Reinhart in Love (27 page)

Now Reinhart suddenly passed into a state of calm. “Why?” he asked simply, the comers of his mouth dropping like an old hound's.

“Just a minute, fella,” warned the kid, a type even more scurvy than Gen's brother, his neck the diameter of Reinhart's wrist, his murky eyes ringed black from onanism. “One minute, Mac, don't get wise with me.”

Genevieve was poking Reinhart's arm. “Be tolerant, Carl. They belong to the wartime generation who have lost their roots. Kenny!” she shouted. “You go on home!”

“Up yours,” someone cried back.

“Look,” said Reinhart, “you still haven't answered my question. Why do you want to bother us?”

The boy imitated Frankenstein's synthetic head.
“Because … you … are … a … jerk.”

“He's got you there,” Gen whispered giggling.

Reinhart wondered how Claude Humbold would have replied to such provocation: probably
a priori
, like all men of force; he would never have got into the situation. Meanwhile, such traffic as there was had to go into the left-hand lane to pass them; this included an occasional interstate truck, manned by a brawny driver. No sooner had Reinhart become twenty than everybody started to fear teen-agers. Somehow
he
always managed to miss the power as it was transferred from hand to hand; he might as well have been a rickety runt weighing one-twenty, for his only weapon was guile.

They lay off the bow of a roadside hamburger joint, which was built in simulation of a battleship, with porthole windows and dummy cannon. Foul weather flags hung like drying underwear across its superstructure: each sent a riotous message about another type of sandwich, with two left oyer for french fries and cole slaw.

“Let's pull in here,” said Reinhart to his second-closest adversary (counting Gen as the first). He pointed to the asphalt ocean surrounding the ship, managed to start his own motor, and led the way before anybody could say Frig you.

“Listen,” he said to Genevieve as the boys pulled in. “I want you to do something for me. Get your brother out of that car for a few minutes, using any pretext. Either that, or you get in with them. And I'm not kidding.”

When her little nose began to twitch, he held up a fist, a symbol of some menace that he had not yet worked out, but she fell for it and called to her brother across him: “You come here and get your allowance, Kenny. It slipped Daddy's mind.”

Kenworthy emerged from the other car like an unreeling hose. In a slow wink Reinhart was also out of his. They passed each other with sneers. The punks showed their weapons as Reinhart reached the driver: Stillsons, tire irons, etc.; with comparable armament we might have retained Corregidor.

“I ain't gonna hoit youse,” said Reinhart, approximately; he also lowered his voice to a hooligan growl; this was the kind of delivery that impressed young people, who are ever seeking models. It would, however, take a while with these; meanwhile, they were derisive with their front teeth. The driver, who at least had a short haircut and a thick neck, seemed the best bet.

Reinhart went to the far side and, leaning in the window, appealed to him cheek-by-jowl: “I'm surprised at you guys running with Raven. You don't know about him?”

“Clobber the slob, Bob,” urged the skinny kid in rear right, with the venom of the undersized.

But as Reinhart had anticipated, the whisper of doubt had already damaged Kenworthy's reputation with the stocky driver, who thereby proved he was normal as he looked.

“Whadduh mean, whadduh yuh mean?” he howled at Reinhart and ordered his friends to pipe down.

“Frankly,” said Reinhart, “I thought you were a bunch of fruits—”

“Listen, man—”

“—until I saw how manly you all look, smoking cigarettes.” He glanced at his own car and saw Gen doing a good job of retaining Kenworthy. “Then I figured you just didn't know.”

“Aw, we know he got clapped up,” said one of them.

Reinhart concentrated on the driver. “Well, to make a long story short, Raven is what you call a transvestite.”

“What's that?” asked one ferret face.

“Morphadike,” explained the driver with a self-satisfied grimace. “You're shit, too, man. I happen to know he likes his ass. Morphadike, huh? Got both kinds of plumbing, huh? You're crap, Mac.”

“There ain't no such thing,” said the smallest punk.

“Naw,” Reinhart said. “What I mean is a guy who puts on girl's clothes whenever he gets a chance.”

“Aw,” sickly laughed the driver, “that was just in the junior play.”

Wonderful the way nature anticipated art. Reinhart had chosen this perversion at random.

“Exactly! And after rehearsals he didn't take them off but wore them around the house, so that it became a scandal in the neighborhood. His sister just told me they might have to put him away: all her underwear is missing.”

The smallest boy held out longest, saying: “You just want to get into her pants, Fatso!”

“No,” said Reinhart with a hollow laugh, “Kenworthy does, if you get what I mean.”

“What do you know,” the driver muttered, cocking his head. “Much obliged, fellow. We'll get him. We always guard the honor of the gang.”

“Yes,” Reinhart agreed. “That kind of member lowers the tone. People are pointing your way already.”

The driver stared with blank eyes. “I told you we'd get him, fellow.”

“O.K.,” said Reinhart, “no offense, Chief.” Once again he passed Kenworthy, this time with the springy step of a man who has done the worst he could do to another. On the other hand, Kenworthy already seemed to feel better about him, giving Reinhart the shoulder-twitch and slack tongue that signified tolerance in his jargon.

“You owe me five dollars,” said Genevieve as he got in beside her. “But I must say that you apparently handled it well, for there they go.” The teen-ager's vehicle roared off the asphalt onto the open highway, with neither backfire nor blue exhaust (they are always ace mechanics).

“Yes, if I do say so myself.” Reinhart was careful to turn his smirk after the vanishing car.

“My brother, poor boy, has many pressures on him. Daddy, so markedly preferring me, is sometimes unfair to Kenny.”

“He seems to give a fair allowance. For God's sake, five bucks,” said Reinhart, getting back to normal. He started the engine, praying that its wheeze owed to the common cold rather than a lethal malady.

“Oh, that.” She giggled conspiratorially, her true allegiance not clear to Reinhart.
“I
usually give him that, and
say
it comes from Daddy. But what I mean is Daddy kids him awfully about playing a girl in the school play, and then in addition he has those pimples.”

“Haven't we all, metaphorically speaking?” Reinhart answered, in an effort to ignore his growing feelings of sonbitchery. He pulled out of range of the mock cannon and on the highway turned back in the direction whence they had come. “No night club tonight, Genevieve. I haven't got but four dollars to my name. I'm sorry if you didn't have a good time.”

She clutched at his wrist, causing the car to swerve across a stretch of gravel shoulder and a motorist behind to make his horn go
Waa-waa
. Reinhart missed the other driver's dirty look, though, for he was watching Genevieve cry into a balled Kleenex: She wiped her eyes and added: “Don't you think?”

Reinhart stopped his vehicle, for they had been running along the shoulder, scattering gravel. His lust had turned to melancholia. “Here's all I want to say, Gen: did you ever think about time? Isn't it fascinating? Look at the second hand on your watch, the way it races around the dial ticking off one precious moment after the next.”

“I should have been home hours ago,” she murmured, and smiled hurtfully at the corners of her nose.

“Ah, and then what? Lie in bed and look at the stars so many light years away from us, and think what a small thing is human life and what fools we are to make so much of it. I mean the kind of person who saves something for decades and decades expecting to use it to the best advantage at some future time, but one day dies missing the point.”

“Not me,” she said, cheering up. “I can never keep a cent.”

“Are you religious?” asked Reinhart, being careful not to touch her, and she had let his arm go when he stopped the automobile.

Genevieve gasped, and said: “You're not a Catholic?”

“Not me,” Reinhart rejoined.

“Well because I was going to say—”

“I read a quotation by George Bernard Shaw that went like this: Use yourself up, so that when you die there's nothing left but an empty husk to bury.”

She leaned against her door and said: “My, aren't we being ghoulish? You know what I thought? That you stopped here to try and kiss me. That would surely be rather bold, with the traffic going by. Most boys would drive up to Cherry Wood and park on that road going to the abandoned quarry, where the cops never come.”

Reinhart supposed it was no use; nobody ever listened to him. He returned the car to the highway and tried again, keeping his eyes on the centerline: “Many of the things we attach an enormous importance to really amount to nothing in the long run. The regret in later years is not that you gave yourself, but that you didn't give enough.”

“Better slow down if you want to make that right turn,” said Genevieve, who had tucked her legs under her bottom on the seat and sat facing him by three-quarters.

Hard after the turn he had to shift into second, to meet a considerable upgrade. He was appalled by the whining of the gears, and tried in his argument to sound another note: “There's no reason in our day and age for a young, intelligent, vigorous person to protect …” (he was hindered here by a deficiency of the language, and not wanting unobjectively to tip his hand, was forced to choose a collective)
“themself
against experience. Isn't it silly to fear what is natural and as old as life itself?” The last was of course rhetorical and he did not look for her reaction, having anyway to watch where they were materially going: up a forested slope void of houses and streetlamps, and his headlights were guttering.

He began to doubt that Genevieve could cope with any degree of subtlety. From the corner of his eye he saw her peering through the windshield at the profound night twelve feet beyond the radiator ornament.

“Could you put on the brights?” she asked.

Silently he tripped the floor switch, and the lights went out absolutely. In a similar movement he brought back what they had, whether brights or dims, and gained the crest. Most of the town, many little glows, was now contained by the rear-vision mirror, and fixed Reinhart's position in space, the sky being starless.

“Guinevere,” said Reinhart, and caught himself; whenever he tried to make himself understood, he thought irrelevantly of King Arthur. “Genevieve—”

“I guess it's left here.” Her finger pointed at his nose.

He bumped along a homemade lane of mud wallows, a kind of buffalo trail, saying absently: “Your house is certainly remote.” Creeping through the black forest, again in second gear, he became desperate.

“Gen, I don't want you to think I'm just coarse. I know every guy gives a pretty girl a line, and I don't blame you for being careful. But when two people are attracted to each other and do nothing about it, I believe the situation becomes psychopathic.” He and a rabbit in the road ahead saw each other and were mutually startled, though the animal leaped higher. “Huh, you live in a real wilderness.”

“You better not go much farther,” said Genevieve, whispering though he saw no house from which she could be overheard by her old man. “Or you'll run into the quarry.”

“The quarry?” He stopped the engine and was buffeted weak by the stillness. “This is Cherry Wood! While I've been talking, you led me right here.” He reached enthusiastically towards her and missed contact, for she was half out the door.

“How dare you suggest such a thing!” she cried. “And how dare you bring me up here for your foul schemes. I may be ripped by briars and brambles and turn my ankle and freeze, but I'm walking home. If you try to follow, I'll go in the nearest house and call the law.”

Reinhart left the wheel and dashed after her in some terror; he always felt exactly like what he was accused of being: in this case, a rapist. In addition, he couldn't see his hand before his face.

“Now you've done it,” Genevieve said from the darkness on his left. “I've broken my leg.”

“Keep calm,” Reinhart screamed. “Show a light, if you've got one.”

But by the time she said “I don't smoke,” he had found her in some hairy bush. “You want to hang on my arm?” he asked. “I won't get fresh.”

“I think the most you would do is carry me,” by which she apparently meant the least; whichever it was, he contained her in his arms, the little goof all soft and perfumed and light and solid at the same time, and was her only connection with the earth for twenty-five yards back to the automobile.

“Stay calm,” he nervously entreated. “I served in the medics. I'll get some sticks and rip up my shirt and make a splint.” He wrenched open the right-hand door.

“Well,” said Gen, “I may not have actually broken it. You know how one thinks the worst in the dark. What I probably need is to stretch out.”

“That's it!” Reinhart answered in an enthusiasm of relief. “With the affected member elevated higher than the head, so that the blood will recede.” He pulled his nose from her hair, where it had been tickled, and suppressed a sneeze. “The back seat will do, with your foot out the window.” There was insufficient space for him to get both Gen and his shoulders into the rear, Dad's auto being a far cry from a London taxicab; but while he sought to engineer the problem, she left his support and hopped nimbly in.