Louise's War Read Online Free PDF Page B

platinum-blonde hair arranged in a long pompadour she often contained in a snood. She never left her room without make-up, and always wore a dress, never trousers or a housecoat. She clipped her nails short to hide her nail-biting habit.
    Ada came to Washington from New York City to play the clarinet with the house band at the Willard Hotel. Rumor had it that girl musicians made eighty-five dollars a week. I almost believed it, what with the number of cocktail dresses and record albums Ada owned. She often stayed out at night long after her set was over, and had gone through several beaux since I’d arrived six months ago. Henry swore she was a divorcée.
    Ada flapped the morning newspaper at me.
    ‘Guess what’s happening today!’ Without letting me answer, she burst out. ‘Marlene Dietrich! She’s going to be at Jelleff’s this afternoon! We have to go!’
    ‘Dearie,’ I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere today. It’s too hot.’
    ‘Louise, we could meet Marlene Dietrich in person! All we have to do is buy a war bond! Besides, Jelleff’s is refrigerated.’
    ‘Not outside, where we’d be standing in line for hours, it isn’t,’ I said. ‘I admire Miss Dietrich very much, but you’ll have to go without me.’
    ‘I swear, I’ll never understand you,’ Ada said, shaking her head. ‘Oh, well.’ She stood up, eyeing my empty plate. ‘Is there any strawberry jam left?’
    ‘One jar. Dellaphine says we can have a teaspoon each. And are you done with the paper? I haven’t read it yet.’
    ‘Can I tear out Miss Dietrich’s picture? Maybe she’ll autograph it for me. There’s just a Safeway ad on the back.’
    Ada left me with most of the newspaper and went off to the kitchen to fix her breakfast.
    I opened the newspaper, where a headline on the front page caught my eye. ‘Tragic Death in Foggy Bottom’, it read. The story left me immobile with shock.
    One Robert Holman had died of a heart attack in his office at an unnamed government agency early yesterday evening.

FOUR
    I was so jolted I couldn’t bring myself to finish reading the newspaper story. Instead I went into the kitchen for another cup of coffee to bolster my courage, adding sugar even though I had used all I should today. Back on the porch, while drinking my coffee and watching a trio of hummingbirds busy at Phoebe’s bee balm, I tried, without success, to convince myself I’d misread the news article. After finishing my coffee I picked up the paper again.
    According to the newspaper, Holman’s wife, who’d been waiting for him with their children in the family car to go away for the weekend, discovered his body and raised an alarm. Must have been quite an alarm, I reflected, for word of a death at the OSS offices to find its way into the newspaper, even if OSS hadn’t been identified by name.
    How terrible, I thought, for Holman’s wife, his children and anyone still in the office when the body was found.
    Morbidly the article dwelled on the disheveled state of Holman’s office, a file cabinet overturned, the desktop swept clean, papers and files tumbled onto the floor. The man must have thrashed about mightily as he died, perhaps struggling to get to his telephone or out into the hall. His corpse lay spreadeagled on the floor, in the midst of a heap of papers. Poor man.
    I read the story twice before I absorbed the news and accepted it. Bob Holman was dead. My boss. I had seen him, what, an hour, two hours before he died? Stupidly, I felt saddened that the man had died before enjoying his weekend on the Potomac.
    Bob’s funeral was tomorrow, only two days after he died. That was fast. Of course, it was extremely hot this summer and ice was in short supply.
    Ada Herman slowed her pace, pausing to check out the feature at the movie house on the corner of Pennsylvania and 21st – Walt Disney’s latest cartoon, Kipling’s Jungle Book – waiting for exactly the right moment to turn down the street towards her boarding house.