Vital Parts by Thomas Berger Page B

soon,” said Reinhart. “I imagine I will be joining Mr. Sweet in the firm.”
    She peered dramatically at an immense watch on a purple patent-leather band around her wrist. “It’s lunchtime, and I have to go out now. Was there anything further? I have to lock the office, you see.”
    â€œAre you alone here?” Reinhart regretted having put the question when he saw her suspicious, even frightened, glance. He smiled to allay any fears that he might be a potential rapist, but felt his treacherous face assume a leer.
    â€œPeople keep coming in,” she said quickly, staring at the door. “We’re just getting under way. We aren’t really organized yet. We don’t even keep any petty cash on hand.” She grew shrill. “And certainly no stamps. We have a Pitney-Bowes postage machine in back.” Her hair fell across her glasses on both sides, and she whip-lashed her neck to throw it back.
    Reinhart lifted himself. “I’m leaving too.” He would have liked a quiet moment to examine his wallet and see if he possessed the wherewithal to buy her lunch. She probably ate copiously; her figure did not suggest the old office-girl’s old standby, tuna on toast.
    â€œHave several things to do first,” said she, presenting no interstices in which he could put a toe, and went to the outer door and held it open. “I’ll send you our brochure. It answers all possible questions.” She was a good five feet ten, he estimated now they were both erect.
    He reached her and stopped. “Nice to meet you, Miss—” The corridor was thronged with noontime traffic. Some young-executive or office-boy types—you could no longer tell—sauntered by in pinched-waisted summer suits and feathery sideburns. One was saying, “A wedge of Stilton and a pint of nut-brown ale. That’s lunch to me. But where can you get it in this burg?” You fraud, thought Reinhart, who had lately read an article on cheeses of the world, Stilton is scooped out with a spoon. But he saw the girl eyeing them with obvious admiration.
    Her attention cruised reluctantly back to him, and her mouth clamped together. She forthwith abandoned all pretense of courtesy.
    â€œThis way out, man.” She threw a brawny thumb over her shoulder. The crowd made her nervy.
    â€œYou didn’t seem to hear me say I would soon be working with Bob. … But that’s all right,” he added quickly, in response to her expression, which now signified open maleficence. “I’ll let Bob tell you himself when he gets back. Please inform him that Reinhart, Carl Reinhart, was in.”
    She shuddered in revulsion and closed the door behind him. No, he had checked his fly before entering; he had shaved, washed, and deodorized himself that morning. It was simply that women ignored him nowadays and if he tried to assert himself, acted like this girl or the waitress at Gino’s. The only thing that kept him from turning fag was his detestation of men. People were so rotten that why anybody would want to be frozen in order to preserve himself as a human being—the elevator opened its jaws, swallowed him, and he descended its esophagus.
    The strange, almost eerie coincidence was that he had also first met Genevieve, in a similarly unpleasant fashion, on entering an office of which she was the lone functionary. But he had then been twenty-two, which term of years if doubled brought him to his current pass. Now, at forty-four, he had been thrown out of his own home.
    Gen had threatened to put the police on him if he showed up there again. He had not anticipated that she would react so violently to the rape of Blaine’s locks.
    â€œAfter all,” he pointed out, “it will grow back.”
    Blaine was still hysterical and, wrapped around his mother, his half-plucked chicken-head against her neck, sobbed into the collar of her housecoat. Her fanatical face, which an