took care of the stock for the actors. She was only sixteen, but they took her right into the gang, and she almost got a Guild card herself, only her folks found out how little she’d been to school, and raised hell . . .
She came out of the coffee shop, and moved slowly toward the bar. She looked down. Her boots needed a shine; there was a stand over in the corner by the barbershop. Only, how long would a mark wait, nursing a drink at a bar?
She’d gone back to school, then, and only seen her friends on Friday and Saturday nights, and daytimes Saturday and Sunday, and it was one Saturday night when they’d all gone down to Pico to hear a fellow that used to be at the Rancho play the guitar that she met Kenny and they went down to Tijuana the next day and got married.
Vera Mae, snap out of it, people will stare at you, standing in the middle of a lobby this way, not knowing which way to turn. Get back in the bar, and go to work.
Then she saw the rancher she’d been talking to out in the grandstand come out of the restaurant. He was carrying a tray, his run-over boots wobbling some on the carpeted floor. Taking dinner up to his kids . . .
Lonnie Verdoux.
She walked over and punched the elevator button for him, and all at once she knew that Fat Stuff was going to have a long, lonely wait in the bar.
CHAPTER III
THE TRAY was too heavy, and the plates were too hot. The gray-haired lady in the hotel restaurant had been real pleased to be fixing a supper for two little children to eat in their hotel room. She’d put a plate of pickles and celery and olives on from the regular dinner, saying the hotel could spare them, and she’d put all the hot food in fancy plates that had boiling water under them, and the result was, Lon didn’t know could he make it to the elevator and press the button and get in and close the door and—
A voice said, “Let me help you, cowboy,” and there was the gal called Vera Mae, punching the button for him and steadying his elbow all at one time.
“Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it.”
“It takes practice walking on carpets in high heels.” Vera Mae pulled the elevator door shut, and when he told her “four” pressed the button. “I’ll go along as a sort of a convoy.”
“You’re a nice girl,” he said. He heard himself adding, “Pretty, too.”
She didn’t answer him. Or his big mouth. Man with two kids and no clear way of making any money ought to learn he wasn’t no big catch of a beau.
The elevator stopped, and he got out. “Sure,” Vera Mae said. “And your wife doesn’t understand you.”
He stopped, the metal tray burning his hand from the boiling water. He swung around to face her. A bottle of milk nearly went over, and Vera Mae caught it with her hand, straightened it.
“My wife’s dead,” he said. “And I wasn’t trying to get fresh.” Then he grinned. “It just comes natural, I guess. I don’t have to try.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And you weren’t fresh. But these back-country hotshots—take the kid to the rodeo, and leave the old lady home to feed the chickens.”
Lon said, “We don’t keep chickens,” and then at the look on her face, burst into laughter. She had to hold one edge of the tray for him, or he would have spilled the whole thing; they stood in the hotel corridor, holding the tray between them, laughing like fools. Then she said, “Ouch,” as the hot water reached her, and he had the whole tray again.
“Lady downstairs broke her neck trying to make the supper nice,” he said. He started toward the room, walking careful. But Vera Mae trailed along.
“Young lady?” she asked. She twisted the knob of the door he nodded at.
“Well, not so young,” he said. “Said she had a boy about my age, about forty, and me, I’m only thirty-one. Those kids are going to wash clear away.”
There was no sign of the children in the bedroom, but the splashing noises from the closed bathroom door were a pretty good sign that neither of them had drowned. Lonnie set the tray down on the bench, and kind of braced himself to go in there and lay down the law, but Vera Mae was still watching him.
She grinned and put a finger to her lips. She looked about Mike’s age herself as she snatched up the two glasses of ice water from the tray and tiptoed to the bathroom door, holding her lips together real straight so as not to make any noise. But she didn’t need to worry; Mike and June wouldn’t have heard a powder blast.
She whipped the door open, and threw the water out of the glass in two expert shots. The kids sounded like they’d been bird-shot. Then June shrieked, “Vera Mae!” and Mike’s voice, a little deeper, followed after a second.
“You two come out,” Vera Mae said. “And I mean dry. Your dad’s worn out from lugging a ton of food up to you.” She shut the bathroom door and winked at Lon; then she went over to the tray and raised the shiny metal covers.
“It’s what they asked for,” Lon said defensively. “Club sandwiches and milk and French pastry. God knows where they heard of ’em.”
“Sounds all right to me,” Vera Mae said. “Bread and meat and raw vegetables. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to eat?”
“I guess so,” Lon said. He tried to keep his voice from sounding so gloomy. “But the PTA ladies came up one time and raised hell with me. I dunno. I’d gone to a lot of trouble to get tomatoes, too.”
The kids burst out of the bathroom like a bull out of a chute. They looked pretty good, except their hair was still wet. Vera Mae went and got two towels; she threw one to Lon, and grabbed June herself. He started rubbing Mike’s head; he felt a little like he’d been kicked in the stomach.
She looked up, once, and said, “I’m not being bossy, am I?”
He said, “Naw, but the gent you were with—”
She stared at him across June’s head, across Mike’s held down in his lap. “Yeah, Lon?” He didn’t even know she knew his name; June must have told her.
“Nothing,” he said. He moved his lips very deliberately; he wasn’t going to mumble. “I just thought he might be waiting some place.”
“Let him wait,” she said. Because her voice wasn’t pretty now, it was the first time he noticed how nice it had been before. Then the bells came back into it. “No,” she said. “Duke’s downstairs—you know, I pointed him out to you; he’s with an Indian rider, an Okie we call Turk, he’s got a white hat on.” She let go of June, gave the little girl a pat on the backside and sent her toward the bed. Then she went over to the flimsy little table where the kids had been drawing houses, and took the hotel pen and a sheet of paper. She wrote something and put it in an envelope.
“G’wan down to the bar,” she said, “and give this to Duke. And have yourself a drink. But just one.”
“I gotta get the kids—”
“Woman’s work,” she said. “If you don’t trust me, send the chambermaid in.”
“The
