PAGE 6
The Three Of Them
by
Anna Czarnik nodded and made her unwieldy escape.
Geisha McCoy waved a hand at the mulatto maid. “Go to your room, Blanche. I’ll ring when I need you.” The girl vanished, gratefully, without a backward glance at the disorderly room. Martha Foote felt herself dismissed, too. And yet she made no move to go. She stood there, in the middle of the room, and every housekeeper inch of her yearned to tidy the chaos all about her, and every sympathetic impulse urged her to comfort the nerve-tortured woman before her. Something of this must have shone in her face, for Geisha McCoy’s tone was half-pettish, half-apologetic as she spoke.
“You’ve no business allowing things like that, you know. My nerves are all shot to pieces anyway. But even if they weren’t, who could stand that kind of torture? A woman like that ought to lose her job for that. One word from me at the office and she–“
“Don’t say it, then,” interrupted Martha Foote, and came over to the bed. Mechanically her fingers straightened the tumbled covers, removed a jumble of magazines, flicked away the crumbs. “I’m sorry you were disturbed. The scrubbing can’t be helped, of course, but there is a rule against unnecessary noise, and she shouldn’t have been singing. But–well, I suppose she’s got to find relief, somehow. Would you believe that woman is the cut-up of the top floor? She’s a natural comedian, and she does more for me in the way of keeping the other girls happy and satisfied than–“
“What about me? Where do I come in? Instead of sleeping until eleven I’m kept awake by this Polish dirge. I go on at the Majestic at four, and again at 9.45 and I’m sick, I tell you! Sick!”
She looked it, too. Suddenly she twisted about and flung herself, face downward, on the pillow. “Oh, God!” she cried, without any particular expression. “Oh, God! Oh, God!”
That decided Martha Foote.
She crossed over to the other side of the bed, first flicking off the glaring top lights, sat down beside the shaken woman on the pillows, and laid a cool, light hand on her shoulder.
“It isn’t as bad as that. Or it won’t be, anyway, after you’ve told me about it.”
She waited. Geisha McCoy remained as she was, face down. But she did not openly resent the hand on her shoulder. So Martha Foote waited. And as suddenly as Six-eighteen had flung herself prone she twisted about and sat up, breathing quickly. She passed a hand over her eyes and pushed back her streaming hair with an oddly desperate little gesture. Her lips were parted, her eyes wide.
“They’ve got away from me,” she cried, and Martha Foote knew what she meant. “I can’t hold ’em any more. I work as hard as ever–harder. That’s it. It seems the harder I work the colder they get. Last week, in Indianapolis, they couldn’t have been more indifferent if I’d been the educational film that closes the show. And, oh my God! They sit and knit.”
“Knit!” echoed Martha Foote. “But everybody’s knitting nowadays.”
“Not when I’m on. They can’t. But they do. There were three of them in the third row yesterday afternoon. One of ’em was doing a grey sock with four shiny needles. Four! I couldn’t keep my eyes off of them. And the second was doing a sweater, and the third a helmet. I could tell by the shape. And you can’t be funny, can you, when you’re hypnotised by three stony-faced females all doubled up over a bunch of olive-drab? Olive-drab! I’m scared of it. It sticks out all over the house. Last night there were two young kids in uniform right down in the first row, centre, right. I’ll bet the oldest wasn’t twenty-three. There they sat, looking up at me with their baby faces. That’s all they are. Kids. The house seems to be peppered with ’em. You wouldn’t think olive-drab could stick out the way it does. I can see it farther than red. I can see it day and night. I can’t seem to see anything else. I can’t–“