At the door she turned and went back to the corner and exhumed the platinum purse and descended the stairs.
Minnie was in the hall.
“I’ll give you ten dollars,” Temple said.
“I wont be gone ten minutes.”
“I caint do it, Miss Temple.
Hit be worth my job if Miss Reba find it out, and my th’oat too, if Mist Popeye do.”
“I swear I’ll be back in ten minutes. I swear I will.
Twenty dollars.”
She put the bill in Minnie’s hand.
“You better come back,” Minnie said, opening the door.
“If you aint back here in ten minutes, I aint going to be, neither.”
Temple opened the lattice and peered out.
The street was empty save for a taxi at the curb across the way, and a man in a cap standing in a door beyond it.
She went down the street, walking swiftly.
At the corner a cab overtook her, slowing, the driver looking at her interrogatively.
She turned into the drug store at the corner and went back to the telephone booth.
Then she returned to the house.
As she turned the corner she met the man in the cap who had been leaning in the door.
She entered the lattice.
Minnie opened the door.
“Thank goodness,” Minnie said.
“When that cab over there started up, I got ready to pack up too.
If you aint ghy say nothing about it, I git you a drink.”
When Minnie fetched the gin Temple started to drink it.
Her hand was trembling and there was a sort of elation in her face as she stood again just inside the door, listening, the glass in her hand.
I’ll need it later, she said.
I’ll need more than that.
She covered the glass with a saucer and hid it carefully.
Then she dug into the mass of garments in the corner and found a dancing-frock and shook it out and hung it back in the closet.
She looked at the other things a moment, but she returned to the bed and lay down again.
At once she rose and drew the chair up and sat down, her feet on the unmade bed.
While daylight died slowly in the room she sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening to every sound on the stairs.
At half-past six Minnie brought her supper up.
On the tray was another glass of gin.
“Miss Reba sont this un,” she said.
“She say, how you feelin?”
“Tell her, all right,” Temple said.
“I’m going to have a bath and then go to bed, tell her.”
When Minnie was gone Temple poured the two drinks into a tumbler and gloated over it, the glass shaking in her hands.
She set it carefully away and covered it and ate her supper from the bed.
When she finished she lit a cigarette.
Her movements were jerky; she smoked swiftly, moving about the room.
She stood for a moment at the window, the shade lifted aside, then she dropped it and turned into the room again, spying herself in the mirror.
She turned before it, studying herself, puffing at the cigarette.
She snapped it behind her, toward the fireplace, and went to the mirror and combed her hair.
She ripped the curtain aside and took the dress down and laid it on the bed and returned and drew out a drawer in the dresser and took a garment out.
She paused with the garment in her hand, then she replaced it and closed the drawer and caught up the frock swiftly and hung it back in the closet.
A moment later she found herself walking up and down the room, another cigarette burning in her hand, without any recollection of having lit it.
She flung it away and went to the table and looked at her watch and propped it against the pack of cigarettes so she could see it from the bed, and lay down.
When she did so she felt the pistol through the pillow.