Max Collins - Quarry's deal

I said he wasn’t and sat down.

Ruthy raised a hand to boob level and milled her fingers in a sort of wave. “I’m Ruthy,” she said.

“I guessed,” I said.

She gave me a schoolgirl grin and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Jack.”

“If it isn’t bad, it isn’t true,” I said.

We were in the middle of the big table. I was across from Ruthy, who was wearing a yellow short-sleeve sweatshirt that had a dancing Snoopy on it. Her blond hair was pulled back from her face and she had little make-up on. She looked good, though. Nice tits. Lu looked good, too, in her pants suit with the halter top. Tree was wearing a sportcoat and open-collar shirt, and seemed to have sobered up considerably since this afternoon. The range of clothing at the table was in keeping with the rest of the patrons at DiPreta’s; there was everything from evening wear to sandals and sweatshirts and all the stops between. It was like being on Mars, or in Cleveland.

A middle-aged waitress in traditional black-and-white uniform with black hose came over to take our order, asking first if we wanted anything from the bar. Tree and I both declined, but Lu asked for a Bloody Mary and Ruthy a screw- driver. Then Tree recommended the rigatoni and Lu and I went along with him, but Ruthy wanted an anchovy pizza.

When the waitress had gone, I told Ruthy how much I enjoyed the play Sunday.

“Did you really?” It lit up her dark blue eyes, which darted around as she spoke, never looking at you, never landing. “It’s too bad you couldn’t see me in something heavy. I mean, Born Yesterday, after all. How shallow can you get? Anyway at least it was fun, and, well, you can’t go dropping Edward Albee in the laps of these little old ladies in tennis shoes at the matinees, can you?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said.

“Not that anybody in Des Moines is ready for something heavy.” She shook a Virginia Slims out of the pack in front of her; she’d already had several. Tree used a lighter to fire it for her. “The theater’s a once-or-twice-a-year thing for Des Moines-birthday, anniversary… Before curtain the manager comes out and has everybody in the house applaud for people celebrating ‘special days.’ But you know that. You were there. Bunch of smalltown bullshit, but what can you expect? Now this Fourposter play coming up isn’t so bad, but I’m not in it. A good woman’s role for a change, too. I guess I’ll be playing these lousy ingenues and sexpot roles till my teeth fall the fuck out. It’d be nice to play something sensitive for a change. Like when I was at Drake.”

“Drake?”

“The university here. I did a lot of good stuff there. I did Rhinoceros. ”

“I don’t think I know it.”

“It’s a wonderful play. It’s about everybody turning into rhinoceroses.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Oh, it is. It’s very symbolic.”

“What of?”

She gestured with her cigarette. “Uh, people getting insensitive, I think. People turning into monsters and nobody noticing or caring and pretty soon everybody’s a monster. Our director at the time said it was about Vietnam, even though it was written before Vietnam. I think it’s about conformity. It’s a comedy.”

“I like a good laugh.”

“I played an ingenue in that, too, but at least the play was heavy. There are so few good roles for women. That’s because most of the playwrights are men. If it wasn’t for the queer ones, we wouldn’t have any decent roles.”

I started to ask something and Lu, who knew I was leading Ruthy on, cut in.

“How’s your work coming?” she said. “Those sets struck yet, kiddo?”

“God, no, and we been working all day without a real break and am I famished. And here we sit in the slowest restaurant in town, and it’ll be years before the food comes. We really should’ve gone to Babe’s or Noah’s.”

“Then why’d we come here?” I asked.

“First, some friends of Frank’s own the place and even at the busy times we get a private place to eat, and second, they got the best anchovy pizza in town.”

Tree had been silent through all of this. He’d been watching Ruthy throughout, hanging on her every word, savoring everything about her with that special fatherly sort of lust that gives incest a bad name.

And she was a fine-looking girt. She had a lot going for her besides her chest, too. There was a fascinating mouth on the child, a fascination having nothing at all to do with the words that came out of said mouth. Puffy, pouty lips and little white teeth. It was easy to imagine that mouth doing things other than eating an anchovy pizza.

But watching her eat the pizza, once it came, wasn’t especially fascinating. She wolfed it down and kept up her chatter as she did, which was impressive in its way, but a sexy girl eating with her mouth open is just as obnoxious as if it were you or me.

Between bites of rigatoni I asked her how she and Lucille met.

“We got together down in Florida,” Ruthy said. “We lived in the same apartment building. I was working a dinner theater down there. I was there a year. You should’ve seen my tan. But I got a chance a couple years ago to move back to Des Moines and work the Candle Lite, and Des Moines is sort of home to me, since I went to college here, before I dropped out, so I was glad to come back… even if it meant kissing my year-round tan goodbye.”

Tree finally decided to join the conversation. “The nice thing about the Candle Lite, for Ruthy,” he said, “is she gets to work other places, too. The Candle Lite is linked with a number of other dinner theaters in the Midwest, and in many of them she gets to appear with name actors. Just last March she was in Milwaukee in The Seven Year Itch with one of the actors from Gilligan’s Island.”

“It usually keeps me out of the hard work,” Ruthy said, feigning sheepishness. “This is actually the first time I’ve had to help strike a set since I came to the Candle Lite… which is why I’m working so hard at it. The rest of the company thinks I’m going to loaf my way through it, and I’m going to show ’em.”

“Not to change the subject,” Lu said, apparently a bit bored with Ruthy’s show biz patter, “but Jack here’s been looking for work for the past week or so and hasn’t had much luck. Jack has better manners than to bring it up now, but I’m not a shy type. Think you might have something for him at the Barn?”

“What line are you in, Jack?” Tree said. Nothing in his voice, but a little something in his eyes.

“I’m a salesman. I used to sell ladies underwear, but you can see how much the girls here care about that.”

The air was chill in there and four nice nipples were standing out and we all laughed a little.

“Well, I know what kind of poker player you are. And I’m thinking of replacing one of my dealers. Interested?”

“Very.’’

“Come around and play some cards tomorrow night… and try not to win too much more of my money… and stay and talk to me after closing.”

“Fine.”

Just as we’d prearranged.

Then I asked Ruthy how exactly “striking a set” was accomplished, and she told us. Tree and I listened intently. Lu had a couple of Bloody Marys and stared off someplace.

On the stage was an antique oak bed, a post rising from each corner to support a lace-trimmed, blue satin canopy. There were several other pieces of antique-looking furniture, a chair, table, trunk; another chair, and all of them, including the bed, were pushed forward, almost to the edge of the stage, as Ruthy and another member of the repertory company, a lumpish female in curlers and workshirt and rolled-up jeans, painted the light blue “walls” of the set, which had a doorway off to the left and a window to the right.