Reinhart's Women (34 page)

Marge said: “Listen here. This is all on me.” She raised her eyebrows without increasing the size of her eyes.

“No, certainly not,” said Reinhart. “We might be confidence men who go about getting free meals. People may be trustworthy in Brockville, but you should be aware of how they are in the outside world, Marge.” He raised his elbow. “If this chili idea catches on, it’ll probably ruin your serenity.”

Marge shrugged joyfully. “I’ll take that chance.”

The final coffee-drinker pushed his cup away and rose from the stool at the counter. He stepped behind the cash register, pushed a button, and made some transaction in the drawer that shot out.

“I wouldn’t mind having a place like this myself,” Reinhart said. “Gosh, a customer makes his own change.”

Marge asked solemnly: “You serious? Are you in the market for a restaurant?”

“Probably not.” He smiled rhetorically at Edie, who was finishing her second beer already. He wondered whether he should worry. “I’m an amateur cook, you see, and I guess I sometimes think of having a place where I could show off my talents.”

Marge straightened up and put her hands in the pockets of her smock. “It hasn’t always been so quiet here. When my folks ran it, years ago, they used to do a lot of business. One time in the Thirties a couple of fellows came in and ate a real nice lunch: breaded veal cutlet, mashed potatoes, peas ’n’ carrots, stewed tomatoes, and fresh peach pie a la mode for dessert. Used to have more of a menu those days. Anyway, after they paid up and left, my dad said, ‘Know who that was? That was John Dillinger and Homer Van Meter.’ I wasn’t there at the time. I was in school. I suppose it could have been them. Dad always insisted on it and would rattle off what they ate.”

Reinhart asked Edie: “Do you recognize those names? They were famous bank robbers of those days. Real celebrities of the Midwest. Household words. When Dillinger was killed by the FBI in an alleyway next to a movie theater in Chicago, newsboys came out from the city to sell extras on the residential streets of the suburb where I lived. Do you even know what an ‘extra’ is?”

Edie was smiling at him. She made no verbal response.

To Marge, Reinhart said: “Could have been them. They certainly came through this part of the country. Probably was them.” Dillinger had supplied to the region its only color, so far as was known: it seemed reasonable enough to claim it whenever feasible.

“About that chili recipe,” Marge said. “Do you want me to give it to you now, or do you want me to make up a take-out order to bring back to the city with you?”

Reinhart drank some beer. “I think I’d rather bring somebody out here from the city to taste the product on the spot. They might get some ideas for packaging it when they see your restaurant. Does that overhead fan work? This is a great-looking place. That’s a real vintage Coke sign, isn’t it?” He referred to a framed rectangle of metal against the back wall, with “Coca-Cola” in bas-relief script. “You see reproductions of stuff like that on sale in shops that cater to young people.”

Marge nodded. “We’re rough and ready but real,” said she, chuckling. “How about calling it John Dillinger’s Chili?”

“With a tommy gun on the label,” said Reinhart.

After more of this badinage Marge went away to let them eat their meal. When Reinhart finally poured the remainder of the first bottle of beer into his glass and reached for the second, he saw three empty bottles: four, counting the one he had just drained. Edie had her glass to her lips at the moment. She peered strangely at him over the rim. Had she drunk three bottles of beer?

Before long Marge was back. “How about more chili?”

“No, thanks,” said Reinhart. “This was quite a generous portion, and it’s just right. I don’t want to dull my taste by eating too much. This flavor’s like a rich perfume.”

Edie spoke up. “He’s an authority. He’s a television chef.” She emptied her current glass.

“I’ll get the rest of the beer,” said Marge, and set off.

But Reinhart called her back. “We have to be on our way, Marge. I mean it about exploring the possibility of marketing the chili. I’ll be in touch soon. Write down your phone number for me, and I’ll give you mine.” Marge went to fetch writing materials. Reinhart said to Edie: “I wish you’d eat some of your food. If you’re not used to drinking, that’s too much beer on an empty stomach.”

She wrinkled her nose and looked as though she might whine, but then straightened up on the seat and stoically forked up chili, pinto beans, rice.

Marge arrived with a piece of brown paper bearing her name and phone number, followed by a dash and the word “chili.” Reinhart tore a strip from the bottom of the paper and wrote upon it his name and Winona’s number.

“I really have to warn you again,” said he, “that I can’t promise anything. But we’ll give it a try. And at the least I’ll be back to eat your chili myself and will recommend it to others.”

“On TV?” said Marge. “I guess this is certainly one of the most important days of my life.”

Reinhart feared that irrespective of his warnings she would encourage her hopes to go as far as they could, and he remembered only now that on his first meeting with Grace Greenwood in the supermarket, her position on the Pancho Villa line of Mex-Tex canned goods, distributed by her own firm, had been none too enthusiastic.

Edie was undoubtedly feeling the effects of the alcohol. When they got into the car she lowered her head until her chin touched the base of her neck and said nothing as Reinhart drove back to the motorway and entered it pointing south.

Owning a restaurant! What a crazy fantasy. Nevertheless he entertained it for some miles before noticing that Edie had awakened.

He glanced at her and said: “Are you O.K.?”

“I’m just fine,” she said coolly.

They exchanged no further speech during the remainder of the homeward drive. The beer had apparently extinguished such light as Edie had, and Reinhart had really never quite known what to talk to her about: his intent from the first had been merely to be kind.

CHAPTER 17

W
HEN REINHART RETURNED FROM
his country outing his grandsons were home alone. They were peacefully occupied, Toby in the hallway with a fleet of miniature cars and Parker on the floor of Winona’s bedroom, working in a child’s inept fashion with a pair of those blunt-bladed scissors made for small people.

Toby pushed one of the tiny vehicles up the alleyway of bare wood between the wall and the hall runner. He defied custom by not simulating the sound of an engine.

Reinhart asked: “That wouldn’t be a Rolls-Royce, would it?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re not making any engine noise. They used to say about a Rolls-Royce that it ran so quietly the only sound you heard was the ticking of the dashboard clock.”

“Ticking?” asked Toby. “Was there a bomb in it?”

Reinhart thought for a moment. “Clocks used to tick. That was before they were digital.”

“I can tell time on the ones with hands!” Toby announced with pride. “We learned that in school.”

The telephone rang. He answered the one beside the door.

“Carl?” It was Helen Clayton. “I thought you’d want to know why Grace Greenwood has been out of touch. It seems she made a suicide attempt yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“Lovers’ quarrel! Can you imagine that? She got this girl to move in with her, you know, after working on her for weeks. Just like it was a
guy
and a girl. And they didn’t get along, so this girl was going to walk out on her, and Grace took an overdose of sleeping tablets. Of course she claims it was by accident: it was dark, and she got the wrong bottle or something. What surprised me though is that it was Grace who did this and not the other dyke. Grace is always the boss.”

“Not in this situation,” said Reinhart.

“Excuse me?”

He said: “I guess even authoritative people have someone who knows their number.”

“Dykes!” said Helen. “God in heaven. I guess fags have got nothing on them.” She said this with a hint of female pride, the old-fashioned kind that predated the recent phase of feminine activism: the sort that had been characteristic of his mother, a roughhewn woman who despised the aims of femlib as being degenerative of the authority she had acquired singlehanded.

“I guess they’re all human,” said Reinhart, but without piety. He got a grip on himself. “Thanks, Helen. I
am
interested in that information.”

“I’ve got my own source,” said she.

“No doubt male?”

“Now, now,” Helen said. “Do I ask you to explain everything?”

“I’d be glad to.”

“I’ll bet,” said Helen. She seemed to think his life more enterprising than it was.

“Maybe we can get together again soon.”

“Let me call you about that,” said Helen. “Al has to go in the hospital for another operation. That means I’ll have to spend a lot more time at the motel office.”

“Al’s Motel?”

“Didn’t I mention it? Al’s my husband. He’s been disabled for a while and in a wheelchair, but he can run the office when he’s not in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry to hear about his trouble,” Reinhart said. He cupped his hand around the mouthpiece, so that Toby, up the hall, would not hear him. “Do you mind my asking? Did Al know we were there the other day?” Helen couldn’t understand his whisper, and he had to repeat the question in a somewhat louder voice.

She answered: “He knew
I
was there. I don’t think he saw you. I didn’t tell him your name, Carl, if that’s what’s worrying you. I’m not a pervert.”

“I hope things work out for him at the hospital,” said Reinhart, with real feeling.

He had just hung up and was starting for the kitchen when Winona came in. His instantaneous emotion, which came and went like a flash of light, so swift it might have been imagined, was one of repugnance. In guilty compensation he went to her, seized, and hugged her.

She seemed ill at ease with him. Her trunk was rigid.

“Dad,” she said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Winona. How are
you?”

“I’m all right,” she said defiantly, almost angrily. She went into the living room and dropped with a funny shoulder movement onto the sofa, as if she were a little girl again.

Reinhart followed her. She was wearing a long skirt. He liked that. He was bored with those eternal jeans.

“Daddy,” she said, “Mother’s been in touch with me. It seems she’s out of the hospital. She claims there was nothing wrong with her at all, that there was no reason for me to call the police, that there was no reason for the police to call the ambulance, and so on down the line, and she intends to sue everybody involved.”

“How much more money does she want you to give her? Do you have anything left after paying Blaine for her supposed treatment?” Reinhart ground his teeth.

“Ah, well...”

At just that moment the doorbell rang, with a marked effect on Winona. Reinhart was annoyed to be interrupted just as he was about to talk turkey with her.

When he opened the door, he saw Genevieve, showing what he knew from experience as, by intention anyway, a sweet smile.

“Hi, Carl.” She had undergone an alteration in appearance: something, some neatening, by cut or comb, had been done to her hair. She also seemed to be better dressed, or perhaps it was merely that today she was not wearing that old green coat. All in all, it was an improvement.

Reinhart blocked the doorway with his large body. “Just what can I do for you, Genevieve?”

She continued to grin. “You’re not going to ask about my trouble the other day, the emergency trip to the hospital, et cetera?”

“No,” said Reinhart. “I don’t have the slightest interest in it.”

In what would seem an instant of genuine admiration, Genevieve said: “Carl, if you had always been the mean son of a bitch you’ve turned into in your old age, I’d probably have stuck by you.”

“Thank God, then, my change came too late.” Reinhart sighed to dramatize his sense of tragedy averted, but in point of fact he too now grinned. Bantering with Gen was a sadomasochistic entertainment, but sometimes even yet he could remember when they had been, though for all too short a term, comrades.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

“Why should I?”

“For old times’ sake.” Her morale had been raised by something or other—perhaps the commotion she had caused last Monday. At any rate she did not hint at the beseeching note, alternating with the spiteful, culminating in the vicious, which had characterized her style at the shopping mall.

Reinhart stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. “This is Winona’s apartment and not mine, and in fact she’s here at the moment. She just told me you had an idea of suing all the poor devils who responded to your fake emergency the other day, including her! I recognize that threat to be as false as your breakdown itself, and I warn you if you say anything to make her feel bad, you will be given a ride out the door on the toe of my shoe.”

Genevieve raised her hands and said: “O.K., O.K.!”

Reinhart sighed again and ushered her through the door.

“Winona!” he called in warning when he reached the entrance hall. “It’s your mother.”

He gestured towards the living room, then stepped ahead of Genevieve and led her in.

Winona, however, came from the bedroom hallway, behind them. “Mother,” she said.

Genevieve now wore the kind of curled lip that she wished, but not ardently, to be taken as a polite smile. For a while she ignored her daughter absolutely and instead surveyed the room.

It had dawned upon Reinhart shortly after setting up his domestic partnership with Winona years before, when she was still a teenager, that his daughter had a taste in furnishings and their arrangement that was markedly superior to that of her mother—though indeed he recognized his own gifts in that area as being minor: he could not, for example, have said why a chair bought by Winona invariably had a unique agreement with the situation in which she deployed it, or how her hand, to all appearances even careless, could throw a bouquet of flowers into a vase, touch them here and there, and place the vessel at just the precise convergence of all reasonable sightlines in the room and furthermore in that corner which most profited from new color.