Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) Read Free

early this morning, she thought as she dressed, and I’ll clear that desk of mine so completely that Burnett will give me permission to leave early and I can be back here by five o’clock. The guests were arriving at six. Scott would come before then, of course. He was the host, tonight. She gave a last look at the photograph, at the rather solemn face which didn’t do Scott justice—he wasn’t so cold and intent as the camera pretended he was. His face was much more gentle than that. In fact, the usual adjective that women used for him was “sweet”; that was the gruesome effect that his charm and his smile combined with his height, fair hair, and blue eyes had on them. But what I like most of all, Rona decided as she pulled the blanket and sheets off the narrow bed, is the way he pays no attention to any of them. In the beginning, when she had first met Scott, he hadn’t wanted to pay much attention to her either. But he did, all the same. She was smiling as she hurried to the kitchenette to stop the kettle whistling itself hoarse.
    After breakfast, there was the usual tidying of the two small rooms which Rona called “my apartment” so proudly. (Mrs. Kasprowicz was coming in later, to clean and polish for three hours. At a dollar an hour, Rona could only afford her twice a week.) It was a simple apartment—the top floor of a brownstone house that had been converted into small flats—but everything it contained was Rona’s: Rona’s work, Rona’s ideas. This is something I’ve produced, she thought as she stood looking at the living-room. And then she wondered, as she did at least once each day, where Scott and she would live, and when. Perhaps by this summer, he would feel he had saved enough money. Last night, she thought wryly, had been no help to his budget, but what could she have done? Remonstrate gently? And risk making him angry, risk spoiling the evening? He didn’t like nagging women or interference. He liked to enjoy his impulses, even if they cost forty dollars.
    She had started worrying again. So she picked up a pencil and found a shopping pad and gave herself some practical worries to think about. She must order crackers, cheese. Flowers. Smoked salmon, olives, lemons, nuts. Liver pâté from the delicatessen on Third Avenue. Soda water. Scotch for Scott’s father, certainly. Perhaps some of the other men preferred that too. Martinis for the others. Cigarettes, she had nearly forgotten cigarettes. What else?
    She must take her party shoes to the cobbler to get the ankle strap fixed. And remind the cleaner to deliver her silk suit by five-thirty. What else, what else? A note for Mrs. Kasprowicz, printed carefully so that there would be no mistakes, about the glasses to be washed and polished. Oh, and ice...she must order extra ice.
    Then, with a last quick look around her, she went into the small hall. On the telephone table, near the door, she left the instructions for Mrs. Kasprowicz. She glanced in the mirror that hung over the table, readjusted the angle of her neat white sailor hat and tucked away a stray end of the heavy-meshed veil fitting closely over her face. She pulled on her freshly washed white gloves which matched the piqué waistcoat she wore with her grey wool suit, checked the seams of her stockings, and opened the door. The morning paper was lying at the threshold, in time for an eight o’clock breakfast. She lifted it, decided not to take it with her, and glanced at the headlines. The navy plane was still missing in the Baltic: ten young men who would never come back to their families... New York reservoirs were still low... Further investigations in Washington... The case of Dr. Fuchs was still going on, even if it was over... A Communist demonstration in New York against the President of Chile... Nazi trouble rising once more in Hamburg: desecration of graves.
    As she laid the paper with a frown on the hall table, the ’phone rang. I’ll be late, she warned herself, but