Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [81]
“Uppity workers,” Vivian says, exhaling a long plume of blue smoke.
Mironson shakes his head and smiles.
“Of course, it’s more complicated than I can understand,” Vivian says graciously. “I think that goes without saying. Quite frankly, I don’t even know who Eugene Debs is. My point is to keep it simple. One need tell the strikers only what they have to know in order to survive until Tuesday. And then until Wednesday. And then until Thursday. And so on. And if later someone actually asks you, what does this all mean? — well, then I suppose you can give them all the Marxist rhetoric you think they can stand.”
“I hope you were on the debating team wherever you went to school,” Mironson says.
“Oh, well, no,” Vivian says. “Actually, I’m not sure my school even had a debating team. I took classes in table etiquette and deportment.”
McDermott laughs, and even Ross is grinning.
“What shall we call it?” Mironson asks, looking at Vivian. “This practical newsletter of ours.”
Vivian exhales a long curl of smoke. She stubs her cigarette out in an ashtray on the makeshift table. Beside the ashtray is a crumpled package of cigarettes.
“Lucky Strike,” she says without a moment’s hesitation.
Alphonse
All day yesterday they worked on the newsletter, which now Alphonse can just about read and which is a thousand times better than the one they were starting to pack up before Miss Burton spoke her mind and then went into a huddle with Mironson while they all kind of sat around eating a second breakfast, which Alphonse thought was frankly terrific. And then the other woman, Mrs. Beecher, saw Alphonse putting rolls with cheese in them in his pockets and asked him if he wouldn’t rather wrap them in waxed paper, and Alphonse nearly died of embarrassment and then confessed that he took them for his mother, and Mrs. Beecher said well maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to carry rolls and cheese in your pockets because of all the crumbs and wouldn’t it be better if she just made up some sandwiches for his mother when it was time for Alphonse to go back to the city, and all day yesterday he was furious with himself for not even being able to say a proper thank you.
In the late afternoon, Ross and McDermott and Alphonse went back into the city with some of the newsletters and leaflets tied into bundles, and Alphonse thought Mr. Beecher’s arm must be near to falling off with all the pumping he was doing on that nifty machine that printed the copies. After they delivered the leaflets to Nadeau’s apartment, McDermott asked Alphonse if he wouldn’t like to visit his mother for a while, after which he would pick him up in an hour and take him back to the house on the beach. Alphonse knew that McDermott and Mahon and Ross wanted to go to the speakeasy and drink, but he was glad anyway for the chance to see his mother and Augustin and Gérard, and even, he had to admit, Marie-Thérèse, who seemed to have calmed down considerably. And also it was a chance to check to see if he was taller than Marie-Thérèse yet — an exercise he liked to do weekly — though she wouldn’t agree to a back-to-back.
And then McDermott picked him up as he said he would and for the first time ever Alphonse didn’t want to eat any of the leftover bread or cupcakes in the truck because he knew that he and the men were headed for a good meal. Mrs. Beecher made excellent pies and potatoes and eggs and coffee, and just this morning, the smell of bacon was again so wonderful that Alphonse nearly tripped over himself trying to get down the stairs to breakfast.
Last night, the woman with the penny-colored hair brought more food and the men had a lot to drink and Alphonse noted that even Miss Burton had quite a lot to drink herself. She was teaching Mironson how to make something called a sidecar in a beautiful silver shaker and after he got the hang of it, everybody got more drunk, even Miss Burton. Mrs. Beecher didn’t drink too much, though, and you could just tell by the look of her that she probably wasn’t much of a drinker anyway.
After dinner Alphonse