“Here”, I said. “You take the stool and I’ll sit on some of these envelope boxes.”
“Okay”, said Dorita, sitting down on the stool and not offering to help me move the envelope boxes.
By shifting and moving things I fixed us each a place to work. Then I showed Dorita how to crease the announcements. “Make the first fold on the word ‘welcome’ and the second on ‘Come all’”, I said. “That way it will just fit the envelope.” Dorita was humming tunelessly and looking over my left shoulder.
I said, “Do you see what I mean?”
She said, “Millions of rats. I can hear them everywhere.”
“That’s rain on the roof”, I said not very convincingly.
“It is not”, she said. “It’s the rats. I see their eyes shining in the dark.”
“Where”, I said nervously. “There”, she said. “Behind you.”
As I turned to look I saw out of the corner of my eye one of her white-gloved hands flash out as quick as a snake’s tongue and knock my stack of announcements off the packing box. But Dorita said, “Oops, look what you did.”
The announcements slapped to the floor and fanned out into the darkness. I didn’t relish the thought of kneeling down and feeling around on that dark floor with my bare hands for them. I put on my gloves and seeing that Dorita still had on hers I asked her to help me. She laughed the gulping ugly laugh and said, “You spilled them. You pick them up.”
I said, “I saw you knock them off the table, Dorita.”
She said, “You did not. You never did.” Her voice held no conviction—in fact no inflexion of any kind. She might have been saying, “Hand me the ink.”
I said, “Dorita, I saw you spill those announcements. What was the idea?”
She said, “I did it for a joke”, then made the funny gulping noise which from the floor where I was kneeling sounded so much like something stemming from grief that I looked up at her sharply. There was no joy in her face but her eyes blazed and her gloved hand covered her mouth. She was laughing all right.
I said, “I don’t think it’s funny. I’m tired.”
She said, “I’ve got ten fur coats. You can borrow them any time.”
I said, “No thanks.”
She said, “Here, put on this leopard.” She yanked off her coat and dropped it down on my shoulders. I tried to shrug it off but she leaned over, grabbed the two lapels and began pulling the coat tight around my neck. I could feel the warmth from her body still in the coat. I could smell her oily body smell, I could feel her breath in my face, not unpleasant, but sweetish and warm like a dentist’s assistant’s. I stood up, jerked the coat off and threw it at her, just as Mary called out from the front door, “Hi, Bets. I’m sorry I’m so late.”
Like a flash Dorita slipped into her coat, buttoned it and was demurely folding announcements when Mary got to our lighted spot. Mary said, “Oh, Dorita, I didn’t know you were coming down here.”
Dorita said. “Mr Ajax asked me to help.”
Mary said, “That’s wonderful, it’s awfully lonely for Betty down here.”
Dorita said, “Betty doesn’t like me. She doesn’t want me to help her.”
I said, “That’s not true. I just don’t like your knocking my announcements off on the floor.”
Dorita said, “I didn’t knock them off. You knocked them with your sleeve.”
Mary looked puzzled. She said, “You two aren’t quarrelling are you?”
“Heavens, no”, I said.
Dorita said, “Let’s all go and get a cup of coffee. I know a little place just a block from here.”
I said, “Wait until I pick up these announcements.”
Mary said, “Here, I’ll hold a match. Oh, darn, I’ve only got one. Have you got any, Dorita?”
Dorita said, “No, I didn’t bring a purse.”
I was fumbling in my purse for matches when it suddenly dawned on me that if Dorita didn’t have a purse, then it must have been my purse she was looking in while I was at the back of the warehouse trying to find her something to sit on.
I looked up at her but she was busily smoothing the fingers of her string gloves. They were crocheted in ridges and looked like the skin on chickens’ legs.
Mary said, “Oh, let’s let the old announcements go until tomorrow.”
I said, “You and Dorita go ahead. I’ll turn off the light.”
They started toward the door, I knelt down, hurriedly scooped up the spilled announcements, then reached up, turned the switch and plunged the warehouse into thick impenetrable blackness. Like a tightrope walker I started feeling my way through the darkness toward the thin strip of pale light that marked the door. I was about halfway there when suddenly at my elbow I heard the gulping laugh. Panic-stricken I ran toward the door calling, “Mary, Mary, wait for me.”
When I got to the doorway, Mary said, “What in the world happened? Did you step on a rat?”
“Almost”, I said as Dorita sauntered slowly out of the darkness. As we walked along the waterfront in the rain, the waves slurped under the pilings, the sharp prow of a Japanese freighter loomed dark and sleek, like a huge shark; trucks zoomed past, belching diesel fumes, taxis screeched to sudden stops, and people passed us with their heads down to avoid facing the storm.
I loved the waterfront any time, especially in the rain when the salt and tar smells were stronger, but this night it seemed sinister to me. Filled with dark corners, rats and people who looked like seagulls. I had got thoroughly chilled in the warehouse and my teeth were chattering when we finally got to the small, warm, brightly-lighted café. Dorita laughed and talked with the funny old Norwegian who ran the place and ordered us all sugar doughnuts and coffee.
Under the pretext of getting out my cigarettes I opened my purse and went over the contents. Everything seemed to be there. Had I imagined that I had seen Dorita looking in a purse? Had it been some trick of light and shadow? I looked again to make sure that Dorita wasn’t carrying a purse. She wasn’t. I drank my coffee and as its comforting warmth took the knots out of my stomach, everything that had happened began to take on the aspect of a bad dream.
Mary and Dorita were making plans to meet at the warehouse at two o’clock the next day, which was Sunday. Mary gave Dorita her key saying that she knew the watchman and wouldn’t need it if we got there first. It was when I was wondering why Dorita didn’t have a key of her own, why Mr Ajax hadn’t given her one, that I noticed that she was eating the sticky, sugary doughnuts in the white string gloves.
“Normal people don’t eat sugar doughnuts in gloves”, I told Mary excitedly on the way home. “Only people who are afraid to leave fingerprints keep their gloves on all the time.”
Mary said, “Oh, Betsy, you’re just imagining things. You know what a vivid imagination you have. Dorita works for the Western Trucking Company.” “Doing what?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly”, Mary said. “She’s queer-looking but she’s awfully nice.”
I said, “She’s queer-looking and she’s queer-acting. I caught her fumbling around in my purse; she deliberately knocked over my stack of announcements, she asked me how much I weighed and she tried to choke me with her leopard.”
Mary said, “You’re just tired, Betsy.”
The next afternoon when we got to the warehouse, Dorita was already there. Sitting on the stool under the dim light, industriously folding announcements and stuffing them in the envelopes. The afternoon was uneventful except that I thought it odd both that Dorita should have worn such a beautiful mink coat to work in a dirty old warehouse, and that the fringe of hair under her scarf should have changed from jet-black to magenta.
As we worked we talked, but at the end of the afternoon I realized that although Dorita knew almost everything about Mary and me, we not only didn’t know what she did at Western Trucking, we didn’t even know where she lived.
Monday I called Mary at work and told her that I could not face going down to that lonely warehouse,
and couldn’t I bring the rest of the announcements home.
She said, “Well, I told Dorita you’d be down at five-thirty.”
I said, “That’s just why I don’t want to go. I’m afraid to be in that old warehouse with her. Anyway it’s terribly stormy and will probably be as cold as the dead down there. Call Dorita and tell her we’re going to do the rest of the announcements at home.”
Mary said she would and at five-thirty I took a cab to the warehouse, told the driver to wait and went in to get the announcements. Dorita in a grey squirrel coat and blonde hair was sitting under the light folding announcements.
I said, “Didn’t Mary call you?”
She said, “No.”
I said, “Well, I’m going to take the rest of the announcements home and do them.”
She said, “You’re not. I won’t let you. Are you a Catholic?”
I picked up a big stack of the announcements and started toward the door. Dorita ran after me, grabbed the front of my coat and hissed at me, “I asked you if you were a Catholic?”
I said, “No, I’m not and let go of my coat.”
She said, “You’re lying. You’re lying. You’re lying.”
The cab driver called from the doorway, “Need any help, lady?”
I said. “Yes.”
Dorita let go of my coat and said, “Here, honey. I’ll help you load the stuff in the cab.”
I didn’t say anything but I must have given her a very cold look for she pretended to shiver, said, “Brrr, it’s cold in here”, then laughed.
The cab driver and I made three trips and when we had everything in the cab I told him to drive me home. As we drove off I saw Dorita standing in the doorway of the deserted warehouse. She waved to me. When Mary came home she insisted that she had called Dorita and told her not to go to the warehouse.
That night as we all sat around the dining-room table folding the announcements, I told the family everything about Dorita. They all agreed that she sounded both crazy and dangerous but not for a moment did they want me to give her up. They agreed that the warehouse was too lonely and scary a place to see her but they thought we should move our operations up town.
About eleven-thirty we were in the breakfast nook drinking coffee, and listening to the storm howl around the house, when the doorbell rang. Dede went to the door and reported nobody there but the wind. The next morning I found the identification card with my signature which I always carried in my wallet, slipped under the front door. I hadn’t even known that I had lost it. I told Mary that I thought that Dorita had taken it the day I saw her opening my purse.
Mary said, “Well, let’s go right down and ask her. She’s going to meet me at the radio station at ten o’clock.”
I said, “I have to go to work but we’ll all have lunch together and I’ll ask her then. Mary, I think you should find out more about Dorita. Ask Mr Ajax about her. I know there’s something peculiar about her. Something almost sinister.”
At a little before twelve Mary called to tell me to meet them in the coffee shop of a small hotel way up town. I said, “Why so far away? I’m terribly busy and I have to get back on time.”
Mary said, “Dorita says that she has something important to show us in this hotel. She asked me if we wouldn’t please meet her there.”
I said, “Did you ask Mr Ajax about her?”
Mary said, “He was too busy and so was I. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
We got to the hotel at twelve-thirty sharp, and Dorita, in a beaver coat and black hair, was waiting for us in the coffee shop. The minute we sat down she said, “My uncle works for Scotland Yard. My father is the head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. For years they’ve been on the trail of the biggest diamond smuggler in the world. She is here working in the florist shop in this hotel. Mary, you go in and ask the woman in there if her name is Martha Heath. Tell her a friend of yours wants to know. Don’t tell her who you are. Don’t talk to her, just find out and come right back.” Her eyes blazed but her voice was as unemotional as gravy.
I said, “Why don’t you go?”
She said, “Because Martha Heath would recognize me. Go on, Mary. Hurry.”
I said, “What good will it do even if she says she is Martha Heath?”
Dorita said, “You’ll see. Scotland Yard has been after her for years and years.”
Mary said, “Order me a tomato sandwich on dark bread and a cup of coffee. I’ll be right back.”
Her eyes were shining and I knew that she loved this assignment for Scotland Yard and Pinkerton. After she had gone I said to Dorita, “What do you do down at Western Trucking?”
She said, “Are you a Catholic?”
I said, “I asked you what you did at Western Trucking?”
She said, “I check on other trucking companies for Mr Ajax, and I check on the employees of Western.”
“What kind of checking?” I asked. “You mean what time they get to work and how long they stay in the rest-room?”
“Oh, no”, said Dorita. “I check on employees they think are stealing. There’s a lot of room for stealing in a trucking company. Our cargoes are very valuable sometimes. Saturday I had to have a man fired.”
“How did you get your training for this job?” I asked looking pointedly at the black fringe and thinking of the other colours of hair.
Dorita said, “I was trained by Pinkerton but I worked for Scotland Yard.” I said, “Is that why you asked me how much I weighed that first day?”
She said, “Yes. I have to know everything about people.”
I said, “Is that why you went through my purse? I saw you, you know.”
She said, “Honey, I didn’t go through your purse. You shouldn’t say things like that about people. Is Mary in love with Mr Ajax?”
“Heavens, no!” I said. Mr Ajax, the president of Western Trucking was short, bald, about fifty and married.
Dorita said, “They’re both Catholics.”
I said, “Mary is not a Catholic. We’re Episcopalians.”
Dorita said, “Why does she wear that big silver cross then?”
I said, “That cross belonged to our Aunt Louise who was a sister in the Episcopalian Church. Mary wears it because it looks smart with that plain black dress.”
Dorita said, “You’re lying and you’re both Catholics.” Then she opened her purse and took out a framed miniature of a doughy-looking little baby. “This,” she said, flashing the picture in front of my eyes, “is your precious Mr Ajax when he was a baby.”
“Who cares?” I said.
Just then Mary came back and excitedly reported that the woman in the flower shop looked like a tired algebra teacher instead of a famous diamond smuggler, but had admitted that she was Martha Heath.
“What do we do now?” Mary asked.
“Nothing”, said Dorita, putting the miniature in her purse. “I’ll cable England tomorrow.”
Even Mary thought it was funny that she ate her tuna fish sandwich without taking off her brown suede gloves.
Mary’s Christmas party had snowballed and snowballed until it was now a good-sized avalanche. Mary was getting wonderful co-operation from everyone, and had had so much stuff donated that it began to look as if there would be a wristwatch and a vacuum cleaner for every shut-in in the state, but the millions of details of such a promotion kept her running about eighteen hours a day. After all the announcements had been mailed, I volunteered to go to her office in the radio station for an hour or two every night after work.
“I can write sport announcements, answer the phone, write letters, even take dictation from you,” I told her. She accepted joyously and so each night I left the office a little early and was at the radio station at five minutes past five.
The first night, when I walked in through the reception room, the door of the continuity department was ajar and I could see through into the salesmen’s room. Dorita was sitting at Mary’s desk typing on her typewriter. I remember being mildly irritated because Mary
had also solicited Dorita’s help with her clerical work.
When I went into Mary’s office, after stopping to tell the switchboard girl I would take all Mary’s calls, Dorita was sitting across the room looking at a magazine. From the speaker overhead Bing Crosby was mellowly intoning, ‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay.’
I said unenthusiastically to Dorita. “Did Mary ask you to come down and help too?”
“No”, she said. “Mr Ajax told me to drop in and see if there was something I could do.”
I said, “Well, if you want to help, type this list while I go through this huge pile of telephone messages.”
Dorita said, “I can’t type.”
I turned and looked at her unbelievingly. She smiled at me and lit a cigarette. The telephone rang. I answered and a woman wanted to know if Mary would raffle off her cow at the Christmas party. I said I wasn’t sure and for her to call the next day.
The phone rang again as soon as I had hung up and it was a churchwarden in the southern part of the state volunteering the voices of his choir if we would furnish the transportation. I told him to call the next day. The phone rang again and a woman asked if I would lend her little boy an accordion so he could play at the Christmas party.
By the time Mary finally came in I had forgotten all about Dorita, and was desperately trying to fend off a very drunk fat man who wanted to play Santa Claus at the Christmas party, and wanted to practise there in the radio station by having me sit on his lap. Mary got rid of the fat man, put Dorita right to work alphabetising some cards, and put me to work typing the lists and answering letters. We worked until after eight, Dorita without taking off her gloves.
On the way home I told Mary about seeing Dorita typing at her typewriter. Mary said, “Oh, darn, I forgot to ask Mr Ajax about her. Say, did that man call about the popcorn balls?”
“Yes, and he says he’ll make them in all colours”, I told her. “Let’s go down and talk to Andy about Dorita. There is something evil about her that I don’t understand. Anyway where does she get all those fur coats and why is her hair a different colour every day?”