While Mortals Sleep Part 18

There was a picture in the paper one day, showing Gloria St. Pierre leaving the jail with Gratz. George didn't believe either one was real.

And then, one night, he was reading The Encyclopedia of Criminology The Encyclopedia of Criminology. He was looking for clues that would help him to understand the life Gloria St. Pierre had chosen to lead. The Encyclopedia Encyclopedia, all-inclusive as it tried to be, said not one word about why such a beautiful, intelligent girl should have thrown her life away on such ugly, greedy, cruel men.

There was a knock on the door.

George opened the door, found two unfamiliar young men standing outside. One of them said George's name politely, read it and his address from a piece of paper torn from a pack of cigarettes. It was the piece of paper on which Gloria St. Pierre had started to write George's biography, The Thrilling Life Story of Mr. Z The Thrilling Life Story of Mr. Z.

George recognized it a split second before the two men started beating the stuffing out of him. They called him "Professor" every time they hit him. They didn't seem mad at all.

But they knew their business. George went to the hospital with four broken ribs, two broken ankles, a split ear, a closed eye, and a headful of orioles.

The next morning, George sat in his hospital bed and tried to write his parents a letter. "Dear Mother and Father:" "Dear Mother and Father:" he wrote, he wrote, "I'm in the hospital, but you mustn't worry." "I'm in the hospital, but you mustn't worry."

He was wondering what to say beyond that, when a platinum blonde with eyelashes like buggy whips came in. She carried a potted plant and a copy of True Detective True Detective.

She smelled like a gangster funeral.

She was Gloria St. Pierre, but George had no way of recognizing her. Bernard Baruch could have hidden behind a disguise like that. She came bearing gifts all right, but no pity seemed to go with them. George's wounds interested her, but the interest was clinical. She was obviously used to seeing people bashed up, and she gave George low grades as a spectacle.

"You got off easy," she said. She a.s.sumed George knew who she was.

"I'm not dead," said George. "That's true."

She nodded. "That's smart," she said. "That's smarter than I thought you'd be. You could have been dead very easily. I'm surprised you're not dead."

"May I ask a question?" said George.

"I'd think you'd be through asking questions," she said. And George finally recognized her voice.

He lay back and closed his one good eye.

"I brought you a plant and a magazine," she said.

"Thanks," he said. He wished she would go away. He had nothing to say to her. She was so wild and unfamiliar that George couldn't even think about her.

"If you want some other plant or some other magazine," she said, "say so."

"Just fine," said George. A whanging headache was coming on.

"I thought of getting you something to eat," she said. "But they said you were on the serious list, so I thought maybe you better not eat."

George opened his eye. This was the first he'd heard of his being on the serious list. "Serious list?" he said.

"They wouldn't have let me in if I hadn't said I was your sister," she said. "I think it's some kind of mistake. You don't look serious to me."

George sighed-or meant to sigh. It came out a groan. And, through the whanging and purple flashes of his headache, he said, "They should have you make up the list."

"I suppose you blame me for all this," she said. "I suppose that's how your mind works."

"It isn't working," said George.

"I'm here just because I feel sorry for you," she said. "I don't owe you any apology at all. You asked for this. I hope you learned something," she said. "Everything there is to learn isn't printed in books."

"I know that now," said George. "Thanks for coming, and thanks for the presents, Miss St. Pierre. I think I'd better take a nap now." George pretended to go to sleep, but Gloria St. Pierre didn't go away. George could feel her and smell her very close by.

"I left him," she said. "You hear me?"

George went on pretending to sleep.

"After I heard what he had done to you, I left him," she said.

George went on pretending to sleep. After a while Gloria St. Pierre went away.

And, after a while, George really did go to sleep. Sleeping in an overheated room with his head out of order, George dreamed of Gloria St. Pierre.

When he woke up, the hospital room seemed part of the dream, too. Trying to find out what was real and what was a dream, George examined the objects on his bedside table. Among these things were the plant and the magazine Gloria had brought him.

The cover on the magazine could very well have been a part of the dream George had been having, so he pushed that aside. For utterly sane reading, he chose the tag wired to the stem of the plant. And the tag started out sanely enough. "Clementine Hitchc.o.c.k Double-Blooming Geranium," "Clementine Hitchc.o.c.k Double-Blooming Geranium," it said. it said.

But after that the tag went crazy. "Warning! This is a fully patented plant!" "Warning! This is a fully patented plant!" it said. it said. "As.e.xual reproduction is strictly forbidden by law!" "As.e.xual reproduction is strictly forbidden by law!"

George thanked G.o.d when the perfect image of reality, a fat policeman, clumped in. He wanted George to tell him about the beating.

George told the lugubrious tale from the beginning, and realized, as he told it, that he didn't intend to press charges. There was a crude fairness in what had happened. He had, after all, started things off by slugging a known gangster much smaller than himself. Moreover, George's brains had taken such a scrambling that he remembered almost nothing about the men who had done the actual beating.

The policeman didn't try to argue George into pressing charges. He was glad to be saved some work. There was one thing about George's tale that interested him, though. "You say you know this Gloria St. Pierre?" he said.

"I've just told you," said George.

"She's only two doors down," said the policeman.

"What?" said George.

"Sure," said the policeman. "She got beat up, too-in the park right across the street from the hospital."

"How badly hurt is she?" said George.

"She's on the serious list," said the policeman. "About the same deal as you-a couple of ankles broken, a couple of ribs, two big shiners. You still got all your teeth?"

"Yes," said George.

"Well," said the policeman, "she lost her upper front ones."

"Who did it?" said George.

"Her husband," said the policeman. "Gratz."

"You've got him?" said George.

"In the morgue," said the policeman. "A detective caught him working her over. Gratz ran. The detective shot him when he wouldn't stop. So the lady's a widow now."

George's ankles were set and put in casts after lunch that day. He was given a wheelchair and crutches.

It took him a while to get nerve enough to go calling on the widow Gratz.

At last, he rolled himself into her room and up to her bedside.

Gloria was reading a copy of the Ladies' Home Journal Ladies' Home Journal. When George rolled in, she covered the lower part of her face with the magazine. She covered it too late. George had already seen how fat-lipped and snaggletoothed she was.

Both eyes were black and blue. Her hair was immaculately groomed, however. And she wore earrings-big, barbarous hoops.

"I-I'm sorry," said George.

She didn't answer. She stared at him.

"You came to see me-tried to cheer me up," he said. "Maybe I can cheer you up."

She shook her head.

"Can't you talk?" said George.

She shook her head. And then tears ran down her cheeks.

"Oh my-my," said George, full of pity.

"Pleath-go way," she said. "Don't look at me-pleath! I'm tho d.a.m.n ugly. Go way."

"You don't look so bad," said George earnestly. "Really."

"He thpoiled my lookth!" she said. The tears got worse.

"He thpoiled my lookth, tho no other man would ever want me!"

"Oh now-" said George gently, "as soon as the swelling goes down, you'll be beautiful again."

"I'll have falth teeth," she said. "I'm not even twenty-one, and I'll have falth teeth. I'll look like thomething out of the bottom of a garbath can. I'm going to become a nun."

"A what?" said George.

"A nun," she said. "All men are pigth. My huthband wath a pig. My father wath a pig. You're a pig. All men are pigth. Go way."

George sighed, and he went away.

George snoozed before supper, dreamed about Gloria again. When he woke up, he found Gloria St. Pierre in a wheelchair next to his bed, watching him.

She was solemn. She had left her big earrings in her room. And she was doing nothing to cover her bunged-up face. She exposed it bravely, almost proudly, for all to see.

"h.e.l.lo," she said.

"h.e.l.lo," said George.

"Why didn't you tell me you were a minithter?" she said.

"I'm not one," said George.

"You're thtudying to be one," she said.

"How do you know that?" said George.

"It'th in the newthpaper," she said. She had the paper with her. She read the headline out loud: "DIVINITY THTUDENT, GUN MOLL, HOTHPITALITHED BY THUGTH."

"Oh boy," murmured George, thinking of the effect of the headline on his landlord, the dean of the Divinity School, and on his own parents in a white clapboard house in the Wabash Valley, not far away.

"Why didn't you tell me what you were?" said Gloria. "If I'd know what you were, I never would have thaid the thingth I thaid."

"Why not?" said George.

"You're the only kind of man who ithn't a pig," she said. "I thought you were jutht thome college kid who wath a pig like everybody elth, only you jutht didn't have the nerve to act like a pig."

"Um," said George.

"If you're a minithter-or thtudying to be one, anyway-" she said, "how come you don't bawl me out?"

"For what?" said George.

"For all the evil thingth I do," she said. She didn't seem to be fooling. She knew she was bad, and she felt strongly that George's duty was to scare her.

"Well-until I get a pulpit of my own-" said George.

"What do you need a pulpit for?" she said. "Don't you believe what you believe? Tho why you need a pulpit?" She rolled her wheelchair closer. "Tell me I'll go to h.e.l.l, if I don't change," she said. rolled her wheelchair closer. "Tell me I'll go to h.e.l.l, if I don't change," she said.

George managed a humble smile. "I'm not sure you will," he said.

She backed off from George. "You're jutht like my father," she said contemptuously. "He'd forgive and forgive and forgive me-only it wathn't forgiving at all. He jutht didn't care."

Gloria shook her head. "Boy-" she said, "what a lothy mitherable minithter you're you're going to be! You don't believe anything! I pity you." going to be! You don't believe anything! I pity you."

And she left.

George had another dream about Gloria St. Pierre that night-Gloria with the lisp this time, Gloria with the teeth missing and the ankles in casts. It was the wildest dream yet. He was able to think of the dream with a certain wry humor. It didn't embarra.s.s him to have a body as well as a mind and a soul. He didn't blame his body for wanting Gloria St. Pierre. It was a perfectly natural thing for a body to do.

When George went calling on her after breakfast, he imagined that his mind and soul weren't involved in the least.

"Good morning," she said to him. Many swellings had gone down. Her looks were improved-and she had a question all ready for him. This was it: "If I wath to become a houthwife with many children, and the children were good," she said to George, "would you rejoith?"