Belinda got up and snatched a metal-cased tape measure off the desk and drew back her arm as if to throw it at Jean, at which point Jean covered the receiver with one hand.
"If you throw that you're going to get spanked," she said, with a flash in her eye. "And no Baskin-Robbins, either. Put it down."
Thus confronted, Belinda compromised. She didn't throw the tape measure, but she ignored the order to put it down. Instead she marched around the desk and advanced on me.
"Stand still," she said. "I'll jist measure you."
"Do you think this dress goes with her hair?" Beverly asked, holding up a paper doll dress.
"I think so," I said.
Belinda kicked me. "Stand still, I said," she said.
"I was standing still," I protested.
"You talked," she said serenely. "Let's see your boots."
Beverly scooted over to help her and Belinda carefully measured my boots from heel to boot top.
"Tall boots," Belinda said. "Did you bring the soft car?"
"I brought it," I said. Meanwhile my eyes were roving scoutlike over the antiques. Except for the dower chest none of them looked really expensive, but they were well chosen. There was a wooden snow shovel that I liked, and a charming silver ewer that I would have liked to look at. Unfortunately it was right next to the phone and I couldn't look at it because I didn't think Jean would welcome me that close to the conversation.
However, I could look at Jean, and I liked what I saw. There was a nice color in her cheeks, perhaps caused by the heated argument she was having. Beverly and Belinda went to the door to make sure the soft car was really there, then, after whispering a bit, began to work on their mother. Belinda put the tape measure back on the desk and began a slow, easy, seductive ascent back into Jean's lap. Beverly followed, and Jean soon had two girls in her lap, their wild ringlets obscuring her modest bosom, their clean little ears not a foot from the phone. Inevitably, she was forced to take notice.
She took it with a huge sigh, covered the receiver again, and looked down at the undemanding curly heads just beneath her chin. At that point they turned and smothered her with kisses. She peered at me from between them, the receiver momentarily hooked on her shoulder.
"I hate to ask," she said, "but could you just take them?"
She opened a drawer and scattered two or three dollar bills on the desk.
"Take some money," she said. "I'll feel less guilty for doing this to you. I really have to finish this call. He won't stop unless I explain. If you'll just take them they can have anything they want. Stuff them till they burst. All I've heard is Baskin-Robbins for thirty-six hours."
"I hope you both bust!" she said, to her daughters. "I hope you eat so much ice cream you vomit. It'll serve you right."
Then she looked at me with silent appeal.
Belinda popped out of her lap and laughed merrily.
"Ice cream don't make you vomit," she said, marching around the desk and catching one of my fingers.
"Don't you want to come, Mom?" Beverly said. When Jean shook her head she slid down and ran to join us.
For tiny people the girls had ferocious appetites. Giant banana splits were not much beyond their capacity. In ten minutes they had reduced two of them to a trough of rich strawberry-streaked chocolate syrup.
While they were mucking around with their spoons in the gooey troughs of syrup I pumped them. It might have been an immoral tactic, but I didn't care. He who hopes to find out about women can't be too picky about tactics. Besides, the girls were easy to pump. They were quite without reticence, and saw no reason why the world—or at least myself—shouldn't know all about their family life.
"What does your daddy do?" I asked.
"Teaches people to dance," Belinda said. "He already teached us."
"Old dances," Beverly said. "That people did in olden times."
"He has pigs, too," Belinda said, holding up one fist and slowly opening her fingers until four of the five were sticking up. "Four pigs. I feeded them."
This information merely confirmed the opinion I had already formed of Jimmy from my one glimpse. A man who taught archaic dances and kept pigs was bound to possess extensive charm.
"I bet he's a nice daddy," I said.
"He is," Belinda said, puddling her syrup.
"Only he forgets," Beverly said.
"Yeah," Belinda said. "Once he forgetted me!"
"And me," Beverly said. "We had to spend the night with Mary."
"Who's Mary?"
The girls shrugged.
"Daddy's friend," Beverly said.
"She's got the Longest hair," Belinda said, waving her spoon at me for emphasis. When she waved it a small rivulet of pinkish chocolate syrup ran down into her sleeve. I grabbed the spoon just as the first drops went under the sleeve.
Belinda coolly looked down her sleeve. "Not much spilled," she said, ripping five or six more napkins out of the napkin holder. She got most of the goo off her coat and then licked her wrist until it was more or less clean.
When the three of us marched back into the shop Jean was slumped in her chair, staring forlornly at the crumpled one-dollar bills she had meant for me to take. The girls dashed around and jumped in her lap.
"Give me some kisses," Jean said, "so I'll know what you ate."
The girls happily complied. Jean pretended to be stumped, requiring a good deal of kissing as she tried to puzzle out the flavors. While they were kissing I looked closely at the dower chest, which was a really wonderful piece. It had everything it needed to have except a price tag.
"I think I've got it," Jean said. "Beverly had chocolate pineapple and Belinda had pineapple strawberry."
Both girls laughed cheerfully and lolled like tiny harem girls across their mother's lap.
"Banana spluts, four flavors," Belinda said, yawning.
"Three," Beverly corrected.
Belinda studied her fingers to see if it was four flavors or three, but lost interest in the question before she made up her mind.
When I looked around at Jean she was watching me quizzically. It was not lost on her that I was deeply attracted to the dower chest. The look in her eye made me feel awkward. It was obvious that the chest was her favorite thing. If I bought her favorite thing, at this stage of her life, I would probably take a small part of the heart out of her, something I was loath to do.
On the other hand, she did have an antique store, open to the public, and the point of a store is to sell. Probably Jean had just begun to edge over the wavery line that separates the long-time collector from the novitiate dealer. If I didn't buy the chest somebody else would.
"Nice chest," I said. "What'll you take for it?"
Jean yawned and slumped down in her chair, as relaxed as the girls. They were all sprawling more or less voluptuously. She still had the nice color in her cheeks.
“What am I offered?" she asked, grinning.
"You're the seller," I said. "You have to make the price."
Jean yawned again. She seemed to be fading before my eyes, but she was not uncheerful. She had fine green eyes and at that moment they were alight with merriment, although I didn't know why. She wound a finger through Belinda's ringlets.
"I'm too tired to price a chest," she said. "Besides, it's my favorite thing. If you buy it I'll cry."
I walked over to the desk and picked up the silver ewer. It didn't have a price either. There were a number of small white price tags scattered on the desk, but so far none of them had prices on them.
"How long have you been open?" I asked.
"About a month," Jean said, sleepily. "It's an old established business we have here."
"We run it," Belinda said.
"You don't," Beverly pointed out. "Momma runs it. Besides, you broke a cup."
"Shut up about that cup," Jean said. "She didn't mean to break it. Anybody can break a cup."
"Would you take a thousand for the chest?" I asked, sort of testing the waters.
"I
guess so," Jean said, without much conviction. "However, I think it's mean of you to force me to be professional when I've just spent two hours on the phone. I'm not myself. Anything I do I'm liable to regret tomorrow."
She had such nice color that she appeared to be blushing when she wasn't. What she was doing was flirting, which was not what I had expected, exactly. Previously she had seemed too involved with the end of her marriage to be capable of flirtation.
"Is he coming home with us?" Belinda asked, divining as if by magic her mother's newest mood.
"I don't know," Jean said. "He's welcome, if he likes. I’ll even make him dinner when I wake up."
"Goody," Beverly said.
"With peas?" Belinda asked, poking her mother.
"With peas," Jean said. "Don't poke me."
"Of course he's undoubtedly a popular gentleman," she added, sinking deeper into the chair. "He's probably too busy to come to our house tonight."
"No, he isn't," Belinda said, glaring at me. "Are you?"
"I am tonight," I said, remembering Oblivia Brown. "But I’d love to come to your house."
"He doesn't really want to," Jean said, from behind Belinda. "He just wants to see all the things I haven't brought to the store. He wants our goodies, not us."
Both girls looked at me solemnly, to see if this could be true.
"No fair," I said. "I’d love to come to your house."
With a sigh Jean roused herself and sat up. She looked at me studiously. I’ve been looked at a lot of ways, but never quite so studiously. She had very clear eyes.
"Well, tomorrow night's open," she said. "Along with the next twenty or thirty years. Take your pick."
"I’ll take tomorrow night," I said, instantly casting about in my mind for a lie I could tell Cindy. After all, we were still vaguely planning to set off for New Mexico once we had discharged our obligations to Oblivia Brown.
Jean was still watching me. I got a strange feeling. I can tell when Fm being sized up.
"You don't have to buy a thousand-dollar chest just to impress me," she said.
"I wasn't," I said, which was true. I could move the chest for two thousand easily.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Of course," I said. "I was just worried that you might be attached to it."
She grinned. "I’ve got another one," she said. "This one is second best."
"Oh good," I said. "Then I can buy it."
Actually, I felt trumped. If the one I was buying was worth a thousand, how good was the one she was keeping? My reputation hadn't been built by buying second-best things.
I sat down and wrote the check anyway. The second-best chest was worth every penny of it, though it was already fading in my favor. I no longer felt it was exceptional—just first rate. I would get rid of it quick, and the purchase might further other purposes.
Also, it would accustom Jean to selling things, which was important. The thrill of the sale might get her in gear, and once she got moving as a dealer she might keep moving. She would learn the first great lesson, which is that there are always more things to buy.
Of course, on another level I was doing it to impress her. At least it might impress her. Women seem to detest parsimonious men, and yet they often marry them. They seem to adore men who spend money like water, but I don't know that they take them very seriously. Perhaps they secretly believe that tightwads have the right slant on life, or at least the right slant on money.
Jean picked up the check and looked at it for a while.
"What do you know?" she said, to the girls. "He bought my chest. It's not mine anymore. I think I'll cry."
The girls, who were still in their harem-girl loll, straightened up and looked at their mother, to see if it was true. It wasn't. Jean looked slightly stunned, but not tearful.
"You're not cryin'," Belinda pointed out, with a touch of sternness.
"Nope," Jean said. "Guess what this means?"
"What?" Beveriy asked.
"New clothes for all," Jean said.
"Bloomingdale's?" Belinda inquired hopefully.
"I'm gonna have you sheared," Jean said, ruffling her daughter's ringlets. "You got too much hair."
Belinda reached in the desk drawer and pulled out a mirror. It was an old, silver-backed mirror. As I left, their three heads were squeezed together, as they all contemplated new hairstyles with the aid of one mirror.
"You can change your mind about coming if you feel like it," Jean said. "You don't have to let us bully you."
"You didn't bully me," I said.
"I did!" Belinda said.
Chapter II
Oblivia Brown lived only three blocks from Cindy, so we walked to the party, holding hands. It was a sharp, clear night. Clouds of frozen breath streamed behind us as we walked, like vapor trails.
Oblivia's house was only slightly smaller than the Executive Office Building, and hailed from about the same period. The butler who let us in was a dour little shrimp, the antithesis of Benson. He was so fish-eyed and uninterested in life that he didn't even change expression when I handed him the Stetson with the diamondback hatband. He reminded me of the croupiers in minor casinos in places like Elko, Nevada.
As we started to go down a hallway hung with not very good mirrors in not very interesting frames I saw a dog standing in our path. It was black and extremely shaggy and seemed to have a hump of some sort. It looked like a miniature buffalo.
"That’s Felix," Cindy said. "Hi, Felix."
Felix retreated in a hurry. He went bounding up some stairs. As we passed he was standing on a landing, looking very much like a small buffalo.
A large number of people were assembled in a long living room. Our hostess immediately spotted us and swam through a sea of pinstripes to our side. I had expected her to be beautiful, or at least stylish, but she was neither. She had a thin face, her hair was limp, her complexion blurred, and her look vague. She wore a dowdy-looking gray dress and a string of imitation pearls that looked like they'd been bought at Woolworth's.
"So tall," she said, looking at me. "Adore those yellow boots. I just hope they're not made from the skin of some pathetic endangered creature. My charity, you know. Very partial to creatures here. So yellow. I've never seen such a yellow creature."
Oblivia stood at a kind of angle to us, so that she could speak to us and yet keep an eye on the crowd, which I noticed included both old Cotswinkle and John C. V. Ponsonby.
"The boots are just armadillo," I said. "They're not endangered."
"Oh," Oblivia said. "Armadillo. I thought that was where Prub lived."
Cindy smiled. "That's Amarillo," she said.
Oblivia smiled. "So far," she said. "Can't keep places straight unless I've been to them."
Prub I knew. He was a crazed liberal trial lawyer who lived in Amarillo. His real passion in life was collecting minor league baseball teams. At the time he owned eight, scattered from Puerto Rico to Vancouver. I had once sold him a baseball autographed by Heinie Manush, one of his true heroes.
"Is Prub here?" I asked hopefully.
"Well, I hope not," Oblivia said. "Of course, the man's brilliant, but so difficult. Won't eat asparagus. Insulted my chef so badly he almost quit. Told him the sauce had curdled. Of course it had—Jean-Luc has an off night once in a while. Nobody but Prub would have dared mention it. Jean-Luc had one of his rages— so fierce. Didn't bother Prub."
"Why won't he eat asparagus?" Cindy asked.
"Claims he ate it on his wedding night and a bad thing happened," Oblivia said.
Actually Prub had been married six times. Every time he won a big case his wife of the moment divorced him and took half of his fee. One of them had been a friend of Coffee's, so I was no stranger to stories about Prub Bosque.
Cindy had had enough of such chitchat. She started into the crowd, only to be immediately embraced by a short man in a tweed suit. The short man stood on tiptoes and kissed whatever she would allow him, which was just a cheek.
&nb
sp; "So lecherous," Oblivia said. Something like a spark of hatred appeared in her otherwise unfocused eyes.
"Who's that?" I asked.
"George," she said. "Can you imagine those tweeds?"
I remembered that someone named George Psalmanazar was the boyfriend of Khaki Descartes, but that didn’t explain the spark of hatred. George also had snow-white hair. His teeth were clenched as if he had a pipe in them, but he didn't.
"Such a crowd," Oblivia said, taking my hand in order to lead me into it. Her hand was damp, as if it had been left in a dim room in a tropical clime too long. I was puzzled as to why old Cotswinkle might be fucking her, when he had a wife who was fifty times more beautiful. His wife was standing nearby, in fact, looking even better than she had at the Penroses'.
The clammy hand of my hostess pulled me deeper into the pinstripes. The crowd sucked at us like an undertow and before I knew it we were over in a comer, far from safety, where Khaki Descartes was in earnest conversation with John C. V. Ponsonby.
"Knew I’d find you together," Oblivia said. "George is drunk."
"Don't be silly," Khaki said.
John C. V. Ponsonby said nothing. He appeared to be in a hypnotic trance. Perhaps over the years he had learned to sleep on his feet, like a horse. His silence had an equine quality.
"George is drunk," Oblivia repeated. The flash of hate came in her eyes again.
"Moreover," she said, "he is talking about Iran. I consider that ominous."
"Well, go tell him to shut up about it," Khaki said. "You know him as well as I do."
"Not the case," Oblivia said. "That was long ago.
"I put him at my table only because he gave his word not to talk about Iran," Oblivia continued, "He gets so pettish if he's not at my table."
George seemed to be clinging to Cindy like a small tweedy burr.
Meanwhile Andy Landry and Eviste Labouchere had just stepped into the room. Eviste was wearing a white suit. From a distance it made him look a little like Claude Rains.
"My god," Khaki said. "Where'd he get that suit? Look at that suit."
"More to the point," Oblivia said, "where did he get Andy? I thought Lilah was the one who liked him."
"You're slipping a little. Via," Khaki said. "Lilah just took him home by mistake. She thought he was Jean-Luc."
McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 Page 18