If he talked to the burgess tomorrow. There was something there that would need thinking about, too, but the thing to do right now was locate some matches. His own, of course, were more than merely wet—the striking surface had soaked right off them. But there was a cigarette machine, and fortunately a mechanical, not an electrically operated, one.
By the time Sam got back with the others Groff was busy by candlelight, trying to brace a Coca-Cola easel display to cover the window they had broken. Sharon Froman was hugging the briefcase full of manuscript.
You don't last thirty years in the resort business unless you know how to take your mind off your troubles. Mrs. Goudeket, sipping delicately from a quart bottle of black cherry soda, chattered gaily: "Soda pop! Three years I haven't had a drop of soda pop. Now don't tell on me, Dick. If Dr. Postal ever finds out, he'll kill me next time he comes to the hotel—" She choked on a swallow of the soda.
Dick McCue sat on one of the counter stools, sneering at the spectacle Sharon Froman was making of herself over that Mickey Groff. All the same, he admitted to himself, it was a real championship performance. She hadn't had two minutes alone with him, but McCue was willing to bet she could tell to a nickel how much a transistor manufacturer, in process of expansion from forty employees to a hundred, was likely to have in the bank. And there wasn't a chance in the world that this Groff knew what she was doing. This was the no-nonsense Sharon, the hard-working first-week-of-the-season Sharon, who was right by Groff's side when he needed a hand, who didn't ask foolish questions, who kept calm and ready. And to think that as late as Monday night, sneaking back to his own room, he had begun to think—
Sharon and the manufacturer came in from the storeroom with another load of newspapers and dumped them. "All right," said Groff, "I guess that's all we'll need. They won't be very comfortable, but maybe somebody'll come by before morning."
"I don't expect to sleep much anyhow," said Sharon cheerfully. She tapped Zehedi on the shoulder. "Move your feet a little, will you, Sam?"
The grocer started. He picked his feet up so she could spread the newspapers, and when she was through she had to remind him he could put them down again. Five years down the drain. Five more years of hot dogs and that muddy water they call coffee. I'll be thirty-five years old, and still three or four years to go—
Everybody felt it at once.
"The wind?" ventured Mrs. Goudeket. They stared at each other; the building seemed to be vibrating slightly.