The Inn at Lake Devine (22 page)

“Fine,” I said.

“Natalie’s a chef,” Kris told them.

“Can you bring us more pickles?” asked Al, handing over the relish tray.

“Just the roast beef?” Victor asked Kris.

He looked at the menu. “Can I get… let’s see … a baked potato?”

“It comes with potayda kugel,” said the waiter.

“You’ll like that,” I said.

“He means, Do you want another main course?” said Marilyn.

“Is that the practice?”

The waiter said, “Nothing surprises me—one, two, half a dozen—”

“I’ll start with one,” said Kris.

“You do catering?” Marilyn asked me.

I said, No, I was a restaurant chef.

“A
French
chef,” Kris added.

I said, “I trained with a French chef.”

“In France?”

“In Newton, Mass.”

“Natalie can tell whether boiling water’s been salted just by sniffing the steam,” said Kris.

“I know Newton,” said Harry. “My kid went to college with a kid from Newton.”

“What’s your job at the hotel?” Al asked Kris.

“Night manager; jack-of-all-trades.”

“Are your service employees organized?” asked Harry.

“We don’t have many.”

“How many?”

“Depends on the season.”

“Probably exempt,” Al said to Harry.

“We love your dress,” said Reenie. “At your age you can wear black.”

“And fitted,” said Marilyn, who was concealed under a chocolate-and-cream awning-striped caftan.

“He likes it too,” said Reenie, winking at Kris, who winked at me.

“We have a daughter who’s dating a non-Jewish fellow,” said Harry.

“Harry—” scolded his wife.

“He’s a nice enough boy, but he’s a Roman Catholic.”

“They’re only eighteen years of age, though,” said Reenie.

“Too young!” said Al.

“No, I meant eighteen is good. These things don’t last when they start that young.”

“Not that we’re prejudiced,” said Harry. “I’ve spent my whole adult life fighting that kind of crap at the bargaining table.”

“They’re not interested—” his wife said.

“They don’t mind! Do you mind my discussing this with you?”

Kris and I said no.

“Your folks go along with this?” Harry asked me.

“Our folks,” I began. “It’s a little unusual—”

“They’ve seen us unhappy,” said Kris solemnly, “and they want us to be happy.”

Marilyn pinched the back of my hand. “I see what you see in him.”

“Why were you unhappy?” asked her friend.

I began with Robin, but had only gotten as far as our reunion at Pappagallo when I was stopped by the sight of our waiter race-walking toward us with a Hula-Hoop-size tray held above his head. “Is this ours already?” I asked our tablemates.

“They have everything prepared,” said Reenie. “Right there for the taking.”

“Hope he remembered the pickles,” said Al.

When the tray was lowered to a nearby server, I counted nine silver-domed entrées, which turned out to be everyone’s order plus a flanken for the table.

“Ice water?” asked a busboy.

“Is a beer possible?” Kris asked.

Barely possible, the busboy’s expression seemed to say. “I’ll send the cocktail waitress over.”

Harry leaned across the table to ask Kris, “Are you having a drink with dinner?”

“A beer.”

“You think they have beer?”

“I’m sure they do.”

“I sometimes have a beer with a frankfurter,” said Harry.

“Try it,” said his wife. “You’re on vacation.”

“I will if you will,” said Al.

W
e watched a first-rate magic act in the Blue Lagoon, then followed the crowd to the Red Sea Ballroom, where a spangled Toni Falcone charged up to the mike, elbows pumping, and let loose. Every few songs, she’d note an anniversary or birthday, reading from a slip of paper stored coyly in her bra.

I worried that we’d be next, a hot tip from the front desk, the impostor honeymooners. Toni announced there were new grandparents in the room … their name, their borough, their grandson’s name and weight, then, to my relief, she crumpled her crib sheet. I whispered to Kris, “I think we can relax—” which was cut off by the band striking up “Hello, Young Lovers.”

Toni sang directly to us at our chrome toadstool table, arms outstretched, fingers flexing. Neither of us moved a muscle. She stamped her spike-heeled, ankle-strapped foot and cried, “C’mon, you two! Get up and dance.” I shook my head, which had been enough to decline the magician’s call minutes earlier. But Kris knew there was no getting away. He took my hand and we walked into the spotlight. Reenie and Marilyn clapped ecstatically.

We danced primly at first, then closer and closer. Wrinkled, bespectacled faces studied us and mentally pinched our cheeks. And then, because it was the Catskills, where you give the audience what it wants, Kris twirled me once in a pirouette, then clamped me to him in Latin-ballroom fashion. “Aren’t they darling, ladies and gentlemen?” Toni purred. When we returned to unremarkable footwork, she grew restless; she put out a call to “everyone still in
love to come up and join the happy couple.” Dozens of old-marrieds did, a few great fox-trotters among them, relieving us of the spotlight. Toni and the band moved on to a shmaltzy “It’s All in the Game.”

I said into Kris’s collar, “Is anyone watching now?”

“No one.”

I tightened my left arm around him and sighed.

“What?” he whispered.

“Just this,” I said. “You.”

We continued to dance on the now-packed floor, the perfect excuse for our barely moving. I remember thinking how wonderful he smelled; how I liked the texture of his wool jacket; how warm and solid his hand was; that I’d steal the hotel soap and buy a Mathis album, which led to the realization that either a show tune or a corny oldie would be our song. I said, “Thank you for hunting me down in Newton,” and kissed the spot where his earlobe met his jaw.

Soon he whispered, “Are you tired?”

I said I didn’t want to let go, if that’s what he meant.

He said, “It’s getting a little dangerous.”

“I could stop nuzzling you.”

“Actually,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind being alone.”

“Me too.”

It was a medley: “It’s All in the Game,” segued into “Wonderful, Wonderful.” A ripple of applause drew a “Thank you, you’re
too
kind; Sonny Cirrell, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Let’s make our move,” said Kris.

If we thought we were slipping away unnoticed, we were wrong. At the door we heard Reenie or Marilyn call, “See you at breakfast!” And from the stage, through the amplifiers, out the speakers—a husky, loaded “Sweet dreams, you two.”

W
e weren’t so far removed from dormitory life and childhood beds that a locked, private room didn’t seem like the best real estate on earth. I used the bathroom first, then, from the doorway, watched him remove his tie, jacket, shirt, and T-shirt; saw for the first time his swirl of chest hair, his freckled shoulders, his extremely affecting collarbone. He walked over to where I stood transfixed, ran his hands up and down my arms in soothing fashion, and—assuming modesty had paralyzed me—said, “Everything’s totally up to you.”

I took my shoes off, one at a time. My panty hose. I don’t remember the actual act of unhooking, unzipping, and removing my dress, but we must have, because I do recall a slip phase, horizontal on the shiny bedspread, some acrobatic rolling, and the unwrapping of his purchase from the Halseeyon’s all-night pharmacy. I know we must have pulled the bedspread down and fallen asleep at some point, because we woke under the covers, smiling, even though it was 8:30
A.M.
and the phone was ringing.

“Breakfast only goes till nine, kids,” advised someone who sounded like Honey. “We didn’t want you to miss it.”

Groggy, I asked, “How much time?”

“Half-hour. But as long as you get there under the wire, they’ll take care of you.”

I pulled on jeans and my bulky Irish sweater, brushed my hair into a ponytail, then sat on the flat edge of the pink bathtub to watch Kris’s shoulder blades and the indentation of his waist while he shaved. I said, “What did we tell those people at our table? That we were friends?”

“I think they got the picture,” said Kris.

“Didn’t we get introduced at some point as actual newlyweds?”

“
Young lovers
, I believe, was the musical term.”

I aired the thought I’d had while dancing—that one of Toni’s tunes could end up being our song.

“I like that,” he said. “I like that you’re thinking ahead.”

“Ahead”—life beyond the Halseeyon—brought forth a vision of my mother yoo-hooing up the stairs from Saul Zinler’s kitchen, having used her master key to see if I had died in my sleep, or worse.

I mumbled, “She’ll figure it out.”

He wiped foam off his face with a pink towel. “Who?”

“My mother. I told her: ‘I’m an adult. I make my own decisions.’ ”

“Right. You’ve got your own life and your own garret.”

He sat down next to me as I heard my mother phoning my father, the neighbors, the Inn at Lake Devine, and, without a doubt, the Newton police. “You could call them,” he said. “Tell them you’re safe. And in good hands.”

I smiled. He took my face in his hands and kissed me, his skin still warm and spiced from shaving, a morning-after kiss that started sweetly, then intensified.

And as I gripped the edge of the slippery tub, I was thinking, This man, this dear man—imagine—is Ingrid Berry’s son.

“
W
e’re so proud,” cried Marilyn and Reenie when we sat down. “Everyone saw the show last night, all our friends. They
knew you were from our table. They think you look like sister and brother. How did you sleep? We asked them to call your room; we didn’t want you to miss breakfast … oh, look—isn’t that the Feldman girl?”

From the surprise and pleasure on Kris’s face, I knew it had to be Nelson’s friend approaching, but whatever I had expected in a Catskills hotel heiress, this wasn’t it. Her tight black leather jumper over a tie-dyed body stocking startled me, and her high-heeled clogs made me smile. She was short and wiry, with a teenager’s freckled face and frizzy, cider-colored hair. “Hey!” she was saying, picking up speed. “Hey, Kris Berry!” When she came closer, I saw that the black leather was man-made; another step and I saw that her left hand was weighed down by the largest emerald-cut diamond ever mounted within four prongs.

“Linette,” Kris was saying. “I want you to meet Natalie Marx.”

Linette beamed and squeezed my hand.

“How’d you know we were here?” Kris asked.

“Word got back to me,” she said.

“I did a little fancy footwork at the front desk,” said Kris.

“No problem, kiddo.” She gestured around the vast, teeming dining room. “We’re practically empty.”

Victor the waiter was at our elbows and on his best behavior, smiling unctuously. “Folks? Can I get you appetizers, hottahcold cereal, halfagrapefruit?”

“Appetizers?” I repeated. He handed me the breakfast menu and pointed to a list of various pickled and smoked fish, and every fruit that had ever been dried, stewed, or buried in sour cream. “Canned figs,” I said. “I haven’t had canned figs since I was a kid. My father used to put evaporated milk on his.”

“Can you join us?” Kris asked Linette.

None of the rapt and fed onlookers offered to give up his or her front-row seat. “We’re the Seidlers and the Mizitskys,” said Reenie. “We met you earlier in the week.”

“Of course,” said Linette. “You’re with Eleven ninety-nine. I
spoke with Housekeeping. We’re thrilled to have you. Did you get whatever it was you didn’t have?”

“Before we got back to our rooms!” said Marilyn.

“You’re a miracle worker,” said Reenie.

“I wish all my problems were that easy to solve.” A busboy, unbidden, brought a chair. Victor returned with a cup, saucer, and a small stainless-steel teapot. As she bobbed the teabag, Linette turned to Kris and asked, “How is he doing?”

He shook his head. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“What was her name?”

“Robin Fife.”

“Was she wonderful?” Linette asked, eyes shining. “Were they madly in love?”

“I guess so,” said Kris, flinching. “Sure.”

“Where’d she go to school?”

“UConn,” said Kris.

“Connecticut College,” I corrected.

“Beautiful?”

“Tall and blond,” I said. “Very sweet and kind. The all-American girl.”

“Are we talking about the brother’s fiancée?” Reenie asked.

“She was killed on her wedding day, on her way to the church,” Linette supplied.

“More or less,” said Kris.

“
Oy Gotenyu
,” someone murmured.

“He and I were friends at Cornell,” said Linette.

“But you never met Robin?” I asked her.

Linette said she hadn’t. There was no Robin back then.

“Actually,” said Kris, “he’s known her since we were kids. Her parents have been coming to the Inn for ages.”

I turned to the older couples and said, to flatter our host and upgrader, “Linette was one of the first of his college friends to call Kris’s brother. She thought it would be good for him to get away.”