The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [12]
He stood awkwardly for a moment, then put a quick kiss on her waxen forehead.
“I have to go. I’m sort of late.”
“Oh, the show. Yeah, you’d better do. Break a leg and everything, huh?”
“Sure.”
“You’ll be beautiful, baby, I know you will. I’m proud of you.”
“Because Marc ran off and left them hanging?”
“Just because. Because I want to be proud of you, so let me, huh?”
“Sure.” He started for the door, then turned. “Hey,” he said, “you had dinner yet?”
“Oh, sure. I spent the whole day eating and sleeping. Can’t you tell by looking at me?”
“I just—”
“I mean for Christ’s sake, Petey, do I look like I had dinner? You know how I get, you know I couldn’t swallow anything and if I did it wouldn’t stay down, and—”
“I was thinking about Robin.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “I forgot.”
“Christ.”
“I think I gave her a sandwich for lunch. Robin? Honey, did you have any lunch?”
“Fix her some dinner, Gretch.”
“I can’t.”
“Jesus, Gretchen—”
She stood hunched forward, her fingernails digging through the sheer housedress into the scant flesh of her thighs. Tears welled out of her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. She said, “I can’t, Jesus, I can’t, I just can’t, I’d vomit, I swear I would vomit, I can’t do it—”
He looked at Robin. The girl was wide-eyed, expressionless, taking it all in. God, what that kid had to take in. The whole trip, he thought. Everything but food.
“Okay,” he said. He bent over, scooped the child up in his arms, perched her on her shoulders. “Let’s go, Robin Bluejay Nightingale Vann. Let’s get moving, Moving Vann. We’re going to a tacky little restaurant where you can have a tacky big dinner, got it?”
“Moving Vann,” Robin said, and began to giggle.
He took Robin to Raparound, an outdoor coffeehouse around the corner from the playhouse. He put her in a chair and took one of the waitresses aside.
“A large orange juice and all the milk she’ll drink, and whatever else you can stuff into her. She usually likes French toast. Then you can take her back to the Shithouse or else keep her here until after the show.”
“I didn’t think you were in it.”
“I’m doing the lighting tonight. And I’m late, I really have to run.”
The waitress was a heavyset girl named Anne. She had olive skin and prominent white teeth. She said, “I don’t mind taking her home, Peter, but is it all right?”
“Huh?”
“Is it safe?”
“Gretchen’s not a monster.”
“I know, I only meant—”
“Gretch has never been bad to the kid. It’s just that sometimes she can’t cope.”
“I know. I was thinking she could sleep in the back room here. There’s a cot.”
He thought for a moment. “All right,” he said. “Maybe that’s best if Danny doesn’t mind.”
“Why should he?”
“Okay. I’ll pick her up whatever time it is. Eleven, eleven thirty.”
She nodded and looked about to say something. He could guess what it probably was and didn’t have time to listen to it. He turned, darted outside, jogged off toward the playhouse.
Anthony Bartholomew wore his standard uniform of white duck trousers, a black shirt open at the throat, and a white linen ascot. He looked at his watch and whistled soundlessly.
Peter said, “I know. There were problems.”
“I imagine there were. Everybody has them. Well, you know the play and the board. I’ll have a fast run-through on the script with you and then we’ll see what happens. It’s going to be the usual Wednesday night crowd plus a busful of blue-haired ladies from Trenton, so if you eff up nobody’ll likely notice. Just give Warren the spot when he’s supposed to get it or the cocksucker’s likely to stop in the middle of the scene and correct you from the stage.”
“They’d just think Miller wrote it that way.”
“They might, but Tanya won’t. She