The Delicate Darling by Jack Webb

Author:Jack Webb [Webb, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4149-0
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1959-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Poets were just plain nuts, Pat decided. She dropped the book. She wished the place had a radio. She wished she knew what time it was. She wished Juan would wake up. Then she could send him out to get her a skirt and blouse. What if he were afraid to go out? The thought gave her pause. But not for long. No one could follow them here. Whoever Juan feared could not be within miles of this lousy dump. Not if he expected Juan to be living with that Mrs. Manning. She had seen newspaper photographs of Mrs. Manning. Reba Manning looked like a bitch. Remembering Juan as he lay on the bed there beyond the door, she suddenly was angry.

As though she were an ambient and particularly unhappy part of his conscience, Mrs. Mulvaney moved about Father Shanley’s house accomplishing her daily chores more in the manner of a zombie than a living human being. Though much of the swelling was gone on the side of her jaw where the tooth had been extracted, a large black-and-blue lump had appeared to make her appearance more grim and forbidding than mortal man could bear.

So Father had fled into the yard and to his roses. Around the corner of the house where it would have partial shade, the first of his Twilight roses was in bloom. As scraggly, thorny skeletons of limbs and barbered roots, the three bushes had been a Christmas gift from Sammy via the great rose gardens of Jackson Perkins. Now, in the long, warm summer days, the miracle of their rebirth was occurring and the tight buds had begun to unfurl and the flowers were like none other Father ever had seen. A compelling mixture of lavender and lilac, they were strange, enchanting roses.

With his finger tips, he felt the soil beneath one rose. Though the top of the mulch appeared dry, there was a sensation of damp springiness beneath. They needed no water yet. He wondered if they had been crossed with a rose called Sterling Silver, cross-pollinating in both directions. The thought of producing a blue rose was exciting to Father Shanley. This morning, though, it was not exciting enough.

Mrs. Mulvaney was on his back. He would have climbed an Everest, stepped in the ring with Sugar Ray, joined the Trappists to get rid of Mrs. Mulvaney. He sighed and began to wander among his blooms. It had been a wonderful spring for roses. Living was a six-foot mass of flame and the Golden Showers against the south side of the parish house were like the burst of sunrise on a hot summer day. So what? Pat Mulvaney was not in any rose, nor Delicado hiding beneath any bush. Most of the night his mind had worked in and around the problem of finding them. With two hundred dollars between them, they could be a mile away or fifty miles distant and still be in the great sprawling city. There was no place to start.

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