Lay Her Among The Lilies

She startled me. I wasn’t expecting to see this plump, matronly woman who looked as if

she had just come in from a shopping expedition and was now about to cook the lunch.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” I said, lifting my hat. “I’m looking for Nurse Gurney.” I waved

to the half-open front door behind me. “She lives there, doesn’t she?”

The plump woman dipped into the paper sack and took out a plum. She examined it

closely, the eyes in her vacant, fat face suspicious. Satisfied, she popped it into her mouth. I

watched her, fascinated.

“Why, yes,” she said in a muffled voice. “Yes, she does.” She raised her cupped hand,

turned the stone out of her mouth into her hand in a refined way and dropped the stone back

into the sack. “Have a plum?”

I said I didn’t care for plums, and thanked her.

“They’re good for you,” she said, dipped into the sack and fished our another. But this time

it didn’t pass her scrutiny and she put it back and found another more to her liking.

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

“You haven’t seen her, have you?” I asked, watching the plum disappear between the big

teeth.

“Seen who?”

“Nurse Gurney. I’ve just called and I find the front door open. I can’t get any answer to my

ring.”

She chewed the plum while her unintelligent face remained blank. After she had got rid of

the plum stone, she said. “You should eat plums. You haven’t got a very healthy colour. I eat

two pounds every day.”

From the shape of her that wasn’t all she ate.

“Well, maybe I’ll get around to them one day,” I said patiently. “Nurse Gurney doesn’t

happen to be in your apartment?”

Her mind had wandered into the paper sack again, and she looked up, startled. “What was

that?”

Whenever I run into a woman like this I am very, very glad I am a bachelor.

“Nurse Gurney.” I felt I wanted to make signs the way I do when I talk to a foreigner. “The

one who lives in that apartment. I said she doesn’t happen to be in your apartment.”

The blue eyes went vague.

“Nurse Gurney?”

“That’s right.”

“In my apartment?”

I drew a deep breath.

“Yeah. She doesn’t happen to be in your apartment, does she?”

“Why should she be?”

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

I felt blood begin to sing in my ears.

“Well, you see, her front door was open. She doesn’t appear to be in her apartment. I

wondered if she had popped over to have a word with you.”

Another plum came into view. I averted my eyes. Seeing those big teeth bite into so much

fruit was beginning to undermine my mental stability.

“Oh, no, she hasn’t done that.”

Well, at least we were making progress.

“You wouldn’t know where she is?”

The plum stone appeared and dropped into the sack. A look of pain came over the fat, blank

face. She thought. You could see her thinking the way you can see a snail move if you watch

hard enough.

“She might be in the—the bathroom,” she said at last. “I should wait and ring again.”

Quite brilliant in a dumb kind of way.

“She’s not in there. I’ve looked.”

She was about to put the bite on another plum. Instead she lowered it to look reproachfully

at me.

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do.”

I took off my hat and ran my fingers through my hair. Much more of this and I would be

walking up the wall.

“I knocked first,” I said, through clenched teeth. “Well, if she’s not with you I’ll go back

and try again.”

She was still thinking. The look of pain was still on her face.

“I know what I would do if I were you,” she said.

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

I could guess, but I didn’t tell her. I had a feeling she would insult at the drop of a hat.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I’d go downstairs and see the janitor. He’s a very helpful man.” Then she spoilt it by

adding, “Are you sure you won’t have a plum?”

“Yeah, I’m quite sure. Well, thanks, I’ll see the janitor like you said. Sorry to have taken up

so much of your time.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” she said, and smiled.

I backed away, and as she closed the door she put another plum into the maw she called her

mouth.

I rode down the elevator to the lobby and walked down a flight of dark, dusty stairs to the

basement. At the bottom of the stairs a door faced me. It bore a solitary legend: Janitor.

I raised my hand and rapped. A lean old man with a long, stringy neck, dressed in faded

dungarees, appeared. He was old and bored and smelt faintly of creosote and whisky.

He squinted at me without interest, said one word out of a phlegmy old throat, “Yes?”

I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get much help out of him unless I shook him out of his

lethargy. From the look of him he seldom came up out of the darkness, and his contacts with

human beings were rare. He and Rip Van Winkle would have made a fine business team,

providing Winkle took charge of things; not otherwise; decidedly not otherwise.

I leaned forward and hooked a finger in his pocket.

“Listen, pally,” I said, as tough as an Orchid City cop. “Shake the hay out of your hair. I

want a little co-operation from you.” While I talked I rocked him to and fro. “Apartment

246—what gives?”

He swallowed his Adam’s apple twice. The second time I didn’t think it would come to the