6
His invitation to go out to dinner with him followed so quickly on her realization that he wasn’t Norman that she was surprised into accepting. She supposed simple relief played a part, too. It wasn’t until she was in the passenger seat of his car that Practical-Sensible, who had been pretty much left in the dust, caught up and asked her what she was doing, going out with a man (a much younger man) she didn’t know, was she insane? There was real terror in these questions, but Rosie recognized the questions themselves for what they were — mere camouflage. The important question was so horrifying Practical-Sensible didn’t dare ask it, even from her place inside Rosie’s head.
What if Norman catches you? That was the important question. What if Norman caught her eating dinner with another man? A younger, good-looking man? The fact that Norman was eight hundred miles east of here didn’t matter to Practical-Sensible, who really wasn’t Practical and Sensible at all, but only Frightened and Confused.
Norman wasn’t the only issue, however. She hadn’t been alone with any man but her
husband in her entire life as a woman, and right now her emotions were a gorgeous stew. Eat dinner with him? Oh, sure. Right. Her throat had narrowed down to a pinhole and her stomach was sudsing like a washing machine.
If he had been wearing anything dressier than clean, faded jeans and an Oxford shirt, or if he’d given the faintest look of doubt to her own unpretentious skirt-and-sweater combination, she would have said no, and if the place he took her to had looked too difficult (it was the only word she could think of), she didn’t believe she would have been able even to get out of his Buick. But the restaurant looked welcoming rather than threatening, a brightly lighted storefront called Pop’s Kitchen, with paddle-fans overhead and red-and-white-checked tablecloths spread across butcherblock tables. According to the neon sign in the window, Pop’s Kitchen served Strictly Kansas City Beef. The waiters were all older gentlemen who wore black shoes and long aprons tied up under their armpits. To Rosie they looked like white dresses with Empire waists. The people eating at the tables looked like her and Bill —
well, like Bill, anyway: middle-class, middle-income folks wearing informal clothes. To Rosie the restaurant felt cheerful and open, the kind of place where you could breathe.
Maybe, but they don’t look like you, her mind whispered, and don’t you go thinking that they do, Rosie. They look confident, they look happy, and most of all they look like they belong here. You don’t and you never will. There were too many years with Norman, too many times when you sat in the corner vomiting into your apron. You’ve forgotten how people are, and what they talk about . . . if you ever knew to begin with. If you try to be like these people, if you even dream you can be like these people, you are going to earn yourself a broken heart.
Was that true? It was terrifying to think it might be, because part of her was happy —
happy that Bill Steiner had come to see her, happy that he had brought flowers, happy that he had asked her to dinner. She didn’t have the slightest idea how she felt about him, but that she had been asked out on a date . . . that made her feel young and full of magic. She couldn’t help it.
Go on, feel happy, Norman said. He whispered the words into her ear as she and Bill stepped through the door of Pop’s Kitchen, words so close and so real that it was almost as if he were passing by. Enjoy it while you can, because later on he’s going to take you back out into the dark, and then he’s going to want to talk to you up close. Or maybe he won’t bother with the talking part. Maybe he’ll just drag you into the nearest alley and do you against the wall.
No, she thought. Suddenly the bright lights inside the restaurant were too bright and she could hear everything, everything, even the big sloppy gasps of the overhead paddle -fans walloping the air. No, that’s a lie — he’s nice and that’s a lie!
The answer was immediate and inexorable, the Gospel According to Norman: No one’s nice, sweetheart — how many times have I told you that? Down deep, everyone’s streetgrease. You, me, everyone.
‘Rose?’ Bill asked. ‘You okay? You look pale.’
No, she wasn’t okay. She knew the voice in her head was a lying voice, one which came from a part of her that was still blighted by Norman’s poison, but what she knew and what she felt were very different things. She couldn’t sit in the midst of all these people, that was all, smelling their soaps and colognes and shampoos, listening to the bright interweavings of their chatter. She couldn’t deal with the waiter who would come bending into her space with a list of specials, some perhaps in a foreign language. Most of all she couldn’t deal with Bill Steiner
— talking to him, answering his questions, and all the time wondering how his hair would feel under her palm.
She opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t okay, that she felt sick to her stomach and he’d better take her home, perhaps another time. Then, as she had in the recording studio, she
thought of the woman in the rose madder chiton, standing there on top of the overgrown hill with her hand upraised and one bare shoulder gleaming in the strange, cloudy light of that place. Standing there, completely unafraid, above a ruined temple that looked more haunted than any house Rosie had ever seen in her life. As she visualized the blonde hair in its plait, the gold armlet, and the barely glimpsed upswell of breast, the flutters in Rosie’s stomach quieted.
I can get through this, she thought. I don’t know if I can actually eat, but surely I can find enough courage to sit down with him for awhile in this well-lighted place. And am I going to worry about him raping me later on? I think rape is the last thing on this man’s mind. That’s just one of Norman’s ideas — Norman, who believes no black man ever owned a portable radio that wasn’t stolen from a white man.
The simple truth of this made her sag a little with relief, and she smiled at Bill. It was weak and a little trembly at the corners, but better than no smile at all. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘A tiny bit scared, that’s all. You’ll have to bear with me.’
‘Not scared of me?’
Damned right scared of you, Norman said from the place in her head where he lived like a vicious tumor.
‘No, not exactly.’ She raised her eyes to his face. It was an effort, and she could feel her cheeks flushing, but she managed. ‘It’s just that you’re only the second guy I’ve ever gone out with in my whole life, and if this is a date, it’s the first real one I’ve been on since my high-school senior prom. That was back in 1980.’
‘Holy God,’ he said. He spoke softly, and without a trace of facetiousness. ‘Now I’m getting a little scared.’
The host — Rosie wasn’t sure if you called him a maître d’ or if that was someone else —
came up and asked if they wanted smoking or non-smoking.
‘Do you smoke?’ Bill asked her, and Rosie quickly shook her head. ‘Somewhere out of the mainstream would be great,’ Bill said to the man in the tuxedo, and Rosie caught a gray-green flicker — she thought it was a five -dollar bill — passing from Bill’s hand to the host’s. ‘A corner, maybe?’
‘Certainly, sir.’ He led them through the brightly lighted room and beneath the lazily turning paddle-fans.
When they were seated, Rosie asked Bill how he had found her, although she supposed she already knew. What she was really curious about was why he had found her.
‘It was Robbie Lefferts,’ he said. ‘Robbie comes in every few days to see if I’ve gotten any new paperbacks — well, old paperbacks, actually; you know what I mean — ‘
She remembered David Goodis — It was a tough break, Parry was innocent — and smiled.
‘I knew he hired you to read the Christina Bell novels, because he came in special to tell me. He was very excited.’
‘Was he really?’
‘He said you were the best voice he’d heard since Kathy Bates’s recording of Silence of the Lambs, and that means a lot — Robbie worships that recording, along with Robert Frost reading “The Death of the Hired Man.” He’s got that on an old thirty-three-and-a-third Caedmon LP. It’s scratchy, but it’s amazing.’