Heaven's My Destination by Thornton Wilder

Author:Thornton Wilder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2011-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Kansas City. The Courting of Roberta Weyerhauser. Herb’s Legacies.

During the days following his discharge from the hospital in Kansas City Brush had given much thought to the problem of finding Roberta. One day his eye had fallen on the advertisement of a private detective agency. He called upon the manager and laid most of the facts before him. Now after many forwardings a letter from the agency reached him. It gave the address of the farmhouse and added that one of the daughters in the home, a Miss Roberta Weyerhauser, had left the farm over a year ago, coming to Kansas City and had found employment as a waitress at the Rising Sun Chop Suey Palace.

On the first noon following his return to the city, Brush hurried to the restaurant for lunch. He climbed a narrow staircase, and on the second floor entered a large room hung with Chinese lanterns. The floor rose in gradually ascending levels about a central space reserved for dancing. On each tier there was a ring of tables for the diners. Brush seated himself at one of the tables on the highest level and looked about him. There were five waitresses standing about, and looking at them closely, he decided that any one of them might be Roberta Weyerhauser. They were dressed in a vaguely Chinese costume that included red satin trousers. A disc of rouge had been drawn on each cheek and their eyebrows had been painted in an upward curve at the outer edges. The waitress who came forward to take Brush’s order was a tall bony girl with a mass of disheveled hair and a sullen expression.

“What’ll you have?” she asked.

Brush scanned the card. “What’s specially good?” he asked, slowly.

“ ’T’s all wonderful.”

“Is there anything here that’s a favorite of yours?”

“I like’m all. I’m crazy about’m all,” replied the girl, coolly, scratching her head with the pencil. “Everyone of’m’ll give you a great big thrill you’ll never forget.”

Brush looked up. “Might I ask you your name?” he said.

“Sure. You can know everything. My name’s Whosis. I live with my mother and we don’t keep a phone. I get out at four o’clock, but I only let my boy-friend see me home. I don’t like to dance and the pictures hurt my eyes; so what else would you like to know?”

Brush turned red. “I didn’t mean anything like that,” he said, in a low voice. “All I wanted to know was, was there one of the waitresses here named Roberta Weyerhauser.”

“What is this, anyway?” she replied, angrily. “What’s it to you? Who are you?”

“I . . . I’m just a friend of Miss Weyerhauser’s.”

“Say, who are you? Did somebody send you?”

“Are you Roberta Weyerhauser?”

“No, I’m not. My name’s Lily Wilson, if you must know. And looka here: you tend to your business and I’ll tend to mine. That way we’ll get on better. See?”

Brush looked at her earnestly. “I asked you a question, that’s all,” he said.

“Hurry up. What’ll you have?”

Without looking at him she took down his order, then cast a contemptuous glance at him and started to go.

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