All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [226]
“Stick around and you’ll get rich,” I said.
“I could have been rich a long time back,” she said, “paddling in this muck. If I had wanted to.”
She could have, all right. But she hadn’t. At least as far as I knew.
“Yeah–” she jabbed out the cigarette in the tray on the desk–“I’m getting out of here.” She lifted her eyes to mine, as though daring me to say something.
I didn’t say anything, but I shook my head.
“You think I won’t?” she demanded.
“I think you won’t.”
“I’ll show you, damn you.”
“No,” I said, and shook my head again, “you won’t. You’ve got a talent for this, just like a fish for swimming. And you can’t expect a fish not to swim.”
She started to say something, but didn’t. We sat there in the dimness for a couple of minutes. “Stop staring at me,” he ordered. Then, “Didn’t I tell you to get out of here? Why don’t you get out and go home?”
“I’m waiting for the Boss,” I said matter-of-factly, “he’s–” Then I remembered. “Didn’t you hear what happened?”
“What?”
“Tom Stark.”
“Somebody ought to kick his teeth down his throat.”
“Somebody did,” I said.
“They ought to done it long back.”
“Well, they did a pretty good job this afternoon. The last I heard he was unconscious. They called the Boss to the field house.”
“How bad was it?” she asked. “Was it bad?” She leaned forward at me.
“He was unconscious. That’s all I know. I reckon they took him to the hospital.”
“Didn’t they say how bad? Didn’t they tell the Boss?” she demanded, leaning forward.
“What the hell’s it to you? You said somebody ought to kick his teeth down his throat, and now they did it you act like you loved him.”
“Hah,” she said, “that’s a laugh.”
I looked at my watch. “The Boss is late. I reckon he must be at the hospital with the triple threat.”
She was silent for a moment, looking down at the desk top again and gnawing the lip. Then, all at once, she got up, went across to the rack, put her coat on and jerked on her hat, and went out to the door. I swung my head around to watch her. At the door she hesitated, throwing the latch, and said, “I’m leaving, and I want to lock up. I don’t see why you can’t sit in your own office, anyway.”
I got up and went out into the reception room. She slammed her door, and without a word to me moved, pretty fast, across the place and out into the corridor. I stood there and listened to the rapid, diminishing staccato of her heels on the marble of the corridor..
When it had died away, I went into my own office and sat down by the window and looked down at the river mist which was fingering in over the roofs.
I wasn’t, however, looking out over the mist-veiled, romantic, crepuscular city, but was bent over my nice, tidy, comforting tax figures, under a green-shaded light, when the telephone rang. It was Sadie. She said that she was at the University hospital, and that Tom Stark was still unconscious. The Boss was there but she hadn’t seen him. But she understood he had asked for me.
So Sadie had gone over there. To lurk in the antiseptic shadows.
I left the tidy, comforting tax figures and went out. I had a sandwich at a hamburger stand and a cup of coffee and drove to the hospital. I found the Boss alone in a waiting room. He was looking a little grim. I asked how tom was, and learned that he was then in the X-ray room and that they didn’t know much. Dr. Stanton was on the case, and some other specialist was flying in by special plane from Baltimore for a consultation.
Then he said, “I want you to go out and get Lucy. She ought to be here. Out there in the country I guess she hasn’t seen the paper yet.”
I said I would go, and started out the door.
“Jack,” he called, and I turned. “Sort of break it to her easy,” he said. “you know–sort of build her up for it.”
I said I would, and left. It sounded pretty bad if Lucy had to have all that build-up. And as I drove along the highway, against the lights of the Saturday-night incoming traffic, I thought how much fun it was going to be to build Lucy up for the news. And I thought the same thing as I walked up the anachronistic patch of concrete walk toward the dimly lighted white house. Then as I stood in the parlor surrounded by the walnut and red plush and the cards for the stereoscope and the malarial crayon portrait on the easel, and built Lucy up for the news, it was definitely not fun.