Vital Parts (22 page)

Reinhart repeated now what he had said then: “What matters most to a man, you will find, is his profession. I say encourage Negroes to become doctors and lawyers and the race problem will vanish overnight.”

Blaine had replied with some standard abuse, but Eunice, who was after all somewhat older and, more importantly, worked at a job, pointed out that it might not be that easy. “I mean, the blacks have had it with the whole Western-civilization bag. I mean, I don't altogether grasp the concept with my honky hangup—it's completely phony to believe you can think black if you are white and evil to try—but that's as close as you can come in words because the English language is hopelessly corrupted.”

Reinhart thought about that, and also about the possibility that she might be hopelessly insane. “But isn't it the only one we have here?” he asked, and turned the other way and stared out the window.

A built-up area had begun to accumulate on either side of the road, country branches of urban department stores, the covered arenas of discount houses, dispensing stations of soft ice cream, actually made with milk and expanded with compressed air. Another favorite of Winona's. Reinhart missed his daughter, which for him meant a feeling of unbearable tenderness and not an actual craving to be in her presence.

“I used to make it with this spade,” Eunice said ruminatively, “and he dressed African.” Quite tendentiously she went on: “It is often forgotten or never known that Africa is an immense continent, and the people of one area may be separated from those of another by thousands of miles and be as different as Finns are from the Portuguese.”

“As it happens,” Reinhart noted, “I
was
aware of that. I probably saw the same TV special that you did.”

This pricked her. “I have never been uptight about the blacks,” she said reprovingly.

“Why?” he asked as a wiseguy. “Because they are really brown?”

Eunice ignored this. “I used to have to meet him secretly,” said she, “so as not to humiliate him. The whole situation is reversed from what I gather it used to be. Now it is we honkies who are considered inferior and must keep our place.”

“The whole question of color is hard to figure out,” Reinhart said without satirical intent. “I have never understood why Orientals are called yellow. I have never laid eyes on a Chinese or Japanese who came anywhere near that description. It doesn't make any sense at all.” He cleared his throat resentfully. “Like so many other things you have heard for years and for which you can never find the source. My parents were always terrified of drafts. My dad would invariably develop a cold if one blew on him for three minutes, if he were in some sort of enclosure. On the other hand, he could cut grass or rake leaves all day in a stiff wind, which he found invigorating. What did this mean?”

He glanced at Eunice and added: “You may think I'm a running dog of the Establishment, but I have always questioned things.” He had never seen such a dedicated driver as she, with fixed eyes and rigid limbs. When he drove with a passenger he was always flicking his head back and forth; he was even capable of swiveling his neck to converse with the back seat. Gen hated that practice, though Reinhart had a flawless insurance record. Also he was even more deft at manipulating a motor vehicle when half drunk, putting the lie to yet another cherished piece of general opinion.

“Now,” he said, “scientists have definitely proved that colds come only from association with other people, that is, from germs so contracted. In the absence of such germs—”

“Viruses,” said Eunice. The interruption astonished him. He had been certain she was not listening. Actually she was the normal sporadic auditor. Most people were incapable of listening to anything continuously, Reinhart had been made aware, even praise, hence the utility of filler, which perhaps was her misidentification of his current topic. Solid columns on race riots, mass murders, peace talks, then at the bottom of the page a dispatch from Nowheresville, Ark., to the effect that a gasoline tanker collided with a farmer's truckful of eggs; result: an omelette a hundred yards in diameter.

“Go on,” she said, “make your point.”

“Well,” Reinhart admitted, “it's hardly mine. Just let me say that volunteers have sat with their bare feet in ice water all day, others have been exposed, naked, to chilling temperatures and cold drafts. None of these people contracted colds. Whereas individuals maintained in complete comfort, but in close proximity to others with stuffed noses, etcetera, came down with it. Yet the remarkable thing is that my dad really would catch a cold from a draft. I have observed that personally many times. Why? Ideas are weapons, as they used to say during World War II. One of these ideas, for example, was that the Japanese were little yellow-skinned monkeyfaces.”

“My spade was a third-degree black belt in karate.”

“Bob Sweet does karate too. For all I know he studied it in Japan.”

“I never heard that about Bob,” Eunice said sullenly. “But it doesn't sound anything like him. He's not well at all.”

“You're kidding.”

“Streckfuss keeps him alive,” Eunice stated with stress. “But you can't turn back the clock, even with cellular therapy. Or at least
I
don't think so. Of course it's easy for me to say because I'm young, young, young!” She sang the last clause.

Then why don't you drive faster? Reinhart wanted to say. She was simply being spiteful, for the usual motives. Sweet was both her boss and her elder.

He said instead: “Bob is a remarkable guy.”

“Oh, I'm not putting him down really. But he's forty-
five
. Isn't it about time he grew up?”

“Look here, young lady,” Reinhart spoke in real indignation, which however he wanted her to assume was mock—even though he had no designs on her person—“I'll have you know I am almost that age myself.”

“But do you hang out in discothèques and do you half kill yourself at tennis and give demonstrations in water-skiing and otherwise compete with the kids?”

“I thought you said he wasn't well.”

“Because of stuff like that.”

“Eunice, has it ever been pointed out to you that you don't speak with logic? You just said that it did not sound like Bob to do karate, whereas it is all the more likely in view of what you tell me.”

Eunice speeded up slightly, reminding Reinhart that he was still in the car. “When it comes to Bob,” she said, “I am very sensitive. He has embarrassed me more than once. If he has taken up karate, I know why. It's because of that black I told you about. Oh, I could stand it if he merely wanted to ball me. That's a hangup of his generation.” Reinhart appreciated the nicety; she could have said “your.”

In return he said: “That should not offend you, true or not. You are an attractive girl.”

She shrugged with her head. “So. O.K. But I meant that old Freudian bag. Bob was in analysis for years, with various shrinks.”

“There is nothing abnormal or perverted about the desire of an older man,” Reinhart asserted firmly, “for a younger girl. It is recognized as quite commonplace in many cultures. There is a good practical reason for it. If the desire is for flesh, then it is reasonable to want the flesh to be as lively as possible. In compensation, older women have generally a more generous spirit and a greater breadth of understanding.” But he did not wish to be rude to present company. “I find it easy to talk to you, but that is not always the case.” And Genevieve, the “older” woman he knew best, was hardly generous but was in perfect physical shape.

“Don't get me wrong,” Eunice said. “I think you can swing all your life. I just don't dig this desperate scene.”

“I doubt whether we should go on talking like this,” Reinhart said. “Bob is my friend and our employer.” Nevertheless he was enjoying it to the hilt. Having firmly accepted Sweet as a hero, he was now in a position to hear some dirt about him. So far her implications had been merely frivolous. Sweet had described her as a nymphomaniac, Reinhart reminded himself. It was her turn. Reinhart kept the advantage of having only lately joined the organization and thus was being contested for by both sides. He could of course give no encouragement to the lower echelons. Yet a physically attractive girl, whatever her rank in the power structure, had a certain force, even if you did not literally care to enjoy her favors. That was a curious thing. Reinhart certainly wanted Eunice to think well of him.

No, to be honest, he wanted her to desire him sexually. In the old days Reinhart's wish had been that a girl understand that he wanted her. One might have been somewhat wary of the female as aggressor—though taking her, of course, if she appealed. But only in recent years had he known an inclination to be—well, baldly, raped was probably the word. With this recognition he also understood that for him one's forties were not a romantic but rather a surrealistic era. Hopeless enough for a man of his years to get any feasible piece without paying for it. There was a certain womanish element in a man's middle age.

“Oh,” said Eunice, “I've told him all this to his face. Hypocrisy has never been my thing. What I don't dig is this idea of his that he should want to make out with me, like it's some kind of law.”

“I don't understand that at all,” Reinhart confessed.

“Isn't that the Freudian cop-out? You are supposed to want to, so you can admit it and then free yourself from it and blow your mind?”

Trying to understand, Reinhart peered at her and saw a glossy longitudinal streak of what was evidently a tear which had lately passed that way, so diminishing itself as to be dropless when it reached the round, soft chin. At first he thought she must be allergic to some pollen currently on tour with the wind, but naturally the car was air-conditioned.

“Can you believe it?” he said. “Once, years ago, I thought of going into psychiatry as a career.” He saw she was now definitely weeping. “I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong? I'm sure Bob has not intended to be obnoxious to you. These big operators sometimes forget that those of us in more modest positions in life are often oversensitive. We have less to think about outside ourselves. Rushing to drive through another big deal, they don't always notice they have bowled someone over.”

She continued to sob and drive on. Since he had last noticed the terrain they had left the highway and were now on a city street, in fact amidst an instant slum. Even a slow car makes quick transitions.

“Hey,” he said, “we haven't eaten yet. God that was a long movie. You can call me a Philistine but frankly I think it could have used some editing.” Eunice had had some reason for wanting to see the film before dinner. What she had against Sweet might be merely that he had not made a pass at her. If she were nymphomaniacal that sort of neglect would hurt. But other than a few random gestures, the major one of which was her clutching his fly, obviously by accident and in oblivion, Reinhart had seen no evidence of the alleged disposition. Or had she heard, through the open intercom, Sweet apply the term to her? That was indeed cruel. Reinhart had sensed from the first that Sweet was a sadist, like many other powerful personages. By which he did not mean a figure in a pair of spurred boots and flicking a blacksnake whip, but rather a man who would use his inferiors by whim. The attractive thing about power was precisely that it tended to corrupt, else you had a thoroughly synthetic situation controlled by automata with their unsmirchable mechanical consciences.

At last Eunice shook her head and its twenty pounds of hair. Her large breasts nudged the steering wheel as she took the kind of breath that traditionally straightens one out.

“I guess you think I'm a drag too,” said she.

Reinhart groaned compassionately. “Aw, don't say things like that. I don't know when I've had such a thoroughly pleasant evening. You know, I felt quite proud to be seen at the theater in your company, a lovely girl like you. I'll bet I was envied by many.” It had just dawned on him that not only middle-aged flops like himself felt inadequate. A sense of losing was not exclusive to actual losers. One assumes the other guy is firmly in the saddle, but he may be a millionaire dying of cancer.

“What's that mean?” Eunice asked flatly. “Please don't put me on. If you don't want to fuck, just say so. I'll survive.”

“But will I?” Reinhart managed to say lightly though his ears were revolving. He wondered why he had misheard. But what else could it be? Words were everywhere devalued now. Blaine habitually referred to anyone who held public office in terms which until only recently were rather technical labels for particular perversions.

“I can't get turned on by subtlety,” she said. “You know, that creepy sort of stuff you see in old movies on TV, weird little looks, touches of the hand, candlelight and wine with some pimpy waiter grinning at the loving couple. Then a long, disgusting display of mouths pressed together. I actually think that is far more indecent than if they showed them going down on each other.”

“You do?” Reinhart said politely. He was the sort who felt an obligation to respond fairly frequently when being addressed, with affirmative murmurs and rhetorical questions, but admired the man who could listen in serene silence and yet convey the impression of sympathetic interest.

Had she really said
going down?
Perhaps it had a different meaning nowadays. No, the context had been appropriate. But it was hard to be startled for long by nonchalance. He was always nervous on the way to Gloria's, but settled down when she shucked her clothes in that routine style of a whore. Once when her air-conditioner was on the fritz she had met him at the door bare-breasted and it seemed the most natural thing in the world. He was not even impelled to stare at them.

“It'll have to be your place,” Eunice said. “I don't want to go home. He's the kind who likes to watch, in case you didn't know. Maybe that shouldn't bug me, but I am basically quite conservative.”