tucking in his clean shirt. He didn't look perfect, but it would have to do. Auntie Lil was waiting impatiently. Yet, after making him hurry, she deliberately tarried at the doorway until Fran emerged from a back room. Only then would she leave. Ignoring Auntie Lil, who blocked her nearly every step of the way, Fran followed them out the door and walked briskly to the nearby corner and waited for the traffic light to change. She turned their way only twice—both times to look up at a small window toward the back of the church, no doubt the quarters of Father Stebbins.
In a rare act of imperiousness, Auntie Lil refused to enter the waiting limousine under her own steam. She stood stubbornly at the curb, swatting away help from T.S., until Lilah's driver took the hint. The uniformed man finally looked up from his newspaper, quickly hopped out onto the street and scurried around to open the rear door for them. Auntie Lil gave him a courteous but contained nod, slipped inside the long, dark car and conspicuously bestowed a queen-like departing wave at the far more pedestrian Fran.
Her grand gesture was cut short when T.S.—annoyed at her uncharacteristic pettiness—deliberately hopped in right after her. Besides, it served her right for hogging the seat next to Lilah.
Unlike himself, Lilah did look perfect. At least in T.S.'s opinion. She was a tall and athletic woman whose elegant posture was right at home in the back seat of the limousine. Lilah wore a purple crepe dress that highlighted her short white hair and her lovely, outdoor complexion. She shunned hair dye and most other forms of artifice, as if seeking to atone for her great wealth by being scrupulously honest about what money could and could not buy. T.S. admired her healthy beauty and reflected that, had Auntie Lil not been planted firmly between them, he might have gracefully pulled off a suave kiss to Lilah's hand. As it was, he contented himself by craning his neck around Auntie Lil's enormous hat and nodding.
"Hello, there, Theodore," Lilah said with a smile. The combined effect of her voice and face so close to his warmed the temperature of the limousine at least a few degrees.
"Lovely to see you, Lilah," he admitted, grinning like the village idiot and unable to control his facial features long enough to stop. A long green feather swept down from the back of Auntie Lil's hat Three Musketeers-style, then swooped back up just enough to tickle the end of his nose. He sneezed violently and tugged on the end of the feather. "Madam, would you kindly remove your hat?" he asked with a straight face.
Auntie Lil unpinned the contraption and gave it a rumble seat of its own.
"That's a lovely hat, Lillian," Lilah lied smoothly. "Wherever did you get it?"
"My friend, Herbert Wong, brought it back from Pago Pago," she answered.
"Your friend Herbert Wong?" T.S. said. "He was my friend first." She was always absconding with his friends. She didn't mean to, she was just so enthusiastic about new companions that, before T.S. knew what was happening, his former buddies would be out getting drunk with Auntie Lil while he stayed home alone and watched television.
"He was your employee," Auntie Lil pointed out. "He's my friend."
Lilah winked at T.S. in secret sympathy and he decided that he didn't give a hoot about Herbert Wong one way or the other. "Where is this place?" he asked cheerfully.
"On First Avenue. Grady knows the address." Lilah waved a hand toward the driver. He was a handsome, burly man with the map of Ireland printed all over his broad face. His reddish brown hair topped a massive head and, as they soon discovered, he retained a thick Irish brogue.
"Bit of traffic ahead, ma'am," he called back to Lilah, rather unnecessarily as they had moved ahead little more than three inches in the last half minute. But instead of being annoyed, a curious sensation flowed through T.S. They were stalled near Times Square and all around them, neon lights blinked, it seemed, in time to the music. People flowed around the car, parting and coming back together, trying without luck to peer inside to see if anyone famous rode within. Groups of kids laughed and grabbed at one another, caught up in the joy and sheer energy of New York, while well-dressed adults huddled together in groups, suppressing their childlike merriment at the suspense of waiting for the nightlife to begin. It was