Tomorrow!

by Philip Wylie

  Lenore wanted to look beyond it all, out the windows. She could do it by scrunching lower than the attendant liked and by rolling her eyes up toward her forehead. She could see, then, the blue sky patches and a big, unopened snow-bag moving in overhead, against which rose the sides and tops of half a dozen of the nearest skyscrapers—a winter vignette of the Green Prairie sky line. It was the blue, diminishing bits of sky she wanted to see. For they, somewhat like her own freedom and self-respect, were being closed up and eradicated; overcast, was the word. Yet she had a sense, haunting, unhappy, hypnagogic as the drier’s hum, that everything was happening because she willed it so, that by some different magic of her own mind she could break the dark spell of her days, perhaps even push back the invading snow clouds.

  The drier was a head noise like, she thought, things people hear on the verge of nervous breakdown. The sound, she knew, was steady but it seemed to have changing cadences and various volumes; it was her head, her hearing, her own nerves that perceived unevenly. Low on the horizon, between buildings, the remaining blue sky looked moonstone pale; high up, it was cobalt, like a bluebird’s back. This, she thought, was a true distinction and not fancied.

  “Francine,” she called, wondering what Lizzie, what Edna or Dot had been francophized for the sake of swank, “my nails are dry enough for the last coat. And I’m in a hurry.”

  Francine came obediently, sat down docilely.

  The new cocktail frock had come up from the Grand Salon de Couture on the second floor. Lenore’s mink coat would conceal it while she finished shopping and until, at five thirty or thereabouts, she drove under the canopy of the Ritz-Hadley for Thelma Emerson’s party.

  Everybody would be there. Kit would be there. Nobody would be there.

  She fidgeted in the chair. She had a headache. It would grow worse, she knew, in the floors below and the stores beyond, while she jousted with people-onslaught around the counters, in the aisles. Then, worse still, over at the Hadley, under the lush dim lights, where the women would look at the women to see what they’d done to themselves this time and the men would look at the women just to see. They’d dance in too-crowded places, there and elsewhere. One martini, two martinis, three martinis away from now the headache would not be a pain but merely a sense of stiff places in the brain, waiting for tomorrow morning. She’d have lost a glove and a handkerchief, borrowed Kit’s after using up her Kleenexes, had her lipstick mistletoe-smeared by anybody, and got her shoes wet somewhere between car and curb: a glamour girl in a Christmas-scented night eroded by the exigencies of her good time.

  She almost wanted to cry and she wouldn’t have wept in Aubrey’s for the million dollars she would soon doubtless have, many times over. She wouldn’t have wept anywhere. Wasn’t she, right here, making the bed, herself, that she would lie in?

  The feelings of confusion, the sense of trapped helplessness, that came over her every day were girlish feelings, maidenly sensations, no doubt. She almost regretted that she did not have her mother’s acceptance of the flesh, her mother’s near-welcome of love’s lesser uses. Then Kit, and all Kit meant—to Lenore, to Lenore’s family—would never seem a Galahad, of course; but Galahad would seem instead just another man, no different from the Beast that woke up Beauty, or a clown. To Netta, males were like that: commodities; humanity-in-pants. But to Lenore, one male remained stubbornly other.

  Chuck, she thought, oh, Chuck!

  The words were warm within her, stirred within her. The buzzing drier sang them for a little while. Chuck, oh, Chuck. Her eyes, on the disappearing blueness, grew bright; her breasts lifted up and her lips came apart; she breathed faster as if the machine’s rhythm had set tingling inside her some other beat, some amorous cadence of the blood.

  She was startled when Francine stopped painting lacquer on her nails, framed words, called thinly, “Lucky, lucky you!” The girl squeezed her arm passionately and reflected in her own eyes Lenore’s expression. Looking at the common prettiness of the manicurist, Lenore could not keep herself from thinking: this is Kit’s kind of girl; they talk the same language. But Lenore had a decency of her own. She smiled gently. She said, exhaling, “Aren’t I lucky, Francine?” If she bit her tongue afterward, the girl couldn’t see that.

  The drier went off suddenly, unexpectedly. For a split second, Lenore could hear the other machines and the overriding noise of woman-talk. Then the effeminate voice of “Aubrey”

  came from behind her chair: “A call for you, Miss Bailey. I’m very sorry. I tried, personally, to explain you couldn’t answer right now. I said you’d call back. I offered to take the name and number. They were extremely rude, whoever they were. They insisted you be told it was your sector calling about some yellow goods, an emergency matter.”

  Lenore said, “Wha-a-a-at? It doesn’t even make sense! W ait!” For it did make sense. She ducked out from beneath the drier, feeling her hair, and ran toward the phones.

  “Yes? Lenore Bailey speaking.”

  “My God.” The voice was Rat, secretarial. “Have we been playing tag to reach you! This is Beatrice Jaffrey, Lenore. There’s a”—her voice fell to a whisper—“Condition Yellow out. Has been, quite a while.”

  Lenore’s answer was faltering. “Today? Good heavens, they can’t expect us—unless it’s—serious?”

  “It’s so serious,” Beatrice replied, “I can’t wait for your double-take. Make tracks, honey!” There was a click.

  Lenore hung up. For half a minute, she merely stood beside the high shelf of the half-enclosed booth, her hand resting lightly on the mauve telephone. She was going to miss Thelma Emerson’s party. The fact gave her such a sense of elation that all other facts and all other assumptions were crowded out of her mind. She was possessed by a kind of happiness, a surge of joy, something she had not felt for a long time.

  I hate him that much, she thought with astonishment.

  Certainly it’s too much hatred for a bride. If I didn’t know before, she thought, I know now. Dad and Mom will hate me.

  In the ensuing seconds, other parts of her brain meshed. Her good mind and the good education which had disciplined it took charge of her thoughts. Thoughts that plunged, climbed, curved in the dizzying pattern of cars sluicing over the track-maze of a roller coaster. Cars as seen against the summer skies on Swan Island. Her belly felt that way, besides: roller coaster.

  All these people, she thought, staring at the people in the perfume, the peignoirs, the soft-sexy drape of music.

  They haven’t been told. They aren’t supposed to know. It’s the latest, newest change in the orders.

  It must be genuine, she thought.

  Somewhere planes must have come over the borders, had a dog fight maybe. Maybe the air exercises started it. Maybe our bombers ran into something foreign scouting us.

  Only then did she think, maybe it’s it. Blitz.

  Condition Yellow.

  Confidential to CD personnel. Assemble with equipment. Was there a Phase Two, any more? Or not? Would the people in the store get a warning, during Yellow, if things grew more serious than however things were? Or would they have to wait for the Red, the sirens? She couldn’t recall. The codes and schemes and plans had changed and changed again; her struggling mind could bring to consciousness only a succession of Federal directives, state directives, local directives. Among them, she couldn’t isolate the last set. Orders in effect.

  Should she tell anybody? Absolutely not! That essence of the directives remained unchanged. Might panic the store. For nothing.

  Be hard, she thought, to make a fast trip home, now.

  She walked back, half a minute after hanging up.

  Aubrey was nervous. He would have said “distrait.” He was passing the fingers of his left hand, delicately, back and forth over the palm of his right.

  “Darling,” he said, “you’re pale! It was important, after all! A shock?”

  “I’m not sure, “ she answered. I “But I’ve got to go at once.”

  �
�You’re not dry yet,” he said. “Not combed out.”

  “Your left hand,” Francine added anxiously. “Not finished.”

  Lenore began taking off the kimono. She picked up a comb. She raked and tugged; pins fell around her. Aubrey protested, tried to seize the comb. Women began to lean out to watch, their eyes alert and fascinated, the driers like big, cockeyed, silver crowns suspended over them.

  Francine was trying to help. But Aubrey curtly rejected, had stamped away to pout.

  “I’ll put my suit hack on,” Lenore said. “You can send my dress to the house.”

  Francine replied anxiously, “But I’m not sure we can get a messenger this late! And it’s Saturday. And Monday’s Christmas. You’ll want it before Tuesday!”

  Lenore had a thought, at once weird and charitable, shattering and kind. She ran to the dressing room, pursued by the manicurist. She picked up her handbag, fumbled, produced a five-dollar bill. “You live out toward Edgeplains, isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yes. But I won’t get off for two hours.”

  Lenore pressed the bill in her hand. “I’ll speak to Aubrey. He’ll let you bling it out—

  early, perhaps. And then go on home.”

  Francine showed delight. “I could help do our tree!”

  Lenore was head-deep in her skirt. “Sure,” she said. She thought that Francine could do what Francines did, now. Now and forever. Kit could have her if he wanted, the Kits of the world.

  Francine could revel in the little bought pleasures of life, the pleasures she longed for so intently that all wisdom was excluded by desire. It was the only thing you could accomplish for some people: condemn them to their bliss and its going price, big or little.

  She presented Aubrey with a twenty-dollar bill: “Merry Christmas!” Lenore’s dark, dark hair rode her neck like a mane; her dark blue eyes were excited; her long fingers shook: “Look!

  Let Francine off now and let her take my dress to my house, please!”

  He rolled his eyes at his customers. “I’m short a manicurist as it is.”

  “A special favor! I have to have it! I’m dining tomorrow with Minerva—”

  “I couldn’t, Miss Bailey. I . . . ! But. . . .”

  But he was adding the bill to others in his pocket.

  The street wind and the bell-jingle hit Lenore. She raised the mink collar around her cheeks. The shock of the weather changed the pitch of her thoughts. Concerning the impulse which had caused her to bribe Francine’s early way home, she said to herself wryly, First reaction: pure melodrama! Calm yourself, moron!

  She calmed herself.

  Twenty-five dollars, you idiot! she said to herself.

  She said, winding through the crowd on Central Avenue. It would be a small price for a life, though. And she said, Who on earth would have believed Aubrey would accept the money!

  She said, What on earth has gotten into me that makes me feel positively elated?

  She said, Chuck.

  At the parking garage, where the Baileys always kept their cars downtown, at least fifty women and half that many men were stamping on the frigid concrete waiting for the boys to bring their coups, convertibles, and sedans down the ramp. Lenore was appalled. It would take twenty or thirty minutes for her Ford to appear. And they’d been trying to reach her for a “long time.”

  How long? They hadn’t said. Condition Yellow was how old? Of what significance?

  They hadn’t said. She wondered if she should find the manager, ask him for special service. If she mentioned Civil Defense, it would be a violation of rules. And nothing else would faze him, probably, for doubtless half the people standing and stamping there had tried other ruses and bribes.

  She glanced out at the street. Cabs were hard to get also. Just about impossible.

  Suddenly, she worried.

  Looking down the side street, looking toward Central and across it, looking at the ocean of December-muffled humanity, she was scared. For the first time, she wondered where Chuck was, her father; her mother was at home cleaning. As if in further answer, she saw, or thought she saw, in the distance, Nora Conner walking along beside a colored woman. It was only the briefest glimpse. Lenore had an urge to race after the child, take her home. The urge died: Lenore’s primary concern was different. She turned back to the ticket booth, a square of pasteboard in her hand. Then she saw Mr. and Mrs. Ellinsen getting into their car. If they were on their way home, at Ash and Arkansas, it would do. She ran up to them.

  Merry Christmas, Lenore, and sure, we’re going home. Crowds tuckered us out! Mr.

  Ellinsen was definitely not an expert driver and Lenore began to sense, as they first tried Court and then River to make their way south in the heavy traffic, that there was something vaguely wrong in the traffic itself. Every once in a while, a private car would take a wild chance to make a small, extra gain in the procession. Every once in a while, a lone driver would clamp down on his horn and shoot past everybody, like a cop. That in turn (evidence, she knew, of Civil Defense people on the way toward their sectors) irritated all other drivers.

  “People have gone absolutely crazy today,” Mrs. Ellinsen observed. “I’ve personally seen three collisions—minor, though. If it gets much worse, it simply won’t be possible to live in cities any more!”

  Lenore didn’t reply to that.

  She saw another thing. An entire fire company, sirens roaring, bells jangling, ground and tore, braked and ricocheted—south, through the jam-packed streets.

  “Wonder where the fire is?” Mr. Ellinsen asked. And he tried, without much success, to gain a block or two in the swathe opened by the red-painted trucks.

  Lenore did not reply to that either. She thought there was probably no more. She thought that, following regular Condition Yellow procedure, the Green Prairie fire-fighting equipment would all be heading out of town—all save a few stand-by pieces. When the emergency was over, they’d come back. Or else, of course, when the need turned cataclysmic. Doctors, she thought, would, or should, be heading out of town for the same reason. Nurses, also. Certain engineers and technicians. Various Red Cross people and their equipment.

  At Arkansas and Walnut Street they let her out. She thanked them and hurried. A car or two went by, fast, on Walnut; otherwise the residential area seemed deserted. She began to run.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone at home in the Conner house, she thought; then she saw, bright against the dulling afternoon, a light in the front attic window. She smiled. Ted Conner would be there, at his radio. Her steps slowed and she almost went in, went up, talked to Ted for a moment. She felt Ted would be able to tell her a lot about this alarm. And Ted might know where Chuck was at this point.

  Reluctantly, she went on. She’d been summoned and that meant a beeline, not stops made out of curiosity, certainly not stops for inquiry about people, even people you loved.

  She swung open her own front door. “Mom!”

  “I’m in here!” Nella was reclining on the divan. She had a magazine, a highhall, a box of candy, a fire going in the grate, a radio on, and she talked in a barrage as Lenore stripped off her coat, gloves, galoshes. “What a day! What a hellish day! The new maid’s impossible! I’m not through with cleaning. You’ll have to do your own room, yourself, tomorrow. Why didn’t you go straight to the Ritz? That Conner brat ran away on me!”

  “I thought I saw her downtown.”

  Mrs. Bailey sat up a little. “Well! On her way to see Santa, I bet! Beth said she had a cold.

  I didn’t see any signs. Saddled me with the child, and the child skipped. I even went racing down to River Avenue looking for her. Somebody said that she saw me coming and popped into a manhole. Imagine!”

  “Manhole!”

  “The kids do. School kids. There are ladders. That’s what they said in the fruit store.

  Young hellion! You can go blocks underground in the new sewer. Down to the cemetery—and beyond. If you’re that much of a fool. Me, I wouldn’t walk in one for a fo
rtune. Where’s your new dress?”

  Lenore decided not to tell her mother anything about her major decision. There wasn’t time. And it no longer mattered to Lenore what her mother thought. She knew what her mother would say and try to do. That didn’t matter either. She answered, “Mother, I got yanked away from Aubrey’s by Civil Defense.”

  “What?” Mrs. Bailey didn’t understand; she was so completely baffled she could not even react.

  “Now, Mother, take this calmly. I got an alert. It means nothing probably. Perhaps just a special drill—to see how we respond when we don’t in the least expect it. But it meant going through the routine. Coming home. Getting into my clothes. Going over to the school—all such.

  I’m in a hurry.”