A Cup of Tea - Amy Ephron [37]
He walked across the street and rang the bell although it was evident to him that she didn’t live there anymore. Miss Wetzel opened the door and peered up at him. He hesitated. “I’m looking for Eleanor Smith,” he said as politely and formally as he could. The bird-like woman shook her head. “Would you have an address?” She studied him for a moment—then left him in the open doorway as she reached in a drawer in the table for a slip of paper on which, in Eleanor’s own hand, was written her address.
He took a taxi to her apartment building. As the cab pulled up and stopped at the curb, she walked out of the lobby on Robert Doyle’s arm. Philip turned his head away so that she wouldn’t see him, then looked back and watched as they walked down the street. She wasn’t as thin as she had been, softer somehow yet moving with the same ease she’d always had, coltish, graceful. Her hair was straight, silken. Her skin unblemished. He watched her turn and look at Doyle and laugh at something that he’d said. Had he really expected she would wait for him?
He directed his taxi driver to take him to Jane Howard’s address. And, once inside, demanded a whiskey.
“Have you even had lunch?” Jane asked him as she poured him a drink.
“When did you get so conservative?”
“I know,” said Jane. “Isn’t it peculiar?”
She handed him the scotch. He took a sip and sat down in an armchair. “Have you seen her?” he asked.
“Eleanor,” said Jane. “Once.” She chose these next words very carefully. “There was a period when she didn’t go out much.”
“Because of me?” he asked. He wondered if she’d heard about his death…or his return.
“That’s best left between the two of you,” said Jane.
“She’s met someone else, hasn’t she?”
Jane made a face. “You know when Rosemary was little,” she said, “we used to play a game. I’d say ‘blue’ and she’d say…The grown-up version is, I’d say ‘blue’ and you’d say, ‘Moon.’ ‘War’…”
Philip answered immediately, “…Crime.”
Jane nodded. “‘Blue’…‘violet.’ But whenever anyone else would play,” she explained, “and they would say ‘yellow’ we would both say ‘sun’ or ‘chicken’, depending on our mood. But Rosemary and I always said the same thing usually at the same time.”
She was trying to explain to him that she had switched sides, that it was one thing when they were playing in this, but now that it seemed real, her loyalty was to Rosemary.
“You haven’t answered my question,” said Philip.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said. And then very formally added, “Can I get you another drink?”
Philip nodded, acknowledging the new rules between them.
Teddy found him in the office a few hours later with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a half-full glass. The mood at the docks was hushed, subdued.
An American carrier on its way to Britain had been hit the week before by German U-boats, less than a quarter of the crew had survived, and the ship had sunk, smashed and broken, in a mass of flames. It had been transporting civilian supplies, food, medicine, or as Teddy put it, “All this for potatoes and rubbing alcohol.” And all ocean crossings had been delayed until passenger and cargo ships could be accompanied by military escort. Fleets of warships had been dispatched from England, France, and the United States. The seas were deserted except for the battalions and the German U-boats lurking under water just off the European shore.
Philip and Teddy had given their workers the week off but, not knowing what else to do with themselves, they showed up each morning, anyway, with bag lunches and dominoes and small children in tow and collected at the edge of the wharf idling away the afternoon, staring at the empty