Джеймс Кейн - Mildred Pierce

“I don’t know. I feel as though I’d picked his bones. First his kids, and then his car, and now the house, and — everything he’s got.”

“Will you kindly tell me what good the house would do him? On the first call for interest he’d lose it, wouldn’t he?”

“But he looked so pitiful.”

“Baby, they all do. That’s what gets us.”

It was a hot morning in October, her last at the restaurant. The previous two weeks had been a mad scramble in which it had seemed she would never find time for all she had to do. There had been visits to Los Angeles Street, to order the equipment her precious credit entitled her to; calls on restaurant proprietors, to get her pie orders to the point where they would really help on expenses; endless scurrying to the model home, where painters were transforming it; hard, secret figuring about money; work and worry that sent her to bed at night almost too exhausted to sleep. But now that was over. The equipment was in, particularly a gigantic range that made her heart thump when she looked at it; the painters were done, almost; three new pie contracts were safely past the sample stage. The load of debt she would have to carry, the interest, taxes, and installments involved, frightened her, and at the same time excited her. If she could ever struggle through the first year or two, she told herself, then she would “have something.” So she sat with the girls at breakfast, listening to Ida instruct Shirley, who was to take her place, with a queer, light feeling, as though she were made of gas, and would float away.

Ida talked with her customary earnestness. “Now when you got to make a customer wait, you can’t just leave him sit there, like you done with that old party yesterday. You got to take an interest in him, make him feel you’re watching out for him. Like you could ask him if he wouldn’t like a bowl of soup or something, while he’s waiting.”

“At leas’ ask him don’t he want to feel your leg.”

Ida took no notice of Anna’s interruption, but went grimly on. When a customer came in and sat down at Anna’s station, Mildred motioned Anna back to her coffee. “Sit down, I’ll take care of him.”

She paid little attention to the customer, except to wonder whether his bald spot was brown by nature, or from sunburn. It was a tiny bald spot, with black hair all around it, but it was a bald spot just the same. While he fingered the menu, she decided for sunburn. Then she noticed he was heavily sunburned all over, but even this didn’t account for a slightly Latin look about him. He was quite tall, and rather lanky, and a bit boyish looking in his battered flannels. But his eyes were brown, and the little clipped moustache was decidedly Continental. All these things, though, she noted without interest until he put down the menu and glanced at her. “What in the hell am I looking at that for? Why does anybody ever look at a menu for breakfast? You know exactly what you’re going to have, and yet you keep looking at it.”

“To find out the prices, of course.”

She had no intention of making a gag, but his eyes were friendly, and it slipped out on her. He snapped his fingers as though this were the answer to something that had worried him all his life, and said: “That’s it.” Then they both laughed, and he got down to business. “O.K. — you ready?”

“Shoot.”

“Orange juice, oatmeal, bacon and eggs, fried on one side and not too much, dry toast, and large coffee. You got it?”

She recited it back to him, with his own intonations, and they laughed again. “And if you could step on it slightly, show just a little speed — why, I might get to Arrowhead in time for a little swimming before the sun goes down.”

“Gee, I wish I could go to Arrowhead.”

“Come on.”

“You better look out, I might say yes.”

When she came back with his orange juice, he grinned and said: “Well? I mean it.”

“I told you to look out. Maybe I did too.”

“You know what would be a highly original thing for you to do?”

“What’s that?”

“Say yes, right away — like that.”

A wild, excited feeling swept over her. It suddenly occurred to her that for the moment she was free as a bird. Her pies were all made and delivered, the children were with the Pierces at the beach, the painters would be done by noon, there was nothing to detain her at all. It was as though for just a little while she was unlisted in God’s big index, and as she turned away from him she could feel the wind in her hair. She went to the kitchen, and beckoned to Ida. “Ida, I think the real trouble with that girl is me. I think I make her nervous. And she’s got to start some time. Why don’t I just quietly get out?”

Ida looked over toward Mr. Chris, who was doing his morning accounts. “Well he’d just love to save a buck.”

“Of course he would.”

“All right, Mildred, you run along, and I wish you all kinds of luck with your little restaurant, and I’ll be out the very first chance I get, and — oh, your check!”

“I’ll pick it up next week.”

“That’s right, when you come with the pies.”

Mildred got the bacon and eggs, went out with them. His eyes met hers before she was through the kitchen door, and she couldn’t repress a little smile as she approached. As she set down the plate she asked: “Well, what are you grinning about?”

“And what are you grinning about?”

“Oh — might as well be original once in a while.”

“Damn it, I like you.”

The rest of it was quick, breathless, and eager. He wanted to get started, she insisted she had to take her car home. He wanted to tail her there, she said she had an errand to do after she got there. The errand was to see that the model home was locked after the painters got out, but she didn’t go into that. They made the rendezvous at the Colorado Pharmacy, at twelve fifteen. Then Anna approached, to take over and collect her tip. Mildred hurried to her locker, changed, said her hasty good-byes, and scooted.

She didn’t, however, go home at once. She raced over to the Broadway Hollywood and bought swimming things, thanking her luck that she had money enough with her to pay for them. Then she raced to her car and started home. It was fourteen minutes to twelve, by the dash clock, when she whirled up the drive. She put the car away, closed the garage, and ran into the house with her bundles, glancing from habit toward the Gesslers’, but the shades were all down, they apparently having gone away for the weekend. Inside, she pulled her own shades down, locked all doors, checked icebox, range, water heater, and spigots. Then she whipped off her dress, changed into the little sports suit and floppy hat. She ripped open the new beach bag, stuffed her purchases into it. From her dressing table she took a comb, dropped that in. From the bathroom she got a clean towel and cake of soap, dropped them in. Then she closed the bag, got out a light coat, and dived out the door. Then, trying it to make sure it was locked, she started down the drive, but at a pace in comic contrast with the haste of a moment before. For the benefit of all who might be looking, she proceeded at demure leisure, merely a lady out for a Saturday swim, the beach bag dangling innocently from her hand, the coat thrown carelessly over one arm.

But when she got out of the block her pace quickened. She was almost running when she reached the model home. It was properly locked, and a glance through the windows told her the painters had gone. She tiptoed around it, her eyes shooting into every precious part. Then, satisfied that everything was in order, she started for the drugstore. She had gone only a block or two when she heard a horn, so close it made her jump. He was within a few feet of her, at the wheel of a big blue Cord. “I honked you before, but I couldn’t make you stop.”