"I don't know what he's doing, but I imagine he is," she replied without much interest. She yawned. "This has been a big day for me, too. I'm sleeping until noon, so you're on your own in the morning. Sunday is a dead day around here anyway. Basil will have a hangover and droop about the place before he leaves, if he's here at all tomorrow, and Wade will camp out in the den and watch news and financial programs all morning after he has his breakfast. He belongs to some investment club, too, and will go there for lunch.
"After I get up, we'll go shopping," she said.
"The stores I want to go to aren't open early anyway."
"What about Wade? Does he ever go to church? At the orphanage, we all had to attend church every Sunday."
"Church? Not Wade, and I'm there only for weddings and funerals. Actually, not too many funerals. I don't like sad events. Why, do you want to go to church? I thought you said you had your own beliefs, but if you want to go, I'll have someone take you," she said, dropping the corners of her mouth.
"It's all right. I just wondered about Wade."
"We'll all wonder about Wade," she muttered, and kept walking. We paused in the hallway in front of her door and mine. I saw her look to the door of one of the two other bedrooms.
"Basil's probably passed out," she muttered, "Well, have a good first night's sleep here in your new home, Celeste."
"Thank you."
"Welcome," she said, hugging me. "We're going to have so much fun together." She kissed me on the cheek and then went to her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.
I went to mine and undressed slowly, my arms and shoulders feeling so heavy. It really had been a long day, full of so many different emotions. I wiped off the makeup and crawled into the luxurious bed, sinking happily into the soft mattress and fluffy pillows. I thought I heard a door open and close and then footsteps in the hallway. I listened for a moment, expecting Ami to come to my room to tell me something she had forgotten. There were more footsteps and then another door, sounding more like it had been slammed closed.
I listened. Despite my fatigue, my curiosity was too great to shove aside. I rose and went to my door, opening it slowly and peering into the now dimly lit hallway. I saw no one and was about to close my door when I spotted something on the hallway floor to my right. It looked like an article of clothing. I stepped out and approached it slowly. What was it?
I squatted beside it and lifted it to look at it. It was the bottoms to a man's pair of pajamas. Why was it out here like this? I wondered. Confused as to what to do with it, I dropped it where I had found it and started to turn back to my room. I heard muffled voices behind Ami's door, and then what I was sure was the sound of her whimpering. It froze me in my steps. I listened harder. It was whimpering.
The sound of someone coming up the stairway sent me flurrying back to my room. I closed the door softly, my heart thumping, and listened. If anyone had come up that stairway, he or she was floating over the hall-way floor. I heard nothing. After another long moment, I returned to bed.
Still, there was only silence now, and my eyelids were so heavy, I couldn't keep them open anyway, even when I imagined I saw Noble at the foot of the bed.
I called to him, but I didn't hear him speak the way I used to. I thought I heard the sound of a piano, but even that seemed distant and vague. I'm so tired I'm dreaming already, I thought, and whispered his name once more. His name remained on my lips until the morning light slowly lifted my eyelids and introduced me to a new day. My first thoughts were about him. Was I seeing him again? Would I see him now? I gazed around, but he wasn't there.
Then I thought about the pajama bottom. What did that mean? Whose was it? Why would it be in a hallway?
With some effort, I sat up and scrubbed my cheeks with my dry palms. My throat felt just as dry. I was just not used to drinking so much alcohol, I thought. How could Ami do it and look so vibrant and fresh all the time? Or was that all just the magic of makeup? The small heart-shaped clock on the night table read 9:00. Could that be? I couldn't remember ever sleeping that late. At the orphanage, sleeping until seven was a luxury.
I rose and went to my door. Opening it slowly, I peered out and saw that the pajama bottom was gone. How curious, I thought, and wondered if I should even mention it. Perhaps it was just something Mrs. Cukor had dropped when she had brought recently washed laundry upstairs. But I hadn't seen it when Ami and I had returned from the nightclub. Why would Mrs. Cukor be doing wash that late? I shrugged. She was strange enough to do anything, I thought. Maybe it was all a dream. It certainly felt that way at the moment. So much of the evening seemed vague to me now.
I went to the bathroom to shower. Afterward, I dressed, putting on my best one-piece dress. The only shoes I had to wear were what I called my clodhoppers, the ones with the big wide heels. They were ugly and not very comfortable. Maybe they had been designed by Puritans to torture sinners.
Ami's bedroom door was shut tight. I thought about the whimpering I had heard and wondered if that hadn't been part of a strange dream as well. After all, I had drunk more alcohol than ever before in my life.
The house was very quiet. I quietly descended the stairs and went into the dining room. Wade was there, dressed in a jacket and tie, reading the Wall Street Journal. He didn't hear me enter, lowering his paper only when Mrs. McAlister stepped into the dining room, saw me, and exclaimed, "I wondered when you would wake up and come to breakfast! I hope you don't think of this as you would some hotel and expect room service."
"I'm sorry I got up so late," I said.
Wade stared at me, a slightly amused look on his face. Did he have to dress so formally even on Sunday? I wondered.
"I usually don't sleep this late. In fact, I can't remember ever sleeping this late. At the orphanage--"
"I'll bet," Mrs. McAlister said sharply. "Well, what do you want? Eggs, oatmeal, what?"
"I'm not that hungry," I said. "I could get it myself."
"Not in my kitchen," she remarked, putting her hands on her hips and standing in front of the kitchen doorway as though she would fight to the death to prevent me from entering.
"Good morning," Wade finally said. "Mrs. McAlister has her set way of doing things," he added. "Just tell her what you would like for breakfast."
"Orange juice. Do you have any cereals?"