The Elmore Roller-Rink Roadhouse combined wholesomeness and elegance in a manner archetypally midwestern. Under a glowing greenhouse ceiling lattices of pipes supported an aerial meadow of herbs and houseplants in hanging pots and tiers of terracotta planters. Beneath the greenery a great many antique kitchen tables of oak and pine (all tagged for sale, as were the plants) were grouped about an implausibly large dance floor. It really had been, long ago, a roller rink. Two couples were out on the floor dancing, with lively unspectacular competence, to the Chocolate Doughnut Polka. It was only seven o’clock: everyone else was eating dinner.
The food was wonderful. Boadicea had explained the exact nature of its superiority to anything they might have eaten in Switzerland, had explained it into the ground. Now, with dessert still to be chosen, she had to think of something else for them to talk about, since Carl seemed perfectly prepared to sit there and say nothing. Even with his sunglasses off, his face was unreadable, though handsome enough, considered simple as sculpture: the broad brow and blunt nose, the massive muscles of the neck tapering into the simple geometries of his crew cut, the emphatic carving of the lips, nostrils, and eyes, which yet, for all their distinctness, yielded no meanings of a psychological order. If he smiled, it was that mechanical sort of smile that suggested gears and pulleys. Clank, screek, snik, and then a little card emerges from the metal slot with the word SMILE on it. Sitting there, facing him across the little spray of bachelor buttons and petunias, she tried it herself — tightening the corner of her lips, and lifting them, notch by notch. But then, before he’d noticed, the pendulum swung back and she felt the sting of guilt. What right had she to expect Carl Mueller to be forthcoming with her? She was nothing to him but the boss’s daughter, and she’d taken every mean advantage of that position, commandeering his company as though he had no life or feelings of his own. And then blaming him!
“I’m sorry,” she said, with an utter sincerity of contrition.
Carl crinkled his brow. “For what?”
“For dragging you off like this. For taking up your time. I mean—” She pressed her fingers to the sides of her head just above the cheekbones, where the flux of various miseries was beginning to take the form of a monster headache. “I mean, I didn’t ask, did I, whether you had other plans for this evening?”
He produced one of his clockwork smiles. “That’s okay, Miss Whiting. I didn’t exactly plan on coming here to Elmore tonight, but what the hell. Like you say, the food’s great. You worried about your folks?”
“My feelings are pretty much the opposite of worry. I’m thoroughly pissed off with all of them.”
“That’s what I’d gathered. Of course, it’s none of my business, but I can say for a fact that your father didn’t have much choice whether or not to go to Chicago.”
“Oh yes, I learned long ago that business is business. And I don’t — I can’t — blame him. But Serjeant could have come. He is my brother.”
“I didn’t mention it before, Miss Whiting—”
“Beverley,” she corrected. Earlier she’d made a game of making him call her by the name on her false ID.
“I didn’t mention it before, Miss Whiting, because it didn’t seem my place to, but the reason your brother couldn’t come for you is that two weeks ago he got his license suspended for drunk driving. He was driving home from Elmore, as a matter of fact.”
“He could have come along with you then. So could Alethea.”
“Maybe they could. But I don’t think either of them cares that much for my company. Not that they’ve got any kind of grudge against me. But after all, I’m just one of the operations managers, not a friend of the family.” With which — and with, it seemed, no sense at all of its being a questionable act — he poured the last of the wine in the carafe into his own glass.
“If you want to take me home now, that’s all right.”
“Just relax, Miss Whiting.”
“Beverley.”
“Okay, Beverley.”
“There actually is a real Beverley Whittaker. She was in Switzerland, hiking. We met in a hospice about halfway up Mont Blanc. There was the most incredible lightning storm. Once you’ve seen lightning in the mountains, you can understand why the Greeks put their most important god in charge of it.”
Carl nodded gloomily.
She had to stop chattering, but the long silences, when they developed, panicked her equally.
Another couple had gone out on the dance floor, but just as they started dancing the music stopped. The silence enlarged.
She had a rule of thumb for such situations, and it was to take an interest in other people, since that was what they were interested in.
“And, uh, what are you in charge of?” she asked.
“Pardon?” But his eyes connected just long enough to let her see that he’d understood — and resented — the question.
Which, nevertheless, she must repeat. “You said you were an operations manager. Which operation do you manage?”
“Whatever has to do with the work crews. Recruitment and housing primarily. Transport, payroll, supervision.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a job that has to be done.”
“Of course. My father says it’s the most important operation on the farm.”
“That’s a way of saying it’s the dirtiest. Which it is.”
“Well, it’s not what I meant. In fact, I wouldn’t say that.”
“You would if you had to deal with some of the types we end up with. In another month or so, at the height of it, we’ll have something like twelve hundred on the payroll, and of that twelve hundred I’d say a good half of them are no better than animals.”
“I’m sorry, Carl, but I just can’t accept that.”
“Well, there’s no reason you should have to, Miss Whiting.” He smiled. “Beverley, that is. Anyway, it’s a good job, and a hell of a lot of responsibility for someone my age, so it would be crazy to complain, if that’s what it seems like I’m doing. It’s not.”
They were rescued by the waitress who came and asked them what they wanted for dessert. Carl asked for Bavarian cream. Boadicea, because it was her first meal back in America, ordered apple pie.
A new polka had started up, and Boadicea, admitting defeat, turned her chair sideways to watch the dancers. There was a couple out on the floor now who actually could dance, whose bodies moved with the motions of life. They made the other dancers look like the simulacra you paid to see inside a tent at a county fair. The girl was especially good. She wore a wide, whirling, gypsyish skirt with a flounce at the hem, and the sway and flare and swirl of the skirt seemed to infuse the bland music with energies of an altogether higher order. The boy danced with equal energy but less panache. His limbs moved too abruptly, while his torso seemed never quite to unlock from its innate crouch. It was the body of a Brueghel peasant. Even so, the delight in his face was so lively, and it was such a handsome face (not in the least a Brueghel), that you couldn’t keep from feeling an answering delight. The girl (Boadicea was sure) wouldn’t have danced nearly so well with someone else, would not have been so set-on-fire. Together, for as long as the polka lasted, they brought time to a stop at the Elmore Roller-Rink Roadhouse.