“My cousin Ruth has a friend who runs a rooming house. She calls it a tourist home. It’s on El Camino del Mar.”

“That sounds like a very high class location.”

“It’s the highway. 101.”

“Oh.” Ruby’s jaw tightened but when she spoke again her voice was as gay and blithe as ever: “Well, none of my friends up north will know the difference. They’ll think it’s high class just like I thought.” She paused. “Is it far from here?”

“Ten blocks or so.”

“Oh God.” Ruby sat down again, holding the fox’s head close against her face.

Hazel looked away. Dead things made her nervous.

“I can call you a cab,” she said.

“No. No thanks.”

“It’s a long way, in this heat.”

“I don’t — I don’t mind the heat like most people. I’m just a little tired, but I’ll manage. I always do. I’m stronger than I look.”

To prove her point she got back onto her feet. She wore winter shoes, black suede pumps scuffed at the toes and heels. Her stockingless legs were very white, as if they’d been frozen.

“I’d better be on my way.”

“Hold it a minute while I phone and see if Mrs. Freeman has a vacancy. It might save you a trip.”

“You’re kind, Miss Philip, you’re a kind person,” Ruby said, in a surprised voice.

It was too hot to argue so Hazel merely shook her head.

She used the extension phone in the operating room, partly because she didn’t want Ruby to overhear her conversation, and partly because she liked to sit in the dental chair while she was telephoning.

Ruth answered the telephone: “Hello? Hazel? I was just doing the lunch dishes.” Ruth always made a point of telling people what she was doing, had just done or was about to do. In this way she gave the impression that she did as much work as any six people and so could never be accused of being lazy or not earning her keep. “What do you want? I was just about to start on the Venetian blinds.”

“There’s a young girl here looking for a room. I thought I’d send her over to Mrs. Freeman’s.”

“Is the girl respectable?”

“She’s a friend of one of Dr. Foster’s relatives from up north.”

“Then she should certainly be respectable.” Ruth was the official baby sitter for the Fosters’ three children, and while she hadn’t much interest in, or use for, Gordon, she admired Elaine Foster tremendously.

Hazel said, “I don’t want to send the girl all the way over there unless Mrs. Freeman has a vacancy. Could you give me her phone number?”

“She doesn’t have a phone. What with the girls using it all the time, she had it taken out. But I know she has a vacancy. I saw her last night at the organ recital at church.”

“What’s the house number?”

“1906.”

“Thanks.”

“Hazel? Are you still there?... When I finish the blinds, I have to go over to the Fosters’ to baby-sit, but when I come home I thought I’d wax all the window sills.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Wax is a preservative.”

“All right, then. All right.” There was no use in arguing with Ruth. Hazel knew that by evening the window sills would all be waxed and Ruth would be lying on the bed with a wet cloth across her eyes.

Gordon came in from the lab and began washing his hands at the basin.

Hazel climbed awkwardly out of the dental chair. “Have you finished?”

“With the bridge, yes. I still have that inlay to cast.”

“I can help you.”

“It’s your afternoon off as well as mine.”

“In this weather there’s nothing I want to do anyway.” There was something, but she would never have admitted it to anyone: she wanted to go down to the beach in a brand-new bathing suit and look the way she had twenty years ago when she and George were married. She had changed in those twenty years, and so had George, but it was characteristic of Hazel that she noticed more changes in herself than in him.

Gordon dried his hands on a linen towel. “Who was at the door?”

“That girl, the one who was here last week.”

“Girl?”

“Ruby MacCormick.”

“Well,” he said, carefully. “What did she want?”

“She’s still here.”

“Oh.”

“She wants a room. She’s moving. I was just trying to find a place for her to go.”

“And did you?”

“I think so. It’s on the highway, 1906.”

“Not a very good location.”

“The best she can afford, that’s my opinion. She talks big, but I can tell. Any woman could.”

He threw away the towel and stood for a moment with his clenched fist pressed against the left side of his chest. It was a way he had of standing lately, as if all his problems had gathered together in a tight little bunch around his heart, and the pressure of his fist was meant to dispel them.

Hazel leaned over and picked up the towel and put it in the laundry container. She spoke quietly: “Maybe you’d better go out and say hello to her, just for politeness’s sake.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“All right then, I’ll say it for you.”

“Do that.” He hesitated a moment. “Did you bring your car this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps it wouldn’t be too much out of your way to drive the girl as far as the highway. I feel a certain obligation to her because she’s a stranger in town.”

“Well, so do I, only I wanted to stay and help you cast the inlay. I’ll pour it up for you.”

“I can do it alone. Or you can come back later, if you insist.”

“I’ll come back.”

“Thank you, Hazel.”

He sounded so deeply grateful that she wasn’t sure what he was thanking her for; it couldn’t be for anything so trivial as offering to help him with the inlay, or driving Ruby over to the highway.

On the way to Mrs. Freeman’s, the girl sat quiet and motionless except when Hazel’s old Chevy hit a bump or turned a fast corner, or when Hazel asked a direct question: “What made you decide to come to Channel City?”

“I wanted to get away from home.”

“This is a tough place to make a living.”

“I have a job.”

“You’d do better down south. Some of the big airplane factories—”

“I like it here.”

“There’s not much chance of promotion being a waitress at the Beachcomber.”

“Mr. Anderson says I can work up to cashier or hostess if I try.”

“And after that?”

Ruby frowned and then rubbed away the frown lines with the tip of her forefinger. “After that I might get married.”

“Have you a boyfriend back home?”

“Loads of them, but they’re all silly and immature.”

“How old are you, Ruby?”

“Old enough.”

Hazel wanted to laugh — the things the girl said were funny, but the way she said them was not. There was an air of stubborn earnestness about her, as if she had in the back of her mind a single and solemn purpose that obliterated all others.

Hazel stopped the car in front of 1906, a two-storied frame house with a sign nailed to one of the porch pillars: “Mrs. Freeman’s Tourist Home, Ladies Only, Reasonable Rates, Ocean View.” The house, like the scrawny shrubs planted around it and the parched lawn in front of it, bore the marks of the drought years.

“It’s not much to look at from the outside, but it’s clean inside. Mrs. Freeman is a very clean woman,” Hazel added quite severely, as if Ruby had accused Mrs. Freeman of being a very dirty one.

Ruby opened the car door. “Thank you for the ride.”

“That’s all right.”

“I didn’t want to admit it but I was awful tired. You just about saved my life.”

“It was Dr. Foster’s idea.”

“It was? Heavens, I didn’t think he’d even remember me, honestly.”

But the word, honestly, was contradicted by the coy and artificial tone of her voice. She’s lying, Hazel thought. She expected to be remembered, and wanted to be. I wonder what her game is.

Ruby put her suitcase on the ground and started to close the car door.

“Leave it open,” Hazel said. “It’s cooler.”

“But you can’t drive with it open.”

“I thought if you wouldn’t be too long I’d wait here for you and drop you off at work on my way back to the office.”

The girl looked wary. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask me. I offered.”

“But why? Did Dr. Foster—?”

“No. This is my own idea.”

“Thank you.” She stood in the blazing sun, stroking the red fox. “You’ve changed my day, Miss Philip.”

“Have I?”

“It started out very bad, worse than I would ever tell anyone. But now it’s changed. You’ve brought me luck. I feel, I honestly feel lucky.”

“I’m glad you do,” Hazel said. She wasn’t certain what luck meant to Ruby or how the girl would use it now that it had come her way.

The front door opened and Mrs. Freeman came out on the porch, a tall, stout, middle-aged woman in a printed silk dress that blew around her like a tent. She peered down at the car with the look of chronic suspicion that landladies acquire after years of people. Then, very abruptly, she turned and went back into the house as if she had lost all interest in the car because she’d been expecting someone else.

Inside the house again, Mrs. Freeman leaned against the banister and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. I thought it was him, I thought for sure. He said, any day now, any day. One of these days...

Ruby picked up her suitcase. “I’m kind of scared. Would you come in with me?”

“I don’t know her. She’s a friend of my cousin’s, not mine. Besides, you’re lucky now, remember?”

“Yes, I’m lucky. This is my lucky day. People will like me and I will like them.”