Minerva Sloan found that morning, and to her vast annoyance, four names on the lost leaf of her Christmas list which could not be ignored. That meant, in spite of the Saturday crowd, which would also be a last-minute crowd, she would have to go into the middle of the melee again and make four purchases. The items would be mailed, and they would probably be delivered late, but the postmark would show her correct intentions.
It was Willis, her venerable chauffeur, who bore the brunt of the hardship, of course, driving in tortuous traffic, finding a place to double-park (no police disturbed Minerva’s car) and waiting in the tedious cold. Minerva decided, since she was obliged to go out, that she would shop in Green Prairie rather than River City. It was farther, but she could stop in at the bank and save herself another trip on the following Tuesday.
Her errands, to her annoyance, took double the time she had generously allowed. The clerks were tired and rude, the gifts in the shops had been mauled, and traffic moved not at all, for long periods. She put off the bank expedition until afternoon and had Willis edge through Front Street (where the big tractor trucks backed up at warehouses made the way a zigzag, but where the very adroitness of their drivers kept some motion in the long lines of vehicles).
Thence, by other streets, she went to Wickley Heights Boulevard where two policemen and a gaudy doorman kept things moving along the elegant, curved façade of the Ritz-Hadley.
Even that usually serene hostelry was crowded. Minerva had intended to refresh herself in the Aztec Room, a euphemism for the bar. It was jammed. A hundred kids, minors, college students home on vacation, were dancing to an abominably loud jazz band. Dancing and illegally drinking, too.
Minerva backed out of the hot room and had her cocktails on the Palm Terrace, a wide hallway which looked out, through twenty-foot-high glass windows, on the landscaped hotel lawns, the eight-lane parkway, the river—and the slums on the opposite shore. Georges, the headwaiter in the Empire Room, brought a menu to the Terrace. Minerva ordered. She was notified when the meal was ready and dined sedately at an east-facing window, a window hung with wine-colored draperies that gave a view of the putting grounds, the winterempty swimming pool and the Broadmere beyond.
She was considerably mollified by the time she returned, wrapped in her silver-blue mink cloak, to the outside canopy. The tall, mannerly doorman summoned her car. She was still amiably aglow, still pleasantly aburp, when she entered the bank, let in by Bill Maine who rattled nervous bolts when he saw her car.
The moment she entered, she knew things were wrong, very wrong. Too many clerks were rushing about; and they were rushing too hurriedly; besides, they were carrying too many things. She caught sight of Beau Bailey, looking white, trotting in the nether distance. She bawled, “Beau!”
He turned and hurried up. She stared at him as he drew near. The man, she thought, is mortally frightened.
“What the devil is the to-do about?”
Beau trotted even faster to close the gap. “Minerva! Get home immediately! Condition Yellow—been in effect for hours! Don’t you know?”
“Know what? What on earth arc you talking about?”
He clapped a fat hand to his forehead. “It’s all over! The rumors, anyway! Air-raid alert!
The radio and TV aren’t saying, but people keep calling. The most terrific rumors. Enemy planes everywhere! Many cities hit! Condition Yellow here, though, still …! Thank God.”
“Beau, listen. I don’t know what you mean.”
“ Russian bombers,” his voice answered, with a thin, squealing overtone, “are said to be attacking our cities. The CD people have given the bank its special alert! Hours ago!”
“Are you mad?” Minerva peered at the man. “I just had lunch at the Ritz. There was absolutely no sign of such a thing!”
“ I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you! The radio is going on, and the TV, as per usual. Only, no announcer sounds right or looks quite right, any more. Evidently they’ve heard more than they’re permitted to tell! But Condition Yellow is official.”
“What in the world is this yellow condition?”
“The first air-raid alert. That’s why”—he looked over his shoulder, along the polished marble floor, toward the closed tellers’ windows—“that’s why everybody’s rushing around!
Condition Yellow means we have to get all important papers—bonds, stock, cash, records—
down in the deep vault.”
“See here, Beau,” Minerva said solidly, “I don’t know what’s panicked you. But I do know nothing of the sort is happening.”
“You do?” He seemed on the verge of inexpressible relief.
“I know it morally. I would have been notified! It may be that those incalculable damned fools have started some sort of a crazy air-alert practice again. They did it before, you’ll remember. It could even be a real foul-up-an alert the military started, because they made some error. That has happened. But—”
Beau’s hope was perishing before her eyes. “If you’d step into Mr. Pavley’s office, where there’s a TV set… ”
“I will,” Minerva said. “I will. Because, believe me, this hysteria has got to stop!”
Her first, creepy inkling came when she saw the live show in progress at the local station.
The actors were saying their rather stupid lines, but merely saying them. Their gestures were somewhat alien to their words. And their eyes kept straying from the business in hand, as if they were watching something or somebody in the studio, rather than playing to each other. It was not, as Beau had said, normal.
Minerva picked up a phone. She dialed a number. It was busy, so she tried another. She gave that up because she got the busy signal with the first digit: the automatic switching station was busy as a whole. “ Something’s happening,” she admitted.
She went out on the Boor of the bank. Her eyes roved over the place slowly, from the vaulted windows to the huge light fixtures that hung down on chains from the remote ceiling; she looked at the balcony that ran around three sides and at the figures moving there hurriedly. She gazed at the spread of gleaming marble, big as a skating rink, usually peopled by hurrying depositors, people making withdrawals, people doing business—with her. From nowhere, unwonted, a line came into her mind: This, too, shall pass away.
It annoyed her greatly. But it alarmed her slightly, too.
Another thought entered her busy brain. Suppose, right now, the sirens let go? Whether in earnest or in some crazed drill, they would catch her here. Right here. In the middle of town, in the bank. At best, she’d he delayed for hours, getting home. At worst! But the worst was preposterous.
She turned to Beau, who had accompanied her, agitated, wringing his hands frequently.
“I don’t know what this is all about, but I think I’ll go and find out. I’ll phone you.” She left the bank, quite quickly.
After she had departed, Beau went back to his office. He put on his mufHer, his rubbers, his coat and his hat. He went out on the mezzanine and down the stairs. Nobody saw him, nobody who had importance enough to question his going. He pushed through the crowds to the Kyle Parking Garage and waited an endless forty minutes for his car to come down the ramp. He drove east, to the Wickley Heights section and so, circuitously, toward his home.
Traffic was bad and constantly getting worse and it was nervous traffic. He saw fenders banged twice, but the drivers didn’t even get out to argue. They just went on.
He thought three things, mostly:
He wasn’t required in the bank on any Saturday.
Under the Sloan skyscraper were the best air-raid shelters in the center of town, the vaults. If anything did happen, the employees he had left there would be the best off of anyone in the area.
A man’s place, in a crisis, was at home.
His car radio played dance and Christmas music. The regular programs were no longer on the air. Just records, as if somebody in authority had ordered the change.