Flash and Filigree by Terry Southern

record. It was then, that after considerable effort, she began to recall exactly the scene in part, of Albert holding the open-top, pine board box to his chest, his white face strained beneath grimace as by some stiff tangle of under surface wire, while there, from where his chin touched, or so she recalled, the one, half-exposed crock, rose a curl of excelsior, bunched as it was in almost concealing, twice-folded, the sea-blue square of the invoice. And then he was gone. Actually, what she did recall was the figure, “10.95,” marked on the remaining half-top of the box in black crayon, and this figure she had entered into the allowance sheet, there, either in contempt or uncertainty, to slur the four ciphers into being very nearly illegible.
    “It’s about those crocks, El,” Beth Jackson was saying in Nurse Thorne’s office.
    This might have been a question (Is it about those crocks?) from the way Eleanor Thorne chose to answer, simply: “Yes, it is, Beth,” regarding her quite seriously, holding a patient smile.
    “Oh, you’ve heard then?” asked Beth, assuming that same smile of patience with the other’s guilt.
    “What I mean is this, Beth: if we take on accounts with houses that don’t know our procedure here—though a new house, how we could expect them to is beyond me—then there’s bound to be trouble. Do you see my point?”
    Whereupon Beth managed a frown. “Why, how do you mean?” she asked.
    “Well here for example, what’s your problem over those crocks?”
    “Oh, mind I don’t say I have one,” replied fat Beth as airily as had they been speaking of lovers, two pretty girls. But even so saying, her mind’s-eye piqued with an image of gyno and her own Jane Ward, unpacking, as had happened, in Beth’s absence, the box of crocks, excitedly stuffing excelsior down the incinerator-shaft, and along with it, perhaps, the precious fold of invoice. They had never been sure. “The fact is, El, Mr. Rogers asked me to look into it.”
    “He’s spoken to you about it then?”
    “To tell the truth, Eleanor, I hadn’t given it another thought. Oh, it was odd all right at the time I thought so, granted. But still, it wasn’t any of our business, I said so to Jane, ‘If they’ve found a new way of getting their work in to Mr. Rogers, fine and dandy, it saves you the bother!’ And that poor sweet!”
    “Your Jane? Jane Ward? She was there then?”
    “Jane, the poor mopsy! You know what a stickler she is for procedure—‘red-tape’ I called it to her—I can tell you she was almost in tears. ‘Now you’re to listen,’ I told her, ‘it isn’t our worry I can tell you for sure! We’re here to see to the women, and not for signing scraps and bits of paper every time you turn around! What they want to do about that is nobody’s affair but their own. And that’s what they’re paid for!’ After twenty-eight years I ought to know what my duties are, Eleanor, I told her exactly that!” For this was nine years more than Nurse Thorne could say.
    “How was the shipment unpacked, Beth? That may be the answer.”
    “Well, of course, it’s a shame I wasn’t there when it did come, though mind I don’t say it would have made a difference in the conditions.”
    “No?”
    “Oh no, I was at Hillcrest with Dr. Stevens! I thought you knew.”
    “Yes, I see.”
    “I mean it was my day for Hillcrest, you would have known that.”
    “Of course. Then it was Jane Ward unpacked the shipment?”
    “Jane was in a state when I got there. I shouldn’t want this to go any further than the two of us, El, but I think it’s Albert. The child’s terrified.”
    “Ridiculous!”
    “Eleanor, I told her exactly that! But then you know yourself. And she is such a mopsy! ‘Unawakened,’ I call it. Babs too, the darling.”
    Jane Ward was the youngest nurse in the Clinic, was, in fact one full year the junior of Babs Mintner, though Babs was the prettier by far.
    “Beth, that is ridiculous,” repeated