Belder said dubiously, “Theresa can be awfully hard.”
Bertha’s jaw pushed forward. “My God, man! If you think your mother-in-law’s hard, wait until you see me in action. She’s an amateur. I get paid for being hard.”
4
The Vanihsing Auto
The fog was lifting and the sun was beginning to break through as Everett Belder parked his wife’s car in front of his house, glanced surreptitiously back to where Bertha Cool was ensconced in a parked automobile in the middle of the next block. He got out of the car, buttoned his overcoat, and reached up to adjust the brim of his hat, making a furtive signal out of the motion.
Bertha Cool, watching him through the windshield of the agency car, snorted and said disgustedly to herself, “Now what the hell does he think he’s gaining by that?”
Belder looked at his watch, glanced toward the house, reached through the open window in the left front door of the car, pressed his palm on the horn button, then walked briskly down the street.
Bertha Cool, settling herself in the car cushions with philosophic patience, lit a cigarette and waited, her shrewd little eyes taking in everything that went on.
There was but little automobile traffic on the quiet residential street. The main boulevard at which Belder was waiting for a downtown bus had enough activity to give forth a faint hum — not the continuous snarl which would have sounded a few months earlier before automobile traffic had been restricted, but nevertheless a faintly audible noise of traffic.
A bus pulled in to the corner, stopped and let Belder aboard and rolled on. The sun had not yet burned away the high fog clouds that had drifted in from the ocean, but the cloud-bank was getting thin, with patches of blue sky beginning to appear.