Suddenly she knew that she did not want Aron to know about her. Maybe he could come to her in New York. He would think she had always lived in an elegant little house on the East Side. She would take him to the theater, to the opera, and people would see them together and wonder at their loveliness, and recognize that they were either brother and sister or mother and son. No one could fail to know. They could go together to Ethel’s funeral. She would need an oversized coffin and six wrestlers to carry it. Kate was so filled with amusement at her thoughts that she did not hear Joe’s knocking on the door. He opened it a crack and looked in and saw her gay and smiling face.

“Breakfast,” he said and nudged the door open with the edge of the linen-covered tray. He pushed the door closed with his knee. “Want it there?” he asked and gestured toward the gray room with his chin.

“No. I’ll have it right here. And I want a boiled egg and a piece of cinnamon toast. Four and a half minutes on the egg. Make sure. I don’t want it gooey.”

“You must feel better, ma’am.”

“I do,” she said. “That new medicine is wonderful. You look dragged by dogs, Joe. Don’t you feel well?”

“I’m all right,” he said and set the tray on the table in front of the big deep chair. “Four and a half minutes?”

“That’s right. And if there’s a good apple—a crisp apple—bring that too.”

“You ain’t et like this since I knew you,” he said.

In the kitchen, waiting for the cook to boil the egg, he was apprehensive. Maybe she knew. He’d have to be careful. But hell! she couldn’t hate him for something he didn’t know. No crime in that.

Back in her room he said, “Didn’t have no apples. He said this was a good pear.”

“I’d like that even better,” said Kate.

He watched her chip off the egg and dip a spoon into the shell. “How is it?”

“Perfect!” said Kate. “Just perfect.”

“You look good,” he said.

“I feel good. You look like hell. What’s the matter?”

Joe went into it warily. “Ma’am, there ain’t nobody needs five hundred like I do.”

She said playfully, “There isn’t anyone who needs—”

“What?”

“Forget it. What are you trying to say? You couldn’t find her—is that it? Well, if you did a good job looking, you’ll get your five hundred. Tell me about it.” She picked up the salt shaker and scattered a few grains into the open eggshell.

Joe put an artificial joy on his face. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m in a spot. I need it. Well, I looked in Pajaro and Watsonville. Got a line on her in Watsonville but she’d went to Santa” Cruz. Got a smell of her there but she was gone.”

Kate tasted the egg and added more salt. “That all?”

“No,” said Joe. “I went it blind there. Dropped down to San Luis an’ she had been there too but gone.”

“No trace? No idea where she went?”

Joe fiddled with his fingers. His whole pitch, maybe his whole life, depended on his next words, and he was reluctant to say them.

“Come on,” she said at last. “You got something—what is it?”

“Well, it ain’t much. I don’t know what to think of it.”

“Don’t think. Just tell. I’ll think,” she said sharply.

“Might not even be true.”

“For Christ’s sake!” she said angrily.

“Well, I talked to the last guy that seen her. Guy named Joe, like me—”

“Did you get his grandmother’s name?” she asked sarcastically.

“This guy Joe says she loaded up on beer one night an’ she said how she’s going to come back to Salinas an’ lay low. Then she dropped out of sight. This guy Joe didn’t know nothing more.”

Kate was startled out of control. Joe read her quick start, the apprehension, and then the almost hopeless fear and weariness. Whatever it was, Joe had something. He had got the breaks at last.

She looked up from her lap and her twisted fingers. “We’ll forget the old fart,” she said. “You’ll get your five hundred, Joe.”

Joe breathed shallowly, afraid that any sound might drag her out of her self-absorption. She had believed him. More than that, she was believing things he had not told her. He wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible. He said, “Thank you, ma’am,” but very softly, and he moved silently toward the door.

His hand was on the knob when she spoke with elaborate casualness. “Joe, by the way—”

“Ma’am?”

“If you should hear anything about—her, let me know, will you?”

“I sure will. Want me to dig into it?”

“No. Don’t bother. It isn’t that important.”

In his room, with the door latched, Joe sat down and folded his arms. He smiled to himself. And instantly he began to work out the future course. He decided to let her brood on it till, say, next week. Let her relax, and then bring up Ethel again. He did not know what his weapon was or how he was going to use it. But he did know that it was very sharp and he itched to use it. He would have laughed out loud if he had known that Kate had gone to the gray room and locked its door, and that she sat still in the big chair and her eyes were closed.

PART FIVE