with Dr. Horne since Pierson Webb’s operation. He was a surgeon and she was not a surgical nurse.

It was eleven before she was free to seek out Dr. Horne, but then he was in surgery.

When she finally saw him it was four. He smiled at her and motioned her to a seat. “Miss Neil,” he said, “I’ll come straight to the point. Pierson Webb phoned me last night and insisted that I persuade you to leave the hospital to become his private nurse.”

Merry shook her head. “I can’t, Dr. Horne. I told Mr. Webb when he asked me the day he left the hospital.” She spread her hands in a hopeless gesture. “I’m a hospital nurse, Dr. Horne. I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”

He sighed and smiled at her again, as he got to his feet. “I told him as much,” he said. “But if you know Pierson at all, you know he isn’t a man you can say no to. He doesn’t understand the meaning of the word.”

“I’m sorry,” Merry said lamely.

He said slowly, “You were in surgery when he was taken there.” Merry nodded, and he continued, “So you are aware of his condition.”

“Yes.” She felt distressed. “In spite of that, Dr. Horne, I can’t do it. He doesn’t really need me. There are all kinds of fine nurses he could hire. I don’t think he even really wants me, I mean not as me. I think it’s just because I…”

Dr. Horne smiled encouragingly at her. “Because you told him no,” he finished. “Of course you’re right. And you needn’t be sorry at all.”

As she left Dr. Horne’s office she thought, “But I am sorry for him. I’m sorrier for him than for any person I know. To have led such an empty life and then have to die.”

Tammy, passing by, gave her a nudge. “Hey,” she said, “you look horrible.” Her eyes crinkled in delight. “You just came out of Horne’s office. Did he make a pass at you or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped.

When she left the hospital the smog was still as thick and acrid as ever. She found herself wishing that Arch Heller’s white Jaguar would be waiting at the curb.

She rode home on the bus with all the other coughing, miserable people who cursed and berated the smog.

As Merry climbed the three flights of stairs, she heard the frantic ringing of the telephone.

Chapter Fifteen

She hurried inside and picked up the receiver impatiently.

The operator’s voice was calm and unhurried. “I have a long distance call for a Mrs. Harvey Miles. Is she there, please?”

Merry repeated, her voice puzzled, “Mrs. Harvey Miles?”

Just as she realized that the call was for Agnes, the receiver was snatched from her hand and Agnes, her voice brittle with anger, said into the telephone, “My name is not Miles. It’s McLeod. Do you understand? It’s McLeod!”

Merry stood to one side. “Mrs. Harvey Miles.” That meant Agnes had never divorced her husband. She turned to leave the room, having no desire to listen to the private conversation.

But Agnes’ voice had risen and carried into the kitchen. “Dr. Bronley,” she screamed, her voice shaking, “Ellen is my daughter. Mine! Not my mother’s. Mine. And I’ll say what’s to be done about her!”

Merry heard her drop the phone violently back on the cradle. At first there was silence and then Agnes’ wild, uncontrolled weeping filled the small apartment.

Merry rushed into the other room and knelt beside Agnes. “Don’t, don’t,” she begged. “Nothing can be so bad as all that.”

“A lot you know about it. But Ellen isn’t your daughter, is she? All you have to worry about is—is whether or not to go to a party. Or if—if one of us comes in late for dinner when you’re cooking. You don’t have any real worries.”

She glared up at Tammy who had come in and was standing against the door watching the scene with wide-eyed wonder. “And you,” she flung at her. “All you have to worry about is whether you can maneuver some guy into seeing you get a screen test, and what dress to wear to what party. And…and!” She burst into even wilder sobbing.

Tammy shrugged. “My, my, my, but she’s really putting one on, isn’t she?”

Merry shook her head at Tammy and mouthed a silent no.

Tammy said, “Whatever I’ve blundered into, I had nothing to do with.” She tried for lightness. “Honest injun.” Holding up one hand so Agnes could see her crossed fingers.

And then suddenly as it came through to her, her eyes widened even more and her mouth flew open. She said, staring at Agnes, “What do you mean ‘daughter’?” Her eyes fixed on Agnes’ bowed head. “That ‘friend’ you’ve been going to San Francisco to see,” she said, “is really your daughter. No wonder you’ve been so upset.” Her voice was suddenly warm with pity. “Agnes, I didn’t mean to be silly sounding. If I’d known…”

Agnes lifted her head, not bothering with the tears that streamed down her cheeks. “So now you know,” she said, her voice filled with pain and defeat. “Her name’s Ellen and she’s five years old, and my mother and one quack of a doctor are trying to make me believe there’s something wrong with her heart, and if she doesn’t have surgery to correct the condition, she’s going to die.”

Merry and Tammy glanced quickly at each other and then at Agnes. Tammy asked, her voice unusually gentle, “Is she Harvey’s child, Agnes?”

Agnes said roughly, “Of course she is. Who else was I married to?”

Merry asked slowly, “Does he know about this heart condition, Agnes? Being a doctor himself, he’d know more about something like that than you would. What does he say?”

Agnes’ shaky voice was tinged with defiance. “How can he know about her condition?” she said. “When he doesn’t even know she exists?”

Tammy asked, her tone incredulous, “He doesn’t know he has a daughter? That’s a little…unfair, isn’t it? I mean if he’s her father, doesn’t he have the right to know about it?”

Agnes’ trembling lips tightened. “No!” she said. “He never wanted her. He walked out on me when I was pregnant. He’s never given a damn about her. About anyone, except that stupid medical career of his!”

Tammy said carefully, “You’re tripping all over yourself, Agnes. How can he care about someone he doesn’t even know exists?”

Agnes said bitterly, “Even if he’d known I was going to have her, it wouldn’t have made any difference to him; he’d still have left me.”

Tammy said, “If I’d been in your place, he’d darn well have known about her. And he’d have provided for her, too.”

Agnes said coldly, “I had too much pride to beg him for anything. I’d rather have died than accept a single penny he offered me. I’d rather die now.”

Merry asked hesitantly, “Is it money, Agnes? Is that why you’re worried over the suggestion of surgery?”

Agnes shook her head. “I can take care of Ellen,” she said stonily. “But I don’t think she needs surgery, just because my mother and that quack of a doctor think that she…”

Merry broke in carefully, “Who’s her doctor, Agnes?”

“Dr. Paul Bronley,” she said defensively. “You don’t have to tell me he’s a specialist:. I know he is. But that doesn’t make him any less a quack!”

Merry shook her head. “You shouldn’t be afraid of surgery. You’re a nurse, Agnes. You know the wonders it’s accomplished. Heart surgery isn’t the gamble it was only a few years back. It…”

“Don’t go quoting statistics to me! I don’t care if the statistics say only one in a thousand die. If my Ellen is that one, then the statistics don’t mean anything!”

Tammy asked, “What if she needs surgery and doesn’t have it? What happens? Does she die, Agnes?”

Agnes’ face twisted. “Stay out of this,” she said. “No one asked you to interfere. Doctors aren’t always right, you know. They’ve been proven wrong a good many times.”

She brushed a hand shakily across her mouth. “Ellen needs sunshine and fresh air and…and the ocean. I’m going to take her on vacation right beside the ocean. That’s all she needs. You’ll see.” Her lips trembled. “I’m her mother. I guess I should know more what to do than strangers.”

She pushed her way through the room to the bedroom, slammed the door and flung herself crosswise on the bed.

The terror ebbed and flowed in her. She felt helpless and beaten.

She beat her two fists against the spread. Ellen. Ellen. Ellen. Don’t die. Oh, please don’t die and leave me!

* * * *

The lights came on early because of the smog. Traffic crawled along the street, and the sounds drifting in were faint and far away.

Tammy looked at Merry, her face resolute. She said softly, “I don’t know much of what this is all about, and you can say it’s none of my business, but it’s quite clear that Agnes is in no mood to think straight, and what she needs right now is someone who can think straight for her.”

Involuntarily Merry’s eyes turned towards the closed bedroom door and the unhappy and afraid woman who was behind it.

She wet her lips and looked again at Tammy. “Harvey Miles?”

Tammy nodded, unflinching. She said gently, “This is right, Merry. I know it’s right. If a decision on whether Agnes’ daughter lives or dies has to be made, and Agnes isn’t able to make it, then I think the child’s father should know what’s going on.” She shrugged and said wryly, “I don’t know why I’m bothering.”

Merry said slowly, “You’re right. He should know. After all, he is Ellen’s father,” as if convincing herself that she wasn’t betraying a trust.

Tammy went to get her coat. Merry asked, “Now?”

“There’s no time for waiting,” Tammy said. “I’ll phone from a pay booth,” giving a quick glance at the closed bedroom door.

Merry paced the floor, making no attempt to break into Agnes’ wanted privacy. She walked to the window to look at the eerie greenish darkness lit by the yellow glare of the fog lights as the cars moved slowly along the street.

Pity welled up in her. But pity was a nothingness, she thought bitterly. It was something you felt but could not project. There were no words, no words at all. Tears fell steadily and silently down her cheeks. Love hurt, she thought. And no matter what garment it wore, it brought pain, and pain brought fear.

She wiped at the tears and still they came. She wondered suddenly if she were weeping as much for Agnes as she was for herself.

* * * *

Hollywood is a city of fairy like splendor, of clouds, and sunshine and smog. Of hopes lifted up, and hearts torn down, of death and despair, of joy and success. It is Every Town.

Hours later Merry Neil, awakening slowly to a wealth of sunlight that flooded the bedroom, felt her heart warm and spread out.

She allowed the alarm to ring a few minutes before she pushed down the stem.

Tammy stirred in the double bed beside her, and snuggled farther beneath the blanket. “Ummm,” she said, “this is too nice to leave. It can’t be morning.”

“A sunshiny morning,” Merry said cheerfully. “Open your eyes and take a look.”

Tammy opened first one eye and then the other. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, now, you’re right!” She jumped lightly to her feet. “I love sunshine. And California. And people. Especially people.” She turned to grin at Merry. “The kind of people who can help me, that is.”

And then remembering, she turned to Agnes. Abruptly the laughter drained from her face.

Agnes said sharply, “You don’t have to go around long-faced because of me. Stop it!”

Tammy, reverting to her usual flippant self, said airily, “Anytime. Anytime.”

She remembered last night. She’d phoned Harvey Miles, then met him for coffee. As she’d told Merry later, he had practically wept when he learned he was a father.

She’d told Merry that she thought Agnes was wrong. “A person can make a mistake,” she’d said, “but does that mean he has to live with it for the rest of his life? That’s hardly fair.”

Merry, dressing, was remembering, too. She could understand Agnes’s attitude towards Harvey better than Tammy could, because she’d been there. She knew how it felt, and Tammy didn’t. Pain left you afraid to reach out, afraid to show yourself. It left you vulnerable.

She finished dressing first and hurried into the kitchen to put on the coffee and pour the orange juice. Breakfast was always a disordered affair. This morning it was more so. Tammy doodled until she could only gulp her juice and half finish her coffee, and Agnes sat at the table and took all of her time sipping at one cup of coffee which she never did finish.

She was very careful to keep all conversation away from what she had revealed last night. It was as if she were saying, “I talked when I shouldn’t have. I want you to forget it.”

Merry thought, with a little sigh, that it couldn’t be forgotten. Because Harvey Miles knew. She licked her lips and hurried ahead, boarding the bus first. She felt a sense of having betrayed. Her hands locked tightly in her lap.

The smell of citrus blossoms was sweet in the air as she got off the bus and walked the block to the hospital. She was anxious to get into uniform. This was her work, her life, her refuge.

* * * *

When she walked down the hospital steps at five and saw the slender, dark-haired girl in huge sunglasses waiting behind the wheel of the flamboyant scarlet car, she was taken aback. She had truly forgotten the promise she’d made Natalie Pries.

Natalie indicated the seat next to her. “Hop in, sweetie.”

She waved a tanned hand at the sunglasses. “I’m not really trying to avoid being recognized; the glasses are kind of a status symbol, you know? I love being recognized. I think I’d die if no one recognized me.”

Merry got in the car and drew the door closed. She said, “I forgot I said we’d have dinner, Natalie. I’m sorry.”

Natalie turned to stare at her. “Sweetie,” she said, “you certainly are honest, aren’t you? But that’s okay. I’m not going to create a scene about it or anything.”

“Let’s make it just coffee,” Merry said. “I didn’t tell Tammy I wouldn’t be home. She’s doing the cooking this week, and she’ll cook extra for me and she’ll wait dinner.”

Natalie said, with sudden wistfulness, “It sounds like fun, you know? Cooking and everything like that.” She sighed. “Okay, coffee.”

Merry turned to smile at her. “I know a place,” she said, “but they don’t serve champagne.”

Natalie laughed in childish delight. She said, “You remembered. Oh, gosh, don’t let it ever get out. About the milk, I mean.”

“No,” Merry said.

Later, when they sat across a booth from one another and sipped coffee, Merry waited for the other girl to say what it was she wanted her to know.

But Natalie seemed in no hurry. She chattered aimlessly about Hollywood and dropped names one after another. She talked about her earlier life and the drugstore where she’d been working when Pierson Webb had discovered her.

“It was one of those crazy little drugstores where they don’t sell anything except drugs. I mean, it wasn’t one of those big elaborate drugstores at all. And who’d expect someone like Pierson to wander in there. I mean it was like fate, wasn’t it?”

She swirled her coffee around in her cup, staring down at it. She laughed suddenly. “When I told them at home about going the next day for a screen test, my pop, he was drunk at the time, offered to beat me black and blue for telling a bare-faced lie.”

She took a gulp of the coffee, made a face and set the cup down. “Cold,” she said. She laughed. “But when Pop found out it wasn’t a lie and all the money started coming in, and I started being someone, why he was different.” She looked down at her hands, slender and pink-tipped, and delicately tanned. “Pop always liked to drink,” she told Merry, “and now he drinks the best. You’d think he’d never tasted anything but the best, to hear him tell it now.”

She frowned at Merry’s look. “I don’t mind,” she said quickly. “It could have been worse. I mean, Pop really did like me, I mean even before the money started coming in, I was important to him.”

Merry felt pity begin in her throat. She said gently, “Of course you were.”

Natalie said slowly, “I’m not sure I like the way you said that. You know? I mean, if you’re thinking of being sorry for me, don’t. I’ve got everything. Everything.”

She turned her hands around on the table. “I’ve got my next husband picked out,” she said. “I’ve even picked out the ring.”

Merry suddenly felt cold. She forced herself to look at Natalie and ask calmly, “Why do you keep marrying them, Natalie?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Natalie giggled, seeming to regain her good humor, “anything else is immoral and against the law.”

Merry laughed in spite of herself. “I didn’t mean that.”

Natalie watched Merry’s face. She said, “This one is going to be for keeps. This is the absolute end. We both feel it. No more anythings. I may even decide to have a baby.” She shook her head. “Can you imagine me with a baby?”

Merry said, with careful lightness, “Your liking for milk will come in handy if you’re going to have a baby.”

“Oh, sweetie, I didn’t say I was going to. I said maybe I might. Of course if that’s what Jeffie wants I’ll go along with him. I mean I’ve really got this thing for him. A big, big, thing.”

Merry started to get up. She said, “That’s what you wanted to tell me, wasn’t it, Natalie? That you’re going to marry Jeff Morrow?”

“Well, sweetie, like I said, if things were different, I could like you quite a lot. And I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else and be hurt. I mean, I don’t really want you to be hurt at all.”

Merry said stiffly, “Don’t worry about me, Natalie. I was hurt once, a long time ago, and I’m inoculated against it. Besides, there was never anything serious between me and Jeff Morrow.”

“Well, sweetie,” Natalie told her, “I’m really glad. I mean, for your sake.”

“Liar,” she told herself as she climbed the stairs to the apartment. “Liar. Liar. How much pain did you have to have before you were inoculated against it? How much? How much?”

When she walked into the apartment, Harvey Miles was there.

Chapter Sixteen

Agnes turned a tortured face towards Merry and said, her voice broken, “You had no right…no right.”

Harvey didn’t look around. He suddenly looked much taller than he really was. He took Agnes by the shoulders, forced her to sit down and then stood over her, his posture almost menacing.

“You’re going to listen to what I have to tell you,” he said. “Don’t try and get out of that chair, and don’t interrupt me.”

Tammy came in, closing the door behind her. Still Harvey didn’t turn around, didn’t acknowledge that anyone was in the room but Agnes and himself.

“I made it a point to talk to Dr. Bronley,” he said, his voice clipped and measured as if he were talking to an uncooperative patient. “He told me Ellen’s is definitely a congenital malformation of the heart. Technically speaking, there is pronounced stenosis of the pulmonary artery where it leaves the right ventricle, and also displacement of the aorta towards the right, defect at a high point in the cardiac septum and hypertrophy of the right side of the heart. As a result insufficient blood reaches the lungs and the right ventricle pumps part of the venous blood through the defective part of the septum into the aorra instead of into the lungs.”

Agnes said scornfully, “You sound so big, doctor. What are you? A resident, hardly even a working doctor!”

Only a faint reddening of his face told Merry Harvey had heard her.

“Ellen would never have lived until now except that she has an opening into the septum as well as the stenosis in the pulmonary artery. In plain layman’s language, Agnes, our little girl is going to die unless something is done immediately.”

“Stop it! Stop it! She’s not ‘our’ little girl,” she cried, choking on the words. “She’s mine. You walked out on her. And now you think you can walk back into my life, just like that, and take over as if you belonged. Well, you can’t. Ellen’s mine! Let us alone!”

Harvey’s face was suddenly ruthless. “If you force me,” he said, “I’ll go into court, as Ellen’s father, and get a court order to compel you to agree to that operation. I don’t care what you think of me. Ellen is the one to consider now. Ellen’s life.”

He began to shake her. “She’s going to die,” he said. “Can’t you get that through your head? Unless you open your mind and see what’s happening, she’s going to die. Do you want that?” He shook her until her teeth chattered. “Is that what you want?”

She stopped fighting all at once, and went limp. Her mouth worked frantically in her tortured face. “I don’t want her to die. Oh, God, I don’t want her to die. She’s all I have!”

Harvey told her gently, “We’ll see that she lives.”

Merry saw his hand touch Agnes’ shoulder for a brief second in a comforting gesture, before Agnes seemed to realize. Then she pulled herself free, aloof and out of reach. She turned and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and leaned trembling against it.

Tears came silently down her cheeks. She wasn’t ready to admit it, but there was almost a feeling of relief in her: she was almost grateful to Harvey for taking the decision out of her hands.

She wiped her eyes as Harvey’s voice rang out behind the door. “I’m going to make the arrangements, Agnes, with you or without you. Bronley said the sooner surgery could be arranged, the better.”

Agnes opened the door and came out. She stood, small and slender and white-faced, looking up at him. “He’s different,” she thought. “He looks like a doctor. He looks like a man. Not like that frightened boy who turned and ran when the going got tough.”

She drew an unsteady breath. But she would not let him get close to her again. Never. She nodded. “Make the arrangements and…let me know.” It was incredible, she thought, how terribly tired she was suddenly. She wiped a hand vaguely across her face. She asked, “Have you seen Ellen?”

He shook his head and she told him her mother’s address, repeating it twice for him. “Go see her, my mother will be delighted.”

“And Ellen?” he asked.

She looked at him, her lips quivering, and her voice broke again. “Be gentle with her,” she said. “Ellen doesn’t know you exist.”

He looked at her with sudden gentleness, and for a very brief moment, it was as if the years between had not occurred, as if they were once again the young man and the girl so madly, unheedingly in love with one another.

But then Agnes jerked her head to one side, breaking the spell. Too many years had passed between them; too many unpleasant things had happened.

Harvey backed towards the door. “Thanks,” he said, “for allowing me to see Ellen.”

Her eyebrows raised in mockery. With the hardness she’d acquired through the years she replied, “Don’t thank me. Not for being forced. As you…mentioned…you are Ellen’s father.” She wiped a hand along one side of her face. “I lost. You won.” She didn’t look at either Tammy or Merry.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Agnes.”

She shrugged. “Should I feel differently?”

She turned her face away and didn’t look at him again. He let himself out of the apartment and Merry heard the quick racing of his footsteps going down the stairs.

Agnes turned then to look, first at Merry, then at Tammy. “What a girl needs these days,” she said, “are friends.”

Merry said, “Friends are for helping, Agnes.”

Agnes gave a low, harsh laugh. “Friends,” she said, “are for snooping and breaking promises and putting their noses in places where they have no right to put them.”

She turned and strode out of the apartment, letting the door slam behind her. Outside, she felt limp, spent, as if she had run too long, too fast, and now the reaction had set in; she was only tired.

* * * *

Tammy was impatient with Merry, and she let the impatience show. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, “I feel like shaking you. We did the right thing, and if Agnes would admit it, she’d say she was glad, because now it’s taken out of her hands. The decision isn’t hers alone to make.”

Merry nodded. “Still,” she said, “it was betrayal.”

Tammy shrugged. “White isn’t always white,” she said. “And black isn’t always black. Sometimes there’s a need for betrayal. Well, that’s the end of that lecture. What do we eat? And when?”

Merry shook her head. “I’ll have to look first. I’m really not too hungry.”

“Neither am I,” Tammy said. “All I need is something to fill the gap.”

“A sandwich and coffee?” Merry asked.

“Suits me.”

As Merry washed lettuce and opened a package of meat to make sandwiches she asked worriedly, “I wonder where Agnes went.”

Tammy said cheerfully, “To walk it off. She’ll be back.” She got out bread and began spreading the slices with salad dressing. “I’ve got news,” she said. “Maybe I’m selfish to be glad about it, since Agnes…” She shrugged. “Oh, the heck with it, why be hypocritical? I matter to me more than anybody.”

“Don’t be so modest,” Merry said.

Tammy replaced the lid on the jar of salad dressing and licked the side of her finger. She said, “Pierson Webb wants to see me day after tomorrow. At his place. Arch told me tonight.”

Merry picked out three lettuce leaves and put them on two slices of bread. She said slowly, “Tammy, don’t trust him.”

“Who?” Tammy asked, pretending she’d misunderstood. “Arch, for heaven’s sake?”

Merry said, “You know I’m not talking about Arch Heller.”

Tammy laughed. “If I were going to warn someone against a guy, it wouldn’t be against an ugly old men like Pierson Webb.”

Merry decided to be light. She said, “I’ve heard they’re the most dangerous kind.”

“Not to me they aren’t,” Tammy said, matching her tone.

Merry finished the sandwiches, sliced them in half, and put them on the plates. She said, “Sometimes people have to pay a…high price for what they want.”

Tammy started to laugh. “Oh, no!” she said. “Merry Neil, I don’t believe it! You haven’t really fallen for that kind of gag, have you? You read too many articles about Hollywood.”

She carried the two plates into the other room. “Hey,” she said, when she came back into the kitchen, “you forgot the coffee.”

“I just put the water on.”

Tammy leaned against the cupboard. She said, “If anybody… I mean anybody…tried that proposition stuff on me, I’d punch him in the nose.”

Merry laughed and said solemnly, “Well, I should hope so.”

Tammy watched her pour the boiling water over the coffee in the two cups. She said, “You’ve got it all wrong, Merry. You get places by what you’ve got on the ball, not by what you give someone or what you promise.”

She ate the sandwich ravenously. “I might have two of these,” she said. There was a rumbling in her stomach that had little to do with what she had eaten. She thought, “Is that the truth I told Merry? Would I do that? If…if Pierson Webb offered me what I want, a screen test, a contract, and there were strings attached to it, what would I really do?”

She popped the last of the sandwich into her mouth and dusted her fingers. “Guess I’ll fix myself a second,” she said, hopping up from the chair. She looked at Merry, inquiringly.

Merry shook her head, “Not me.”

Tammy spread two more slices of bread with salad dressing, handling the knife so roughly that she spread her fingers as well as the bread.

“I’d punch him in the nose,” she told herself firmly. And felt much better.

When she went back in the other room, Agnes was there. She declined a sandwich but had a cup of coffee, sitting at the table with the other two girls. No one said anything; they sat staring down at the table, tense and silent.

Finally Agnes said, “Dammit, it’s done. Whether for good or for bad, it’s done. I’ve no doubt you both meant well, and maybe it’s for the best. However, let’s forget it.”

Merry let out a sigh of relief. She looked at Agnes’ tense, unhappy face, and wanted to say something comforting, but decided against it. Agnes would probably prefer that she said nothing.

* * * *

The next few days moved rapidly from one crisis to another. Agnes asked for, and received, a week’s absence from the hospital to be with Ellen.

The little girl’s operation had suddenly become an emergency.

Agnes seemed exceptionally calm now that the decision had been made. As she told Merry, “I’m still afraid, but Dr. Bronley and… Harvey, are right. I have to give Ellen this chance.” She drew in her breath raggedly. “It’s her only one. It’s been put off too long as it is. Dr. Bronley says that the sooner the operation is performed, the better Ellen’s chances will be.”

Her voice broke off suddenly and hung there, tortured, disembodied. “If she loses this chance,” she rasped, “it will be my fault. I’ll have killed her.”

Merry said, “Stop that! Why do you want to punish yourself?”

Harvey, who had come to drive Agnes up to San Francisco, said, “Besides, Ellen’s going to live. I’ve talked to Bronley. I’ve read case histories…”

Agnes flared out at him. “And how many died, Harvey? Or are you afraid to tell me the statistics on those who died?”

“Some of them died,” he said. “But most of them died before the techniques used today were perfected.”

Her voice was thin and tight. “You can stand there and be calm and talk about it because Ellen doesn’t mean anything to you.”

She was sorry after she’d said it, but the words could not be recalled.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She fumbled for her purse, picked it up, and hung her coat over one arm. “I guess we’re ready,” she said, not looking at him.

* * * *

The following day was Tammy’s day. Pierson Webb had put off the first meeting, saying only that he had more important use for his time on that particular night.

Tammy had stormed, angry and upset. She told Merry, “He’s a fraud. He’s ugly, inside and out. He never meant to see me. I know that now. I hate him. Hate him. Hate him!”

There was nothing for Merry to say, no words of comfort, because she believed Tammy was right. Pierson Webb was only toying with Tammy, holding the bait out and then drawing it back before she could reach it.

She was more surprised than Tammy when the summons came for Tammy to see Pierson that night.

Tammy rushed home from the hospital in a flurry of excitement. She refused anything to eat, saying that if she ate while she was so nervous, she’d probably burp in the great man’s face.

She discarded one dress after another, finally settling on a slim black sheath. “It has good lines,” she grinned, “and besides that, it makes my lines good…sexy, that is.”

The dress over one arm, she darted into the bedroom.

When she came out, ready to leave, Merry gasped. “Tammy,” she said, “you’ve overdone yourself. You’re really beautiful.”

“Of course I am,” Tammy said. But she was pleased.

She paraded up and down the small apartment restlessly. Pierson Webb had told her he’d send a car for her.

She turned suddenly to Merry and asked in shaken horror, “What if he doesn’t send the car? What if he was just putting me on?”

It had occurred to Merry also. She was relieved to see the Rolls Royce pull up in front of the apartment building and the uniformed chauffeur step out and walk towards them.

“Imagine me riding to work in a Rolls Royce!” Tammy breathed. She turned her large dark eyes to Merry. “Keep your fingers crossed for me.”

Merry nodded. “My toes, too.”

She watched from the window as Tammy stepped into the car. She couldn’t stop the feeling of foreboding growing in her stomach.

She turned from the window and was on her way to the kitchen when the telephone stopped her.

Natalie Pries’ sultry, sweet voice sounded agitated. “Sweetie,” she said when Merry answered, “there’s something you should know…”

Merry said coldly, “If it’s about Jeff Morrow, I don’t…”

Natalie cut her off. “It’s not about Jeff. It’s about your friend Tammy. It’s not a screen test she’s going to get from Pierson Webb. It’s going to be a joke. Mai Hinge is going to use it as an amusement piece in her column tomorrow. She’s the one who told me. I think it’s a shame that…”

Merry said, “He wouldn’t do a thing like that. Nobody would. What would he gain by deliberately humiliating Tammy?”

Natalie laughed. “Sweetie,” she said, “you don’t really know Pierson, do you? He and Mai Hinge are a lot alike. You cut into either of them, and they wouldn’t bleed blood. They’d bleed ice water.”

Chapter Seventeen

Agnes lay restlessly in the big bed, unable to sleep. Finally she got up and padded barefoot from bedroom to kitchen to living room to hall, being careful not to wake her mother.

Ellen’s operation was scheduled for eight o’clock the next morning. Fear had taken over her mind. Harvey had asked if she wanted him to stay, and she had curtly refused the offer.

A dozen times her eyes strayed towards the telephone. She wished she had the courage to pick up the phone and call his hotel. Ask him to come and sit with her, talk with her, comfort her. But she didn’t have that kind of courage.

“He’d like to think that you still feel romantic towards him,” she hammered at herself. “Is that what you want him to think?”

She put both hands over her face and whimpered, stifling the sound. “I don’t care what anyone thinks. I only want Ellen to be well!”

She turned her head as her mother, an old bathrobe wrapped around her portly figure, came down the stairs.

She walked over and put one hand comfortingly on her daughter’s shoulder. “I’ll make us some coffee,” she said. “And we’ll talk or we’ll be silent. I only want you to know I’m here, dear.”

With a little cry Agnes turned, like a child, and buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.

* * * *

“The bastard!” Arch said, although Merry had never heard him swear before. He said it again, liking the sound of the word.

Beverly Hills was just ahead of them, the subdued lights of the houses nestled luxuriously in the hills and the soundless noise that marked the “good address” section of the city.

Arch turned to look at her, and Merry heard the frown in his voice. “I know what he’s like,” he said, “but this!”

Merry cradled her purse in her lap. “Why?” she thought. “Why does he have to humiliate Tammy? Because she yearns for what he can give? Because I refused what he asked of me?”

There was a numbness in the pit of her stomach. “Or because he’s dying and he knows it and wants to hurt anyone within his striking power?”

The car began to climb the hill. Merry saw the tenseness with which Arch gripped the wheel. She wondered, “Does Arch love her?”

She had phoned him as soon as Natalie hung up. She had been on the point of tears, and he hadn’t hesitated. “I’ve got one more number to do,” he’d said, “and then I’m free until eleven. Hang tight. I’ll be there as soon as I can make it.”

Merry had hung tight. She’d changed her dress and combed her hair a dozen times just to keep her hands busy and her mind from thinking.

She said, “Maybe Natalie didn’t really know.”

Arch shook his head and wheeled the car much too quickly around a curve. “Natalie Pries,” he informed Merry, “would know.” He stared straight ahead. “Natalie’s a good kid,” he said. “It’s her image that’s out of step.”

“Natalie told me that her image is her.”

“That’s too bad,” Arch said. He swung the car in through the unlocked gates of the big house.

“What shall we do now?” he said, when he’d brought the car up the drive. “Beard the lion in his den and give him a good going over?”

He shook his head. He looked tired, suddenly, Merry thought, and older. “I’m too much of a coward for that,” he said. “He’s an old man, and besides, he gave me my first break.”

Merry said gently, “What good would it do, Arch? Would it retract Tammy’s humiliation? Would it take it away?”

“No,” Arch said. “Still.…”

“Maybe she’ll be able to laugh it off,” Merry said.

“Or cry it off,” Arch said.

They looked at each other. The trouble, Merry thought, was that Tammy could not do either.

“Well,” Arch said, “do or die. We can’t just sit here.”

They had just gotten out of the car when the big front door opened and light flooded the area. Tammy walked towards them, picking her steps carefully, and not looking back.

Merry saw Pierson Webb framed in the doorway behind her. He looked thinner and very sick. She was shocked, but tried not to show it.

He lifted his eyebrows sardonically. “Let me guess,” he sneered. “Natalie Pries got through to you. I’ve told that doll that if she doesn’t watch out, she’s going to get too soft for the game, and then it’ll be necks.” He drew one hand across his throat. “Hers.”

Arch ignored him. He looked at Tammy. “What happened here?”

Pierson Webb gave a taunting laugh. “The knight on the white charger. Aren’t you a bit on the beefy side for that role, Arch?”

Arch looked at Tammy. She shrugged and said, stiff with disappointment, “He talked to me like a father. He said I should go to drama school and learn how to be an actress. He told me beauty alone can’t get a girl by in Hollywood these days, and the sooner I knew that truth, the better off I’d be.”

She marched to the car and got in. “Are you taking me home?”

Arch said, “It’s a good idea,” and slid in on the other side.

Merry was looking at Pierson Webb. His mouth was contorted into a sneer. “You were expecting a different approach, doll?”

He’d backed down. Why? Because he wasn’t really as heartless as he chose to appear? Mai Hinge, anger in every line of her thin, hard face, suddenly brushed past him. Or had Mai Hinge been his target all along?

Mai glared at Merry. “I have an idea you’re behind this letdown, dearie.” Her voice tightened. “But don’t think you’re always on the winning side, doll. Natalie Pries is going to announce her engagement to Jeff Morrow sometime this week,” she said in a voice intended only for Merry. “So what are you going to be left with? The tail end of an affair. You’re a nobody in this town, and who wants to saddle himself with a nobody?”

Merry got into the car, Mai’s low, taunting laughter ringing in her ears.

Glimpsing Mai, Tammy said, “Where did she come from?”

“Is hell a swear word?” Arch asked, reverting to his usual self.

Tammy laughed, although her face remained cold and set. “By the way,” she said, “just what were you and Merry doing here?”

Merry glanced at Arch. She said, “We came after you.”

Tammy’s dark brows lifted in incredulity. “Oh, no!” she said, “not you, Arch! You weren’t thinking that I…that we…” she burst out laughing. “Why, I was as safe as if I’d been in…in a monastery!”

Her lovely face hardened suddenly. “No screen test,” she said. “There never was meant to be any. All he wanted to do was to give me a lecture on the right way to get ahead in the movie industry today!”

Arch said, “It could have been a great deal worse. What he told you makes sense. You ought to give it some thought.”

Tammy put her hands over her ears like a sullen child. “I won’t listen,” she said.

Over her head Merry and Arch looked at each other in understanding and relief. They both knew how much worse it could have been. They also knew that they’d never let Tammy know.

* * * *

At seven-thirty Agnes stood beside her daughter’s bed as she was readied for surgery. On the other side of the child’s bed stood Harvey Miles.

Agnes’ mother waited in the hall. “I can see Ellen later,” she had said. “These last few minutes belong to Ellen’s mother and father.”

Agnes had quickly turned her face away, but standing now and looking down at her daughter, she thought with sudden panic, “I don’t want to be bitter; I don’t want to hate. If I hate, maybe God won’t…answer my prayers.”

Ellen turned her small face and looked imploringly up at Agnes. Agnes said softly, “I’ll be here when you come back, sweetheart. And it isn’t going to hurt, I promise. And when it’s over you’ll be…well.”

She squeezed the thin hand as Ellen turned toward Harvey. The bluish lips opened and she said in a thin whisper, “Daddy?”

Harvey nodded at her. “Me too,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

Agnes watched his head bent over the child’s bed. The word “daddy” was still painful and shy in Ellen’s lips, but she seemed to find delight in saying it.

Fingers of pain pressed Agnes’ head. What about afterwards? she thought. What about when it’s over? She tightened her lips. She wouldn’t think of afterwards. There would be time enough for that later. If… If… If. Everything, the whole world, hinged on that one word.

At five to eight Ellen was wheeled into surgery, and for the three people who loved her, long, tense hours lay ahead.

* * * *

At fifteen minutes to eight, Merry, later than usual, stepped off the bus and hurried up the street to the hospital. She was unprepared for the assault of the reporters who surrounded her as she started up the steps of the hospital.

A brassy-voiced woman reporter, handling her cigarette like a pointer, placed herself directly in front of Merry and drawled, “Don’t give us that same old jazz you tried the other time, dearie. Pierson Webb’s back in the hospital. Why? It isn’t going to kill you to give us a break.”

Merry pushed past her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said over her shoulder. “I don’t even know Mr. Webb’s in the hospital.”

She pushed open the glass doors only to be confronted by the balding reporter with the cigar. “Listen, sister,” he said in his complaining voice, “open up. It doesn’t have to be an exclusive. Just give me the dope.”

Merry snapped, “Get out of my way you…you vulture!”

“Now look, baby,” he whined, “this is no way to act. People in this town have got to keep good relations with the press. They…”

“Get out of my way!”

He looked at her set face and shrugged. He said, “I don’t dig you nurses. I don’t dig you at all.” But he got out of her way.

* * * *

Merry was frowning as she took the elevator up to the fifth floor. The nurse at the desk looked up at her approach. “You have a new patient,” she said. “He asked for you the minute he was brought in, I’ve heard.”

Merry said, “Pierson Webb?”

The other nurse nodded. She handed Merry his chart, and Merry glanced at it as she walked slowly down the wide, gleaming corridor to the door behind which he lay.

His chart said he’d been brought in at four that morning, in pain, and that he’d been put under sedation. The attending doctor—Horne.

Dr. Horne came out of the room just as Merry arrived. He closed the door behind him, his face grim.

“He’s your case exclusively,” he said. “He asked for you. I hope you won’t mind. He’s dying.”

“I don’t mind,” Merry said. She looked past him to the closed door. “Does he…know?”

Dr. Horne surprised her by nodding. “He wanted the truth,” he said, “and this time I gave it to him. He’s no fool. He’d have known a lie for what it was.” He sighed, and brushed at his thinning hair. “Good luck,” he said.

* * * *

Pierson Webb turned his head on the pillow when she came in. “Surprise, doll,” he said, his voice weak but taunting. “You didn’t expect to see me here this morning, did you?”

Merry laughed, careful to hide her pity. She shook her head. “Can’t say as I did,” she said as she approached his bed.

He moved his head fretfully. “Don’t take my temperature and all of that jazz,” he said. “That’s already been done too many times as it is.

“That friend of yours,” he said, “I gave her good advice.”

Merry nodded. She said, “I know.”

“She won’t take it,” he said. “They never take advice.”

Merry didn’t answer, but she was afraid he was right about Tammy.

Suddenly he said, in a low, tired voice, “A man wastes so damn much of his life.” He drew a deep breath. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t throw your life away like I did mine, so you end up with nothing, and you die with nothing.”

Merry aimed a careful, professional smile on him. “Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself. There’s nothing that wrong with you. We’ll have you out of here in a few days. We need the space for sick people.”

He turned his face to the wall. “Don’t give me that Pollyanna talk,” he said. “I know the score. I’m going to die, and I’m damn scared. I don’t know if there’s a God or not. I used to believe in a God, but that was too long ago to remember. Now I don’t want to know.”

Merry was torn with pity, but she held it in check. The chart indicated a sedative at eight. She looked at her watch and went to prepare the needle.

At one o’clock the call came from Agnes. Mrs. Keyes, on duty at the desk, wasn’t the cold, impatient woman she had been when Natalie Pries had phoned.

She listened openly as Merry talked. The whole hospital knew that Agnes’ daughter was being operated on that morning.

Agnes’ voice was clouded with tears and for a moment, Merry tensed with fear. Then Agnes said distinctly, “Ellen’s going to live; she’s going to be well. The doctor said maybe in a week she can even climb stairs.” She started to cry, and she said, “I’m going to hang up. There’s absolutely no sense in paying toll charges in order to weep over the telephone.”

“Agnes,” Merry said, close to tears herself, “oh, Agnes, I’m so happy for you!”

Mrs. Keyes smiled at Merry. She said, “From the sound of your tears, I’d say the operation was a success.”

Merry nodded, reaching up to wipe at her eyes. “She’s going to live, Agnes said, and she’s going to be well…climb stairs and everything.”

Mrs. Keyes said quietly, “Thank God,” and went back to her work. Merry went to find Tammy.

* * * *

At two o’clock, the door of Pierson Webb’s room opened and a small, stout woman and a tall, blonde young man pushed their way inside.

She got up from her chair and said in her sternest voice, “I’m sorry but Mr. Webb isn’t to have visitors. You must have seen the sign on the door.”

The woman said calmly, “I’m not a visitor; I’m Pete’s wife.”

The man on the bed swung his face from the wall to the woman. “Dorothy!” he said. “You did come.”

She pulled forward a chair and sat down in it, spreading her skirt carefully. “Of course I came,” she said. “I told you once that if you ever needed me, I’d come. Did you think I’d break that promise?”

Merry saw the first tears she’d ever seen Pierson Webb shed appear in his eyes. He clung to the woman’s hand. “Why does it always have to be too late?” he asked. “I’m going to die.”

“Hush,” she said. “Hush that kind of talk.”

He said, “Why didn’t you make me stay?”

Pierson turned to look up at the blonde man still standing beside the bed.

“Hello… Father,” he said, as if the word were unfamiliar on his lips.

Pierson said, “You’ve grown up too fast. Why couldn’t you have waited?”

The woman said softly, “Ted’s twenty-five, Pete. He’s through college and he’s got his own law office. You can be proud of him.”

“Why is it always too late?” Pierson asked again. His eyes sought the woman’s. “Don’t leave me,” he said.

“I won’t leave you, Pete,” Dorothy promised, and Merry tiptoed quietly out of the room, pulled the door closed behind her, and straightened the “No Visitors” sign hung on the knob.

Chapter Eighteen

It was the day Pierson Webb was to leave the hospital, a lush, beautiful day, with a brilliant California sun.

Pierson was going home to die. He’d been in the hospital four days this time. The reporters, after the first morning, had stayed clear.

Merry, walking from his room toward the elevators, was surprised to see Mai Hinge round the corner.

The columnist’s thin face was lined with weariness and she puffed furiously on a cigarette.

Her dark eyes raked Merry. She said, “Well, if it isn’t Miss Sweetness and Light.” Her eyes moved past Merry’s face to Pierson Webb’s door.

She said, “I see I’m still being kept on the outside.”

Merry said softly, “Mr. Webb is not seeing anyone except his immediate family. He’s leaving the hospital this morning. His wife and son are in the room with him.”

Mai laughed bitterly. “His wife,” she said. “Oh, yes, she’d be here. Pierson’s got plenty of money, you know. She’d be on hand for the kill.”

Merry wanted to say, “The money doesn’t matter to her. She’d get that in any event. She cares for him. She really cares.” But she held back the words. Mai would only mock them.

Mai sighed. “Living he had no time for me, and dying he still has no time for me.” She flipped the cigarette across the polished floor. “The story of my life.”

Her lips twisted and she said, suddenly vicious, “Wipe that smug smile off your face, sweetie. You’re not winning in the game of love either. But then maybe you’ll be satisfied with an affair. Has Jeff asked you?” Her lips formed a sneer and she said softly, “He wouldn’t have to ask you, would he? You’re the offering sort, aren’t you, sweetie?”

Merry said slowly, “I feel sorry for you.”

Without warning, Mai’s hand lashed forward into a stinging blow across Merry’s face. “I don’t allow anyone to feel sorry for me. Not anyone!” And she whirled swiftly and went down the hall towards the stairs, disregarding the elevator.

Ted Webb, who had just left his father’s room, asked, “What was that all about?”

Merry said quietly, one hand held to her burning cheek, “That was for heartbreak.”

He lifted one blonde brow but said nothing, and turned his head to watch Tammy approach from the nursing station.

Merry felt a charge in the air, a charge she’d felt from the first moment Tammy and Ted had met, four days before.

She pushed the down button on the elevator, and as she waited, she heard Ted Webb say, “He’s my father and he’s dying and I can’t feel anything.”

And Tammy’s low, comforting voice, “You never knew him.”

“Still I should be able to feel something,” he said. “My mother…”

“He’s her husband,” Tammy said, in a very un-Tammy-like voice.

Merry heard the catch come suddenly in Ted Webb’s throat. “Would you love a man like that, always and forever?”

Tammy said softly, “I think I could…if he were the right man.”

Ted said, “Have coffee with me? Something? Talk to me?”

“Yes,” Tammy said. “Whenever you say, whatever you say.”

The elevator came and Merry stepped into it. She felt strangely lost and alone.

The feeling deepened when she sat alone that night in the apartment. Ted had phoned and Tammy had gone out with him.

She’d looked softer, Merry thought, and more lovely than ever.

She’d looked at Merry, her eyes luminous. “Sometimes,” she’d said, “you wait and wait for something and it never comes to you and then again sometimes…” she smiled dreamily. “I’m going to marry him,” she said.

“He’s asked you?” Merry said.

“No,” Tammy shook her head. “But he will. Maybe it will be a month…six months. He has to get over his father. But he’ll ask me.”

Merry couldn’t resist asking, “What about the big movie star bit?”

“What movie star bit?” Tammy grinned at her.

Merry had become more serious. “What about Arch?”

Tammy had said, “I never said once that I loved him.”

It was true, Tammy thought, running down the steps to meet Ted. “Maybe I should feel sorry for Arch,” she told herself. But she couldn’t feel sorry for anyone. “I’m selfish,” she thought. “I’ll have to change. Maybe I will change. I don’t know.”

She climbed into the car that was waiting for her. She smiled at the man who sat behind the wheel.

He didn’t have to talk to her or flatter her. He didn’t have to do anything, except to be there. She was content just to be with him. And she’d never felt like that with any man before. Always before a man had been there to be used.

* * * *

Merry stared out the window. The apartment was much too silent. She willed the telephone to ring. It didn’t oblige.

“And whom do I want to phone me?” she asked herself jeeringly. “Jeff?” He’d phoned twice in the past four days and both times she’d pleaded another engagement.

“I do not want him to phone me,” she told herself emphatically. “I wouldn’t see him if he did phone. I want more than Jeff Morrow has to offer.”

She turned her back to the window and did not see the white sports car that slowed to a stop in front of the building, or the stocky figure in sunglasses who jumped lightly from the car and ran toward the apartment.

She was startled when the buzzer sounded. “Arch,” the voice said, when she asked who was there.

Walking slowly she unlatched the door and let him in. She said carefully, “Tammy isn’t here.”

“I know she isn’t,” he said calmly. “I came to take you for a ride. I might even buy you an orange juice if you behave.”

Merry was so grateful to him for coming she could have cried. “Wait until I get a sweater.”

Arch drove slowly and they talked little. “It’s a nice night for driving,” he said.

Merry, her head resting against the car seat, nodded. “Swell.”

He half turned toward her and said, “Listen, if you’re worrying about me and Tammy, don’t. There was never anything there. I always knew exactly where I stood with Tammy.” He took the car around a curve. “I hope this guy’s for her,” he said. “I’d hate it if she had her dreams turned inside out.”

Merry thought, “I hope he’s for her, too.”

There was silence again for a few miles and then Arch wheeled the car into, the parking lot of a drive-in. “I feel like a hamburger along with that orange juice,” he said.

Merry grinned. “To heck with the Chamber of Commerce,” she said. “I feel like coffee with that hamburger.”

They ate and drank in companionable silence. Finally Arch said, “I’ve been thinking for a long time that maybe I’d go back to West Virginia for a while. I need to find myself. I’m a hill boy at heart. I guess I’ll always be.” He gazed off into the distance. “I might even find myself a wife and settle down there,” he said slowly. “I don’t intend to live my life the way old Pierson has lived his, with nothing to show for it.”

Merry finished her coffee. A breeze blew in from the ocean as they drove back.

When he pulled up in front of the apartment building, Merry turned to him impulsively. “Find the right one, Arch.”

“I’ll do that,” he said solemnly. “I’ll pick very carefully.”

“I like your singing,” Merry said. “I really do, Arch. It…it makes me want to cry.”

“Well, now,” Arch said lightly, “I’ve made it. I can’t go any higher than that.” He leaned toward her, and his face became serious. “If I were you,” he said softly, “I’d do something about that great big ache you’re carrying around, baby.”

Merry didn’t deny it was there. She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Goodnight, Arch.”

“That sure wasn’t a kiss of passion,” he said.

Merry saw that he waited until she was inside the apartment before the car pulled away from the curb.

When she went upstairs, Agnes was back. She was in the kitchen making coffee.

She hugged Agnes, saying, “This can be the loneliest place where you’re the only one in the apartment.”

Agnes said, “Tammy?”

Merry threw off her sweater. “Tammy has found love. His name’s Ted. He’s a lawyer. Pierson Webb’s son.”

“For real love?” Agnes asked, her eyes searching Merry’s face.

Merry said softly, “Seems like.” She looked at the water Agnes had boiling. “Enough for two?”

“I’ll fill it up,” Agnes said. She filled the coffee pot and put it back on the stove.

Merry asked, “Ellen?”

Agnes’ face went soft. She said, “I left her with Mother while I came back to find us a place. I want Ellen with me, and Mother doesn’t seem to mind moving.”

Merry decided that her next question must have been in her eyes, because Agnes said abruptly, “Harvey has nothing to do with it.”

She got down another cup and poured the coffee. She said, “Don’t ask me about Harvey, Merry, because I don’t know. Ellen is quite fond of him, and as they say, a lot of water has gone over the dam. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not ready to think about it yet.”

They drank their coffee in silence.

Agnes, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window at the city spread below her, thought, “What if Harvey asks to come back? What will I say? What do I want to say?”

She gave a sigh. Love once gone, she thought, didn’t come back easily. She supposed that what she did would depend on what she thought best for Ellen.

Merry had her own thoughts. “Maybe,” she thought, “I’ll write Mother in the morning. Tell her I’m coming home for a visit.” She’d been away a long time. Too long. A chill of loneliness went through her.

* * * *

It was one of those days at the hospital when everything runs smoothly and automatically. No crises, no little emergencies. The hours seemed to move as slowly as ants climbing a hill. And by the time five o’clock came, Merry found herself with a headache.

She went hurrying down the steps, in a rush to catch the bus. She didn’t notice the car edging its way slowly along the curb, just keeping up with her.

She turned her head sharply when Jeff Morrow’s voice called out to her, “Get in the car. And don’t argue with me, unless you want to create a scene. I’m not the kind of man who appreciates being given the cold shoulder without knowing the reason for it.”

When Merry hesitated he said firmly, “Either you get in the car willingly, or I get out and see that you get in, if I have to pick you up and carry you.”

Merry said as she settled herself on the seat next to him, “I believe you really would.”

“I really would.” He swung the car out from the curb.

Merry said coldly, “You’re turning the wrong way. In case you’ve forgotten, my street is in the other direction.”

“I’m not taking you home,” he said. “I’ve got a few things I want to settle with you first.”

He turned the car down a residential street. “Like, for instance, why have you been avoiding me lately?”

Merry forced laughter. “Avoiding you?” she said. “I’ve had other engagements, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “And anyway, it’s a lie.” He pulled the car to a stop in front of a driveway.

Merry protested, “You can’t park here. In front of someone’s driveway.”

“I can,” he said, “until they tell me to move. Now as to my question…” He grinned at her suddenly. “Natalie told me she’d given you a big mixed up story about my being her next husband and she was afraid she’d led you to believe it was the truth.”

Merry turned to stare at him. “Natalie told you?”

His grin widened. He said, “I told you Natalie tells me everything. I even know about the milk.”

Merry didn’t say anything for a minute, and he began to shake her. “This Tom guy,” he said, “what was he like?”

“Like?” Merry began to laugh with sudden hysteria. She said, “I can’t… I can’t remember exactly what he looked like!”

Jeff shook her harder. He said grimly, “If you ever forget what I look like!”

Merry went suddenly limp. She said, “I’d never forget…never.” And then realizing, she turned her face away from him. She said tightly, “I told myself I’d never fall in love with anyone again.”

He asked her harshly, “How old were you?”

“Seventeen,” she said, laughing. “I thought it was the great love of my life.”

“And now?” he asked her.

“And now?” she repeated. “And now,” she said, “I know.”

“Know what?” he asked her. “Say it.” He began shaking her again.

“I love you,” she said, and began to cry.

He kissed her then, sweetly, passionately, as if he’d never let her go. “Stop crying,” he said. “I have something I want to ask you. Will you marry me?”

“I love you,” Merry said.

He gathered her close to him again. “It’s as good an answer as any,” he said.

Above them a California sun smiled, the lush sweetness of citrus blossoms filled the air, birds sang, and from the door of the house in whose driveway they were parked came the irate owner, brandishing his fists like clubs.