So the days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other I‘ve lived. - P99
"But you can‘t. After all, what about. Well, what about. Well, you can‘t really run off and leave everybody." - P101
The trouble was, I couldn‘t see her; rather, I saw several Hollys, a trio of sweaty faces so white with concern that I was both touched and embarrassed.
‘Honestly. I don‘t feel anything. Except ashamed.‘ - P104
‘But I wasn‘t. And thank you. For saving my life.
You‘re wonderful. Unique. I love you.‘ - P105
That evening, photographs of Holly were front-paged by the late edition of the Journal-American and by the early editions of both the Daily News and the Daily Mirror. The publicity had nothing to do with runaway horses. It concerned quite another matter, as the headlines revealed:
PLAYGIRL ARRESTED IN NARCOTICS SCANDAL (Journal-American), ARREST DOPE-SMUGGLING ACTRESS (Daily News), DRUG RING EXPOSED, GLAMOUR GIRL HELD (Daily Mirror). - P105
There is one especially gross error in this report:she was not arrested in her ‘luxurious apartment‘. It took place in my own bathroom. I was soaking away my horse-ride pains in a tub of scalding water laced with Epsom salts;
Holly, an attentive nurse, was sitting on the edge of the tub waiting to rub me with Sloan‘s liniment and tuck me into bed. There was a knock at the front door. As the door was unlocked, Holly called Come in. In came Madame Sapphia Spanella, trailed by a pair of civilian-clothed detectives, one of them a lady with thick yellow braids roped round her head. - P108
‘Yes, I will oblige.‘
And I did: without the least wanting to. But I hadn‘t the courage to destroy the letter; or the will power to keep it in my pocket when Holly very tentatively inquired if, if by any chance, I‘d had news of José.
It was two mornings later; I was sitting by her bedside in a room that reeked of iodine and bedpans, a hospital room.
She had been there since the night of her arrest. ‘Well, darling,‘ she‘d greeted me, as I tiptoed towards her carrying a carton of Picayune cigarettes and a wheel of new-autumn violets, ‘I lost the heir.‘
She looked not quite twelve years: her pale vanilla hair brushed back, her eyes, for once minus their dark glasses, clear as rain water - one couldn‘t believe how ill she‘d been. - P114
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