“I can’t! I simply can’t! It would be so darned vulgar.”
Her full face was there, only sixteen inches away, with the muscles no longer under strain, the closest I had ever been to it, and there was no question about how lovely it was. Under different circumstances my reaction would have been merely normal and healthy, but at the moment I could have slapped it with pleasure. I had felt a familiar tingle at the base of my spine when I thought she was going to open up about a midnight ride up Broadway, probably with one of her co-workers, possibly with the boss himself, and then she had danced off into this folderol.
She needed a lesson. “I understand your position,” I said, “a girl as sweet and fine and strong as you, but it’s bound to come out in the end, and I want to help. Incidentally, I am not married. I’ll go to Inspector Cramer right now and tell him about it. He’ll want to take photographs of your throat. I know the warden down at the jail and I’ll see that you get good treatment, no rough stuff. Do you know any lawyers?”
She shook her head, answering, I thought, my question about lawyers, but no. She didn’t believe in answering questions. “About your being married,” she said, “I hadn’t even thought. There was an article in the American magazine last month about career girls getting married. Did you read it?”
“No. I may be able to persuade the district attorney to make it a manslaughter charge instead of murder, which would please your folks in Michigan.” I drew my feet back and slid forward on the chair, ready to rise. “Okay, I’ll go tell Cramer.”
“That article was silly,” she said. “I think a girl must get her career established first. That’s why when I see an attractive man I never wonder if he’s married; by the time I’m ready for one these will be too old. That’s why I wouldn’t ask you if you know anyone in show business, because I wouldn’t take help from a man. I think a girl—”
If Ed hadn’t signaled to me just then, his customer having left the chair, there’s no telling how it would have ended. It would have been vulgar to slap her, and no words would have been any good since she was deaf, but surely I might have thought of something that would have taken effect. As it was, I didn’t want to keep Ed waiting so I got up and crossed to his chair and climbed in.
“Just scrape the face,” I told him.
He got a bib on me and tilted me back. “Did you phone?” he asked. “Did that fathead forget again?”
I told him no, that I had been caught midtown with a stubble and an unforeseen errand for which I should be presentable and added, “You seem to have had some excitement.”