Reinhart's Women: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  After some deliberation Reinhart had chosen crepes Suzette: a name known to all as the quintessence of Gourmetism, a dish that was simplicity itself to prepare, and a demonstration that could be given a dramatic character, for attracting an audience was the purpose of his job. The particular stimulus for his choice was an Epicon-distributed product called Mon Paris Instant Crepe Suzette Mix: a package containing two envelopes, the larger of which held sufficient powder, when added to a cup of milk, to make a dozen six-inch dessert crepes; the orange-colored dust in the smaller envelope when mashed into softened butter became the sauce in which the crepes were to be bathed.

  When tested by Reinhart in his home kitchen, the mixture had yielded rubbery pancakes on the one hand, and on the other, a sauce the predominant flavor of which was markedly chemical, though it was obviously intended to be orange. He prepared several batches of crepes and a number of bowls of sauce, each with another variation of the recipe as given—more or less milk, sometimes thinned with water; a greater or lesser proportion of butter in the sauce—but no effort could alter the truth that the product was simply inferior as food and at $4.75 a swindle as an item of trade, since aside from the chemicals the packages contained respectively only flour and sugar.

  At an earlier time of life Reinhart would probably have presented these bald facts to the appropriate authority, but he was by now sufficiently seasoned to understand that a person like Grace Greenwood had not attained her success in the food business by a devotion to the principles of either nutrition or serious gastronomy. What he determined to do then was to make his own mixture, from the authentic materials, of course, the juice and peel of fresh oranges, orange liqueur, and cognac.

  But was this not as unscrupulous as what he would replace? For the only point of the demonstrations was to sell Epicon products, and in fact he was not to be alone in the public phase of the project, but rather to be accompanied by a pitchwoman named Helen Clayton, who while he cooked would give the spiel and then, after the audience had tasted the product, then and there sell packages of Instant Crepe Suzette Mix from an adjoining table.

  The answer to the foregoing question was surely Yes, if having tasted one of Reinhart’s authentic crepes, some naïve housewife bought the wretched powdered product and assumed that from it she could reproduce the model. But there was still another way to look at this situation: wasn’t it quite as likely that, incensed by the difference between the real and the bogus, she would, in this era of the aggressive consumer, return the mix with a complaint? And could not the result of enough of such incidents be that Epicon would cease to distribute the offending product?

  ...Actually, Reinhart had no serious hope that the right thing would be done by anybody else but himself—which was the real reason why he must prepare good crepes Suzette.

  Getting the equipment and supplies together had taken a good week despite Grace’s efficiency and authority. The project was the least among her many, Epicon’s major business being in popular junk foods with no claim to being gourmet: various sliced or minced-and-reconstituted deep-fried substances, potato, banana, corn, etc.; powdered soups, puddings, dips; aerosol-canned cheese; tinned meat spreads, stuffed olives, pretzels, relishes, crackers, all manner of munchies, yummies, and tummy-stuffers, comprising most of the joke-provender extant in the Western world, made available, presumably, for the people who lived to eat, rather than those who ate to live, for it did not pretend to offer nourishment.

  But a more obvious cause of delay was a general disinclination on the part of all male employees beneath the executive level to work with more than a fraction of the dispatch of the typical practitioner, in whichever job, of a decade earlier, the last time Reinhart had exposed himself to anything that could be called business. Furthermore, this persistent delay as practiced by all functionaries was apparently so firmly established by now as to rouse no ire from the victim, evoke no regret from the perpetrator, and indeed not even stir any wonderment. A kind of half-paralysis, with no political significance, seemed to have claimed the American work force. But he had himself been a downright dropout for more than ten years, and it certainly was easier to get back into a system that was forgiving.

  Now back at his demonstration-kitchen, Reinhart assembled the raw materials for a batch of crepes sucrées: flour, eggs, butter, sugar. His colleague, Helen Clayton, was once again rearranging her pitchwoman’s table. She was a robust woman in what might be as late as her early forties or as early as the late thirties, with sandy-red hair, pale skin, and a self-possessed, even slightly hostile manner.

  Earlier in his life this was the type of woman who would have caused him most discomfiture, and perhaps he would naïvely have believed her seemingly otherwise unmotivated resentment to be caused by a lesbian leaning. But now it seemed likely that matters of relative power, not sex, were in question. Which of them was to be boss? It would be difficult for him to reassure her without being despised for his pains.

  When Helen had restacked her little boxes of Instant Crepe Suzette Mix he asked: “How should we go about this?”

  She raised her eyes but not her face. “Huh?”

  “You’re the professional at demonstrations, aren’t you? I’m a raw recruit.” He spoke with a certain breeziness of voice: obsequiousness would not be the note to strike.

  She was no warmer as yet. “How long will it take you to make those things?”

  “A few minutes, once the batter’s ready and the skillet’s hot. I mean the crepes themselves. Then to sauce them, only a minute or so more.”

  Helen winced. “You don’t have a stack already made?”

  “I thought of doing that,” said Reinhart. “But the Suzetting isn’t all that much, just swishing them around in the sauce a moment or two and then folding them in quarters. Of course the flaming adds drama. But I thought the demonstration would have more interest if I started from scratch, more or less. Crepe batter has to rest awhile under refrigeration to be at its best: what I will mix here I won’t use immediately. What I will use I prepared last night at home: it’s in the portable fridge there.” The latter was the standard plastic-walled device for picnics. Its interior held two gallons of the batter, surrounded by ice cubes. This was enough for two hundred crepes, surely a sufficient number to get them through a routine morning. By the afternoon the batter he had mixed in the demonstration would have rested sufficiently to be used.

  “The thing to remember,” Helen said, “is that we’re here to move the product, not to give free cooking lessons or free food. Be careful about kids: they’re a pain in the ass. They’ll want sample after sample, and some of the smaller ones might try to help themselves to things they’re not supposed to have, and for God’s sake don’t let anything dangerous get out of your close vicinity: knives and hot things. Keep ’em away from those burners! That’s the bad news. But the good news is that if they like a product, kids will make their parents buy it, so you’ve got to remember that and put up with them. This time of day you’ll have the very little tots who pull things off the shelves and screech incessantly. But they like sweet stuff, so make those crepes as sweet as possible, with extra-heavy fillings of jam.” Naturally she pronounced the essential word to rhyme with “grape.”

  He answered in good humor: “These are crepes Suzette, and they aren’t made with jam. Most of their flavor comes from the hot sauce that they will be inundated in. It’s quite sweet and rich, with lots of sugar, though, and butter and orange juice—”

  Helen peered at his work-table, and then at him. “You’re not going to use the packaged sauce mix?”

  “Uh, no.”

  Her eyes were fixed on his mouth. Her own lips were threatening to—yes, definitely, to smile. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

  Now he smiled in return. “You disapprove?”

  She laughed outright. “It’s not my affair, is it?”

  But why was it so funny? Finally he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Helen. She lifted one of the li
ttle boxes of instant mix and snorted. “Have you tried these?”

  “Yes.”

  She protruded her lips and pronounced, silently: Sh-it?

  He nodded. “I suppose I’m being dishonest—?”

  “Not unless we say you’re using the mix,” Helen said quickly. “But look, this can be to our advantage. You show the real way to make the sauce. The crepes will be terrific, and those are the ones they’ll taste samples of, right? Then I’ll say something like, ‘Well, that’s the long way. If you want to do it the short way, here’s the instant mix!’”

  She had lost her coolness. They were co-conspirators now. She was really quite a nice-looking woman, tall and full-bosomed, and not wearing, he was happy to note, a pungent scent which could be deleterious to good cuisine, distracting or confusing the olfactory sense.

  “Yes, I guess that’s fair enough,” said he. “Makes me feel better anyway. I hate to be dishonest about food, but on the other hand I don’t like the idea of cooking anything that’s lousy, merely so as to be honest.”

  Helen shrugged and said, with a pout: “I’ll tell you, I myself don’t care. I like simple food. Anything fancy makes me sick to the stomach.”

  He raised his hands at the wrists, signifying that he would not have her shot, though privately he believed the statement insensitive in view of his profession; but then it was humanity’s way to suspend the rules of courtesy when speaking of food or art.

  The big clock over the fresh produce department was not so large that it could be seen across the vast distance that separated him from it, and he wore no watch. Helen, when applied to, told him it was a minute or so to nine. He took the white bonnet from the bottom shelf of his work-table. It was in a collapsed state. He shook it, inflating its flatness. He put on an apron, the strings of which crossed in back and came around to be tied in front.

  Helen was looking at him in what appeared to be approval. “Gee,” she said. “Remind me to get some recipes from you.” Obviously the costume had transformed him in her eyes. He realized that Grace had been right to insist upon his wearing it.

  “Do you like to cook?”

  “Hate it,” said Helen. “That’s why I wanted you to show me some shortcuts.”

  “First one,” he replied in good humor, “is to get yourself some Instant Crepe Suzette Mix.”

  Helen, who was proving an amiable sort, assured him she was earnest about acquiring “kitchen tips.”

  “Of course we eat a lot of take-out. I can’t do this all day and then come home and cook much at night.”

  “Who’s ‘we’? You and your husband?”

  “Well...” Helen leaned towards him as if to share a confidence; he sensed that she might have dug him in the ribs had he been close enough. “You didn’t think I was one of them, did you?”

  “Them?” The question was altogether honest.

  Once again she made her lips prominent and silently mouthed a word. It was lesbian.

  Reinhart averted his face. “No,” he said, “certainly not.” He had not yet had time to think of this third phase of coping with the problem of Winona: he had first to deal with it himself, then to witness Blaine’s reaction, and now finally to deal with the rest of the world.

  With unwitting cruelty Helen persisted. “Did you know she was? Grace, I mean.”

  He mumbled: “I guess so. But I don’t much care.” He tried to keep from sounding the defiant note.

  “I’ve always kept away from them. They make me feel creepy. But Grace is all right to work for. I’ve done a number of jobs for Epicon, usually through her, and she’s always been a perfect lady with me.” Helen laughed coarsely. “But, then, I doubt I’m her type. She likes them skinny, and she likes them young.”

  “Well,” Reinhart said, “here come our customers.” God had mercifully steered a young mother and a small child to the head of their aisle.

  But Helen Clayton still had time for another innocent thrust: “You should see her present friend. My God, she’s positively beautiful. I’ve seen her call for Grace after work in her car. I’ve seen—”

  “Madam,” Reinhart desperately called to the young woman, though she was still remote and was at the very moment bending low to poke into a frozen-food compartment, “would you like a crepe Suzette?”

  Futile as this was practically—the woman could not hear him—it did serve to distract Helen from her previous theme.

  She said in an undertone: “That’s supposed to be my job.”

  “Sorry,” said Reinhart. “I’ve got beginner’s nerves.”

  “Aw, you’ll be just fine.” She considered him a buddy now.

  The young mother had not heard him, but it could be seen that her little son was attracted by the promise of a novelty, down there in the corner, a man in a marshmallow hat and a red-haired lady, and he trotted their way.

  “Hi, little kid,” said Helen, when he came near. “Do you like real sweet things like candy and ice cream?”

  The child silently thrust his open hand at her.

  Reinhart said: “I haven’t even sauced any crepes yet!”

  Helen ignored him and continued to smile at the little boy. When the mother came along, the child turned to her and made demands. The young woman sighed and groaned. Reaching past a stack of the crepe-mix boxes on Helen’s table, she found a jar that Reinhart could not have seen from his angle, unscrewed the top, chose a bright green pellet, and gave it to her child. He was pacified for the moment. His mother shrugged for Helen’s benefit, put the jar on her wheeled cart, and pushed on.

  “What have you got over there?” Reinhart asked. “Are you selling other things?”

  “I took the precaution to get a jar or two of Gourmet Fruit Drops off the gourmet shelf,” said Helen. “You always want to have something to use on the real little kids.”

  Reinhart was impressed by her acumen. “I’m going to take your suggestion and make some finished crepes, in sauce and all ready to eat, so that the customers can taste them right away. Then maybe they’ll stay and watch me cook some more from scratch.” He looked at Helen, expecting approval.

  But she frowned. “Thing is, you’ll be giving them the pay before they do the work. That’s never a good principle. Think of it. If you got your money in advance, do you think you’d work as hard? Human nature.”

  “But will they have the patience to stand and watch a demonstration? That young woman just now didn’t even glance at my setup.”

  “Thing is,” said Helen, “you’ve just got to get the feel of the crowd: some will do one thing, some another. I mean, as crowds. Individuals within the crowd are something else: they can usually be ignored, but not always. There might be a troublemaker, for example. But there might also be somebody there you want to play to, like maybe, for you, a good-looking girl. If you can hold her, you get the feeling you can hold anybody, and that’s good for the self-confidence. Or maybe you like a different kind of challenge, some sour-looking individual who will be against you by nature, skeptical, you know? That might put you on your best behavior.”

  No other customers were yet in sight, and in the preceding hour Reinhart had seen hardly any of the supermarket personnel but the manager, DePau. As yet it was an inappropriate place, this isolated corner, to speak of the psychology of crowds.

  “I don’t think I’m so good at handling people,” Reinhart said. “If I have any gift in life whatever, it’s for making something. I discovered that late enough. I wish I had known it when I was young, but in those days I never showed any inclination to work with my hands. In manual training at school, for example, I couldn’t saw a straight line. I never had any talent at art, and with mechanical things I’m at a loss. When I got out of the Army, I just sort of fell into real estate, and from then on it was a series of jobs of different types that dealt with the public. I don’t mind admitting I never did well at any of them. Then I took up cooking, just as a practical thing at home: I had to bring up and feed a daughter.”

  “Listen,�
�� said Helen Clayton, speaking with solemn conviction, “being really able to make something is the greatest ability there is, because you’ve always got that regardless. People come and go, but what do you care? You’ve always got what you do. You could be alone on the moon.”

  Again Reinhart wryly scanned the deserted aisle. “There’s a somewhat different character to working with food than, say, with wood or precious metals. Cooking is a craft, or perhaps a performing art, but the product that is created is made to be consumed in a unique way: it is taken internally and, if digested, becomes part of the flesh of a living creature. In a sense then, cookery is the only truly creative art. But you do need people to eat the resulting product.”

  But the point seemed lost on Helen, who was very intelligent but whose philosophy was of another character, being tactical rather than strategic, and in fact Reinhart’s favorite people had been her sort during what in retrospect now were established as the most happy times of his life, viz., his days in the wartime Army.

  Suddenly customers appeared in bulk. A plausible reason for this might be that the crowd had been waiting for the doors to open: admitted together, they had toured the aisles in ensemble and had only now reached the last. But subsequent events of the same sort, at arbitrary times, disqualified the argument. People appeared by ones or en masse, crowds formed or failed to collect, according to some law that could not easily be identified. Reinhart discovered that though the action could be hectic when people appeared in number, it was more satisfying than when persons came by sporadically. Although his private code had always exalted the individual and, as the case might be, dreaded or despised the mob, in a public situation such tastes are a weakness and not a strength.

  But the principal difference between this role and all the previous jobs that had pitted him against his fellow man was that for the first time he had a genuine skill to display, and his being in this situation was not still another example of Fate’s inclination towards the arbitrary.