Where Love Has Gone by Harold Robbins Read Free Book Online

looked at me and knew better. And knew that I knew better too. The shadow deepened and furrowed her brow. Abruptly she turned to her mother. “Do you have any aspirin, Mother? I think I have what they refer to as a sedative hangover.”
    Her mother gestured. “On the sideboard, Nora.”
    I watched her cross to the sideboard and shake three tablets out of the small bottle. Then she put one back and I knew that she’d already taken three before she arrived. She glanced at me just before she swallowed the aspirin, and again there was that peculiar flash of recognition between us.
    Suddenly I felt sorry for her. Don’t ask me why; it was just there. Sometimes it is terrible to know so much about another human being. I knew that she was filled with a new and inexplicable fear and that she felt very much alone. For this was tomorrow. The empty tomorrow of her secret nightmares. This was the tomorrow she had told herself would never come.
    And I was the same in that tomorrow as I had always been. Before she ate out my eyes.
    2

    __________________________________________

    In September 1943 the war in Italy was almost over. MacArthur had begun his long march back to the Philippines and I was in San Francisco winding up a tour of defense plants and factories. The wheels had decided that would be an ideal way for me to recover my strength before going back to duty.
    Nora was giving her first showing of the work she had done in the twenty-one months since we had been at war. The little studio that had formerly been the greenhouse in back of her mother’s house was crowded with people. She looked around appraisingly. She was pleased with the turnout.
    Even the newspapers had sent out their art critics and they seemed impressed. She couldn’t help feeling an inner glow of pride. It helped make up for all the long wearying nights she had spent in the studio after working at the aircraft factory all day.
    The war. It was a fool thing she had done. But she had been trapped like everyone else. Caught up in the hysteria of patriotism. The newspapers made a big thing of it—Nora Hayden, prominent debutante, daughter of one of San Francisco’s leading families, and one of America’s most promising young artists, sets aside her career for the duration.
    She had felt like a silly fool when she’d read that. But early in 1942 she had never thought the war would drag on so long. By now she had had it. She was bored with getting up at six thirty and driving fifteen miles to work six days a week, with doing the same stupid thing day after day.
    Stop the conveyer belt. Solder wire number one to wire number two. Start the belt so that the girl at the next bench can solder number two to number three. Stop the belt so that she can start over again. Nora was tired of playing Rosie the Riveter.
    The whole thing was entirely too mechanized, too planned, for her. Even lunch hours were organized. It wasn’t bad enough that she had to eat a lousy sandwich, but every noon hour, along with her sandwich and the sugarless muddy coffee, and had to swallow exhortations to increase her production.
    That noon there had been a rally complete with war hero. She hadn’t even gone outside. Instead she had gone upstairs to the lounge and perched on a bench near the window. She lit a cigarette and stretched out. She closed her eyes. The temporary quiet of the factory was a blessed relief. She could use the rest. She hadn’t gone to bed until four that morning, making sure that everything would be ready for the show that afternoon.
    A roar came from the crowd outside the window. She sat up and looked out. An olive-and-tan Army Chevrolet had pulled up next to the stage just beneath the big blue and white factory E flag.
    The crowd roared again as a man got out of the back seat and clambered up onto the platform.
    The man, of course, was me.
    I did nothing but the applause stretched out into embarrassment. Helplessly I looked away. I was still new enough at it to