Mid-Air by Mid-Air (retail) (epub)

Author:Mid-Air (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

IV

MEANWHILE, NOW THAT Roy was divorced, he lived with them permanently. The house was big enough, and Mel’s wife Rhonda ran it nicely for them all. She hired one of the Black Mrs. White’s friends to live in and paid her the same thirty dollars a week that everyone else got in that neighborhood. At night, they’d generally sit around the card table, except when Mel had his gin club in. On gin club nights, the housekeeper, Willie Mae, would slice the salami and rye bread that was served, without variation, along with Eskimo pies for dessert. Black coffee. They didn’t have decaf in those days, and no one in that crowd would have asked for Sanka anyway. They weren’t old men.

As for Rhonda, those were the nights when B. took her out to dinner. Cicero’s had closed, but there was the Colonial House or the Mural Room, where they’d order their scotch and sodas and veal marsala, or occasionally, the Ding Ho across town, for chop suey. No drinks there, so they’d stop at a bar afterward. They liked each other, Mel’s wife and B. He was the kid brother she’d never had. She was the gal he could take out and not have to talk to. Neither of them was sorry that Roy hardly ever came along.

The few times he did, B. would clam up—a different kind of silence from the comfortable one that pertained between him and Rhonda. Not that it was ever remarked upon or even noticed—Roy was accustomed to doing all the talking. He would start by ordering a round of Tom Collinses, his latest drink, without it crossing his mind that anyone might want anything else. And in a way, he was right—who would turn down a good Tom Collins? Once it came and stood there right in front of you, with the little cherry on top.

Though the truth was that gin gave Rhonda a headache, and B. was never really one for sweet drinks. But neither of them said a word—not even a look, unless Roy was distracted, chatting up a waitress with his smile. Then Rhonda and B. would roll their eyes and shrug, while Roy would proceed to order shrimp cocktails—who doesn’t like shrimp cocktails? Except B., who was slightly allergic—and steaks, “Sure, fine”—and Thousand Island on the salad, before Rhonda could ask for vinaigrette.

Not that she couldn’t have had a side conversation with the waitress, just that she didn’t. Neither did B., they just went along and ate what they wouldn’t have ordered if Roy hadn’t been there.

And then came time for dessert—“What’ve you got?” Roy asked the waitress.

“Bread pudding,” she said.

“My favorite,” he’d lie, no matter what it was, and order it for all three.

There was a sign above his desk at the yard: EVERYTHING I LIKE IS EITHER ILLEGAL, IMMORAL, OR FATTENING. Rhonda took it as a joke at first, but had come to see it as narrative. Now, when the stingers came, “on the house”—the owner, sitting

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