Reinhart's Women (22 page)

Edie flinched in response to the compliment. It would not seem by her manner that she had many such dates. She opened the passenger’s door of the Gremlin for him, held it, closed it. He was made uncomfortable by this courtesy—as he would not have been, had not indeed been, when it was done by Grace.

When Edie climbed behind the wheel he said: “Do you know the Glenwood Mall? There’s a nice restaurant there.” He realized that his basic motive for this expedition was actually not to pay Edie back for her generosity (which gesture thus far seemed only to make her uncomfortable), but rather to eat another meal at Winston’s—and with, this time, a placid companion.

In contrast to Edie’s social manner her style of driving was as forceful as a trucker’s. She was a notable tail-gater, light-jumper, and a bluffer in turning left at high-traffic intersections, blocking with her little yellow Gremlin any opposing vehicle, be it city bus or tractor-trailer. In no time they swung into a parking lot near Winston’s, in fact just facing the place where Genevieve had stood the day before to abuse him.

Remembering that sorry event caused him to be less quick about hopping out than was Edie, though true enough they differed in age and spring of reflex. Whatever his excuse, she had time to sprint around the rear bumper and to get to his door before he had more than opened its catch.

For quite a few years now he had been the occasional recipient of gallantry from young women, but the irony was evident for both parties when the smaller human being assisted the larger in a physical passage. However, Edie was sufficiently large and sinewy to give Reinhart’s spirit a shock as she not only seized and took the door as far away as it would go—for a moment he believed she might tear it off its hinges—but also slipped a large hand under his elbow and exerted enough lift so that if he had not quickly projected himself into the parking lot, he might have gone through the roof.

On the approach to the restaurant, in anticipation of her probable intent to perform another manhandling maneuver at the entrance, Reinhart determined to forestall her: he was after all essentially the weight-lifter he had been as recently as 1941. He slid a hand up her near forearm, hooking elbows. But soon she ripped herself away and positively loped, with great, long, high-arched strides, to the large ornamental bronze opener, a bracket and not a knob, on Winston’s portal and pulled it and the door attached, and Reinhart was, or anyway felt as if he were being, scraped into the restaurant on the spatula of her left hand.

The place was jammed today, though the time was pretty much as it had been the day before, when just after twelve a third of the tables had still been vacant. There was a good-sized, more or less unorganized queue at the moment, gathered before a sallow-faced man in his forties. This fellow was being conspicuously incompetent at the job. No doubt the regular hostess was not at hand for some reason, illness or vacation, and the man was on loan, so to speak, from a superior situation: perhaps he was the manager. Therefore he was doing a rotten job so that nobody would take him as naturally a functionary who merely directed diners to tables.

Actually Reinhart and Edie, tall as they stood, were in a commanding position in the crowd, whose mean height was several inches lower, and the temporary maître d’ proved to be a snob in such matters.

“Two?” he cried at them, up and over several intervening persons who had been waiting there since before Edie had parked the car. Reinhart considered making some public note of this, for justice’s sake, but was soon pleased he had not, for the man’s cry proved but the prelude to what was not the extension of a privilege but rather a virtual command. “Wait in the bar!”

Reinhart was none too pleased to obey, but decided that any objection might upset his guest. “Well,” he said in a jolly tone, “shall we wet our whistles, Edie?”

She giggled shrilly and made a shivering agitation of her large frame. He had not noticed the bar the day before, but there it was now, in a wing off to the left. He took a deep breath and tensed his ligaments before touching Edie’s forearm again, should she take retaliatory action, but he believed, even so, that she could more easily be led by contact than by speech at this point. As it happened she proved docile and almost weightless.

The bar was empty, as Reinhart saw once they got inside it and his eyes made the adjustment to the gloom.

“Have a seat, Edie,” he had to say. “What would you like? A glass of white wine?”

The bartender came along. He was a young man with a supply of tawny hair and a brushy mustache that were “styled.” He looked silently, gravely at Edie.

Reinhart grew impatient. “I’ll have a dry sherry, imported, if you’ve got one.”

The bartender went away.

Reinhart asked her: “Have you ordered?”

She shrugged and said hopelessly: “I’ll try.” When the bartender returned with the sherry, she leaned towards him: “Got any juice?”

“Tomato,” said he. “Orange.”

“I guess it’s not fresh?”

“No,” said the bartender, “that’s too much to expect.”

“Uh-huh.”

Reinhart supposed he should have assumed she would be a teetotaller. “We should have our table before long,” he said. “I’m sorry about the delay.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Edie said expansively. The bartender slid away, giving the illusion he moved on rollers.

“Well,” said Reinhart, “so we’re neighbors. What do you think of your apartment? Have you lived there long? Which direction do your windows face?”

Edie gave him a long and earnest look. Her eyes were delicate in this attitude, and of a color that might have been seen as pale blue or again as a rich gray.

“You’re just doing this to be nice, aren’t you?”

He waited a decent moment before responding. Then he said: “If you really believe what you’re saying, you’re being rude.”

“I guess you’re right, at that.” She began to smile.

“Why don’t you have a glass of wine?” he asked. “It’s the natural product of the grape, you know. A wonderful food, and an aid to digestion. Would God have made fermentation if He didn’t want people to taste its products?”

Edie was now simpering in good spirits. “Oh, Mr. Reinhart,” she said, “you certainly enjoy life.”

This was a novel observation, but he was flattered. He signaled the barman, who came up with a skating kind of movement. Reinhart understood belatedly that the young man considered himself something of a comedian.

“A glass of white wine for the lady, please.”

The bartender said: “I’ll go squeeze some white grapes.”

“Did you know this?” Reinhart asked Edie when the glass had been brought and put before her. “That most white wine is made from red grapes?”

“I certainly did not.” She looked back and forth between her glass and him.

“If they leave the skins in long enough after the juice has been pressed from the fruit, the color goes into the liquid. If they take out the skins right away, the liquid remains clear.”

“Gee.”

“Enough of that,” said Reinhart. “Tell me about yourself.”

Edie rolled her eyes. “Oh, gee. I’m twenty-four.”

Reinhart said: “A human being changes drastically every couple of years. The earlier in life, the shorter the time span, so that a baby’s alterations come with weeks, even days. Then you get past thirty, and while time is of course as inexorable as ever, it is very difficult to measure in a credible way. You don’t make higher marks on the doorjamb each birthday.” She brought out the teacher in him.

Edie still had not tasted the wine. She put the glass down now to say: “I was relieved when I stopped growing, I’ll tell you.”

The bartender had scooted up expectantly. Reinhart was low on wine, but he would not reorder if their table was ready. He had to rise and go to the doorway to see what was happening with the queue. There was none at the moment: everybody else had been seated, apparently, for no one but Edie and himself had come to wait in the bar.

Furthermore, yesterday’s hostess was back at her post, and her male replacement was nowhere in evidence. The couple sent to the bar had been forgotten. Winston’s was falling in Reinhart’s estimation.

He went over to the hostess and entered a complaint. The young woman was in a different character from that of yesterday, when she had been so quietly amiable.

“But I’ve been here all the while,” she said coldly. “There isn’t any man who ever does this job.”

Reinhart slapped his hands together. “Then I guess it was a practical joke.” He smiled at the hostess, who did not return the favor. “You were probably seating someone, and while you were gone this guy pretended to take over. I fell for it. Sorry.” He felt himself begin to smile. “Actually it was pretty funny, now that I think about it.” This was the kind of trick that ten years ago would have made him furious: to be able to laugh freely at it now was to enjoy a luxury.

“Well, I don’t think it’s humorous,” said the hostess. She looked very pale. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Now Reinhart laughed in amazement. “Leave? Because I was duped?”

The young woman trembled. He realized that she was afraid of something. She reached towards the phone on the kind of pulpit that held her equipment. “I’ll call the police.”

“No, don’t do that. I’ll leave peacefully, if you want. But first will you please tell me what I’m supposed to have done?”

The hostess kept her hand on the telephone. “The lady with you at lunch yesterday—you don’t know that she came back in here later and threatened me?”

“God.” He moved towards her, but then caught himself and retreated: it might seem as an attack. “Believe me, I knew nothing about it. How lousy for you! If it’s any relief to know, she’s in the hospital now. She cracked up suddenly, I guess. It was nothing personal.”

The young woman made a silly grimace. “Now I feel worse,” said she. “The poor thing. ... But I tell you, it was pretty scary. And I don’t know you at all, do I, sir? She accused me of carrying on with you.”

“You smiled as you took us to the table,” said Reinhart. “No doubt that’s what she was thinking of. It’s too bad. I’m very sorry, miss.” He shook his head and in so doing caught sight of the impostor who had directed him to wait in the bar. It was with relief that he saw the man jollily eating lunch with three companions: he had considered the possibility that the guy was another deranged soul, with delusions of grandeur.

“I hope she gets better,” said the hostess. “I really do. Was that her doctor who picked her up in the white car?”

“When was that?”

“Right after she left here,” the young woman said, with raised brow. “The second time. You and she had left, and then she came back to make that threat, and I said I’d have to call the manager if she didn’t go away, and then she went outside and this white Cadillac pulled up and she got in.”

Reinhart apologized again and walked out the door into the parking lot. He would certainly have some questions for Helen. ... But he had momentarily forgotten about Edie!

He returned to the bar. “Sorry. I was checking on some private matter.” He noticed that she had not yet drunk any of her wine. “Well, shall we have lunch?”

“You’ll want to kill me, Mr. Reinhart,” Edie said sheepishly, holding up her wrist as if in defense, but she was actually displaying her watch. “But I’ve got a dentist’s appointment in fifteen minutes, and I want to run you home first.”

“What a rotten host I’ve been,” said Reinhart. “I’ll make it up to you, Edie.”

She stood up. “Actually, I’ve had a wonderful time.”

They went out to the car. Edie went to the passenger’s door, but Reinhart stopped her.

“I’m not going to need a ride home. I’m going to stay here for a while. I have to get something for my grandsons, whom I am going to see tonight.”

“How will you get back?”

“Oh, there’s a bus that’s near enough.” He touched her forearm. “Thanks again for offering to lend us the car last night. I’m afraid we Reinharts haven’t done much for you in return, but—”

“That’s what you think,” said Edie with uncharacteristic pertness. She got into her little yellow car and drove rapidly away.

CHAPTER 10

P
ARKER RAVEN, AGE FOUR
, Blaine’s younger son, opened the door on Reinhart’s ring of the bell, but he blocked the entrance with his small body so that his grandfather and aunt could not proceed.

Winona pleaded: “Come on, Parker...”

Parker extended his hand. “Let’s have your money,” said he.

Reinhart gently moved Winona out of his way, and then he lifted Parker from the threshold and, carrying him, entered.

The boy did not resist this action. Instead he chortled and asked: “What you got for me?”

“A punch in the nose,” said his grandfather, holding him, as usual marveling silently at what tough stuff a child’s body is made of: not only sinew but the flesh is so
hard.

Winona was digging anxiously info her purse. Reinhart said to her: “Huh-uh. I’ll take care of this.”

“And what else?” asked Parker. “Come on, Grandpa.”

Reinhart had always believed that both boys favored his son in appearance, but in his new awareness of their mother he realized that Parker anyway bore a strong resemblance to Mercer.

“I’ve got a terrific story for you,” he told Parker. “If I told it to you now, then you wouldn’t have it for later.”

Parker struggled in his grasp, and Reinhart put him down.

“I mean a
thing,”
said the boy, “not talk. Come on.”

“Well,” said Reinhart, “I tried. I don’t like to see you being so grasping, but I can remember when I was little I too was a materialist.” He took a folded paper bag from the pocket of his raincoat, unfolded it deliberately, and removed from it a blue bandanna. “See this? Every cowboy wears this around his neck at all times. It keeps dust from blowing down his shirt. He can wipe his face with it when he’s hot. He can put it across his nose and mouth when he’s in a sandstorm.” Reinhart demonstrated this use, knotting the bandanna’s ends, and then he handed the blue-and-white figured cloth to his grandson. “Oh, this thing’s got a hundred and one uses. A bandage if you’re hurt. Or you can put your money and other valuable possessions in the middle of it, tie it in a bundle, and hide it—or whatever you want.”