Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [239]
Judy slipped into her bra delicately and glanced into the mirror. Clint wasn’t even looking.
“It’s that thing in Germany with all the airplanes.”
“Yes ... that ... thing.”
“I don’t know that I’m in favor of spending tens of millions feeding Nazis. What for? Another war?” She opened her closet. “Clint, start shaving. We’ll be late for dinner.”
“Who are we?”
Judy went to him, rumpled his hair, lifted his legs, and put them on the floor. “We’ll ditch Milt and Laura early and get back and make love like animals.”
Clint stretched and walked into the bathroom.
“I’ll put the children down,” she said putting on a robe.
Clinton and Judy Loveless met Laura and Milton Schuster in the lobby of the restaurant. Clint and Milt shook hands; Judy and Laura bussed cheeks and each said, “Darling how lovely you look,” or words to that effect and Milt said, “Let’s have a drink.” He had come straight from the office and was in need.
The restaurant was noisy. The meal was smothered in sauce. The four of them sat side by side along the wall with other fashionable New Yorkers ... like sides of beef in a butcher shop window.
Milt Schuster was a pale, articulate lawyer in one of the big ad agencies and as a matter of company and personal policy gave his dissertation on “that idiot in the White House.”
Clint didn’t know about that. He thought Harry Truman was doing a hell of a job both feeding the world and keeping it from moral collapse. American prestige had never been so high. However, he did not wish to intrude on Milt Schuster’s soliloquy because it wouldn’t change Milt’s mind anyhow.
Laura began chattering about an Italian film by a newly acclaimed genius, Dino Massavelli. “The picture has such honesty, such realism ... so earthy. Why can’t Hollywood make such films?”
“Because it would bore the crap out of people,” Clint said. “Laura, you liked that picture because it showed a couple of Dagos pissing in an alley and the leading lady refused to shave her armpits. Otherwise no one, including Dino Massavelli, had the slightest idea what the picture was about.”
Milt Schuster said that business was on the skids because of the bureaucracy in Washington. Laura said they simply must see the Cuban-African Dance Group at Town Hall. Clint knew she got kicks from it because of a half-dozen six-foot Negroes built like there was no tomorrow, muscles glistening in their own sweat. Looking at Milt, who could blame her? They had to gobble down the last course because it was getting close to curtain time.
The check came to $61.00, which never failed to hit Clint like a kidney punch. He greased his way out of the place passing the bulwark of captain, maitre d’, check-room attendant, wash-room attendant, and a frantic doorman who blew his whistle desperately for a taxi that never came.
It was only six blocks to the theater ... let’s walk it. They galloped off at a half trot. Fortunately the curtain was fashionably late. They were forced to split up because seats were hard to get, even at fifteen bucks apiece. As was the custom, Clint drew Laura Schuster.
The theater was another of those New York atrocities, an ancient firetrap that seemed to have been constructed for the discomfort of the audience.
The play was a ridiculous bore from six minutes after the first curtain. A grand old team, who were once fine performers, went through the motions and would continue to do so as long as smart New Yorkers plunked down fifteen bucks a ticket.
By the second act Clint had hypnotized himself into complete detachment. His mind was on airplanes flying and landing in rhythm, unloading, pouring life blood into a city of two million human beings. Clint had thought of little else since General Stonebraker had come and gone.
He thought of writing to the general to give him some ideas on the removal of long-range navigation equipment which wouldn’t be needed on the short hauls and the removal of other compartments which, with