“Uh-huh. How did I do with the lights, incidentally?”
“Hmmm. Let us say that you were not awful. You were a little unsteady in the first act, you were quite good in the second act, and you may have been thinking of something else toward the very end. I can understand that. I have the same problem myself. Arthur Miller has that effect on any sensitive intelligence. Oh, you weren’t bad. On a scale of one to ten I’d give you about a seven overall, and I don’t think Marc ever got much more than an eight-point-six on his best night, so I’d call it an impressive debut.”
“Thanks, incidentally.”
“For that back there or for what I just said?”
“Both. I don’t think it will work, though.”
“Let me guess. He was giving you the usual ostrich shit about how much you had to learn.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And how it was essentially a favor to train you, but he was hard up and didn’t want to go to the bother of getting somebody decent all the way from New York.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“It is like hell. I could write his dialogue for the rest of the season. It’s a case of contempt breeding familiarity. What did he offer you?”
“You came in before we got around to numbers.”
“Well, thank God for that. What was he about to offer you?”
“Probably fifty.”
“And what would you have said?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell him he can pay you eighty or he can fuck himself.”
“He won’t pay me eighty.”
“No, but he’ll pay you sixty-five.”
“Why don’t I ask for sixty-five?”
“You could. That’s what I would do in your position, but I’m not sure you have the balls for it. If you ask sixty-five, do you think you could stick to it? Suppose you shot it out as an ultimatum and he said it was out of the question and turned his back on you. What you would have to do is walk out of the room and keep on walking until he raised his price to sixty-five. And I’m not at all certain you could do it.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I would think so. It’s very important to know your capabilities. You can get sixty-five, which still amounts to gross exploitation, incidentally, but you’ll only get it if you ask for eighty. And if you make it damned evident that you want eighty, and think you’re entitled to it.”
“The thing is, the money doesn’t really matter.”
“It matters to Tony.”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Ah. Then give the extra fifteen a week to a charity of your choice. But Tony’s a bad charity. If you work for fifty, you’re personally donating fifteen dollars a week to Anton Bartholomew, and that cocksucker’s no hardship case. Truth?”
“Truth.”
“Piss it away on something. Put it toward a Ferrari. Buy Gretch some new pills and a monogrammed needle. I’m sorry, I hit a sore spot, didn’t I?”
“Kind of.”
“I’m sorry, Peterkin.”
“You couldn’t know.”
“She’s been bad lately, then.”
‘‘You could call it that.”
“Well, reverse the tape and wipe out that line. And profit by my example and avoid developing a reputation for cutting wit. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. Incidentally, we are not walking toward Sully’s.”
“I know.”
“Does your knowledge also include our destination?”
“I left the kid at the Raparound.”
“I see. Again, forgive me.”
“Let it go, Warren.”
“I think I’ll pass on this domestic scene. I’d like to talk with you about it sometime, or rap, as the kiddies say. But not now. Will you come over to Sully’s later and let me buy you that drink?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, come on. You already know whether you will or not. Clue me in and I’ll make plans accordingly.”
“Well, putting it that way, I had decided not to. But I’ll change my mind. I’ll be over in, I don’t know, half an hour?”
“I’ll keep a seat warm.”
Danny had closed the grill at the Raparound. A handful of theatergoers were sitting over coffee. Peter sat down at a table and Anne took a tray of dirty dishes back to the kitchen, then joined him.
She said, “I took her home. I had her all tucked in on the couch and she started saying she wanted her mommy, so I cut out and took her home.”
“How was everything?”
“Gretchen seemed all right. I mean she didn’t throw anything at me. She seemed, I don’t know, in control?”
“That’s good. What do I owe you?”
“Just a minute, I have the check here. Here it is. Oh, wow.”
“How much?”
“Well, it comes to $4.77.”
“Huh?”
“That’s including the tax.”
“Anne, find the right check.”
“Fifty cents for a large orange juice, a dollar and a half for a bacon burger, a dollar for french toast, and fifty cents each for three glasses of milk.”
“She drank three glasses of milk?”
“She was starving, Peter.”
“Yeah, I can dig it, but you’re charging a three-year-old kid a dollar and a half for less than a quart of milk? That’s beautiful.”
“Well, this is no place for a meal, Peter. What am I supposed to do?”
He nodded. “I know. It’s okay, it really is. It’s just that the numbers threw me for a minute.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Okay to give it to you tomorrow?”
“Well, you’ll have to give it to me. I mean personally, because I’ll cover the check out of my own pocket. You know Danny and credit.”
“Uh-huh. Same as I know Danny and fair prices.”
“It’s for the tourists. You know that. It’s to sit over a cup of coffee for three hours or it’s for the tourists.”
“Sure. New Hope’s a nice place to live but I’d hate to visit here.”
“Oh, it’s not even a nice place to live, Peter.”
“I’ll pay you tomorrow.”
“I kind of hope you do.”
“I will, Anne. And thanks.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“That’s the point.”
Three
Sully Jaeger leaned on the bar and looked over the house. The crowd was a little better than usual for a week-night in April. Sully’s restaurant business, like virtually every other retail business in New Hope, was very much a seasonal operation. The fat summer months yielded enough of a profit to cover the rest of the year. But Sully’s place, unlike some others, came out ahead twelve months of the year. While he sold little food off-season, he had a large enough regular trade of local drinkers to cover the nut even in the deadest months of January and February.
During the summer Sully moved a lot of steaks and chicken and shrimp. But his only food customers were tourists, and for most of them one meal at Sully’s was enough. The steaks at the Barge Inn cost seven dollars a copy and were on a par with those at the $1.49 steak joints on Times Square. His fried chicken cost five times as much as the foxy old franchising colonel’s and wasn’t a fifth as good. His shrimp were too long out of the ocean and a plate of four of them was priced at $4.50. His baked potatoes sat in the oven until they sold, however long that might take. Sully himself never ate at his own restaurant, taking most of his meals at a lunch counter on Main Street.
Complaints about the food generally brought a sorrowful expression to his face. He was a jowly, bearish man, a little puffy under the eyes, and he had as much trouble getting a clean shave as Richard Nixon. He had a barrel chest and an ample but firm gut. His whole body was thickly pelted with black hair. Each of his four wives had initially found his hairiness exciting, and each had gradually lost her enthusiasm for it.