After fifteen minutes that seemed like fifteen years, the shelling stopped as suddenly as it had started. He and Max both knew what that meant. “Come on!” they yelled in each other’s stunned ears. Untangling themselves, they hurried to the window.
Sure as the devil, men in khaki uniforms and Russian-style helmets not too different from their own were nosing forward. Gustav chopped down one of them with a short burst from his PPSh. Max wounded another. A moment later, the machine gun down the block spat death at the Red Army soldiers. The Russians-or were they satellite troops? — pulled back and hunkered down. They wanted the German soldiers served to them on a silver platter. If the first round of shelling hadn’t minced the Germans thoroughly enough, maybe a second would.
–
Aaron Finch nodded to his niece. “Give Leon dinner in half an hour or so. He’ll probably go to bed between eight and eight-thirty. Make sure he’s dry before he does. He shouldn’t kick up too big a fuss-isn’t that right, Leon?”
“No,” Leon said. He’d been doing that a lot lately. He was younger than the books claimed all the no-saying was supposed to start. That made him advanced for his age. This once, Aaron would have liked him better normal.
“I’ll handle him,” Olivia Finch declared. She was Aaron’s younger brother’s daughter, and had just turned thirteen. Marvin lived up in the hills, in a nicer part of town than Aaron did…and one farther from the downtown L.A. bomb. Olivia poked Leon in his belly button. “You’ll be a good boy for your Cousin Olivia, won’t you?”
“No.” Leon had strong opinions and a limited vocabulary.
“It’ll work out, Uncle Aaron,” Olivia said.
“Yup.” He nodded. If he hadn’t thought so, he wouldn’t have let her babysit. He was forking over half a buck an hour for dinner and a movie with Ruth and-more important-without Leon. He raised his voice: “You ready, dear?”
His wife came into the living room. “I sure am.” Aaron would have been amazed if she weren’t. She was one of those people for whom right on time counted as late. She smiled at Olivia. “You look nice.”
“Thanks, Aunt Ruth.” Olivia smiled back. To Aaron, Olivia looked like…his niece, wearing whatever silly clothes thirteen-year-old girls wore this year. If Olivia thought of herself as a budding femme fatale-or, if you wanted to get down to brass tacks, as thirteen going on twenty-eight-that was Marvin’s worry, not his.
Ruth, now, Ruth looked nice to him. She wore a sky-blue sweater over a white blouse, with houndstooth wool pants that did nice things to the shape of her waist and hips. Ruth was a woman; Olivia just wanted to be one.
“We’re going out, Leon,” Ruth said. “Wave bye-bye.”
“No,” Leon answered, but he did. His mouth said whatever it said. Sometimes it hardly seemed connected to the rest of him.
Out they went. Aaron held the Nash’s passenger door open so Ruth could get in. Then he went around and hopped in himself. As he started the car, he said, “One of these days, hon, I am gonna teach you to drive.”
“Okay,” Ruth replied. He’d been saying the same thing ever since they got to know each other. It hadn’t happened yet. As he backed out of the driveway, she added, “I feel funny going out and having a good time when there’s that horrible-hole-gouged out of the city just a few miles away.”
“I know what you mean.” Aaron had seen for himself what the bomb had done at much closer range than she had. “But the horrible hole will still be there if you stay home every day for the next two years and let Leon drive you meshiggeh. You’re entitled to a little fun.”
“Twist my arm.” She held it out so he could. He took his right hand off the wheel to give it a token yank. She let out a theatrical squeal for mercy. “Okay, Buster-you talked me into it.”
Aaron pulled into the parking lot at Bill’s Big Burgers. The BBB lot was crowded; quite a few people were out for a good time on a Saturday night. They didn’t let the war get them down, either, any more than they could help.
The Bill in question was a plump cartoon-y sculpture. He had amazing fiberglass hair, wore a shirt and shorts checked green and white, and clutched an enormous hamburger in his right fist and an equally enormous malt in his left. Aaron and Ruth rolled their windows all the way down and waited.
They didn’t wait long. A carhop also wearing a green-and-white-checked shirt and shorts came up with a large professional smile on her face. Her figure was much nicer than Bill’s. “Welcome to BBB,” she said, handing Aaron and Ruth menus. “I’ll be back in a minute to take your orders.”
“What are you gonna do?” Ruth asked.
“I was looking at the cheeseburger with onions-”
“Good thing we’re married.”
“Well, I think so, too. Like I said, a cheeseburger with onions, the fries, and a strawberry malt. How about you?”
“Strawberry malt and fries sound good. I think I’ll have the meat roosters to go with them.”
“Meat roosters!” Aaron snorted. Bill’s Big Burgers also peddled fried chicken. There was a picture of a strutting rooster in golf togs (why golf togs? God only knew) on the menu. Somehow or other, Leon had got that picture mixed up with fish sticks, which he loved. He’d started calling them meat roosters, he hadn’t stopped, and now his mother and father did it along with him.
When Aaron told the carhop what they wanted, he had to make himself not say meat roosters to her. She hustled back into the building to give the kitchen the order. He watched her hustle, not too obviously. She was young enough to be his daughter. And he was with his wife. So he watched without making any kind of fuss about watching.
She came back with a food-filled tray in each hand. She fixed one to Aaron’s door, the other to Ruth’s. “Enjoy your dinners,” she said, and hurried off to take care of another car.
BBB’s wasn’t fancy. When your mascot was a plump guy with silly hair, you weren’t likely to be. The place served plain chow cooked well. Aaron’s dinner was exactly that. After he’d reduced it to a few crumbs, he asked Ruth, “How’s yours?”
“Fine. If we weren’t going to the Deluxe from here, I’d save Leon the last meat rooster. Since we are-” She ate it.
The carhop came back to unhook the trays and settle the tab. Aaron tipped her a dime more than he would have if she weren’t cute. He’d heard somewhere that nice-looking people were more likely to be wealthy and happy than their plainer cousins. He was no beauty himself, but he was pretty damn happy with the gal he’d snagged. Wealthy? He shrugged, there in the old Nash. You couldn’t have everything.
Parking meters in downtown Glendale didn’t gobble coins from six at night to six in the morning. The City Council was talking about changing that, but hadn’t done it yet, no doubt fearing outraged-and cheap-citizens would throw the rascals out if they got greedy. Aaron figured he’d vote that way, but so far everything was just talk.
A whiskery panhandler stood in front of the Deluxe with an upside-down Hollywood Stars cap in his hand. Aaron gave him two bits and waved aside his whimpered thanks. Ruth rolled her eyes. She had to figure he’d spend it on bourbon. Maybe she was right, but Aaron had got a closer look at smashed Los Angeles than she had. The guy might be an ordinary Joe just down on his luck.
Not a first-run house, the theater was showing The African Queen. They’d already seen it once (Aaron had read it, too-he liked C. S. Forester), but it was worth watching again. He also wanted to see the newsreel. You got more concentrated pictures of what was going on in the world there than you did on TV.
What was going on in the world was the world going to hell in a handbasket-an atomic handbasket. A big crater in the middle of a tropical jungle was the wreckage of the Panama Canal. An equally big crater in the middle of a sandy desert was the wreckage of the Suez Canal. A smashed Russian tank in northern Italy said the Red Army still hadn’t muscled its way into Milan. A stream of refugees on a southbound road and the shot-up ruins of a train said the Italians still feared they might. A general pinned a medal on an Air Force pilot who’d downed his fifth MiG and become an ace.