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.