Mildred Pierce (15 page)

He drove them home, and Mildred made drinks, and Bert came in, to sign papers. She was glad, somehow, that since the real estate deal started, Wally had been curiously silent about romance. It permitted her to sit beside Bert without any sense of deceit, and really feel friendly toward him. The first chance she got, she whispered in his ear: ‘I told them the property settlement had been reached out of court. The reporters, I mean. Was that all right?’

‘Perfectly.’

That this elegant announcement should come out in the papers, she knew, meant a great deal to him. She patted his hand, and he patted back. Wally left, and then Bert, after a wistful look at his glass, decided he had to go too. But something caught in Mildred’s throat as he went down the walk, his hat at what was intended to be a jaunty angle, his shoulders thrown bravely back. Mrs Gessler looked at her sharply. ‘Now what is it?’

‘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.’

I
t 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 instalments 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 round 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 dipped 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. ‘OK – 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 meant 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 goodbyes, 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 towards 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.’

‘Anyway, we’re both on time.’

‘Get in. Say, you look great.’

Going through Pasadena they decided it was time to tell names, and when he heard hers, he asked if she was related to Pierce Homes. When she said she was ‘married to them for a while’, he professed to be delighted, saying they were the worst homes ever built, as all the roofs leaked. She said that was nothing to how the treasury leaked, and they both laughed gaily. His name, Beragon, he had to spell for her before she got it straight, and as he put the accent on the last syllable she asked: ‘Is it French?’

‘Spanish, or supposed to be. My great-great-grandfather was one of the original settlers – you know, the gay caballeros that gypped the Indians out of their land, the king out of his taxes, and then sold out to the Americans when Polk started annexing. But if you ask me, the old coot was really a wop. I can’t prove it, but I think the name was originally Bergoni. However, if he Spanished it up, it’s all right with me. Wop or spig, I wouldn’t trust either one as far as a snail can hop, so it doesn’t make much difference, one way or the other.’

‘And what’s your first name?’

‘Montgomery, believe it or not. But Monty’s not so bad.’

‘Then, if I ever get to know you well enough to call you by your first name, I’ll call you that.’

‘Is that a promise, Mrs Pierce?’

‘It is, Mr Beragon.’

She was pleased at all these particulars about himself, for they told her he was giving her his real name, and not a phony invented for a somewhat irregular occasion. She settled back, lost a slightly uneasy feeling she had had, of being just a pick-up.

From Glendale to Lake Arrowhead, for any law-abiding citizen, is a trip of two hours and a half. But Mr Beragon didn’t pay much attention to the law. The blue car climbed into the seventies and stayed there, and when they pulled up at the gate of the settlement it was only a little after two. They didn’t enter it, however. They took the little road to the right, and in a moment were stealing through great mountain pines that ladened the air with their smell. Presently they nosed down a rough dirt track, twisted through bushes that whacked the windshield, and
pulled up with a jerk behind a little shingled shack. Mr Beragon set his brake, started to get out, and then said, as though he had just thought of it: ‘Or would you prefer a bathhouse, around on the other side? I keep this shack here, but—’

‘I think this is fine.’

He took her bag, and they went clumping around a boardwalk to the front. He unlocked the door, and they stepped into the hottest, stuffiest room that Mildred had ever been in.

‘Wooh!’

He strode around, throwing up windows, going out back and opening doors, letting air circulate in a place that evidently hadn’t been opened for a month. While he was doing this she looked around. It was the living-room of a rough mountain shack, with a rough board floor through whose chinks she could see the red earth beneath. Two or three Mexican rugs were scattered around, and the furniture was oak, with leather seats. However, there was a stone fireplace, and a horsy, masculine look to everything, so she half liked it. He reappeared presently, and said: ‘Well, are you hungry? We can get lunch at the tavern, or would you rather swim first.’

‘Hungry? You just
had
breakfast!’

‘Then we’ll swim.’

He picked up her bag and led the way to a small back room whose only furnishings were a cotton rug, a chair, and an iron bed, made up neatly with blankets. ‘If you can manage here, I’ll use the front room, and – see you in a few minutes.’

‘I won’t be long.’

Both of them spoke with elaborate casualness, but she was no sooner alone than she pitched the bag on the bed and zipped it open even more quickly than she had zipped it shut. She was terrified he would reappear before she had finished dressing. Yet the possible consequences, as such, weren’t what frightened her. The heat, and now the piny breeze that was blowing in, filled her with a heavy languorous, South Seas feeling that wanted to dawdle, to play, to get caught half dressed, without any shame whatever. But as he left her, she had caught a whiff of her hair, and it reeked of Archie’s bacon grease. It often did, she knew,
especially when she was a day or so late at the beauty shop, but as to whether Wally noticed this, or liked it, or didn’t like it, she cared no more than she cared whether he dropped by or didn’t drop by. But that this man should notice it was a possibility that made her squirm. She had an obsession to get overboard, to get washed, before he came near her.