And so-the stairs. Peggy found the door as much by Braille as any other way. The stairwell wasn’t very light, either. Somebody bumped into her and said, “Excusez-moi.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Peggy said, and then, “C’est la guerre.” And wasn’t that the sad and sorry truth?
Gray early-morning light spilled out of the door that led to the lobby. Three flights of stairs had made Peggy’s feet start to hurt, but more broken glass crunched under her soles. She would hurt worse if she took off the heels.
The lobby looked like hell, and smelled pretty bad, too. It reminded her of a butcher’s shop with a whole bunch of fresh meat. Some of this meat came in trousers and dresses and nightclothes, though. Stewards and bellhops-they had different titles here, but basically the same jobs-were doing what they could to help the wounded. One of them was noisily sick on the floor, which only made the stink worse.
And, in what looked at first like a scene from a Three Stooges tworeeler, a couple of men near the front desk were punching and kicking each other and poking each other in the eye. Even with more bombs going off not terribly far away, they went at it hammer and tongs. But one of them swore in Czech, the other in guttural German. The big war had started, and so had their own little private one.
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed a man standing next to Peggy. His voice said he was the fellow who’d bumped her on the stairs. “C’est-” He broke off, at a loss for words.