“Wardens,” she said with the utmost disdain. “Oh, the idiots! The meddlesome fools!”
The wardens were looking into the cars. They spotted Minerva and swung through the stalled cars toward her—young fellows, strangers. They opened the door politely enough, if it could be called polite when rank invasion of privacy was involved. “Madam,” one of them said, “you’ll have to take cover.”
Minerva sat like a she-Buddha. “I will not.”
They were obliged to wait-wardens and the obdurate woman—for another crescendo of the siren. “Rules,” the spokesman of the paired youths then said. “If you’ll step into the Farm Industries Building here, it’ll all be over in twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes! I haven’t got twenty minutes. I’m Minerva Sloan.”
They looked blank. She supposed there were people in Green Prairie, newcomers and illiterates, who didn’t know her name. She waved brightly at the thirty-five-story stone edifice on the corner behind the limousine. “Sloan Building,” she bellowed. And then, because the tearing sound was rising again, she pointed at herself-at the center of her full-rounded bosom where a bunch of violets reposed between the much-lifted lapels of her beige gabardine suit.
It didn’t mean anything to them. They in turn pointed to the entry of the Farm Industries Building, which was newer—and loftier—than her own structure. She shook her head and covered her ears with gloved hands. It helped. The pressure of sound finally waned.
“We’ll have to call the police, if you refuse,” the warden said.
“I wish to God you would!” she answered.
They went away.