“All righty.”
“Thank you, miss.”
“….”
“Who the hell is that?”
“I think her name is Jennifer. She’s the Stonecipheco stewardess.”
“Hang me upside down if that’s not the beautifulest goddamn stewardess I ever saw. Would I like anything, she says.”
“Ahem. Lenore has given me to understand that Jennifer is married to the Stonecipheco pilot, in whose hands our lives at the moment happen to rest.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Would you care for some gum?”
“Not if I got beer coming. You sure chew a lot of gum, R.V.”
“I have ear trouble on planes. Normally I loathe gum.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not to mention planes themselves.”
“Ho there, Lenore. You up?”
“Fnoof.”
“I so envy people who can sleep on planes, Andrew.”
“She sure is a nice sleeper. My wife, when she sleeps, sometimes her mouth hangs open. Sometimes a little bit of spit comes out of her mouth and gets on the pillow. I hate that.”
“Lenore is a lovely sleeper.”
“Look, R.V., does Lenore remember me or not? Like I said, I’m just positive it was her I met that night I met my wife. I was a little bit trashed, but still.”
“She hasn’t said anything to me. An appropriate context for discussing the issue didn’t arise, last night. She fell asleep almost immediately.”
“Those Howard Johnson’s beds are comfortable all right. Howard Johnson’s kicks ass. I appreciated the room, and the dinner, and the use of the razor. The Flange just about cleaned me out. I can’t believe I was too stupid to bring more money up with me.”
“Not a problem at all. Stonecipheco will absorb it. Consider it an advance.”
“Except the thing is, I’ve been thinkin’ about it… hey, thanks, looks great. The beer, too. Heh-heh.”
“….”
“Thank you, miss. I believe that will be all for now.”
“Just ring if you want anything.”
“Thank you.”
“Just ring, she says. She’s a tease, ain’t she? Lord, though, look at that. That’s a first-rate pooper, under that skirt.”
“Crusts, again. The girl seems incapable of removing crusts.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Please go on with what you were saying.”
“Well, I was thinkin’ about the night I think I met Lenore, the night I met Melinda-Sue, and what happened was me and this other guy, who turned out later on to be a real loser, we went over to Mount Holyoke, and kind of barged on into these girls’ rooms, for a kind of fraternity thing. I don’t quite remember what.”
“….”
“And I remember I think Lenore got pissed off. She was real young and I don’t think she knew the whole story. I remember she threw a shoe at the guy I was with.”
“A shoe?”
“Yup. And she told Melinda-Sue she had ugly feet.”
“Shoes and feet, again.”
“Yup. So I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to act, if I should just pretend like I don’t know her, either, or what. I can’t tell if she’s still pissed off after all these years or not.”
“Real, sustained anger in Lenore is quite rare, I’ve found. Embarrassment, though, is not. I would be willing to bet that Lenore is simply embarrassed. When she’s embarrassed about something, she tends to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“You think that’s why she sort of acts like she don’t remember me, from that night, or Melinda-Sue?”
“It’s very possible.”
“You say she works at Frequent and Vigorous too? So I’ll be workin’ with her?”
“Not directly. As of before we left, she answered telephones, at the Frequent and Vigorous switchboard, in the lobby, downstairs. But on this trip I’ve had a bit of an inspiration, I think.”
“An inspiration?”
“Yes. I think I’ve come to see that the switchboard is not a full-time place for a woman of Lenore’s capacities. She is chafing, I’m almost certain.”
“Chafing?”
“Yes. I’ve come to see that it all adds up. The context is right. Lenore is chafing. She likes stories. To the extent that she understands herself, it’s as having something like a literary sensibility. And you and I, here most significantly I, will at least for a while be occupied with the Stonecipheco project account. The crux is that I plan to put Lenore on my personal staff, part-time, as a reader.”
“A reader?”
“Yes, of pieces submitted to the high-quality literary review of which I am editor, the Frequent Review. She can weed out the more obviously pathetic or inappropriate submissions, and save me valuable weeding-time, which you and I can spend on the Corfu project.”
“Hell of an idea, R.V.”
“I rather think so myself.”
“Yes indeedy.”
“Of course I’ll have to make sure that her sensibilities are keened to precisely the right pitch for the Review…”
“So we’ll be workin’ with her, but not exactly with her.”
“As far as you go, that is right.”
“Which works out good, because I’m not supposed to say what it is I’m workin’ on, to her.”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“And if she asks, I have to say I’m… let me look at this… I’m supposed to say I’m translating this thing called ‘Norslan: The Third-World Herbicide That Likes People’ into idiomatic modern Greek.”
“Correct.”
“But except we still haven’t come to why exactly I have to say all this shit if she asks. If she’s just an employee, how come it matters? And what does she care if we’re tryin’ to sell nuclear baby food on Corfu?”
“This is unfortunately not entirely clear to me, Andrew, and just let me say I’m far from qualmless about the whole situation.”
“….”
“You are of course already aware that Stonecipheco is controlled by the Beadsman family, to a nearly exhaustive extent, and I’ll now inform you that Mr. Stonecipher Beadsman has stipulated in our contract that Lenore not know what is up in terms of Frequent and Vigorous involvement in the project until he wishes her to.”
“And you don’t find that just a tinch unusual?”
“Charitable speculation about Mr. Beadsman’s reasoning might suggest that he doesn’t want to involve Lenore in any more unpleasantness than is necessary. Suffice to say that the whole Corfu marketing venture is bound up with some family turbulence that’s worrying Lenore a lot, right now. Which turbulence is the main reason she and I came to Amherst, at all, so that Lenore might speak with her brother…”
“The kid we had dinner with at Aqua Vitae.”
“Yes. Stonecipher LaVache Beadsman.”
“He was pretty goddamn wild, I thought. ‘Course I have to admit I was kind of wasted. We drank all that in the Flange, and then you dragged me all over hell’s half acre through those crowds in the forest. Shit I drank went to my head and roosted. He was wild, though, I could tell.”
“He’s had rather a rough time of it.”
“Satanic little dung beetle, too.”
“Dung beetle?”
“Little dude looked like the devil. And what was all that about talkin’ about his leg like it was another person? He would like address comments to his fucking leg. What was all that about?”
“Lenore’s brother has only one leg. One of LaVache’s legs is artificial.”
“No shit.”
“None whatsoever. Couldn’t you tell?”
“He limped some, and he sat weird, but no.”
“He was wearing slacks at dinner. But he was wearing shorts when we first met him, on the hill. You didn’t see his leg then?”
“R.V., that hill got blacker than a panther’s ass when we got up top. The sun went right the hell down. It was darker than shit. I was wasted, too. I wouldn’t have been able to even see Lenore, if she hadn’t had that white dress on. And plus then I had to run right down to get my car over to Coach‘s, so I never really saw the sucker in shorts. I sure am sorry, though.”