Mrs. Richards’ smile was perfect.
Kidd went into the dining room.
The woman sitting next to Mr. Richards was doing something with her earring. “You write poems, Mary told us. Are you going to read us some?”
“Huh? Oh. No, I didn’t bring any.”
The man across from her took his leather-patched elbows from the tablecloth. “That’s a rather dangerous looking thing you did bring.”
“Oh.” Kidd looked at the orchid. “Well, it’s almost dark out.” He snapped the band open, shucked the finger harness, while the people up and down the table chuckled.
From where he stood, the flame at the white wax taper tip covered June’s left eye. She smiled.
“Here,” Mrs. Richards said behind him. “Here’s a chair. Move down a little bit, Sam. Pour him a cup of coffee, Arthur.”
“What do you think I’m doing, honey,” Mr. Richards said with total affability.
A large woman in blue corduroy began to talk again with the man on her left. The cup passed from hand to hand.
The woman in the green dress smiled, but couldn’t keep her eyes (pale grey) from flicking at the steel cage he had set on the corner of the tablecloth. She put the cup beside it. Mrs. Richards held the back of her chair, about to sit. “Really, just like I was telling you, Kidd absolutely saved our lives. He was such a help. We were beginning to think of him as part of the family.”
At the other end of the table, a large man rubbed one finger against his nose and said, “Mary, you’ve been about to bring in that dessert for fifteen minutes now, and I’m on my second cup of coffee.”
Mrs. Richards laughed. “I have been talking on. Here, I’ll bring it in right now.”
June, her small fists whispering in white taffeta, rounded the table for the kitchen.
The man beside the woman in green leaned around her and said, “Mary’s just been going on all about you and your poems. You just live downtown, near the park?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Where do you live?”
“Ah-ha.” Still leaning forward he fingered the collar of his sports shirt. “Now, that’s a very good question.” His nails were not clean and the side of the collar was frayed. “That’s a very good question indeed.” He sat back, still laughing.
Still plucking at her earring, the woman at Mr. Richards’ right said, “You don’t look like a poet. You look more like one of those people they’re always writing about in the Times.”
“Scorpions?” said the very blond man (tweed and leather elbow patches) over his clasped hands. “His hair isn’t long enough.”
“His hair is long,” insisted the earring plucker.
“Long enough,” explained the blond man and turned to look for a napkin fallen by June’s vacated chair.
Kidd grinned at the woman. “Where do you live?”
She stopped plucking, looked surprised. “Ralph and I used to be out on Temple. But now we’ve been staying—” and stopped because somebody said something on her other side, or may have even elbowed her.
“You like it better there?” Kidd asked, vaguely curious as to where Temple was.
“If you can like anything in Bellona, right now!”
Mrs. Richards entered with a large glass bowl.
“What is that?” the man on Mr. Richards’ left asked. “Jello?”
“No, it isn’t jello!” Mrs. Richards set the bowl before Mr. Richards. “It’s wine jelly.” She frowned at the purple sea. “Port. The recipe didn’t mention any sugar. But I think that was probably a mistake, so I put some in, anyway.”
Beside Mrs. Richards, June held a bowl heaped with whipped cream, glossy as the taffeta. Wrapped around one wrist, glittering in the candlelight…No, Kidd thought, she wouldn’t have taken them off the…But the idea made him grin.
“Do you want to serve that, Arthur?”
At his corner Kidd contemplated being belligerently nice to the woman with the earring. But she was too far away. He turned to the woman beside him in green. “You work with Mr. Richards?”
“My husband used to,” she said and passed him a white-capped dessert dish.
He ate a spoonfuclass="underline" maple.
“I,” he said and swallowed, “have to talk to Mr. Richards about some money. You like it here?”
“Oh, it’s a very nice apartment. You moved all the furniture for them, they told us.”
He smiled, nodded, and decided he just couldn’t take grape jello with maple flavored whipped cream.
The man beside the woman leaned around again: “I didn’t really work with Arthur. I used to work for Bill over there who used to do statting for MSE—where Arthur works. So Lynn and me, we just came along.”
“Oh,” Lynn said deprecatingly while Kidd drank coffee, “we just have to extend ourselves, you know, while all this is going on.”
“That’s what I’m doing; that’s what I’m doing. A bunch of us have gotten together, you see. We’re living together in…well, we’re living together. I mean we were just about to get chased out of our house. By some guys with those things, you know?” The man pointed to the orchid. “But today, I’d wear one if I had it.”
“No, you wouldn’t!” Lynn insisted. “You wouldn’t.”
“It’s pretty rough,” Kidd said.
“The way we got together,” Lynn went on to explain, “it’s much better for the children. You see?”
“Yeah, sure!” He’d heard her suddenly helpless tone and he responded to it.
“What’s there around here to write poems about?” That was her husband again. “I mean, nothing ever happens. You sit around, scared to go outside. Or when you do, it’s like walking into a damn swamp.”
“That’s the whole thing,” Lynn acknowledged. “Really. In Bellona, I mean, now. There’s nothing to do.”
From her father’s side, June said: “Kidd writes lovely poems.” Under the candles, shadows bobbled in the cream.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Richards affirmed, setting down dishes of jelly before the large woman in corduroy and the blond man in tweeds. “Kidd, you will read something to us, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Mr. Richards said. “I think Kidd should read a poem.”
Kidd sucked his teeth with annoyance. “I don’t have any. Not with me.”
Mrs. Richards beamed: “I have one. Just a moment.” She turned and hurried out.
Kidd’s annoyance grew. He took another spoonful of jello; which he hadn’t wanted. So drank the rest of his coffee. He hadn’t wanted that either.
“Here we are!” Mrs. Richards cried, returning; she slipped the blue-edged paper before him.
“Oh,” Kidd said. “I forgot you had this one.”
“Go on, read it.”
“Better be good,” said blond and tweedy, affably enough. “Otherwise Ronnie will run the other way every time she sees you on the street because she thinks you’re a—”
“I don’t go out on the streets,” Ronnie said. “I want to hear what kind of poems you write. Go on.”
A man who wasn’t Mr. Richards said, “I don’t know very much about poetry.”
“Stand up, Kidd,” Mr. Richards said, waving a creamy spoon. “So we can hear you.”
Kidd stood and said as levelly as possible, “Mr. Richards, I just came to see you about getting my money for the work I did,” and waited for reaction.
Mr. Richards moved his shoulders back and smiled.
Somewhere—outside in the hall?—a door closed.
Mrs. Richards, holding the edge of the table and smiling, nodded: “Go on, Kidd.”
Ronnie said to Mrs. Richards: “He wants his money: He’s a pretty practical poet.” Though she spoke softly, everyone laughed.
He looked down at Mrs. Richards’ copy of his poem, and drew his tongue back from his teeth for the first word.