Anybody Can Do Anything (20 page)

“Mary,” I said. “We aren’t living in the days of Sherlock Holmes. Anyway I’m not sure I believe that stuff about her uncle or her father.”

Mary said, “As a matter of fact I’m not sure I do. I think she’s a lonely, ugly, slightly crazy woman who is probably taking a correspondence course in detecting. Did that man call about the buses for the shut-ins?”

“No,” I said, “he left word for you to call him at ten tomorrow morning. Mary, I think we should have lunch with Andy tomorrow and tell him about Dorita. Just in case anything should ever happen.”

“What do you mean just in case anything should ever happen?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just have a funny feeling. You didn’t work down in the warehouse with her. She’s evil, Mary, I know it.”

Mary said, “We’ve had twenty-five bicycles donated. Isn’t that wonderful?”

I said, “Will you have lunch with Andy and me tomorrow?”

Mary said, “I’m supposed to go out to the auditorium but I’ll meet you at twelve.”

Andy listened carefully while Mary and I told him everything we could remember about Dorita. Then he had us go back to his office and repeat the entire story while his stenographer took it down. He said, “Just to be on the safe side I would suggest that every night you write a report of everything Dorita says and does and mail it to me.”

As we walked up the street festooned in rain-soaked cedar and Christmas lights, I said to Mary, “Now I feel better. If an important lawyer like Andy had thought I was just imagining things he would have said so.”

One of Mary’s sound trucks turned the corner. From its twin horns Bing Crosby’s velvet voice filled the air with “O tidings of comfort and joy . . . ti . . . i . . . dings of co . . . om . . . fort and joy! Comfort and joy . . . o, o, ti . . . i . . . dings of co—omfort and joy!”

Mary said, “I’m going to give Mother a double waffle iron for Christmas.”

I said, “I suppose I’ll have to give her housedresses again. I wish to God she’d revise her Christmas list.”

Mary said, “Christmas to Mother means Quelques Fleur toilet water, new housedresses and a pair of blue felt Daniel Green bedroom slippers. You’ll never get her to change. It’s like her hats. A hat to Mother is a sailor. If it’s spring it’s straw, if it’s winter it’s felt.”

Bing Crosby had turned and was coming up the street. “God rest ye, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay,” was coming at us from behind now. Suddenly there was a Christmasy feeling in the wet hurrying crowds; a Christmasy
look on their wet intense faces. I supposed it was a result of the relief I felt.

Every night Dorita was in Mary’s office in the radio station when I got there. I never actually saw her at the typewriter again but sometimes when I felt the chair it would be slightly warm. She did help some with little routine jobs but she never took off her gloves and mostly she just smoked and asked questions.

I did my Christmas shopping during my lunch hours and it got so that no matter where I went, into what store, I saw, or thought I saw, Dorita. Once at the very crowded perfume counter in a department store, I was smelling and admiring a perfume I couldn’t afford, when there was a terrific crash at my elbow and an enormous bottle of the perfume was knocked off the counter. Nobody knew how it had happened, the clerks all looked suspiciously at me and when I turned to see who had been standing next to me I saw a woman in a leopard coat dart into the next aisle and disappear in the crowd.

Another time I was in a ten-cent store buying Christmas tree ornaments when someone behind me pulled my hair so hard my eyes watered. I turned angrily to see who it was and a beaver coat was just going through the revolving doors.

Another time I was in the meat market near our house buying lamb’s kidneys when I happened to look at the front window and there was Dorita standing with her face pressed to the glass looking in at me. She stayed there while the butcher weighed the kidneys, wrapped them and I paid for them, but when I came out she was gone.

“Maybe she also lives in the University district,” Mother said when I told her, but I didn’t think so.

Mary reported coming home on a terribly crowded streetcar one night and having her silver cross and chain get caught on the button of someone’s coat and being almost choked to death. I asked Mary if she saw the person whose
button the chain was caught on and she said how could she when there were thirty people jammed into a place meant to hold two.

I noted all these facts in my nightly reports to Andy but it didn’t quell my uneasiness.

Two nights before the Christmas party, Mary and I went to the auditorium to supervise the decoration of the Christmas tree. It was a very foggy night and our taxi crawled along hugging the curb and honking loudly at intersections.

“Did you ever ask Mr. Ajax about Dorita?” I asked Mary.

She said, “I haven’t seen Mr. Ajax for days. I think he’s out of town.”

I said, “Oh well, the party’ll be over in two days and then we’ll be rid of her for good, I trust.”

Our cab drew up before the front entrance of the auditorium and as we got out, Dorita in a black sealskin coat and blond hair, came sauntering along the street and joined us.

“Where did you come from?” Mary said.

Dorita said, “Oh, I live near here and Mr. Ajax asked me to help you decorate the tree.”

Mary said, “I thought Ajax was out of town.”

Dorita said, “That’s what everyone thinks but he isn’t.”

Mary nudged me. We walked up the steps and into the auditorium.

The eighty-foot Christmas tree had already been set up at the left of the stage and electricians on extension ladders were festooning it with lights. The edge of the stage, and the front of the balconies were looped with garlands of cedar and pine and there were huge heaps of trimmings and unhung garlands here and there on the floor, which when stepped on or moved gave off a wonderful spicy aromatic Christmasy smell. One of the workmen had brought down a portable radio and between shouts of “Hand me that hammer, Mac!” or “Key-rist, Charlie, watch where you’re throwin’ them branches!” Bing Crosby mellowly intoned,
“God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen, Let Nothing You Dismay” and
“Adeste Fideles.”

There was nothing for me to do so I sat on the edge of the stage and told the workmen how beautiful the tree was and how artistic they were. Mary spent most of her time in a little office telephoning or answering questions. Dorita leaned against a doorway and smoked.

About eleven-thirty, when they were almost through and ready to go home, one of the electricians asked Mary for her telephone number so he could call her the next day about some fancy lights he thought he could get donated, Mary opened her purse to get one of her business cards and seemed slightly upset when she couldn’t find one. “I distinctly remember putting twenty-five cards in my purse less than a week ago,” she said. “Did you take any of them, Betty?”

“I took one for that man who printed the tickets and one for the popcorn man, but that was two weeks ago,” I said.

Mary said, “Oh, well, remind me to grab another handful tomorrow morning.”

After the workmen had gone Mary and I walked around and admired everything. We switched on the Christmas tree lights and stood and looked up through the branches to the blazing star at the top, and the love of Christmas and everything Christmasy burned so brightly in me, I could feel myself melting like a candle.

“Wouldn’t it be terrible not to have a family at Christmas time? To be all alone?” I said to Mary.

“Perfectly horrible,” said Mary. “Imagine being all by yourself in a hotel room on Christmas Eve. Sitting by the window watching everyone else hurrying home to their children and gay families.”

I said, “Imagine getting up Christmas morning to open your one present from you to you.”

“Speaking of which,” Mary said. “What happened to Dorita?”

“I guess she went home,” I said. “She disappeared about an hour ago.”

“Thank heaven for small blessings,” said Mary. “Let’s turn off these lights and go home. I’m exhausted.”

When we got out to the main entrance Mary said, “Damn it all, I forgot to call a cab. Wait for me, I’ll be back in a minute.” She ran back into the building and I waited on the steps.

The fog which was rolling in thicker than ever, smoked around my feet like swamp mist. From all over the city came the irritable frantic honking of automobile horns and from the Sound occasional anguished groans as freighters warned the little ferries to look out. A car burst suddenly out of the fog, its pale, impotent headlights like cataract-covered eyes, its body almost invisible. A faint yellowness in the mist and the hissing of tires were the only evidences of its progress up the street. When I turned my head to watch it turn the corner, I saw Dorita standing in the dark by one of the building’s pillars, smoking.

I said, “I thought you had gone home.”

She said, “Did you?”

I said, “Why didn’t you speak? Why did you stand there silently in the dark?”

She said, “I was watching the fog. I love fog. It reminds me of London.”

I said, “Did you live in London?”

She said, “Yes, about five years.”

“Recently?” I asked.

She said, “How would you feel if something happened to your children?”

I said, “What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

She said, “Oh, nothing. I was just wondering how you would react if something happened to your children.”

I said, “In the first place nothing is going to happen to my children and in the second place if something should, I’d find the person responsible and kill her.”

Dorita said, “Here, Betty, I brought you a present.”

I said, “I don’t want a present from you.”

Ignoring me, she quickly unwrapped a brown paper bundle she had been carrying and shook out a long dress. “Here,” she said walking over and tossing it at me. “Merry Christmas from me to you.”

As I caught the dress, I noticed a price tag swinging from one sleeve. It was hard to see the dress in the dark but I could feel it was silk. I threw it back at Dorita. “I don’t want a Christmas present from you,” I repeated.

She said, “Okay, honey,” and began wrapping the dress up again. When Mary came out she had it all wrapped up and tucked under her arm.

Mary said, “Hi, Dorita, I thought you’d gone home.”

Dorita said, “I just came out to watch the fog. I love the fog.”

Mary said, “I do sometimes.”

Dorita said, “Here’s a Christmas present for you, Mary.” She tossed the package to her.

Mary said, “Why, thank you, Dorita. How sweet of you.”

I said, “Don’t take it, Mary. She tried to give it to me. It’s some kind of a dress with the price tag still on it.”

Mary said, “Betty, I think you’re being awfully rude.”

I said, “I am not. Don’t take that dress.”

Mary said, “Betty, I’ve never seen you act like this before.”

The taxi drove up. Mary offered Dorita a ride but she refused. As Mary and I walked down the steps I could hear Dorita laughing. I grabbed the brown paper package from Mary, turned and threw it at Dorita, pushed Mary into the cab, got in and slammed the door. Then I told Mary what Dorita had said about the children.

Mary said that she would see Mr. Ajax the next morning, but not to say anything to Mother as it might worry her.

The next morning about ten Mary called me and told me that she had just talked to Mr. Ajax. She said, “He says he knows absolutely nothing about Dorita. He thought she was working for me. He said that two days after I agreed to put on the Christmas party, Dorita appeared in the Western Trucking offices and announced that she was working for me. However,” Mary said, “he looked embarrassed every time he mentioned her name and he was awfully anxious to get me out of his office.” So Mary and I had lunch with Andy and he said to forget the whole thing, that we’d probably never see Dorita again. And we didn’t.

The Christmas party was magnificent, stupendous, gorgeous and so well attended it seemed to include everyone in the entire state, but Dorita was not in evidence. When Mary and I left the auditorium, and we were among the last, we expected to find her leaning against a pillar waiting for us. But she wasn’t. She just disappeared. “Probably climbed back into one of those boxes of rubbish down in that warehouse,” I told Mary.

Christmas Eve we were all around the piano singing carols and when we got to “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” Mary and I both said, “Please, not that one, ever again,” then laughed.

By February Dorita was a story we told unbelieving friends. “But who was she, what did she want?” they always asked and we didn’t know. “Maybe her father was the head of Pinkerton Detective Agency and maybe her uncle did work for Scotland Yard,” we said. “Maybe she was hired to see that we didn’t steal any of those donated bicycles or little bags of hard candy. Maybe the reason she never took off her gloves was because she didn’t have real hands.”

By March, Dorita was no longer real, but a character in something we had read. I got so I hardly even flinched when I saw a leopard coat.

Then came March fifteenth. Mary and I were in her office getting ready to go to lunch when the switchboard operator dialed and told us there were two men to see us. Mary told her to send them in and said, “Darn, it’s those apple men!” But it wasn’t. It was two perfect strangers in light covert cloth overcoats and carrying brown snap brim hats. One of them had piercing brown eyes. The other had heavy-lidded blue eyes. The brown-eyed one said, “Are you Mary and Betty Bard?”

“Yes,” we said.

“Will you please come with us,” he said.

“Where?” we asked.

“To the Post Office Building,” said the heavy-lidded one, opening his coat and showing a gold badge.

“What in the world for?” Mary said.

The brown-eyed one said, “We’ll talk about it when we get to my office.” His voice was deep and throbbed with sadness.

Mary and I put on our coats and the four of us marched solemnly out of the radio station.

It was a beautiful March day. Bright and blowy and with air that smelled like clean clothes. There was an old woman selling daffodils on the corner.