Removing the cap and smoothing her dark hair, Lark complained, “I hear they’re designing sissy berets to go with our uniforms. Isn’t that a letdown.”
“The British commandos wear berets,” Alpharetta defended.
“And there’s nothing sissy about them,” Agnes agreed.
“What color are they?”
“Red.”
“Red? Aren’t they likely to get their heads shot off—with such a bright color?”
“Maybe it has the opposite effect. My father wears a red hat when he goes hunting, so he won’t be mistaken for a deer,” Lark said.
Flossie glanced at Alpharetta seated across the table, with her flaming hair partially hidden under her cap.
“You ever have any trouble, Beaumont—being shot at?”
“Not yet. But Gandy might change that if I’m not careful. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he won’t assign me to tow targets for the new gunners to practice on.”
“Towing gliders is almost as bad.”
“What I’d really like to do is ferry planes to England,” Alpharetta admitted.
“Fat chance. We’ll all probably wind up doing something like delivering the general’s piano or his Scottie dog.”
“Waiter, could we get something to drink?” Agnes called to the boy behind the fountain.
The conversation continued in a light-hearted manner. They ordered, drank their sodas, and left to finish shopping before the stores closed.
It was almost 9:30 by the time the five came out of the picture show. Happy, with a Kleenex tissue in her hand, sniffed, “I just hate sad endings—especially when it’s Alan Ladd who gets killed.”
“Don’t you think Brandon’s friend, Kyle, looks a little like Alan Ladd?” Flossie asked.
“Maybe.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Agnes replied. “And it’s just as well—because Mary Lou is no Veronica Lake.”
Alpharetta looked quickly at her watch. “I hope she’s already at the hotel, waiting for us.”
“She’d better be. Charlie won’t wait. You remember the last time we caught a ride with him.”
When they arrived, Mary Lou Brandon was not at the designated spot in front of the hotel.
“There’s Kyle’s white convertible—under the tree,” Lark commented, for she had seen them driving down the street in it that afternoon.
“So she must be around here somewhere.”
“I’ll bet they’re in the lobby,” Alpharetta suggested. “Watch my packages while I go inside to get her.”
With a mischievous smile, Flossie said, “And if you don’t find her there, maybe you’d better knock on Kyle’s door.”
“You don’t think she’s—no, she couldn’t be,” Happy said.
“Happy’s right. Anything above the first floor is strictly off limits. We all know that,” Lark agreed.
Miffed at Flossie’s insinuation, Alpharetta walked inside the hotel. She hurried past the empty lobby and headed toward the dining room. All the tables were empty. As she walked through the lobby again, she shyly approached the registration desk.
“Excuse me, please.” Alpharetta said, her face showing her embarrassment. “Do you have a Captain Arrington registered here?”
The clerk, suspicious at her question, replied, “Yes, we do.”
“Is he—is he in his room?”
“I believe both Captain and Mrs. Arrington have come in,” he sniffed, eyeing her with even more suspicion.
At that information, Alpharetta felt miserable. What could she do? How could she contact Mary Lou without breaking the rules herself?
“I’m a friend of theirs,” she explained to the clerk. “I . . . I wanted to tell them good-bye, but I don’t suppose they have a telephone in their room?”
“No. But if you wish to leave a message for them, I’ll see that they get it tomorrow morning when they check out.”
“There’s no way I can get in touch tonight? A bellhop or a maid, perhaps?”
“No, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. This is Saturday night, you realize. Everyone else has gone home, and it’s against the rules for me to leave the desk.” He pushed a pad and pencil toward her. “But if you’d like to write a note,” he repeated, “I’ll see that they get it tomorrow.”
Alpharetta had no recollection of the message she wrote. She folded the paper, addressed it and handed it to the clerk. And she watched to see in which pigeon hole he put the message. Room 225.
“Come on, Beaumont. We’re late.” Waiting impatiently in the jeep, Charlie called to her as she walked slowly out the door of the hotel and down the steps.
“Where’s Brandon? Didn’t you find her?” Agnes inquired.
“No,” she said. But her green eyes, widening in chagrin, were not on Agnes, but staring at the two people coming down the street. Alpharetta watched from the shadows while her commanding officer, Major Lee Grier, walked up the side steps with his wife and disappeared into the Bluebonnet Hotel.
She quickly made up her mind. Mary Lou had saved her life too many times for her to abandon her friend now, regardless of what she had done.
“You all go ahead. I’m going to ride back to the base with—with Mary Lou and Kyle.”
“All right, But don’t dally. Curfew’s at 2200.”
Agnes had no need to remind her. Shielding her eyes from the sudden gust of wind, Alpharetta felt a sense of loneliness as the jeep disappeared.
Chapter 7
Alpharetta stared down at her uniform and was doubly sorry that she had worn it to town. Not only was she vulnerable to the desk clerk’s reporting her to the base authorities, but if she got past him without being seen, she could still be recognized by her commanding officer, Major Grier.
Regardless, she had only one course she could pursue—to contact Mary Lou and see that both of them got back to Avenger Field by curfew time. But if they were caught on the second floor, they might as well not return to the base at all.
While Alpharetta stood outside the hotel and pondered her next move, the lights in Sweetwater went out, one by one. And within moments, the town that had been so lively in the afternoon, became a ghost town, with only two people visible—Alpharetta on the outside; the bald desk clerk on the inside.
But a clink of bottles behind the hedge on the right indicated that someone else was out in the night. Alpharetta started walking toward the noise.
A small boy, pulling a wagon filled with empty soft-drink bottles, came into view. Evidently, he had been raiding the hotel’s garbage cans.
“Would you do me a favor?” she inquired immediately,
He stared at her in silence, but in dubious tones he finally asked, “What?”
I’ll give you a dollar if you go into the hotel and tell the people in Room 225 that I’m waiting for them down here.”
He removed his dirty baseball cap and scratched his head. “I dunno.”
“Two dollars,” she bargained.
He made up his mind in a hurry. “All right. But ya got to watch my wagon and make sure nobody steals it.”
“I will.”
“How do I get to the room?”
She walked with him closer to the front door. “You see those steps? Past the desk clerk?”
He nodded.
“They go to the mezzanine. You can find the stairs to the second floor from there. Room 225. Don’t forget.”
With a fleeting look toward his bottles, the boy opened the door and, hunching his thin shoulders as if to make himself invisible, he walked across the hotel hobby.
He was almost to the steps when an irate voice challenged him. “Stop. You know better than to come off the street to play in the hotel. Out. Go on. Out.”
Embarrassed, the boy looked toward the front door in the direction of Alpharetta.
“Go on home,” the desk clerk ordered, “before I call the sheriff.”
His finger pointed toward the door and Alpharetta, disheartened, watched the street urchin retrace his steps to t
he outside.
When he drew beside her, he looked up and said, “The man wouldn’t let me.” He reached down to pick up the tongue of his wagon.
Hearing his sigh, a disappointed Alpharetta quickly pushed a dollar bill into his hand. “At least you tried. Thank you.”
She stood in the shadows while the boy proceeded down the street, to the clinking accompaniment of the empty glass bottles. Suddenly he stopped, turned around, and came back to Alpharetta.
“Why can’t you go?” he asked.
“I’m in uniform. It’s against the rules.”
“Maria wears a uniform and she goes inside.”
“Do you mean the woman who works in the dining room?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s different. She’s a waitress. I’m…” Alpharetta stopped. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it before—the print dress hanging on its wire coat hanger in the last closet in the ladies room.
All at once, a picture of Min-yo, the houseboy at the St. Johns’, flashed through her mind. For eight years he had hung his street clothes in the half bath off the utility room near the kitchen, and when his work was finished, he had always swapped his white coat and dark trousers for the clothes he traveled in.
What if the worker at the hotel was accustomed to doing the same thing as Min-yo? A hopeful Alpharetta sent the child on his way and hurried again into the hotel. The desk clerk looked up briefly, saw that it was not the urchin, and went back to his work while Alpharetta walked ahead to the powder room.
Crossing her fingers for luck, she opened the last closet. The print dress was gone. But in its place hung a waitress’ uniform—black cotton, with white frilly apron and cap. On the lapel of the dress, pinned to the puffed white handkerchief, was a nameplate that read MARIA.
“Thank you, Maria,” she said under her breath and began to remove her own uniform. She pulled the black dress over her head, tightened the belt, and looped under the excess length. She placed the frilly cap on her head and then tied the small white apron around her waist. She hung her own uniform on the coat hanger.
The powder-room mirrors reflected her image in all directions at once, distorting it into tiny facets like the compound eyes of a fly, as she quickly grabbed a linen hand towel, draped it over her arm, and opened the door along the corridor from the lobby.
She knew better than to try the elevator in full view of the desk clerk. She would have to use the stairs instead. At that moment, Alpharetta felt she had wasted an enormous amount of time, yet her watch told her that only ten minutes had elapsed since the jeep had left for the base.
She waited for the desk clerk to turn his back. Then she streaked past the lobby and disappeared toward the mezzanine. From that landing with its curved iron railing, she found the steps that led upward. Alpharetta, listening, began to climb the stairs. Halfway up, the dimly lit treads took a sharp-angled turn. She adjusted her body and leaned toward the wall until the steps straightened again. And then in front of her a closed door signaled that she had reached the second floor.
Now to see whether the door were locked or not—she pushed. The door opened easily and she walked into the hall. Her eyes were cognizant of the brown-patterned wool runner along the entire length of the corridor, past the elevator shaft and the small velvet bench against the opposite wall. A steady drone of electric fans drifted over the open transoms of the individual rooms. But the only respite from the heat was a gentle breeze that swept though the open window at the end of the corridor.
211-213-215. The numbers went up as Alpharetta passed by each door. Before she reached 225, she heard a voice behind her.
“Oh, miss.”
Alpharetta froze and then reluctantly turned around. Standing in the hallway, before an opened door, was the same woman Alpharetta had seen earlier with Major Grier.
“Yes, ma’am?” Alpharetta’s voice croaked.
“Could you please bring some extra towels for Room 217?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am.”
Clutching her one small hand towel, Alpharetta fled the rest of the way down the hall. As she reached the door that held the numbers she’d been searching for, she glanced over her shoulder. The woman was still standing outside in the corridor, observing her.
Alpharetta knocked on the door, tentatively at first, then more urgently when there was no response. Finally she heard some movement inside and a sleepy voice called out, “Who is it?”
Alpharetta glanced again down the hallway. “Maid,” she answered, for with the major’s wife in hearing distance, she couldn’t reveal her identity.
She heard his grumbling as Kyle walked to the door and unlatched it. Before the door had opened all the way, Alpharetta rushed inside, to Kyle Arrington’s sleepy surprise.
At first, he didn’t recognize her, dressed as she was in the black and white uniform. But Mary Lou Brandon, waking up stared incredulously.
“Beaumont! What are you doing here?”
A furious Alpharetta said, “You missed your ride back to base.”
Mary Lou, rubbing her eyes, peered down at her watch. She groaned and looked from Kyle to Alpharetta. But Alpharetta had already turned her back to walk into the antiseptically white bathroom with its tiled walls, where she stripped the bath of its clean white terrycloth towels.
When she came out, Alpharetta said, “I’m taking your towels. Major Grier and his wife are down the hall in Room 217. She stopped me and asked for extras.”
Mary Lou looked horrified at the news. “You mean the major’s here in the hotel?”
Alpharetta nodded.
“Well, you certainly can’t go back to their room. The major will recognize you for sure.”
“And what else can I do? Their door’s wide open and his wife will be watching for me in the hallway.”
“Isn’t there something you can do_to disguise yourself?”
“I am in disguise, in case you haven’t noticed. But I’ll try to hide my face as well as I can. Now, listen. When you see me close the door to their room, hurry on down the back stairs. And wait for me outside.”
“You’re taking an awful chance---for me,” Mary Lou said in a repentant voice.
“I know.”
Mary Lou, in a sundress she’d evidently purchased that afternoon, hid her uniform in the bag while Kyle walked to the mirror to comb his hair.
“Ready?” Alpharetta asked.
“Ready.”
Alpharetta emerged from the room first, with the towels in her arms. In their place, she’d left Kyle the one small linen hand towel from the powder room below.
Slowly she began to walk down the hall. Her pulse quickened, her breath grew shallow as she reached Room 217. Taking a deep breath, Alpharetta knocked at the open door.
“Come in.”
Shielding her face with the towels, Alpharetta edged sideways into the room and closed the door behind her. She gave a momentary start when she saw the major sitting in a chair beside the bed. Luckily, he didn’t bother to look up.
Alpharetta went straight into the bathroom, placed the towels on the racks, and listened for the footsteps down the hall. To make sure Mary Lou had enough time to get down the stairs without being observed, she turned on the water in the claw-footed tub, then the lavatory, ran the water for a minute and then wiped the porcelain fixtures dry.
With a feeling of impending disaster, she wanted to run from the bath into the hallway, but she knew that would only call attention to her. So forcing herself to walk slowly, she came out of the bath. As she reached for the doorknob to open the outside door into the hall, she called over her shoulder, “Good night, ma’am.”
“Oh, just a minute. Lee, honey, do you have some change?”
Behind her, Alpharetta could hear the jingle of coins as the major reached into his pocket. And from the corner of her eye she watched the major’s wife approach.
The woman pressed the coins into Alpharetta’s hands while she stared down at the floor. “Thank yo
u, Maria,” she said, reading the name on her lapel.
“Thank you, ma’am. And good night.”
“Oh, Maria?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Leave the door open, will you? It’s much cooler that way—for now.”
Alpharetta did as she was bid and, with her knees not quite steady, she walked down the corridor.
As she pushed the door open to the stairwell, she heard the major’s wife above the sound of the fans. “Well, she certainly was shy. Stared down at the floor the entire time I was talking.”
Alpharetta didn’t wait to hear the major’s comment. She ran down the dimly lit stairs and, without thinking of the desk clerk, rushed across the lobby into the ladies’ room where she changed back into her own uniform.
By the time she arrived outside, a subdued Kyle and Mary Lou were waiting for her in the white convertible. They had exactly ten minutes to reach base and check in.
On the three-mile trip back to Avenger Field, no one spoke. The wind, sweeping over the arid countryside, caught up swirls of tumbleweed that, in the glare of the headlights, resembled oversized gray animals scurrying toward shelter before the storm.
The car drove past the archway decorated with Fifinella, the grimlin-like figure designed by Walt Disney as a mascot for the women pilots. One minute before curfew and lights out, the two women reached the Nisson hut. Without a word they undressed in the dark and climbed into their cots. But sleep eluded them for some time.
The next morning, a tired and contrite Mary Lou Brandon sat opposite Alpharetta at mess. The others around them had finished their breakfasts and the hall now contained only a few stragglers.
“I swear nothing happened,” Mary Lou vowed. “We took a terrible risk, I know, going up to his room. But after dinner, we were both so bushed. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since we started training. You know that. Up before sun—calisthenics after dark. And if you hadn’t come to the door last night, I wouldn’t have wakened until this morning.”
“But why did you have to choose the very weekend the major’s wife came to visit?”
“How did I know she was going to check into the hotel? Charlie told me she was moving near the base.”
On Wings of Fire Page 6