A Show for Eric

by Anthony M. Rud

 

A Show for Eric

By Anthony M. Rud

Illustrated by Marshall Frantz

It isn’t always sickness alone that hospital walls shelter. There is real human drama—as witness this story of Lydia, scrubwoman, told by a patient who is rich in both sympathy and slang.

Alot of sympathy’s been wasted by the S. P. C. A. and other societies on dogs that have had their tails removed. Laying in bed there, I was kind of moved to wonder if anybody ever’d thought how the tails felt about it. I knew.

Before I stepped on that nail the only part of me that hadn’t been all shot with the rheumatiz had been my right leg and foot. This was just what the docs wanted, so they took it, leaving me just the part that ached.

An old cuss fixed like I was gets a kind of antipathy to white gowns and blue stripes. Docs and nurses, smiling professional and not telling you anything, got on my nerves for fair. That was what made me notice Lydia first—that, and the fact that even the boys at the store seemed to get along first rate without the old man to jack them up. They come to see me once—but that ain’t got anything to do with Lydia.

It was on one of them blue days that I separate her first from the rest of the scenery. I watch her close, not because she’s a walking panacea for the pink-eye, but because she’s the only one who hasn’t got a dopestick or a thermometer concealed about her.

She’s a cork-carpet specialist, her life job being to keep the dirt from showing when the inspector doc makes his regular rounds. One slant at her hands, broad and red in the knuckles and corned-up in the palms, says a mouthful about what she’s been idling away her time doing since she was sixteen. I dope out she knows the feel of a mop better’n my nose knows air.

And now she’s got a permanent wave in her backbone from a lotta stooping. Her face probably once was fat like her waistline, too, but now it’s flabby, and getting ready to wrinkle bad. At that, it’s behind her hair, which is white everywhere except where it’s kinda yellow in spots, like some old guys’ mustaches. With the sorta patient, beat look she’s got in her eyes, you can see that the best Lydia ever coulda been was a chapter on low visibility in females. You can figure her young and spry and shiverin’ the shimmy just about as easy as you can figure me, dolled up in five-ouncers, printing a kayo on the chin of Jack Dempsey. And me tied up with rheumatiz.

At first I try to think up something to say to her, but it looks like all we had in common is fifty-odd years which neither of us wants or is proud of. She don’t bother, though. She just hobbles in, pulling her pail of suds, slaps the hot soap and water all around the cork carpet, and then slaps it up again, wringing out the cloth every time it gets sogged. Then she hobbles on to number three-forty-six, next to my room, where they’s another old fool. When I hear him cussing at everybody, and Lydia, too, when she comes in, I wonder why.

At first I try to think up something to say to her, but it looks like all we had in common is fifty-odd years which neither of us wants or is proud of.

At first I try to think up something to say to her, but it looks like all we had in common is fifty-odd years which neither of us wants or is proud of.

By the time I’m setting up in bed, though, I’m chatting regular with Lydia. It ain’t natural for a guy who’s been gabby as a solo record on the squealola all his life not to talk to somebody, and Lydia’s the only one I see who ain’t got smiling professional replies all on tap.

Mostly at first she pretends she don’t hear me when I ask her questions, but after I keep it up for three or four mornings she kinda forgets the blank stare when she comes in and nods.

Then, one day when she’s about half through the floor, she straightens up until she ain’t much worse than round-shouldered, and looks at the window. Without minding me she goes over and fingers the cheap curtains.

“How—much cost these—you think?” she rasps, and I wonder if her voice is so rusty from not using it any.

“The curtains?” I say eager, glad to guess at anything if it’ll make her talk.

“Oh, maybe about three bucks a pair.”

“Bucks?” she repeats, the blank look coming back quick.

“Dollars I mean,” I says. “About three dollars, I think.”

“Three dollars——” I get a full look at her faded-out blue eyes, half hid down in the flaps of skin, and it’s funny, but I’d swear I seen something that woulda been a smile if she’d knowed how, coming into them. She was looking right through me, though, and I got a spooky sort of feeling.

“What’re you going to do, buy some for the house?” I asks, facetious.

“For my boy!” she says sudden, and I notice the rasp’s most gone all of a sudden. “Curtains—he needs them in his room. It ain’t got curtains and he’s coming home now soon. The paper says——” She stops short and picks up her mop, but I’m not going to be cheated that easy.

“Go on!” I urged. “Tell me about him. What’s his name and where is he?”

This brings her head up again, and bless me, if there ain’t a coupla tears in the corners of her old eyes.

“Eric!” she says, softer than she’s spoke before. “My Eric! He’s in France now, the paper says. On his way back from Germany.”

“Oh, he’s been in the army, eh?”

She just looks at me puzzled.

“What kinda soldier was he?”

“A good soldier!” she flashes. “A fine soldier!”

“I betcha!” I agree enthusiastically. “But was he carrying a gun or was he flying, or——”

“Gun,” she answered. “And now he’s come home soon. When he’s work a while I don’t have to scrub no more. My Eric!” She smiles now regular, and I wonder to myself if it ain’t the mercy of the Lord her boy is one of them that’s coming back.

“You was telling me about the curtains you was going to buy?” I suggests.

“Yes, I get them—next week!” she says. “This week one more five dollars on his rug for the room, and then I buy curtains.”

There was a kinda pride and triumph in her voice that all of a sudden made me feel outa it.

“And you got him a rug, too, eh?”

“Yes, Axyminister!” she answers. “Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents.” And then, remembering her job, she finishes up quick.

Next day I ain’t feeling so sprightly myself, and all I do is watch her when she’s working. I look at her closer, though, and I see the stockings she’s wearing are about an inch thick, where they’s any stocking at all. On her left ankle, just above the raggy shoe, is a bunch of holes the size of the openings through chicken wire. This ain’t what picks my attention, though—the Lord knows my own socks is bad enough most usually. It’s the fact that under there is a big bunchy bundle of what looks like a dirty bandage wound round and round. It’s the foot she limps with, too.

I asky Miss Bradley, the nurse, about it first time I get a chance. It seems that Lydia’s really in a bad way. From standing up on her old number sevens every day for so many years, she’s wore out the pep in the walls of her veins.

“But ain’t there anything she can do for it?” I ask, wondering how come anybody just has to grin and bear a grief like that.

Miss Bradley shrugs her shoulders.

“She has been advised to go to bed with it and give it a long rest,” she says, superiorlike. “After four or five weeks, perhaps, if she would wear an elastic stocking—but you know how useless it is to advise anything of the kind to a scrubwoman.” And she smiles contemptuous.

I get kind of choky in the throat, but it’s mostly the mad that always grips me when I know arguments ain’t worth the wind. Miss Bradley was a trained nurse in a pay hospital where charity cases always got the icy stare. Looking at it cold-blooded, I suppose the directors weren’t to blame. The county hospital was made to take care of unfortunates who didn’t have the price for a private place; and at that, I’ve always heard that the hospital I was in didn’t make ends meet any too well in spite of being crowded most of the time. During the next couple of days, when Lydia comes in I try to get her to go down and have the charity docs give her bum leg an examination, but it ain’t any use.

“I must stay here,” she decides, slow and raspy. “My Eric——” And it don’t matter a continental hoot to her if her leg rots off, just so she gets curtains and things in that room by the time her boy comes back!

Next day when she shows up, I see something’s happened. The limp’s too bad to be forgot entirely, but Lydia’s somehow changed it till it’s almost a hop, skip, jump. And when she goes after the floor, I hear a funny, hoarse kinda noise down in her throat. I listen, scared for the second the old wench is having a death rattle or something, but then I get hep, and almost bust myself laughing! She’s singing! It’s way off the key and all that, but after I get the notion, I figure out it must be a hymn in Svensk or another of them north languages.

“Heard from Eric, Lydia?” I calls out, knowing they’s just one big thing that’d make her happy.

She turns quick to me, nodding and smiling. Them old eyes is just almost ready to run over.

“Yes, he’s come soon. I got this morning——” And she fumbled in the bosom of her tattered apron, drawing out one of the red-triangled envelopes, wrinkled up already by many handlings.

“It say he start the third,” she goes on.

“This is the twenty-fourth, ain’t it?” I ask.

“Yes! My Eric! It say he’s bring a big, wonderful surprise for me, too.”

“Maybe a real German helmet,” I ventures, cautious.

She snorts disdainful, and the four flaps of skin that once was chins straighten out into one proud old chin.

“I got two helmets now!” she says, “And a cross, too. Souveeners!”

“You don’t mean it! Well, well, Eric musta walked along right behind the band wagon playing the barrage music. Maybe he’s got a hunk of the Clown Prince’s coat tails.” But Lydia’s clean forgot there’s any old pegleg in the world called Noonan.

Next morning at the time Lydia usually appears, another mop rustler swushes the suds under my bed. I gather from what she says that Eric has come back, and that Lydia’s so happy she’s taking a day off to celebrate.

I read three newspapers and a part of a novel that day, but all of it’s flat as betless poker. Every now and then I catch myself figuring what a whiz of a dinner Lydia’s getting for Eric right about now, or how Eric’ll like his Axyminister or something. Also I wonder if the boy brought back enough of a wad with him so Lydia’ll be able to hang up her cue and just enjoy having him for a while.

All of which gets answered next morning. A little bit later than usual, Lydia hobbles in. Her face ain’t really all wrinkles, but her hump is back and she don’t look like I thought she would. She nods weary to me, and slops some water outa her pail as she sets it down. Her leg acts like it’s a lot worse, because she has to stop every now and then to hold it. More’n what I see, I sense that Eric ain’t been exactly a cure-all, no matter what’s the surprise he’s brought back for his mother. I lie there nearly five minutes trying to dope some way I can find out and not cause no trouble, but tact ain’t in my line.

“I hears you’re to be congratulated, Lydia!” I sings out cheery at last. “Your boy got back whole, didn’t he?”

She didn’t bother with English none, and what she said went clean over my noddle, but with them brown eyes flashing it didn’t matter much whether it was French or Chinee.

A smile comes to her face and she nods, but I sees her lips working like she wanted to say something only it comes hard. As she looks she leans so heavy on the mop that the wood bends. Her smile don’t last long, either.

“Well, that is the best news of the year!” I goes on, acting as if I didn’t have no suspicions at all. “Did he get decorated or promoted or anything?”

““He’s—officer,” she says, gulping. “Sergeant.”

“Bully for him! He made good, eh? Was that the surprise he was bringing back to you?”

She shakes her head, but I see there ain’t real gladness there because her mouth twitches and she kinda bends her head down slow. Then all of a sudden something breaks. She gives a funny, hoarse noise in her throat and flops down, dropping the mop. Her head is hid in her dirty sleeves on the end of my bed, but I can tell by the way her shoulders shake that she’s crying. There ain’t no more noise about it; she’s just all in and I can see that. The docs had told me that if I try to do too much maybe a blood clot would slip up from my stump and stop my heart, but I take a chance on it. Pulling myself over I reaches and pats her on the back.

“There, there, Lydia,” I says soothing, feeling like an old ass while I does it. “What’s the matter? Can’t I help out some? Is it your leg that’s hurting bad this morning?”

That just brings a shake of her head, but after a while I get her so she'll talk some, and I find out the whole thing. It’s a real grief, too. Seems that Eric’s surprise is a French flapper he’s gone and married. The darn kid’s so much in love that he don’t even see Lydia no more. The way I dope it out, the only thing that’s kept her up for a long time is knowing her boy’s on the way home, and now he gets back he’s planning on boarding out with his new wife because he don’t think Lydia’s place is good enough.

“What’s he working at?” I ask, wishing I had hold of his ear for just a minute.

“He’s washer down at garage,” Lydia tells me between sobs. “He only make sixteen dollars a week.”

When I wonder how he’s going to support a wife on that she gives me a weird tale about something he’s making that’s going to win a fortune for him. I can’t quite savvy the idea, as Lydia ain’t any too hep herself, but I do understand that Eric not only ain’t planning on living at home, but he ain’t got money to waste helping out his ma. Even the fifteen a month he sent her while he was in the service is stopped now, and the government don’t help out no more. He wants her to go down to the county hospital to get her leg fixed, but this only makes Lydia feel worse. She’s sure it’s just because he’s ashamed of her and don’t want her around. I’m so mad I’m just all hopping down inside, but I try to make her think it’s all coming out all right. I tell some lies and do some tall propheting, and finally Lydia climbs up on her bum pins and starts her job again.

I watch her finish and go on to the next room, and then I start. Lydia’s give me the name of the garage where Eric’s pulling down his sixteen per, and I phone the place. Eric ain’t there. They tell me he only works nights, scrubbing Lizzies, but they gives me his address. I scribble a note, and send it to him by A. D. T. Then I hunches myself up good and comfortable on the pillows and does some planning. If anything less’n death and dynamite’ll start this here ungrateful Swede right why I’m the guy to administer the dose.

Along about four Miss Bradley breezes in and says there’s a young fellah by the name of Eric Smith waiting to see me.

“Smith?” I asks. “What’s he done with the rest of it?”

This is a new one on Miss Bradley. She had him sign his name on the visiting card, and he wrote it Smith. She don’t know he’s the son of old Lydia Smithback, so I don’t bother to elucidate.

The minute he comes in, though, I have to do some sudden revising of my ideas. He’s tall and blond, of course, but he ain’t got the selfish lines about his mouth that I’m looking for. Except where the Picardy sun burned him too bad you can see he’s all pink and white and young. His eyes is as solemn as a couple of blue beads, and his hair is part plastered flat and part sticking up, where the army barber clipped it too short.

“How come only Smith now?” I says, after I got him to ease into a chair. “The way I heard it was Smithback.”

He colored just like somebody spilled red ink on a blotter, and just then I notices his hands for the first time. They’re awful big and wide, but they look like they could do things.

“Why, I—you see, it was because I’ve got such a funny name,” he says, nearly busting the brim off’n his straw, twisting it. “Eric Smithback, you know. When I was in school the boys used to call me ‘earache, toothache, bellyache, Smithback!’ I made up my mind that when I come to go into business I’d be just plain Smith. I told Nannette that a whizz-bang just naturally cut off the ‘back’.”

“Oh, yes! And Nanette’s the new wife, eh?”

He nodded, and a kinda proud grin come to his mouth, but I saw him looking at me funny just the same.

“You’re wondering what the devil I’m coming to, ain’t you?’ I queries. “Where I got my info, and what I’m going to do with it?”

“Well—yes, in a way. It had crossed my mind that perhaps my mother——” He looked down at his hat.

I clears my throat.

“Never mind about that part just now,” I says. “You’re the one I’m interested in. A bit of news came to me the other day about a young chap who was working on some kinda invention. Seeing as I’ve got maybe a little bit of capital to sink, I was wondering——”

You oughta seen the pep that come into that guy when I says that! He straightens up in his chair and looks sharp at me, and then he talks. There ain’t nothing solemn or bashful about him now. He starts right in Fletcherizing the rag about a new kinda periscope for autos. Says he got the notion when he was squinting throtigh the trench tubes looking for Boches.

As well as I can get it at first, his plan is to manufacture a simple periscope that you can stick in a job so as the image of what’s coming on the road behind shows up on the glass that’s set in the dash. This gives the driver a good view of everything, eliminates rear-end collisions, and also lets a guy who wants to step on her for a while see when a cycle cop is on his trail.

The last makes a real hit with me, because when I’m out on the open concrete I like to know what fifty feels like, and it’s cost me more’n enough to buy a half a dozen of them periscopes, already.

It seems that Eric has been doping it all out and has made up a coupla the tubes. He ain’t patented them yet, though, on account of being too broke, and he ain’t had no cars to try them on. He took the place down to the garage just so as he could tinker round a little at night when they wasn’t anybody to butt in. The hundred-odd bucks he brought back with him is fading fast, though, and he’s worried. Not a word about Lydia does he say, however, and this kinda makes me sore.

“Don’t you think you oughta try to get a job that'll pay enough to support this wife of yours—not to mention your mother?” I suggests finally. “It'll take a year or two before you’re making much dough outa that periscope, even if it pans out big.”

This flusters him.

“I—I would if I could,” he says, “but what can I find to do? I ain’t trained at anything. I’m just as sorry for mother as I can be, but it looks to me as if Nanette and I were going to have an awfully hard rub just to get along.”

I kinda get hep to something right then, and I questions him careful. I don’t let him on to what I’m driving at, but I find out that he don’t know Lydia’s really down and out with her game leg. She ain’t told him nothing about the curtains or the Axyminister, neither, and he believes that she’s an “attendant” at the hospital. Probly she ain’t really thought it necessary to slip him the news that she’s washing floors. The three a day she’s getting looks like big money to him, not being wise to what it takes even to keep a cottage going in these sky-rocketteering times.

I don’t promise him nothing, making off I wanta see his machine some before I springs my proposition, but I tell him to come back at eight o’clock sharp next morning, and bring his wife and the periscope, too. Then, after figuring out something on my pad of paper, I eat supper and hit a night’s sleep right on the head.

Miss Bradley ain’t much of a sport, but when I let her in on the whole dope she fixes up a screen for me just the way I want it. Guess she ain’t really got much against Lydia, only a sorta feeling that women who washes floors ain’t worth the trouble. I don’t fight with her, though; the party is mine all the. way. All she’s to do is give the signal. After it’s all set, I jerk the stylographic and scribble a coupla blue slips.

Maybe you got a notion of what I supposed Nanette’d be. It was a kinda mixture of the “Follies” and the Russian ballet, with a dash of hot pep that ain’t in either. Nanette was going to be a regular seventh daughter of a seventh Bara, or something like that. Them was the kinda dames a guy met up with regular in the Boulevard Lannes and the cancan Montmart and them other gay lanes of Paree—or that’s the way I had it, anyway. Like with Eric, though, my advance dope is way off.

Nanette slips in easy with Eric, a slim little brown-eyed doll of a girl who just about comes to his shoulder. She’s got her eyes on him when I first sees her, but it ain’t the dumb, adoring kinda worship you sees in cows and highschool girls at the matinées. She’s a wise little piece, but you see right away she knows she’s got the finest man that ever chewed round steak and she ain’t taking no chances that he’s going to notice nobody else while she’s around. There ain’t a line about her that ain’t got a little curve in it somewheres, and altogether I dope her as one of the easiest ladies to look at I ever seen. If they’d only stuck this here war back in the eighties or nineties! But they was only fighting the Civil War over for the third time then, or trying to kill off typhoid and Spaniards at the same time, and that didn’t take me over to Picardy in olive drab. After an eyeful of her, though, I ain’t blaming Eric more’n half as much for forgetting all the rest of the world.

Eric has slipped her the glad news that maybe I’m going to be an angel for his new reverse English spyglass, and so she’s a little nicer than meringue to me. I find her speech remarkable, considering she’s just learning it from Eric. It’s soft inflected, and maybe a little more even accented than I’m used to hearing, but it don’t jar the ears none. Her vocab probly beats Shakespeare’s on points when it’s scrapping for the lovey-dovey champeenship of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. It don’t go so much further, though, but I see she knows how to camouflage all her puzzlement in the kinda smile that makes her an A-1 listener.

The boy takes off about sixteen gunnysacks from the periscope he’s carrying, and breaks right in with the explanation. I let him rave for a while, and so far as I can see the thing looks like a good bet. When you look at the glass that sticks up in the dash of a car you can see the window of the room and all the trees outside just as plain as if you was peeking in the finder of one of these here press cameras.

The only thing that bothers me is how much the devices can be made to sell for. Eric assures me that the price won’t be outa reach, though, and I let it go at that. Seems to me that the guys who makes real high-priced cars oughta fall for the scope, even if it can’t be tacked on to flivvers. It’s got the big advantage over the mirrors most cars use for looking backward in that it shows the whole road clear and plain; no cycle cop can steal up on the blind side like with a regular glass.

The hands of my watch is sliding around toward nine o’clock, though, and I keep one eye on the doorway for Miss Bradley’s high sign. Pretty soon she sails past holding up her hand to her forehead. This means that Lydia’s in three-forty-four.

Right then I shut off the periscope discourse and chase both Eric and Nanette behind the screen in the corner. Neither of them wants to hide very bad, but I explain that I’m giving a little show all by myself and if them or the periscope comes outa cover before I give the word, I’m going to bean them with the shoe I got handy for just that purpose. Eric starts to palaver, but I shut him up effectual, telling him if he ever wants his cop glass to get a look-in he’s gotta imitate the well-known clam right now. I expect it’s because he’s been used to hearing all kinda orders he didn’t understand, but he don’t say no more, and Nanette’s as quiet as a striker who’s come back to his job.

Then Lydia, pulling her pail of suds, backs into the door and pushes it wide open. When I sees the trouble she has just in navigating with the mop and other stuff, I feel like hopping outa bed, stump and all, and helping her. She’s maybe even more bent than yesterday, and after one good look I see it’s because her spirit’s all squashed. She ain’t ready to break down like she done the time before; she’s just humped over and apathetic—an old woman who ain’t got a reason in the world to keep her up, only she can’t shuffle off quick enough. Honest, it just give me back that kinda mad feeling I got the first time I heard about Eric. How could any guy, no matter how blind in love he was, miss seeing that his own mother’s like that?

I don’t bother her for a second or two, till she’s fair started. She limps so bad now that she’s gotta hold on to the mop or the end of the bed or something when she goes from one place to another. When she stops a second to kinda draw a deep breath, and looks up at me with them full eyes, I just can’t stand it any longer.

“I thought you told me your son was back, Lydia?” I asks.

“Yes, he back,” she says toneless.

“He ees come back and thank you—dear old man!” And then she bent down quick for a hug and a kiss that pretty nearly paid me up in full for being thought an antique.

“He ees come back and thank you—dear old man!” And then she bent down quick for a hug and a kiss that pretty nearly paid me up in full for being thought an antique.

“Well, why the deuce don’t he have you go to a hospital and take care of yourself, then? First thing you know, Lydia, you’ll be as bad off as I am.”

She kinda nods, and looks me over slow.

“Worse,” she answers, her voice a sorta tired croak. “Doctor says my leg come off or I die. I die! Eric he got no use for me no more.”

“Oh, now, Lydia!” I protests. “That ain’t reasonable. If you was to tell him now how you scrimped and saved to get him them curtains and that rug for his room, and how you was waiting all the time, just kinda living on in hopes that he’d come back outa hell and be your own boy again, don’t you think it’d be different?”

She shook her head wearily, and one of the white, stringy strands of hair fell down over her eyes.

“I no tell,” she says. “Young woman come; old woman go. I go! He not even want my name no more because he’s ashame.”

Right then the screen fell over forward with a bang, and I got a flash of a sorta silky tigress as Nanette ran to Lydia. Throwing her arms around the old woman Nanette lifted her and set her clean on the edge of my bed. Then, just as if it was all part of the same thing, she turned her pretty head toward where Eric stood. She didn’t bother with English none, and what she said went clean over my noddle, but with them brown eyes flashing it didn’t matter much whether it was French or Chinee. They’s some things that get across in any language; one’s love talk and the other’s what Nanette says to Eric.

I looked at him, and right then I know the trouble’s only started. He’s standing straight and stiff like the corporal of the guard is just getting him ready for inspection, but the boy part of him’s clean gone. When I see them blue eyes wide and burning, and the yellow hair all crinkly and standing up, I get a kinda odd notion what them berserks musta been once. He ain’t got any more pink and white. His face is just about the color of chalk crayons, only where he’s burned it’s kinda muddylike, and them big hands open and shut.

“God!” he says, blowing out his breath explosive. I got my suspicion from just looking at him, though, that he ain’t calling on no regular God; it’s Thor, or Woden, or one of them other Svensk soreheads that he’s thinking about.

“Never mind that part,” I says nasty. “Some guys take a lotta telling before they get wise. What’re you going to do about it?”

He steps up toward the bed, jerky.

“Damn you—Noonan!” he chokes. “Damn you! You knew about this all along——" His fist comes up as if he’s going to smash me right where I lay, but Nanette says one thing sharp and short in French and he stops.

Lydia, who’s till then just dumb like the mop she’s still holding, breaks into sobs that’s dry and hard. They come from way down somewheres, and just listening hurts me.

“He—he can’t—do—nothing!” she breaks out. But Nanette kisses her a half a dozen times, and does her best to quiet her.

“Now look here!” I says, seeing something’s going to bust right quick. “You, Eric Smithback! That periscope notion of yours maybe is worth something and maybe it ain’t. Here’s my proposition. I gotta have a new truck driver delivering shoes for me from my stores. That’s your job and you get thirty-five a week outa it. Twenty-five is what you’re paid for the work, and ten goes on as payment for your periscope. Besides, you get these!” And I flashes the two checks for five hundred apiece I had all ready. “One of these takes her”—and I motions to Lydia—“to some hospital and pays the bills for what’s coming to her leg. If it needs more’n five hundred to do the job I'll help out. The other one fixes up you and Nanette provided you agrees to live in Lydia’s home with her. If that ain’t good enough you just see that you make it good enough. Outa this I get about a fourth interest in your periscope, after paying for the patents and so on. Is it a go?”

Eric opens his mouth once or twice, and I sees he’s having a hard time keeping his Adam’s apple in the right place. Then, without even so much as shaking me by the hand, he takes those blue slips, looks a second at Nanette and his mother, and then stalks over to Lydia. Lifting her just as tender as if all of a sudden she was likely to break, he walks straight outa the room and down the corridor toward the elevator.

Nanette watches after him, kinda astonished. Then, like a flash, she’s bending over the bed, them brown eyes so full they splash on to the spread. “He—he ees come back,” she says, and there’s a little catch in her voice that don’t hurt its loveliness none. “He ees come back and thank you—dear old man!” And then she bent down quick for a hug and a kiss that pretty nearly paid me up in full for being thought an antique.