“Yes. Claire, I’m sorry I—”
“The last time I got stood up was when I was sixteen and had a—”
“Claire, I didn’t stand you up, honest. Some Homicide cops—”
“It felt like being stood up. I waited in the newspaper office until a quarter to eight, God knows why. Why didn’t you call?”
“They wouldn’t let me use the phone.” Kling paused. “Besides, I didn’t know how I could reach you.”
Claire was silent.
“Claire?”
“I’m here,” she said wearily.
“Can I see you tomorrow? We’ll spend the day together. I’m off tomorrow.”
Again, there was silence.
“Claire?”
“I heard you.”
“Well?”
“Bert, why don’t we call it quits, huh? Let’s consider what happened tonight an ill omen and just forget the whole thing, shall we?”
“No,” he said.
“Bert—”
“No! I’ll pick you up at noon, all right?”
Silence.
“Claire?”
“All right. Yes,” she said. “Noon.”
“I’ll explain then. I… I got into a little trouble.”
“All right.”
“Noon?”
“Yes.”
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
“Good night, Claire.”
“Good night, Bert.”
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“That’s all right. I’d just dozed off, anyway.”
“Well… good night, Claire.”
“Good night, Bert.”
He wanted to say more, but he heard the click of the receiver being replaced in the cradle. He sighed, left the phone booth, and ordered a steak with mushrooms, french-fried onions, two baked potatoes, a huge salad with Roquefort dressing, and a glass of milk. He finished off the meal with three more glasses of milk and a slab of chocolate cream pie.
On the way out of the restaurant, he bought a candy bar.
Then he went home to sleep.
16
A common and much believed fallacy in popular literature is the one that links romantic waiters with starry-eyed couples who are obviously in love. The waiter hovers over the table, suggesting special dishes (“Per’aps the pheasant under ground glass for ze lady, yas?”), kissing his fingers, or wringing his hands against his chest while his heart bursts with romance.
Bert Kling had been in a good many restaurants in the city, as boy and man, with a good many young ladies ranging from the plain to the beautiful. He had come to the conclusion a long while back that most waiters in most restaurants had nothing more romantic on their minds than an order of scrambled eggs with lox.
He did not for a moment believe that he and Claire looked starry-eyed with love, but they were without doubt a nice-enough-looking couple, and they were in a fashionable restaurant that overlooked the River Harb, high atop one of the city’s better-known hotels. And, even discounting the absence of the starry-eyed (which he was fast coming to believe were nothing more than a Jon Whitcomb creation — ah, once a man begins to doubt…), he felt that any waiter with more than a stone for a heart should have recognized and aided the fumbling and primitive ritual of two people who were trying to get to know each other.
The day, by any standards, had not been what Kling would have called a rousing success.
He had planned on a picnic in Bethtown, with its attendant ferry ride from Isola across the river. Rain had destroyed that silly notion.
He had drippingly called for Claire at twelve on the dot. The rain had given her a “horrible headache.” Would he mind if they stayed indoors for a little while, just until the Empirin took hold?
Kling did not mind.
Claire had put some good records into the record player and then had lapsed into a heavy silence, which he attributed to the throbbing headache. The rain had oozed against the windowpanes, streaking the city outside. The music had oozed from the record player — Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D, Strauss’s Don Quixote, Franck’s Psyche.
Kling almost fell asleep.
They left the apartment at 2:00. The rain had let up somewhat, but it had put a knife-edge on the air, and they sloshed along in a sullen, uncommunicative silence, hating the rain with common enmity, but somehow having allowed the rain to build a solid wedge between them. When Kling suggested a movie, Claire accepted the offer eagerly.
The movie was terrible.
The feature was called Apache Undoing, or some such damn thing, and it starred hordes of painted Hollywood extras who screeched and whooped down upon a small band of blue-clothed soldiers. The handful of soldiers fought off the wily Apaches until almost the end of the movie. By this time, the hordes flung against the small, tired band must have numbered in the tens of thousands. With five minutes to go in the film, another small handful of soldiers arrived, leaving Kling with the distinct impression that the war would go on for another two hours in a subsequent film to be titled Son of Apache Undoing.
The second film on the bill was about a little girl whose mother and father are getting divorced. The little girl goes with them to Reno — Dad conveniently has business there at the same time Mom must establish residence — and through an unvarying progression of mincing postures and bright-eyed, smirking little-girl facial expressions, convinces Mom and Dad to stay together eternally and live in connubial bliss with their mincing, bright-eyed, smirking little smart-assed daughter.
They left the theater bleary-eyed. It was 6:00.
Kling suggested a drink and dinner. Claire, probably in self-defense, agreed that a drink and dinner would be just dandy along about now.
And so they sat in the restaurant high atop one of the city’s better-known hotels, and they looked through the huge windows that faced the river; across the river there was a sign.
The sign first said: SPRY.
Then it said: SPRY FOR FRYING.
Then it said: SPRY FOR BAKING.
Then it said, again: SPRY.
“What’ll you drink?” Kling asked.
“A whiskey sour, I think,” Claire said.
“No cognac?”
“Later maybe.”
The waiter came over to the table. He looked as romantic as Adolf Hitler.
“Something to drink, sir?” he asked. “A whiskey sour and a martini.” “Lemon peel, sir?” “Olive,” Kling said.
“Thank you, sir. Would you care to see a menu now?” “We’ll wait until after we’ve had our drinks, thank you. All right, Claire?”
“Yes, fine,” she said.
They sat in silence. Kling looked through the windows.
SPRY FOR FRYING.
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
SPRY FOR BAKING.
“It’s been a bust, hasn’t it?”
“Please, Bert.”
“The rain… and that lousy movie. I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted—”
“I knew this would happen, Bert. I tried to tell you, didn’t I? Didn’t I try to warn you off? Didn’t I tell you I was the dullest girl in the world? Why did you insist, Bert? Now you make me feel like a… like a…”
“I don’t want you to feel any way,” he said. “I was only going to suggest that we… we start afresh. From now. Forgetting everything that’s… that’s happened.”
“Oh, what’s the use?” Claire said.
The waiter came with their drinks. “Whiskey sour for the lady?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He put the drinks on the table. Kling lifted the martini glass.
“To a new beginning,” he said.
“If you want to waste a drink,” she answered, and she drank.
“About last night—” he started.