Reinhart's Women by Thomas Berger Page B

to accept the simple explanation: that she had been unlucky in love.

CHAPTER 5
    R EINHART HAD BEEN OUTFITTED with a long two-tiered white enamel table on wheels. On one level or another were implements of the batterie de cuisine: copper chafing dish, virgin pots and pans in bright chrome, a two-ring hot plate, a food processor, a portable mixer, and various smaller tools including that manually operated essential, the long-handled wooden spoon, invented no doubt by the original cave-chef for the stirring of aurochs-tail soup.
    This unit was placed in the far northeast corner of the Top Shop supermarket in the Glenwood Mall, in a situation routinely occupied by the rack for day-old bakery products and the bin for damaged canned and boxed goods. The corner was the most remote in the store, the checkouts being diametrically in the ultimate southwest. But the manager, an elongated, even stringy sort of man with a chin that suggested inherent aggrievement, insisted that no other position was available: i.e., the cable that brought power to the electrical devices could here be deployed with least danger to the customers.
    But it was obvious that Mr. DePau cared little for the project, which he tolerated only because of Grace Greenwood’s arrangements with the higher authority in the headquarters of the Top Shop chain.
    “Frankly,” he said to Reinhart on the latter’s arrival that morning, before the store was open to the public, “the gourmet shelf does not move, and it is my contention that it won’t.”
    “That’s why Epicon is trying this angle,” said Reinhart. “There is a big interest in this country for fine cooking, and—”
    “Look here,” DePau said impatiently. He led Reinhart to the “gourmet” area, which happened to be nowhere near where the demonstration table was installed, but rather tucked away, all two short shelves of it, in the middle of a duke’s-mixture aisle displaying shoe polish, moth balls, clothesline, replacement mopheads, and beer-can openers of the type outmoded by the pull-ring.
    DePau pointed at the shelves. “So what do we have here that’s edible? Between you and me?” He pointed to a vial of spices. “‘Crab Boil’? And look at what we have to charge for this little can of patty doo faw: the markup’s not that much.”
    Reinhart had to assent. “Nor does that stuff contain any goose liver, though it’s called ‘Strasbourg.’ It’s pork liver, as you can read on the can, and it tastes mostly of tin, for my money. You know you can make a marvelous pork-liver pâté at home. The labor takes two minutes or so with a food processor or blender, and it’s dirt cheap.”
    DePau’s nostrils arched ever higher above his lip. “Sounds really awful!” It could have been predicted that he was one of those people. He was about to stride away, but checked himself. “You’re not going to make a bad smell, are you?”
    Reinhart gestured. “This is supposed to be ‘gourmet’ food.”
    “That’s why I asked the question,” said DePau. “I’ll tell you frankly.”
    Reinhart smiled. “I think I know what you mean, and you’re not wrong. For that matter, nobody’s ever wrong when it comes to speaking of their tastes in food. That’s private business if there ever was any. But life really can be enhanced if one expands one’s palate, and then there’s always the question of nourishment.”
    “Can’t be much of that in garlic salt,” said DePau. He was anxious to get away, and food was not the sort of subject that could be argued about. It was not simply that any strife, however mild, had a negative effect on the appetite. Food was a great positive, yea-saying force, the ultimate source of vitality—until a phase of the cycle was completed and oneself became food for the worms. It is only through food that we survive, and we die when we are fed on too heartily by microbes, or by the crab named cancer who eats us alive. In the emotional realm there is no more eloquent