She looked up at the meter. They were out of gas. The red flag was up.
She got to her feet and walked over to her pocketbook. She opened the small change purse and searched through it. She had no quarters, only nickels and dimes.
For a moment, she thought of asking Tom for a quarter, then shrugged her shoulders. She'd had enough of his blasphemous tongue.
She'd do without her bath. She could take it in the morning, when she came back from Mass.
She went into the bathroom and used the last of the hot water to wash her face.
Tom was standing in the kitchen when she came out, his chest bare above his trousers.
She swept by him silently and closed the bedroom door behind her.
Tom went into the bathroom and washed up noisily. Suddenly, the water went cold.
He swore and dried himself quickly, then fished in his pocket for a quarter.
He reached up and put the quarter into the meter, then watched the red on the dial disappear. He nodded, satisfied.
In the morning, he'd turn on the heater and in a few minutes, he'd have enough hot water for his shave. He went into the bedroom, leaving the door open behind him, unaware of the slight hiss coming from under the heater.
He draped his pants on the chair and sat down on the bed. After a moment, he stretched out with a sigh. His shoulder touched Ellen and he felt her turn away.
Ah, the hell with her, he thought, turning on his side, his back to her.
Maybe the commies were right with their ideas of free love.
At least a man wouldn't have to put up with a woman like her.
His eyes began to feel heavy. He could hear the soft, even sounds of her breath. She was asleep already.
He smiled to himself in the dark. With free love, he'd have his pick of women. She'd act different then, all right.
His eyelids drooped and closed and he joined his wife in slumber.
And death.
Jennie sat up in the bed, clutching the sheet to her naked body and staring with wide, frightened eyes at the woman who stood in the doorway.
On the other side of the bed, Bob was already hurriedly buttoning his shirt.
"Did you think he'd leave me for you?" she screamed at Jennie. "Did you think you were the first?
Hasn't he told you how many times I've caught him like this?" Her voice grew contemptuous. "Or do you think he's really in love with you?" Jennie didn't answer. "Tell her, Robert," his wife said angrily. "Tell her you wanted to make love to me tonight and when I refused, you came running over here.
Tell her."
Jennie stared at him.
His face was white and he didn't look in her direction.
He grabbed his coat from the chair and walked over to his wife.
"You're all upset. Let me take you home."
Home.
Jennie felt a sick feeling in her stomach.
This was home – his and hers. He had said so.
It was here they had loved, here they had been together.
But he was talking about someplace else. Another place.
"I'm always upset, aren't I, Robert?
Every time you promise it will never happen again.
But I know better, don't I?
All right," she said suddenly, her voice hard and cold. "We'll go. But not until you tell her."
"Please, dear," he said quickly. "Another time. Not now."
"Now, Robert," she said coldly.
"Now – or the whole world will know about Dr. Grant, the quack, the abortionist, the great lover."
He turned and looked back at Jennie on the bed.
"You'll have to leave, Miss Denton," he said huskily. "You see, I don't love you," he said in a strained voice.
"I love my wife."
And almost at the same moment that the door closed behind him, there was an explosion in an old tenement on the other side of the city.
After the firemen pulled the charred bodies from the fire, they gave their verdict. The victims had been fortunate.
They were already dead before the fire started.
9.
Charles Standhurst was eighty-one years old when he met Jennie Denton.
It was eight o'clock of a spring morning in 1936 and he was in the operating room of the Colton Sanitarium at Santa Monica.
He was the patient just being placed on the operating table and she was acting as Chief Nurse in Surgery.