L.A. 46, page 25
She turned to go to her own apartment and saw a light in the Katz apartment so she knocked lightly on the door.
“Please to come in, Mrs. Malloy,” Mrs. Katz said as soon as she saw who it was. “I am glad you knocked. I just finished calling the children so they could make the arrangements in New York. You see, I am taking Ernie home Monday morning.”
“But you’re coming back, I hope, Mrs. Katz?”
Mrs. Katz shook her head. “No. These months were for Ernie. We both had a good time. Now I will stay with the children. But don’t worry about the lease. Our lawyer will take care.”
Mrs. Malloy was hurt. “Oh, please believe me, Mrs. Katz, I wasn’t even thinking of that. Not at a time like this.”
Mrs. Katz patted her arm. “So I know. But you’re wondering why I’m not crying. I’ll tell you. Thirty good years I spent with Ernie. And now I’m not crying because he wouldn’t want I should. He knew this would happen. I knew it would happen. It was only a question of time.” She took her purse from the telephone stand.
“But now you will excuse me, please. It’s time for me to go back and the taxi I called is waiting.”
“Back—?” Mrs. Malloy asked.
Mrs. Katz explained, “To where I had them take Ernie. To Mr. Groman’s on Wilshire.” She shrugged. “So maybe the rabbi won’t like. Maybe it’s not orthodox. Neither was Ernie and this is the way he would have wanted. In what they call the slumber room they put him. And with Mr. Sudderman acting as shamus and saying tyilum, Mr. Melkha and Captain Johnson, Mr. Fine, and Mr. Leslie and Mr. Morton, Mr. Kolowski and Mr. Kelly from the liquor store down on the corner where Ernie sometimes made a bet, and any of his friends who want, are sitting up with Ernie. Just like it used to be back on the Avenue. I must see to it that there is plenty to eat and drink. I wouldn’t want to shame Ernie.” Mrs. Katz pushed up the back of her bleached hair. “Almost like he was with me, I can hear him say, ‘Come on, Mama. Don’t be so chintzy. Spend a buck. After all, it’s only money.’ ”
Mrs. Malloy accompanied the other woman to the front of the building, then stood under the arch looking out at the lights of the city, savoring the freshness of the air.
Colette came out and got into a cab. The Barry Edens returned from the mountains and drove down the ramp into the garage. A mud-splattered five-year-old car with a press card on the windshield stopped in front of the building then scurried off, after pausing just long enough for Ruby to open the door and get out.
Mrs. Malloy was surprised. “I thought,” she said, as the teen-ager undulated her hips up the walk, “that you were upstairs.”
“No,” Ruby said. “I—I went for a little ride. But thanks for being concerned.”
It wasn’t so much what she said. It was the way she said it. Mrs. Malloy wondered who in hell the little bitch thought she was. She started a hot retort and clamped her lips shut. The Wylies were good tenants and she would have two vacancies as it was.
She unlocked the door of her own apartment and took the cover off the portable typewriter on which she wrote the building’s correspondence. If she wrote the ad now, she could put it on the ledge over the mailboxes and Mr. Hanson would pick it up Monday and it would appear in Tuesday morning’s paper. Her fingers moved rapidly over the keys as she wrote:
VIEW APARTMENT/1 BDR—$350—
NEW BLDG DLX PRI PATIOS. Air cond. Htd. Pool, Subt. Gar. Tub and Shr. conv. Shpg. Trans. Refined ten.
CASA DEL SOL 7225-35 Villa PO 9-3827
Sorry Adults Only No Pets
Day Keene, L.A. 46
