Eve's Men (7 page)

Brian either ignored the girl’s questions or slipped past them through misdirection, such as, “Well, who knows what anybody’s really like, underneath it all?” The only question he answered honestly was about the star’s last hit song—now the movie title.

“No, she was never Miss Colorado herself, just a runner-up. And her life afterwards wasn’t all downhill, was it? The girl in the song is simply someone Kim made up, another country music loser. And that wasn’t Kim, no matter what Hollywood seems to think.”

At that point Chester managed to croak out a few words. “I liked that song. I like country music. It’s the only kind, I say.”

Eve imagined that Belinda knew full well why Brian had invited her and Chester to join them, simply because Brian was a man and therefore would want to get her into bed as fast as possible. Naturally the girl would want to cooperate, if for no other reason than the high she would get later on, telling her snow-bunny friends all about it, how it was, fucking the man who had fucked Kim Sanders. And, lucky girl, she of course would have no idea that Brian was merely using her to humiliate Eve and offend Charley and debase himself, all in one fell swoop.

It was an old habit of his when he had failed at something, when he was really down, when he truly loathed himself. Then nothing would do but to dive right into the nearest cesspool and revel there, give those who loved him irrefutable reason to stop loving him. So Eve wasn’t finding it easy, sitting across from the bounteous Belinda, trying not to be too unpleasant. After all, the girl was just doing what nature intended for her to do, doggedly persisting in her gaudy little mating dance until she eventually wound up many times a mother, fat and pregnant and plain. Eve could hardly wait.

Occasionally Eve would glance over at the front entrance to see if Charley had arrived. After dinner, he’d said he had to go back to his room to phone his wife and his son, who was an undergraduate at Northwestern University. Though Brian had given him directions to the Purple Sage, Charley intimated that he might not even show up.

“Remember, I’m old and stodgy,” he’d said. “And I don’t even own a pair of cowboy boots.”

Eve was of two minds about his coming. On the one hand, she figured the table could certainly use his cool, wry voice, the gentle humor of an actual grownup. Then too she couldn’t deny that later on it would be nice to have his shoulder to cry on. More than that, though, she simply did not want Charley to see her humiliation at his brother’s hands. And it surprised her a little, how strongly she felt about this, considering that she had known the man for only a day. But then he
was
Brian’s brother, and she imagined it was only natural not to want your quasi-in-laws to see you put down and humiliated.

So, later, when she finally saw him coming through the front door, she felt a pang of disappointment. At the same time, she found herself smiling at him, all the way across the room.

Instead of squeezing into the booth next to Brian, Charley scared up a chair and sat down between the two couples, figuring everyone would be more comfortable that way. He was not surprised to find Belinda Einhorn and her brother still looking like day and night. Though Chester appeared old enough to be the girl’s father, he deferred to her as if he were her shy little boy. And when she smiled or laughed, it seemed almost as if she got her energy from him, drawing down on his meager wattage so she could burn all the brighter. Yet Charley knew better than to dismiss the little man out of hand, having visited his mother’s Ozark relatives often enough to recognize Chester’s type, the kind of man who beat the wife and kids and cooed to his hounds, the kind of man who spoke softly and carried great big guns in his pickup.

At the same time, Charley could see that Eve was not in the least impressed with the Einhorns. Though she was probably doing her best to appear sociable, smiling politely when Belinda would cut loose with laughter or some wide-eyed comment meant to be funny, Charley could see the frost in her eyes.

She was wearing jeans, boots, and a black sleeveless jersey. Her hair, thick and dark, looked a lovely mess, hanging about her face. Listening to Belinda’s careless chatter, Charley wondered how the girl could be so oblivious of Eve, so unintimidated by her. And the obvious answer—that the girl was simply too thick to notice the other’s coolness or even her striking beauty—somehow it didn’t quite wash. Most of the time Belinda seemed content to play the sexy airhead, but every now and then a glimmer of keener intelligence would show through, like gold in a back molar.

Finally, trying to include her brother in the conversation, she said something about ranching, which resulted in Brian telling Chester about his own experiences as a greenhorn cowboy on a Texas ranch after his return from Vietnam.

“My boss was this big old Swede, probably the nicest guy I ever worked for. I remember one time he was patiently sitting on the corral rollin’ cigarettes while I kept tryin’ to rope this one maverick calf. Finally I got fed up and tackled the little beast. But even then I think it took me a good ten minutes to hog-tie it.”

Chester looked as if he really wanted to laugh at the story but couldn’t quite bring it off, the muscles in his hollowed face being too stiff for such a task. But Belinda more than made up for his failure, smiling along and laughing loudly at the end.

Charley broke in then, asking Chester about his own ranch. “Where’d you say it was—Missouri?”

“Yep, the southwest corner. Hell, if we’d a mind to, we could prackly spit on Arkansas and Oklahoma—if a body’d want to waste the spit, that is.”

Talking about his ranch seemed to relax the man and for a time he became almost garrulous. The family had two whole sections of “mighty fair grassland,” he said. And they were currently running almost two hundred “mama cows” on it, which meant that it had to carry almost five hundred head in the summer. His father and uncle used to run the spread, but they were both “purty crippled up” now, his daddy having been trampled by a bull while Uncle Harlan lost an arm in a hay baler.

“But the ranch, it’s jest business,” he said. “T’aint my real work.”

“Oh, what is, then?” Eve asked.

“Politics.”

Belinda looked up at the rafters. “Oh boy, here we go,” she said.

Chester scowled at her. “We ain’t goin’ nowheres, Miss Smart-mouth. I jest told ’em what my real work is, that’s all.”

“Politics as in Democrat and Republican?” Brian asked.

“Naa, jest the opposite. No party at all. It’s doin’ away with guvmint. All guvmint. That’s what I’m after.”

Eve was lighting a cigarette. “Like the Libertarians?”

“No, not like them at all. They’s just gabbers, that bunch. Anyways, if yer fer real agin guvmint, ya don’t organize. Ya do things fer yerself. Ya go yer own way.”

Belinda laughed. “Yeah, the Chester Einhorn party.”

“Politics is jest pertectin’ yer propity and freedom,” Chester said. “That’s all it is.”

“And you think one man can do all that, by himself?” Brian asked, innocence incarnate, as if he had not started out the day being charged with two felonies for doing just what Chester recommended: taking the law into his own hands.

Looking down at his tiny, gnarled hands clutching the beer mug, Chester grinned slightly, a secretive, gleeful grin. “Oh, they’s ways,” he allowed. “They’s always ways.”

“Like what?” Eve asked.

The little man paused like an actor before answering, obviously relishing these moments in the spotlight. “Like guns,” he said. “They’s always guns.”

During the silence that followed this pronouncement, Damian Jolly’s assistant, Rick Walters, stopped by the table, resplendent in a Russian peasant blouse and Indian jewelry. No one introduced him to the Einhorns and he in turn totally ignored them.

“I just wanted to tell you how terribly sorry I am about this afternoon,” he said. “When I invited you up to Damian’s place, I thought there was a good possibility of compromise. I’m sorry how it all worked out.”

Eve smiled at him. “So are we, Rick. But we appreciate your help. We really do.”

Rick shook his head. “Jolly and that Italian temper of his … things can get out of hand pretty fast.”

“Well, we don’t blame you, Rick. We know none of it was your fault.”

Brian looked at Eve. “Is that a fact? It sure is great to find out how
we
feel about everything.”

Like a silent movie queen, Rick pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. “Oh, the noise in here, it’s simply dreadful. It really is. Well, I must be off. I’ll see you another time. Bye-bye.”

With that, he turned and made his way through the tables and across the dance floor to the far side of the room, where he joined an elegant young couple at the bar. Leaning toward them, he said something that made them laugh out loud, though inaudibly, in the din of the Purple Sage.

Chester was looking as if he had tasted something sour. “Jest what in hell was that anyway?”

“One of the movie director’s fag assistants,” Brian told him.

“Ain’t none of that kind out our way,” the little cowboy said. “We jest don’t tolerate it.”

Belinda laughed. “The truth is they just don’t stick around. McDonald County ain’t exactly San Francisco, you know.”

“And thank the Lord for that.” Evidently satisfied with getting in the last word with his little sister, Chester decided to take his leave. Scooting out of the booth, he tipped his cowboy hat and shuffled backwards. “Well, it’s been a real pleasure meetin’ y’all,” he said. “But I ain’t one fer late hours. You jest git outa the habit on a ranch, ya know, gittin’ up at five ever’ mornin’. Anyways, I got me a real comfy room over to the Motel Six. So I’ll jest leave Belinda here with y’all, and I be seein’ ya, okay?”

Getting up himself, Brian shook the little man’s hand and clapped him on the back and joked that he himself was one “rancher” who had never quite made it out of bed at five in the morning. Nodding solemnly, Chester turned and walked off, hunching his narrow shoulders as though against a biting winter wind.

“Well, now it’s my turn,” Eve said, sliding out before Brian could sit back down. “I’ve got a very large headache, and I was thinking you might want to give me a lift home, Charley.” Smiling at Belinda, she explained why this was necessary. “Brian has to stay so he can talk business with some movie people. Isn’t that right, Brian?”

“That’s a fact.”

Eve gave Charley a commiserating smile. “So I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, Charley.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “It’s past my bedtime anyway.”

“Yes, we’re just going to have to leave these two in each other’s capable hands. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

Belinda joined in the raillery, smiling sweetly at Eve. “Well, we’ll sure miss you two. We surely will.”

“I know you will. But that’s life.”

Standing now, Charley reached down and shook Belinda’s hand. “I don’t care what everybody says,” he told her. “You’re not that bad looking.”

She laughed and bowed her head in gratitude. “Thank you, kind sir. I’ll try to remember that.”

Charley had to hurry to catch up with Eve, who was moving toward the front door like a cruiser through calm water. When they went on outside, the cold and the silence settled over them. Not until they reached Charley’s car did either speak.

“I don’t really have a headache,” Eve said.

Charley smiled. “Well, that’s convenient. It’s not really past my bedtime.”

As they drove away from the Purple Sage, Eve asked Charley about his phone calls, and he told her that he hadn’t been able to reach his son in Evanston, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Donna, however, had been at home.

“And did she wonder why you’re still here?”

“No, I told her that I had to stay one more day. I still think Brian needs a first-class lawyer, and that’s what I think we should do tomorrow—line one up and make him sit down and listen to the guy. If Brian’s not totally self-destructive, maybe he’ll hire him. Who knows?”

“Not me, certainly.”

Though Eve knew the town better than Charley did, she didn’t know it well enough to suggest a nice, quiet bar where they could have a few drinks before returning to the motel. So they tried to choose one by its appearance, twice parking and going inside only to discover that the places were, respectively, too loud and too gay. Returning to the car, they continued the search. And Charley finally decided that he would wait no longer for Eve to explain what was going on between her and Brian.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did you two have a fight?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, cutting out this way. Leaving him there.”

“With the sexy Miss Einhorn?”

“No, I didn’t mean that.”

“Sure, you did. But don’t worry about it, Charley. It’s just like I said. He wants to collar some of the movie people and find out what’s happening, which could take hours. And I hated it there. I hate cowboy bars.”

“So that bit of Ping-Pong between you and Belinda, that didn’t mean anything?”

“Nothing at all.”

They kept driving around until Eve spotted a place named Rivera’s, a handsome Spanish-style tavern with potted plants bracketing the entrance and only a few cars in the parking lot.