Chapter 8
The restaurant clock read five o'clock as Mona sat at a small table in the back of the Green Leaf Tea Room, a tea bag into her steaming cup, a circle of laughing canasta players encircling her on all sides. Claustrophobia and guilt trapped her too, and she would have stayed down in the housewares storeroom had it not been for that infernal little mouse nibbling away at the cardboard boxes. Her sugar laden teaspoon poised in mid-air, she looked up to see Orin's tall frame sauntering under the trellis rimmed with artificial roses at the hostess station. Even at that distance, Mona discerned an unusual flush to his cheeks, and a determined gait.
"Surprised to find you alone," he said bluntly, pulling up a chair, something in his uncharacteristically commanding demeanor making Mona shiver.
"Wh-what's that supposed to mean...?" she flushed with apprehension.
"It means, my dear wife... that I know you've been getting yourself laid while the rest of us mope around this department store!" he rasped out at her.
"Be quiet, Orin, so nobody hears. That's not true, Orin," she lied through her clenched teeth. "I love only you!" she sobbed.
"What about Hugh Murphy and Nick Harrington?
The two names stabbed out at her and she felt as if someone had stuck her in the guts with a knife. "Oh, God!" How did he find out?
"Don't lie to me, Mona," he pursued grimly. "Don't you want to know how I found out?"
Mona fought back tears, certain now that he would leave her... ask for a divorce, but nothing would force her to admit he was right. "There's nothing to find out... be-because I didn't do anything!"
"Mona, you've never lied to me." His eyes leveled and bored into her downcast ones. "Their wives told me... and do you want to know something else?" He didn't wait for her answer. He plunged in the knife when he said gloatingly, "They threw themselves at me... to get even with their husbands... and I fucked them both... at the same time. What do you think of that, Mona?"
Mona couldn't believe her ears. Orin? My Orin did something nasty like that? "H-How! I don't understand."
"I don't know how they found out," he growled. He leaned over the table and spat, "Didn't you hear what I said? I fucked them both at the same time. Aren't you going to ask any questions about that!"
"No!" flared Mona. "Don't be so crass!" She turned her head to see two canasta players perk up their ears.
"How does it feel to know I've cheated on you? Not very much fun, is it?" he blasted, and from there he proceeded to shower her with details of his sexual encounter with the naked nymphs in the pressing room. Mona found herself becoming aroused, as his unbelievable tale churned on. Finally, when he finished, Mona snuggled her chair up close and ran her hand over his thigh.
"Darling, why don't we go upstairs to our little home away from home and make up, Orin?"
Orin banged his fist on the table. "Sure, now that you've had your fun you want to forget it. Well, let me tell you something. I'm ready to get laid by those two luscious women again. I don't forgive and forget that easily... and I'm gonna make damned sure you don't go bouncing from one hot bed to another!"
Mona's spirits fell with the temperature outside. Her overtures were spurned hideously and his blatant unfairness bothered her.
"...But you're blaming me... and then doing the same thing. That doesn't make sense!" she tried to reason.
For the remaining six hours they stayed awake on that thirtieth of December Orin would not let Mona out of sight. Exhausted, Mona reticently curled up in bed, sleeping poorly plagued with bad dreams, longing for Orin's lengthy arm to hug her close.
When they awoke that morning, the air was crisp as a bite into a cold, green apple and over the intercom thundered an announcement from fourth floor headquarters:
"We regret to inform our store patrons that our heating system is malfunctioning. There will be no heat in the store for the time being. We advise people and children to bundle up in blankets from our linen department on the first floor... I'm sure you've all found it by now. Camping lanterns will be furnished for safety and warmth his evening."
Mona looked at Orin and shivered with rattling teeth. "We... we might freeze to death before you have a chance to divorce me."
Orin rubbed his sleepy eyes. "Now don't start blaming me... you're the one who started this mess that damned sunlamp. Next time I'll think twice before I give you what you want."
Words between them were monosyllabic and few that afternoon. While Orin and Dan played gin rummy in the third floor smoker, Mona lounged r reading Cosmopolitan magazine, Orin looking up from his card hand to cast her an accusing glance with every turn of the page. He didn't say anything, he just glared at her with that stony stare.
By that evening, food rations had slimmed down to dietetic tidbits and the first twinges of real panic set in. It hit some harder than others: The fat bellied little lady who'd been seen stuffing her mouth with gourmet shoppe delights, and draping her body in see-through lingerie, sat at a corner table frowning over a bowl of cold soup.
The fifty-odd stranded storm victims gathered solemnly in the tea room... some playing cards to fend off hunger, others chatting amicably, exchanging stories, when suddenly the lights died. A scream of terror rippled through the crowd.
"Oh, God, the power's off! We're going to die!" screamed a particularly anxious woman, ripe with child.
"Some New Year's Eve this turned out to be," mumbled Mona, washing down a Nesbitt cracker with a sip of cold tea.
"Nobody panic!" It was Dan, the armed guard, standing up on a chair in a Statue of Liberty pose, brandishing a flaming Bic lighter. "Don't anybody panic! Nothing can happen if we stay calm." He remembered his two day security guard training course on crowd control when he told them to finish eating and prepare for the night, following it up with a positive weather report. "Radio says it's supposed to stop snowing tomorrow."
Anybody who knew Dan personably believed him reliable: He carried a transistor radio like most cops carry guns. "Tomorrow we'll be home to our families and loved ones."
A combined sigh of relief and loved-starved murmurs rippled through the crowd. "If we all stay in the same room, we can't freeze to death. Our body heat will keep us warm." A few giggles rose; it wasn't difficult to pick out the singles in the crowd.
Following Dan's directions, the buzzing, hustling, shuffling crowd followed the leader down to the basement's camping department where one hundred hands snatched down sleeping bags and camping lanterns. Like the blind leading the blind, they held hands and inched their way up to the fourth floor, which in the next hour turned into an indoor camp ground; replete with tents pitched from king-sized sheets and burning lanterns dangling from branches of pole lamps. Spirits seemed to brighten despite the ludicrous disaster, and when one of the teenage boys suggested a few cases of champagne to celebrate New Year, nobody objected.
Dumbfounded, half frightened and bewildered, the Bradley's listened to the fracas, separated from their bed by the escalator dividing children's from the adult's furniture. In moments, the boys' lanterns flickered up the escalator and a scraping of cardboard boxes announced the arrival of liquid spirits.
"Happy New Year!" the youth bellowed and popped a champagne cork which was the first in the gatling-gun rupture of popping corks, and the shimmer of glass reflected in lamp light flickered from hand to hand as the bottles made the rounds. Somebody snuck down to the third floor and threaded a tape of disco music and set it ablast on volume ten on the battery operated boombox speakers.
Mona, head banging against the bedstead from the bass drum beat, peeked her head out of the roof of covers and looked around at what resembled a 1960's outdoor rock concert.
Everybody joined in a toast to the New Year... jumping on beds and dancing on them, fears and defenses shed in a wild moment of celebration.
"Really, Orin, it is New Year's Eve. Why do we have to be miserable? Let's go join them for a glass of champagne." complained Mona who loved parties and dancing.
"No!"
"Why?"
"Because you'll end up in somebody's bed, that's why!"
"Orin! For god sakes, at least let me go grab another blanket from an empty bed... I'm freezing to death." When he said nothing, she blasted, "Oh, I see... then you won't need a divorce."
Gripping her arm angrily, Orin hissed back, menacingly. "Don't get smart with me Mona. You're just lucky I haven't smacked you in the jaw!"
"Orin... I'm freezing... I mean it! I'll be right back."
"When he released her, Mona was so terribly frightened, that she scuttled away from him and darted into the darkness, winding her way through the mass of merry-making humanity, searching for a blanket. This was the first time, since she'd known Orin, that he had actually threatened her with violence. Remembering the grim anger in his usually kind eyes, she dabbed at her own.
Around her everyone was kissing and holding each other, making warm body contact after two days of frozen loneliness. It turned into musical arms with faceless strangers in that blackened room, lit only by the fracturing beams of glaring lantern light. Five people joined hands in a circle dance, a circle that grew hand by hand until the fourth floor became a square dance hall of stomping feet and singing voices, swirling and twirling together drunkenly like so many whirling dervishes rejoicing over the mysteries of the universe under a full moon. Shoes flew off kicking feet, and in the heart of the foray a shirt lost a button and was tugged off, dripping with perspiration.
In Hugh Murphy's inner office, sealed off and lit by lanterns, heated by camp stoves, Nick Harrington and his boss sat sipping champagne cooled on a window ledge. In their midst was Dan, making his hourly report on the restless natives raising havoc.
"Go ahead, let them have their party," offered Hugh generously. "We'll have one of our own."
"But Jesus, Mr. Murphy, they're wrecking the store... tearing it up!" Dan was fearful of losing his job.
"Hell, insurance pays for that." Murphy turned to his accountant, James Alabaster, a little eunuch of a man who'd been hidden away in his office, nose in the books sorting out inventory figures, working night and day, ignorant of the white-out until his naked light bulb flickered and died. Spending New Year's Eve with his mother was no fun, so what reason had he to complain, if he couldn't get home?
"That's right. We'll have to cover the deductible, though," he answered in his chirping voice. "Can we have a girl now?" he asked, anxious for the reward
promised him if he could straighten out inventory.
"Sure, James." Hugh emptied his champagne glass and turning to Nick said; "Go get her. Drag her by the hair if you have to. Little James here deserves something nice for straightening out our books."
"Goodie, goodie!" James clapped his hands together. "What does she look like?"
"You'll love her... she's got blonde hair and the prettiest tan this side of Hawaii."
Dan started to rise and turned pale. Good Christ... that's gin rummy Orin's wife!