The Trouble With Ava by Stuart Friedman

Author:Stuart Friedman [Friedman, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4328-9
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 1961-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

Grebb was eating from a platter, dunking bread into a soft egg. He glanced at the opening door as he might have at anything moving, and not expecting to see anything concerning him, he didn’t see her and returned to his food. An eyewink later he looked up and gave her and Cliff a prolonged, impersonal stare.

He knew her, of course, but there was no flicker of recognition. Ava managed to match his composure though her heart was hammering.

“Let’s sit in a booth,” she said casually to Cliff.

“Well, there’s no booth service. But, I’ll ask the counterman.”

She walked over and sat down in one of the empty booths and lit a cigarette and stared into the shadowy emptiness of the horse parlor, aware only, like some stunned, will-less creature, that she was within view of Grebb, who might be watching her.

She heard the counterman tell Cliff in a not-quite-rude, matter-of-fact way that he wouldn’t service the booth, and moments later Cliff came over with a basket of rye bread and several pats of butter.

“They’re calling the soup minestrone tonight. You want some, don’t you?”

She nodded and smiled, appreciating the amiable way he accepted the role of waiter. He returned to the counter and she concentrated on buttering a piece of bread.

Cliff revealed two pronounced elements of the executive and would-be executive personality as she’d observed it—he tried to avoid not only giving offense but taking offense. Grebb, for instance, would have taken instant and furious offense at the counterman’s tone of voice. He might have bellowed, threatened, stomped out—at the very least he would have bristled and muttered and glared. Cliff smiled. Cliff was civilized. Not a savage, not a criminal. He moved safely and securely with decent people, not against them.

Grebb looked at her now and then and she could feel, like a spot of rouge on her right cheek, the point where his glances touched, and she wanted to look at him and his girl friend and defy him with her eyes. He had lied to her about leaving for San Francisco. He was not to be trusted in any way. Her whole entanglement with him had been a desperate reaction against despair, an effort to destroy her unbearable identity.

Now that she was free of the fantasy about Dave’s continuing love, now that she need not destroy Dave—her thoughts fumbled, backtracked, revised—now that she need not destroy her own suicidal fantasies about a reunion and future with Dave …well, now she didn’t need Grebb. That is, she didn’t need to be hardened to the point where she could do something criminal, something horrible like …like the killing, the big killing, in the casino at her wheel.

She was holding her breath and eased it out. Turning, she looked directly and scathingly at Tom Grebb, conveying her scorn and loathing and disdain and total rejection of him and everything he represented. He grinned slightly and said something to the sultry girl in the fur coat, who looked over at Ava for just a moment with a hateful pussycat smile.

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