Early Autumn Part 7

I went to the kitchen and investigated. There were some pork chops. I looked into the cupboard. There was rice. I found some pignolia nuts and some canned pineapple, and some garlic and a can of mandarin oranges. I checked the refrigerator again. There was some all-purpose cream. Heavy would have been better, but one makes do. There were also twelve cans of Schlitz that Patty Giacomin had laid in before she left. She hadn't asked. If she'd asked, I'd have ordered Beck's. But one makes do. I opened a can. I drank some. Perky with a nice finish, no trace of tannin.

I cut the eyes out of the pork chops and trimmed them. I threw the rest away. Patty Giacomin appeared not to have a mallet, so I pounded the pork medallions with the back of a butcher knife. I put a little oil into the skillet and heated it and put the pork in to brown. I drank the rest of my Schlitz and opened another can. When the meat was browned, I added a garlic clove. When that had softened, I added some juice from the pineapple and covered the pan. I made rice with chicken broth and pignolia nuts, thyme, parsley, and a bay leaf and cooked it in the oven. After about five minutes I took the top off the frying pan, let the pineapple juice cook down, added some cream, and let that cook down a little. Then I put in some pineapple chunks and a few mandarin orange segments, shut off the heat, and covered the pan to keep it warm. Then I set the kitchen table for two. I was on my fourth Schlitz when the rice was finished. I made a salad out of half a head of Bibb lettuce I found in the refrigerator and a dressing of oil and vinegar with mustard added and two doves of garlic chopped up.

I put out two plates, served the pork and rice on each of them, poured a gla.s.s of milk for Paul, and carrying my beer can, went to the foot of the stairs.

I yelled, "Dinner," loud. Then I went back and sat down to eat.

I was halfway through dinner when Paul appeared. He didn't say anything. He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down at the place I'd set.

"What's this?" he said.

"Pork, sauce, rice, salad," I said. I took a bite of meat and washed it down with a sip of beer. "And milk."

Paul nudged at the pork medallion with his fork. I ate some rice. He picked up a lettuce leaf from the salad bowl with his fingers and ate it.

I said, "What were you watching?"

He said, "Television."

I nodded. He nudged at the pork medallion again. Then he took a small forkful of rice and ate it.

I said, "What were you watching on the television?"

"Movie." He cut a piece off the pork and ate it.

I said, "What movie?"

"Charlie Chan in Panama."

"Warner Oland or Sidney Toler?" I said.

"Sidney Toler." He reached into the salad bowl and took a forkful of salad and stuffed it into his mouth. I didn't say anything. He ate some pork and rice.

"You cook this?" he said.

"Yes."

"How'd you know how to do that?"

"I taught myself."

"Where'd you get the recipe?"

"I made it up."

He looked at me blankly.

"Well, I sort of made it up. I've eaten an awful lot of meals and some of them were in places where they serve food with sauces. I sort of figured out about sauces and things from that."

"You have this at a restaurant?"

"No. I made this up."

"I don't know how you can do that," he said.

"It's easy once you know that sauces are made in only a few different ways. One way is to reduce a liquid till it's syrupy and then add the cream. What you get is essentially pineapple-flavored cream, or wine-flavored cream, or beer-flavored cream, or whatever. h.e.l.l, you could do it with c.o.ke, but who'd want to."

"My father never cooked," Paul said.

"Mine did," I said.

"He said girls cook."

"He was half right," I said.

"Huh?"

"Girls cook, so do boys. So do women, so do men. You know. He was only half right."

"Oh, yeah."

"What did you do for supper when your mother wasn't home?"

"The lady who took care of me cooked it."

"Your father ever take care of you?"

"No."

We were through eating. I cleared the table and put the dishes into the dishwasher. I'd already cleaned up the preparation dishes.

"Any dessert?" Paul said.

"No. You want to go out and get ice cream or something?"

"Okay."

"Where should we go," I said.

"Baskin-Robbins," he said. "It's downtown. Near where we ate that time."

"Okay," I said. "Let's go."

Paul had a large cone of Pralines 'n Cream. I had nothing.

On the ride home Paul said, "How come you didn't have any ice cream?"

"It's a trade-off I make," I said. "If I drink beer I don't eat dessert."

"Don't you ever do both?"

"No."

"Never?"

I deepened my voice and swelled up my chest as I drove. I said, "Man's gotta do what he's gotta do, boy."

It was dark, and I couldn't see well. I thought he almost smiled.

CHAPTER 10.

It was almost the first day of May and I was still there. Every morning Patty Giacomin made me breakfast, every noon she made me lunch, every evening she made dinner. At first Paul ate dinner with us, but the last week he'd taken a tray to his room and Patty and I had been eating alone. Patty's idea of fancy was to put Cheez Whiz on the broccoli I didn't mind that I used to like the food in the army. What I minded was the growing sense of intimacy. Lately at dinner there was always wine. The wine was appropriate to the food: Blue Nun; Riunite, red, white, and rose; a bottle of cold duck. I'd eat the eye of the round roast and sip the Lambrusco, and she'd chatter at me about her day, and talk about television, and repeat a joke she'd heard. I had begun to envy Paul. Nothing wrong with a tray in your room.

It was warm enough for the top down when I dropped Paul off at school on a Thursday morning and headed back to Emerson Road. The sun was strong, the wind was soft, I had a Sarah Vaughan tape on at top volume. She was singing "Thanks for the Memories" and I should have been feeling like a bra.s.s band. I didn't, I felt like a nightingale without a song to sing. It wasn't spring fever. It was captivity.

While I could get in my miles every morning, I hadn't been to a gym in more than two weeks. I hadn't seen Susan in that time. I hadn't been thirty-five feet from a Giacomin since I'd come out to Lexington. I needed to punch a bag, I needed to bench press a barbell, I needed very much to see Susan. I felt cramped and irritable and scratchy with annoyance as I pulled into the driveway.

There were flowers on the kitchen table, and places set for two, with a gla.s.s of orange juice poured at each place. And the percolator working on the counter. But Patty Giacomin wasn't in the kitchen. No eggs were cooking. No bacon. Good. My cholesterol count was probably being measured in light-years by now. I picked up one of the gla.s.ses of orange juice and drank it. I put the empty gla.s.s into the dishwasher.

Patty Giacomin called from the living room, "Is that you?"

"Yes, it is," I said.

"Come in here," she said. "I want your opinion on something."

I went into the living room. She was standing at the far end, in front of the big picture window that opened out onto her backyard. The morning sun spilled through it and backlit her sort of dramatically.

"What do you think?" she said.

She was wearing a metallic blue peignoir and was standing in a model's pose, one foot turned out at right angles, her knees slightly forward, her shoulders back so her b.r.e.a.s.t.s stuck out The sunlight was bright enough and the robe was thin enough so that I was pretty sure she had nothing on under it.

I said, "Jesus Christ."

She said, "You like?"

I said, "You need a rose in your teeth."

She frowned. "Don't you like my robe," she said. Her lower lip pushed out slightly. She turned as she talked and faced me, her legs apart, her hands on her hips, the bright sun silhouetting her through the cloth.

"Yeah. The robe's nice," I said. I felt a little feverish. I cleared my throat.

"Why don't you come over and take a closer look?" she said.

"I can see an awful lot from here," I said.

"Wouldn't you like to see more," she said.

I shook my head.

She smiled carefully, and let the robe fall open. It hung straight and framed her naked body. The blue went nicely with her skin color.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like a closer look?" she said.

I said, "Jesus Christ, who writes your dialogue."

Her face flattened out.

"What?"

"This is how it would happen on The Dating Game, if they were allowed to film it."

She blushed. The robe hanging open made her seem less s.e.xy than vulnerable.

"You don't want me," she said in a loud whisper.

"Sure, I want you. I want every good-looking woman I ever see. And when they point their pubic bone at me I get positively turbulent. But this ain't the way, babe."

Her face stayed flushed. Her voice stayed in the whisper, though it sounded hoa.r.s.er and less stagey now.

"Why?" she said. "Why isn't it?"

"Well, for one thing, it's contrived."

"Contrived?"

"Yeah, like you read The Total Woman and took notes."

Her eyes had begun to fill. She had let her hands drop to her sides.

"And there's other things. There's Paul, for instance. And a woman I know."

"Paul? What the h.e.l.l has Paul got to do with it?" She wasn't whispering now. Her voice was harsh. "I have to get Paul's permission to f.u.c.k?"

"It's not a matter of permission. Paul wouldn't like it if he found out"

"What do you know about my son?" she said. "What do you think he cares? Do you think he'd think less of me than he does now?"

"No," I said. "He'd think less of me."

She stood without movement for maybe five seconds. Then she deliberately took hold of her robe and shrugged it back over her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. She was naked except for a pair of sling-back pumps made of, apparently, transparent plastic "You saw most of it already," she said. "Want to see it all?" She turned slowly around, 360 degrees, her arms out from her sides. "What do you like best?" she said. Her voice was very harsh now and there were tears on her cheeks. "You want to pay me?" She walked over to me. "You figure I'm a wh.o.r.e, maybe you'll pay me. Twenty bucks, mister? I'll give you a good time."

"Stop it," I said.