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RUBY DANSEN HAD not slept more than two hours since Ishmael had disappeared from the clinic. She bought bread and a wedge of cheese and an apple from a grocery by the hotel and ate them in her room, then drank as much water as she could to kill the hunger pains in her stomach. She had money for perhaps three more days in the hotel, but not if she ate in the café down the street or hired a jitney to Maggie Bassett’s house. So she put on the best dress she had, one made of maroon velvet; a gray hat that had a tall black feather in the band; and walked four miles in the wind to Maggie’s home, her energy gone, her vision speckled with tiny dots.
This time she didn’t twist the doorbell, she banged on the door with her fist. She saw Maggie’s face appear behind a curtain, then the door opened and Maggie was glaring at her, her nostrils white around the rims. “Why are you hammering on my house?” she said.
“Where are you hiding my son?”
“I’m not hiding him anywhere. What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you go back to Denver? Why do you look at me as the source of all your problems? Why would I hide Ishmael? I think you’re a lunatic.”
“You’re a liar,” Ruby said. “Your friends kidnapped him from the clinic. Don’t tell me they didn’t. I was there.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“But you know where he was taken. You know they kidnapped him. You’re disingenuous at best.”
“Oh, there it is with the vocabulary again.”
“You never answer the question. Everything that comes out of your mouth is to protect yourself at someone else’s expense,” Ruby said.
Maggie leaned out the door. “Who’s with you? How did you get here?”
“I walked. I’m by myself.”
“You walked from town?”
“What did I just say?”
Maggie looked at nothing, then back at Ruby. “I think of Ishmael as my son. I wouldn’t see him hurt for the world.”
“You whore.”
There was a wrinkle of triumph at the corner of Maggie’s mouth. “Let me remind you of your own rhetoric, Ruby. You said you forgave me. Now you walk miles to my home and beat on my door to insult me. Does that seem like rational behavior to you?”
“You take orders from company swells, Maggie. I talked with the IWW. Arnold Beckman is a union buster. He kidnapped my boy, and I think you know why.”
Ruby waited, hoping Maggie would conclude that she possessed information which in reality she did not. But the eyes of Maggie Bassett never gave up secrets, never showed defeat or guilt or acceptance of responsibility and, more important, never lingered on the injury of others.
“Who says Arnold told me anything?” Maggie asked. “I don’t take orders from anyone. Do you know what your hat reminds me of?”
“My hat?”
“Don’t misunderstand me. It’s certainly cute. Do you go to the flickers? Actually, people call them ‘the movies’ now. Arnold took me to his studio in the Palisades. You must come out there sometime. I think people would be dying to meet you.”
“Have they hurt him?”
“Who?”
“My son.”
“I have to run some errands. Do you want a ride back to town? I love your hat. It puts me in mind of Robin Hood’s followers, medieval trolls on bandy legs toddling around the set, pretending they’re part of a grand cause.”
“I guess my trip has been a waste. Would you forgive me for what I’m about to do?”
“No more shopgirl silliness, Ruby. Bye-bye, now.”
“Please give Arnold Beckman this message: If he doesn’t return my son, I’m going to kill him.”
“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”
“Thank you. I will. In the meantime, I really need to do something else, for your sake and mine.”
