The Inn at Lake Devine Part 8

He broke off a bite of bread and chewed it slowly. "I agree. It's most difficult in our work.... Did I ever tell you," he confided, lifting his gla.s.s to view me through it, "I find Jewish women very beautiful?"

I swallowed my mouthful of veal, then laughed.

He blinked like a stunned owl and asked what I had found so amusing.

I said, "All Jewish women? You find all Jewish women beautiful? Because there's a pretty wide range."

"Ahhphff," he said, lips vibrating, as if to say, "I couldn't agree more."

"In my family alone we have a redhead, a blonde-"

He shook his head, his eyes closed in profound contradiction. "Not blondes, not redheads ... I meant your kind of looks, exotic, sultry, brilliant dark hair."

I said, "Thank you," but tersely. I'd heard this before from boys at UMa.s.s, usually graduates of Catholic high schools, who believed that Jewish girls were easy once the flattery hit its mark.

He reached over and tugged at the upper sleeve of my jersey. "You dress like a trash collector, of course, which is a shame."

I pointed out that he and I dressed exactly alike at work. I was hardly going to wear a party dress- "But tonight a dress would have been nice. I've never seen you in a dress. I've never seen your legs."

I wondered: Normally flirtatious, or uncalled for? Time to decide.

The veal, he announced, was acceptable, sixty seconds too long on the fire, but tasty.

"Would you send it back?" I asked.

"If I thought it would bring the chef to my table," oozed Monsieur.

I stood and said, "Why don't I clear the plates for the salad."

He lit a cigarette and squinted through his own smoke, watching me sc.r.a.pe the dishes at the sink. After a long silence, he said, smiling, "Come here, cherie."

Ever the good employee, I walked back to the table.

"Here." He patted his lap.

I ignored the invitation and reached for the bread basket.

"Leave it." He drew me onto his lap. "I have some extraordinary Camembert."

I sat there silently, my back rigid. After a few playful bounces I said, "That's enough."

"Why? This isn't nice?" He gathered my hair into a high ponytail and let it fall. He smoothed it, divided it, used it as a paintbrush against my cheek. The next words, whispered moistly at close range, were, "I was hoping you might let Jacques make love to you this evening. An early Christmas present to one another."

I said, "We Jewesses don't celebrate Christmas."

"You would enjoy it very much," he murmured. "I am a very good teacher, you know."

I said, "I'm sure you are, but no thanks."

He rubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and took my face in both of his hands. I sat there while he administered little licks of kisses all over my face as if to say, "Here is the famous seduction technique that in my country subst.i.tutes for love."

When his tongue hit my teeth, I pulled away, thinking several distressing things at once: I don't want to hurt his feelings. I don't want to lose my job or move back home. I want to go to Lake Devine.

"Is it that you're afraid of getting pregnant?"

I said, "What?"

"Because there are ways to prevent that."

I stood, finally, and said, "You think I don't want to sleep with you because I might get pregnant?"

He smiled as if the seduction were progressing exactly as he had hoped. "Non?"

"You think it's fair to ask me to have s.e.x with you?"

He shrugged.

"Did you ever hear of the casting couch?"

He said eagerly, "I don't know about that."

"It's where a Hollywood director says to an actress, 'If you want a part in my film, you'll have to sleep with me.' "

No censure registered in the square Gallic face; in fact, it lit up with admiration.

"It's the same thing," I said.

"It's not the same thing. Those directors have no feelings for those girls. And if those girls do whatever the b.a.s.t.a.r.d is asking, they'd be wrong, wouldn't they? They'd be very stupid and naive."

It was undeniable, finally: Benign little porky Monsieur, who hugged and nuzzled every woman on his payroll, was not benign at all. I persevered, thinking the point would be won as soon as I framed it correctly. "I meant, would you want to have s.e.x with me if I didn't want to have s.e.x with you?"

"Cherie-it's the woman's job to say no, so how do I know what you want?"

I said, "I have to get home. My parents are expecting me."

"What about salad? And dessert?"

I said, "It's late. And I'm not feeling well."

"I thought you'd spend the night! I was so looking forward to your ... company."

I said again, "My parents are expecting me."

"You don't have to stay the night. You'll stay for another hour, and then I'll call a taxi."

I said-for the record; for anyone who might wonder if I had imagined the proposed horse trade-"It's my choice, then: no s.e.x, no days off?"

He thought I was asking if anything short of intercourse would do the trick. He smiled an oily smile and said, "It would be very nice, I a.s.sure you."

"Not for me," I said.

He looked perplexed. Could I stay thirty minutes? Fifteen? He'd made a tarte tatin.

I wondered if there was a place to go-an office at City Hall, a bureau in the State House-to report such an embarra.s.sing personal thing. I said, "I can't. I'd be crazy. And I can't work for someone who-"

"Natalie," he cried. "I need you at Ten Tables."

"You've got more hands than you need," I said, fastening the snaps of my parka.

"I won't mention this to anyone. You'll have a nice day off tomorrow and I'll see you Wednesday."

I said, "I'm afraid you won't."

"Natalie. Don't be childish. I always ask. If the girl says no, what's the harm?"

I raised my voice. "Do you think it's right to ask for s.e.x in exchange for two vacation days? Do you think it's ethical?"

His eyes narrowed. "Ah! Your ethics; your famous ethics." He harrumphed as if everything inexplicable I'd said now made perfect sense. "I forgot while you were sitting on my lap that you come from a race of social workers and agitators. All I was thinking was how much I'd like to f.u.c.k you."

The word seared my ears, his intention exactly. He poured an angry splash of wine into his gla.s.s and gulped it down.

He waved me out-out!-his hand thras.h.i.+ng the air.

Shocked by the hate in his voice, by the loss in one quick hour of a job, a reference, a champion, I said only from a great distance, "Well, good-bye then."

He heckled me in French, sputtering, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

I shrugged: No comprendo.

"You hurt my feelings very badly," wailed Monsieur.

TEN.

I traveled north by bus, holding a gift-wrapped wok and its companion Joyce Chen cookbook on my lap. It was Friday, the day before the wedding, and raining in Boston. The drizzle turned to light snow as we neared New Hamps.h.i.+re, to larger flakes as we crossed into White River Junction. I looked for Fife-Berry wedding guests among my fellow pa.s.sengers, but had no visual test. The only other person who disembarked in Gilbert, a young man in a pea coat carrying a laundry bag, hitched a ride so fast and so playfully that I knew the driver had to be a buddy. I called the Inn, and found the stranger at the other end helpful, even warm, in a way that made me think I had been right to come.

Kris Berry, the dark-eyed, dark-haired younger brother, who resembled his father, came to pick me up at the bus station. I had no summer recollection of this Berry; there hadn't been anyone tall and angular, and certainly no one wearing cross-country skiwear, right down to the knickers and square-toed shoes.

He had volunteered, he told me, to make the transportation runs while everyone else was decorating the dining room with-literally-boughs of holly. He preferred to be outdoors and active. Very nice to meet me, or meet me again. He knew I had been a guest of the Inn before.

I asked if everyone had arrived. He said not every guest was coming a day ahead; that was only for close friends and out-of-towners. Robin wouldn't be arriving until morning-hair or dress or nails or some such thing. I asked if I was too early, and he said, "h.e.l.l, no; rooms are ready. Vespers at four in Middlebury, then dinner back at the Inn. A special deal-roast beef and Yorks.h.i.+re pudding."

I said, "I understand Mrs. Knickerbocker left."

He grinned. "You remember the name of the cook from all those years ago?"

"I remember that curtain call she took every night."

"Every meal, is more like it," said Kris.

"And wasn't the dishwasher Roland?"

"I can't remember anything," he said, adding, "I'm not the natural-born innkeeper they had hoped for." He said Mrs. K. had quit about two years ago-lured to the Trapp Family Lodge, the last anyone heard.

"That seems right," I said.

"Standing O's for the Wiener schnitzel."

"Does she like it?" I asked.

"We don't talk about the big betrayal under our roof. High treason, according to my mother."

I thanked him for the warning. "I might have gone on and on, talking about my fond memories of Mrs. K.'s roast beef au jus," I said, immediately regretting my own last syllable. In the company of Ingrid Berry's son, I had to name the one entree in the world that sounded Semitic.

"Right, the roast beef and popovers," he said. "That was probably her best meal." He smiled a fond, distant smile. "And some desserts weren't bad, compared to everything else on the menu."

Good sign, I thought-derision toward Ingrid and family business.

The tires crunched on snow as the van turned onto the access road. I said, "You know, every time I drove this road with the Fifes, we had to count down from sixty to one."

"Why?"

"They liked to."

"How perfect," said Kris. "How exceedingly ... cheerful."

I wondered how he knew he could say this in front of me. I said, "It was awfully nice of them to invite me."

"Oh, they're the nicest," said Kris, and laughed. "n.o.body's nicer than our soon-to-be-related Donald and Sissy and Miss Robin."

A Yiddish word came to mind, the collective noun my mother applied ironically to the O'Connors. I had the urge to p.r.o.nounce it, to unfurl the banner that advertised my team. I wavered for a few seconds, then said, "The mekhutonim."

He repeated the strange syllables.

"It means 'in-laws, the extended family,' in Yiddish."

Kris asked me if I was Jewish.

I said I was: Natalie Marx. M-A-R-X.

"Cool," said Kris. "Any relation to Karl?"